Redcar Coke Ovens

Debate between Philip Davies and Anna Soubry

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) is right about the irony of the Labour party complaining about steel plants closing when it imposed the Climate Change Act 2008 on the UK, which unilaterally put huge costs on energy that other countries did not face. Will the Minister confirm that the Government have learned the lesson and will not unilaterally impose huge energy costs and carbon emission targets on British businesses? If the Government do not make that commitment, many other manufacturing jobs will follow. We are merely exporting jobs to other countries around the world.

[Anna Soubry]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. However, even if we had the sort of energy prices that I would like, it would not solve the problem for our steel making industry, which is that the price of steel has almost halved because of over-production and under-consumption.