Lord Redwood
Main Page: Lord Redwood (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Redwood's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
(1 day, 16 hours ago)
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Lord Stockwood (Lab)
The noble Lord raises a critical question around how we balance the national resilience of our steel industry with security concerns; that balance is paramount. We remain in conversation with the MoD about making sure that this does not have a prohibitive impact on its procurement and access to products. Equally, it is really important that we utilise the UK Government’s procurement processes to ensure that we are prioritising UK products and services to meet the demand of all our government departments. There are a number of initiatives working on procurement, but I agree that we need to make sure that that perverse incentive does not drive the wrong behaviours.
Lord Redwood (Con)
Will the Government make any payments to the Chinese owners of the Scunthorpe works, or take on any of their debts, bearing in mind that, to effect the transfer, there will be enormous continuing losses to the taxpayer?
Lord Stockwood (Lab)
The Government remain in positive and constructive conversations with Jingye. I know that the noble Lord would not expect me to comment on the specifics of that deal. All I can say is that we are hoping for a positive outcome. The real importance for us is ensuring that we have a steel industry that is fit for the future and for private investment. That is our target aim at the moment.