Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act 2025

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I join in the general congratulations of the House to the noble Baroness, Lady Lloyd, on her new appointment and what was an excellent maiden speech. I have known Liz for some 30 years. I remember her coming as a bright young thing—she is still a bright young thing, of course—to our house in Kennington for a great party, with a lot of the young people who were part of the Blair and Brown project and eagerly preparing for that Government. I worked for seven and a half years in No. 10 Downing Street as a special adviser. For quite a lot of them I was sitting opposite the noble Baroness, Lady Lloyd, when she was working on international development questions and I was working on Europe and defence. She has got a great background and I am sure she is going to be a tremendous success in this House.

I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stockwood. He is a successful businessman who has been a great philanthropist. The one thing I know about him—at least, I hope I am right—is that he has a great attachment to the town of Grimsby. I have been to Grimsby only once. The reason I went there was because I have a great attachment to its former Member of Parliament, the right honourable Tony Crosland. I went to Grimsby for the only time in my life to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of his The Future of Socialism, at which Ed Miliband was the guest lecturer. Anyone with associations with Grimsby, a community that has suffered from the loss of its main industry in deep-sea fishing a long time ago, will know the commitment of the noble Lord, Lord Stockwood, to community development there—one of our young MPs, Keir Mather, told me all about it. He is an excellent addition to our House.

On the subject of this debate, steel is a sovereign capability that we have to retain. I would like to see a public/private partnership developed, but if the only way of retaining this sovereign capability is public ownership then I would be prepared, in exceptional circumstances, to support that. I am not a passionate public ownership man by nature, but I think this would be essential.

Several Members have talked about the need for a plan for steel and I agree—I like the idea of plans—but it is extremely difficult to do that at the moment because of the global crisis in which steel is inevitably wrapped up. It is not just a crisis to do with the steel industry; like the car industry, it is to do with manufacturing. It is the outcome of the tariff war in the world that President Trump has engaged in, with very high tariffs on exports to the United States for some countries, particularly China. We have, in any event, a surplus capacity of steel in the world. I remember that when the European Community faced this problem some 30 or 40 years ago, there was the Davignon plan, which was quite successful in reducing overcapacity. But whereas we could have a Davignon plan for Europe, I somehow doubt we could have one for the world that is likely to have much chance of success. What is happening is that people are imposing tariffs in Europe because they fear a flood of imports which could have gone to the United States coming to Europe—particularly in steel but also in wider industrial sectors.

I consulted Community, the trade union of the steel industry, and it sent me a briefing on what is now going on. I will read out what it said, so that everybody is clear:

“The new measures proposed by the EC would halve the overall quotas and double the import tariffs on steel outside of these quotas to 50%. In addition, the EC plans stricter traceability requirements to specifically target those countries that are producing too much steel and undercutting EU producers”,


which may be a problem. It goes on:

“These measures will significantly reduce the UK’s access to the single market”,


which is, I emphasise,

“by far our largest export market for steel, accounting for almost 80% of exports”.

That puts in context the success of the bilateral agreement that we made with the United States. That addresses part of our export problem, but this is the central question as far as steel exports are concerned. It goes on to say:

“This will undercut UK businesses and cause further damage to our steel industry”.


We have the potential situation in Britain where we are pouring in millions of pounds in support of a steel industry that finds its global markets severely blocked. That is not a very sensible position; we have to find some way through this.

Obviously, the best thing to do is to negotiate a good arrangement with the EU. Having worked in Brussels for three years of my life and got to know intimately the tough types who run EU trade policy and who put the interests of the Union before everything else—quite properly—I suggest that they will say, “Unless you adopt the same measures as we are adopting, of 50% tariffs on imports from the rest of the world, why should we make any change in our policy?” Therefore, what do our Ministers see as the perspective for these discussions with the European Union? How do they see them going?

I make one other point, which perhaps people would expect me to make, given my background. It seems to me that we face what is potentially an economic emergency on tariffs. Why do we not just think about rejoining the European customs union? It is the most obvious thing to do to protect our position. I know we are very proud of the trade agreements that we have negotiated, but I would like to see a cost-benefit analysis carried out in the next month or two about whether the benefits of an independent trade policy outweigh the losses we risk suffering, of which steel is a prime example, by not being members of the EU customs union.