Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Hurd and Nic Dakin

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

Yes to the event, and yes to the assurance that my hon. Friend seeks about continued support. On top of the growth deal, the city deal and the enterprise zone programme, he will be well aware of the very significant Government commitment to future contract for difference auctions worth £730 million for less mature renewable technologies, including offshore wind. I hope he welcomes that.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

What steps are the Government taking to ensure the highest possible UK content in the steel used to build the energy infrastructure in the Humber?

[Mr Hurd]

That is an extremely important point, and it is part of our calculation of the return on the investment made by the British taxpayer. Good progress is being made, and analysis shows that aggregated lifetime UK content in operating windfarms is 43%, against a track target of around 50%, and the proportion is higher for the value of operations and maintenance contracts, which run at about 70% of value at the moment. This will be a key area of our focus as we go forward with the industrial strategy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Hurd and Nic Dakin

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I congratulate, through my hon. Friend, the innovators in his constituency on an outstanding achievement. Let me reassure him that the Government are determined to make sure, both through the industrial strategy and tools such as the innovations audits, that we are better informed and better equipped to support innovation across the country.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The steel industry is very much an industry of the future, and innovation is part of creating that future. What are the Government doing to support research and development in the steel industry, and a metals and materials catapult?

[Mr Hurd]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. We had an excellent debate last week about the future for steel, and I hope I made clear to him the determination of Ministers to support the sector in moving from a story of survival to one of growth. Innovation will clearly be a very important part of that, building on the quality of British steel. As in that debate, I assure him that in the capabilities review that we are funding and accelerating, that issue will be addressed.

Steel Industry

Debate between Nick Hurd and Nic Dakin

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Climate Change and Industry (Mr Nick Hurd)]

I will certainly do that, Mr Betts. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship and to welcome the new shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), to her place.

It has been a really good debate. I know I am meant to say that, but I mean it. Anyone listening to or reading the debate whose livelihood depends directly or indirectly on this critically important sector will be in no doubt about the passion felt for the sector by their elected representatives, on both sides of the House, who have championed their interests, and none more so than the hon. Members for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) and for Redcar (Anna Turley), who made this debate happen and who have spoken so effectively.

I do not think that I or anyone will ever give the hon. Member for Redcar full satisfaction on an explanation for the past, but she knows from the meeting that she had with me and the Secretary of State that we are determined to do everything we can, on top of the support for the taskforce, to support and engineer a beautiful rebirth of the site to the best of our ability. I repeat my offer to visit at whatever point is appropriate and valuable. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland gave a masterful speech. It was extremely well informed and constructive, and contained a good mix of challenge both for his party’s Front Bench and for the Government.

Out of respect for the debate, I am going to resist what was already a weak urge to simply unload a section of prose prepared by civil servants. I will do my best to try to respond to the debate. First, I must do something important, which is to register our complete understanding of the frustration about the uncertainty, which various Members have expressed. That is entirely understandable. I will go further and say that the Government share that frustration, because we are deeply worried, as I will come on to say, about the deep structural difficulties that the sector faces in both the long and short term.

As most Members who know more about this industry than I do will recognise, those underlying issues are extremely complicated, and therefore the solutions that the Government can implement that would have a long-term, sustained impact—that is what we should be about—are not that straightforward. I will be very frank: we are also frustrated about the pace and speed at which decisions are being taken in the private sector. I give full assurance to the Members who probed on that point that, although we might be in a slightly different age, when the steel industry is not necessarily on the front page of the newspapers, the Government are deeply aware that the difficulties have not gone away. We are fully engaged at all levels—ministerial, Secretary of State and official—to stay as close as we can to all the complex conversations that are going on. Our message to everyone is that we are here to support a long-term, sustainable future for the sector.

I refute and push back on the suggestion that underlay a number of speeches: that the Government’s eye is somehow off the ball. That is not true. We absolutely share the view expressed in the debate—I heard the Secretary of State say this directly to the chief executives of the industry—that this is not an industry with a past or a sunset industry, as the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) called it, that we should look at through a lens of nostalgia. We are interested in working together with the sector, stakeholders, the all-party parliamentary group, the Select Committee and everyone else who wants to shape the industry, to present a story around the sector of growth and seizing some of the very real opportunities that are out there. We are entirely sincere in that view and in that determination.

It is worth restating that that is not just because of the importance of the sector, which employs 31,000 people, or because of the huge weight and importance it has to the fundamental identity of many towns across the country represented here today, its value in terms of exports, or the fabulous opportunities that we see for it to be positioned as a dynamic component in an invaluable supply chain, supporting some of the industries where we see big opportunities for growth—the hon. Member for Hartlepool mentioned a couple of those, such as the automotive industry and offshore wind. It is not just for those reasons, but, as the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland and other Members described, because we see it as a foundation sector underpinning the infrastructure of this country. It is, in that respect, strategic. We are determined—I echo the words of my long-standing hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone)—that this sector has got to have a future. We must collectively shape that.

In that context, we totally understand that, even though there may have been some short-term improvement in trading conditions, we cannot be deceived. The Secretary of State and I had a meeting with the chief executives of most of the major companies last week, and they were very clear that trading performance is improving in some ways, but they do not trust that to be sustainable. The overwhelming, crushing issue is that the picture of overcapacity in the industry has not changed, despite some shifts at the margins. Demand remains weak, the volatility of raw material prices is an issue, particularly for coke, prices remain a problem and the spread remains a concern. In conclusion, the situation remains very difficult. We have no illusions about that.

Some of the rhetoric has been: “The Government are all talk. It’s all words.” I am not complacent about this, but I need to state categorically, and to echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), that although the work is not done, action has been taken in some critical areas. We are aware that energy costs—specifically industrial electricity costs—remain a significant problem, but since 2013 more than £120 million- worth of public resource has been effectively reallocated to the steel sector to mitigate these problems. To anyone who describes that as limited, I say that my constituents would not consider £120 million to be small change. I know that is appreciated by the industry, and anyone who says that it is just words on this issue is wrong.

[Nic Dakin]

I am not surprised that the Minister pointed to that, but does he accept that the support was very slow in coming? It took about three years from being promised to being delivered. We do not want that sort of sloth from the Minister and the Government now.

[Mr Hurd]

I hope I have never been associated with sloth—my mother might disagree. I do not know the background to it fully enough, but the more substantive point is that, despite that weight of money, more clearly needs to be done. We have not solved the issue. The pace may be important, but the fundamental challenge for us all is that we have not cracked the problem.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Hurd and Nic Dakin

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

My hon. Friend makes a hugely important point. The social mix is fundamental to the value of NCS, because it is about giving young people opportunities to meet and spend time together that they would not otherwise have, and they value that enormously. We pay by results when it comes to providers delivering that, and we monitor it obsessively.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

10. What recent assessment he has made of implementation of the Government’s procurement reforms.