BUSINESS Secretary Vince Cable was in Redcar on Monday to hand over £1.4m that had been promised to steelmaker SSI in April 2011. The cash will be used to train staff.

But, instead of basking in the glow from the recently relit blast furnace, Mr Cable was forced by the assembled media to defend the Coalition’s position on workers’ rights. “Complete nonsense,” was Mr Cable’s view of a study commissioned by David Cameron proposing it should become easier for firms to sack under-performing staff. In the face of Lib Dem resistance, the Prime Minister risks a row with the right wing of his party by accepting he will struggle to force the plans through. Among the horses running at Redcar racecourse on the same day were the presciently-named No Plan B and Old Man Clegg.

Mr Cable’s Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (Bis) is backing a series of career milkrounds aimed at linking thousands of entrepreneurial university students with small and medium-sized firms.

The scheme will run over the next two weeks at 20 universities “all over England,”

said Bis. However, the nearest event to this region is taking place in Leeds, whereas nearly half of the rounds are being held in the South-East. An early lesson in how to manage transport costs beckons for the North-East’s budding business leaders.

The dramatic demise of Cumbrian Seafoods factory is a hammer blow for Seaham and a reminder of how quickly a successful business can fold.

It comes just 13 months after Cumbrian was standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Nissan as one of the region’s elite companies promised a cash injection from the Government’s flagship job creation programme.

An undisclosed sum from the Regional Growth Fund was earmarked to support ambitious expansion plans at the plant, which would have involved about 100 jobs being created, before the fish packing firm’s deep financial woes began to emerge.