{"id":280623,"date":"2025-04-12T23:50:10","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T23:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/12\/chris-mason-as-british-steel-law-rushed-by-ministers-officials-waited-in-scunthorpe-hotel\/"},"modified":"2025-04-12T23:50:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T23:50:10","slug":"chris-mason-as-british-steel-law-rushed-by-ministers-officials-waited-in-scunthorpe-hotel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/12\/chris-mason-as-british-steel-law-rushed-by-ministers-officials-waited-in-scunthorpe-hotel\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Mason: As British Steel law rushed by ministers, officials waited in Scunthorpe hotel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chris<\/div>


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\"PAPA Media<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The prime minister met steelworkers in Lincolnshire shortly after the hearing in House of Commons<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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There was a moment where all they could do was wait.<\/p>\n

Government officials were holed up in a Premier Inn down the road from British Steel’s steelworks in Scunthorpe and parliament’s work to change the law to allow them to take control of the Chinese-owned company was complete.<\/p>\n

But they couldn’t move yet.<\/p>\n

All they could do \u2013 along with all the politicians 200 miles south in Westminster – was wait.<\/p>\n

They were waiting for Royal Assent, the formality in the legislative process when the King formally agrees to make a bill an act of parliament, and so the law.<\/p>\n

Not that this was snail’s pace law-making, far from it.<\/p>\n

This was a legislative sprint, the timeline from First Reading to Royal Assent measured in hours, not the months it would normally take.<\/p>\n

That moment of Royal Assent happened at around 18:00 on Saturday night and with that those officials could head into the plant.<\/p>\n

The after emergency legislation was rushed through Parliament in a single day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There were concerns in government about the prospect of unrest.<\/p>\n

Around 40% of the workforce there are Chinese, 60% are British.<\/p>\n

Many of the Chinese staff have worked for British Steel’s parent company, Jingye, all of their working lives.<\/p>\n

Some have parents or grandparents who worked for the firm too.<\/p>\n

Most are now leaving.<\/p>\n

A new management structure has been put in place, with the professional services firm EY having been hired by the government to assist with this.<\/p>\n

There is an optimism among ministers that with the law changed they can secure the necessary raw materials to keep the two working blast furnaces in Scunthorpe doing just that – working.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The British Steel plant in Scunthorpe employs 2,700 people<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Jingye had been seeking to sell off to other buyers raw materials already en route to Lincolnshire, which is what convinced the government it had to act and act quickly.<\/p>\n

Others, not least the Conservatives, wonder if it really did need to be so last minute and whether some of these problems could have been anticipated much sooner.<\/p>\n

And some within the industry say the moment of jeopardy has not yet passed.<\/p>\n

Securing the necessary materials to keep blast furnaces up and running isn’t like ordering something online via click and collect – these are highly complex international supply chains with long time lags and at a time of trading turmoil with President Trump’s tariffs.<\/p>\n

And remember all of this, for all of the Westminster drama of a weekend sitting, is just a stop gap.<\/p>\n

Nationalisation, the government taking on full ownership of British Steel, looks increasingly likely.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds acknowledged in the Commons that public ownership was “the likely option”<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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If the Chinese parent company don’t quibble with this desire, if it comes about, it could happen without further legislation.<\/p>\n

But if they did, another new law would be needed.<\/p>\n

The prime minister has described leading what he claims is a “government of industry”.<\/p>\n

He emailed Labour Party supporters on Saturday night about the new law, and the subject line was “British Steel. British jobs”.<\/p>\n

Another case study, reckon some who know the Prime Minister’s mind, of an instinct for a sliver of economic nativism.<\/p>\n

A muscular government intervention in an era dominated by President Trump’s guiding principle of “America First”.<\/p>\n

There are big questions and big numbers attached to this path \u2013 and so potentially big budgetary implications too down the track.<\/p>\n

Those officials in Scunthorpe won’t have to hang around in their hotel rooms any longer.<\/p>\n

But they have plenty to do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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PA Media The prime minister met steelworkers in Lincolnshire shortly after the hearing in House of Commons There was a moment where all they could do was wait. Government officials were holed up in a Premier Inn down the road from British Steel’s steelworks in Scunthorpe and parliament’s work to change the law to allow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/bbcx\/grey-placeholder.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[14,2790,4382,3444,9301,1397,120,30911,103686,1291,1180],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280623"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280625,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280623\/revisions\/280625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}