9:07am Wednesday 8th July 2009
By Rob Merrick
THE steel industry is being allowed to die in the same way as the Tories destroyed coal-mining, Labour MPs claimed yesterday.
One told ministers that if the British steel industry was allowed to flounder, Labour would lose the next election.
The Commons debate followed doubts over the future of the Corus Teesside Cast Products (TCP) plant in Redcar, east Cleveland, and its 3,000 workers, after a consortium tore up a ten-year agreement to buy almost 80 per cent of its steel.
Ministers were condemned for failing to intervene to prevent the recession, forcing thousands of workers onto the dole – the same fate that befell pitmen in the Eighties.
Leading the debate, Rotherham MP Denis MacShane attacked the failure to follow Germany and the Netherlands by taking short-term measures – such as wage subsidies – to save jobs.
And he warned that, by sitting on their hands, ministers were inviting disaster at next year’s General Election, saying: “If Labour loses steel, Labour loses power. It is as simple as that.”
TCP’s future has been secured until next month due to orders placed from within the Corus group. However, the plant could be mothballed if a buyer is not found.
Meanwhile, Corus has announced that it intends to cut 2,000 more jobs across its UK plants, including at Rotherham and Scunthorpe.
Mr MacShane told ministers: “The basic message is simple – under the Conservatives, Britain lost its coal-mining industry.
“Under Labour, Britain must not lose its steel-making industry.”
However, The Northern Echo revealed earlier this year that ministers had ruled out extending a Welsh “wage subsidy”
scheme – worth up to £2,000 for every worker kept from the dole – to England.
In reply, regional economic development minister Rosie Winterton described the Corus redundancies as “tragic” and insisted the Government was doing what it could.
The minister pointed to efforts to stimulate demand for steel – by bringing forward major building schemes – a scheme to top-up trade credit insurance and cash to support apprenticeships at Corus.
Ms Winterton said: “We do see a future for the UK steel industry.
I hope that the interventions that have already taken place – and those that are still to take place – will demonstrate that.”
Last night Community, the union representing many Corus employees, said the potential closure of TCP, and its knock-on effect of a drop in spending, could mean closer to 10,000 people losing their jobs, pushing local unemployment to nine per cent, higher than at any time in the past decade.
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/trade_directory/