Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act 2025

Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in extending a warm welcome to the noble Baroness, Lady Lloyd of Effra, particularly given her Welsh heritage, and to the noble Lord, Lord Stockwood. It is never easy coming straight on to the Front Bench in the Lords, but I congratulate her on an excellent maiden speech and look forward to hearing more of her contributions.

The speech of the noble Baroness was welcome in its acknowledgement of modern methods of agriculture and green forms of energy generation, but it was rather at odds with the thrust of this Act, which pre-dates her introduction. The Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act 2025 has been presented to us as a lifeline—a bold intervention to protect jobs and revitalise Britain’s steel sector. Of course I applaud the efforts to preserve those 2,700 jobs and help keep those blast furnaces alight, but beneath its polished language lies a policy that risks entrenching inefficiency, draining public funds and stifling innovation.

I begin by acknowledging the immense contribution of our steel workers—particularly those in south Wales, who have endured enormous uncertainty. I particularly enjoyed the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, who emphasised the contribution of steel to the communities of south Wales. My father ran the steelworks in Cardiff, so its importance has particular relevance to me. I visited Port Talbot’s site in the summer, but I got the impression there that the £80 million grant that we agreed for retraining is not yet being spent.

The recent decision by Tata Steel to extend its Christmas shutdown across the Port Talbot, Trostre and Llanwern sites, to which the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, has already alluded, is to be regretted. It will have devastating consequences. In some cases, steel-workers’ pay may be down to 65% of normal earnings, leaving families struggling at precisely the time of year when they need money for heating and for Christmas.

Let me be clear. Steel is vital to our economy: it builds our bridges, powers our industries and anchors communities across the nation. The question before us is not whether steel matters but whether this Act truly serves the future of British steel-making. Instead of investing in modernisation and sustainability, the Act prioritises short-term subsidies that prop up outdated plants and practices. Billions in taxpayers’ money is being redirected to cover corporate losses, without demanding real reform. Where are the binding conditions for green transition, digital efficiency or fair competition? None are adequately defined. We are, instead, pouring funds into a model that competes on volume rather than value.

I am proud of the previous Conservative Government’s commitment to low-carbon steel-making, with the plan for an electric arc furnace at Port Talbot, a £1.25 billion project part-funded by a £500 million Conservative Government grant, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, for acknowledging this. It is a crucial step towards low-carbon steel-making, with the potential to cut emissions by up to 90%, and to sustain 5,000 Welsh jobs and many more in the supply chain. One day, of course, I hope that the electricity on the site will be generated by nuclear power. Only the Conservative Government had the foresight to enable all this to happen. It is to be genuinely hoped that the current Labour Government will have similar foresight in their upcoming siting policy for new nuclear advanced technologies, which could be very relevant to Port Talbot.

Further, this legislation dangerously centralises decision-making in Whitehall. By granting extraordinary powers to the Secretary of State to override environmental and labour standards “in the national interest,” it sidelines local communities and weakens accountability. Steel towns such as Scunthorpe deserve consultation, not merely patronage.

This is not industrial strategy; it is industrial nostalgia. Britain cannot build its manufacturing strength by reviving a 20th-century model in a 21st-century economy. Without a clear path towards low-carbon steel production, research partnerships and fair international trade policy, the Act will leave us less competitive, not more secure. We should instead be channelling more funds into innovation: electrified blast furnaces, circular recycling systems and collaborative regional hubs that link industry with universities. That is how we build resilience, not through subsidies that delay the inevitable reckoning with global change.

Patriotism is not blind loyalty to failing structures; it is the courage to reform them. We must craft policy that supports both innovation and inclusion. The Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act 2025 does neither. Let us reject complacency, demand accountability and champion a truly modern industrial strategy. It is time to replace crisis management with the vision to move from reactive measures to a durable and just transition for British Steel that delivers not only for today’s jobs but for tomorrow’s generations.