TONY Blair has been urged to take a personal interest in Teesside steelworkers facing an uncertain future.

Corus set a tough challenge to the workers when it announced that the Redcar plant would stop supplying steel to other Corus operations in the UK. Instead, it would have to sell its products on the global market.

Mr Blair was challenged by local MP Vera Baird during Prime Minister's Question Time in the House of Commons yesterday.

She said: "If we fail and the plant closes, the loss of jobs will probably be 12,000 or more. Will you take a personal interest in these workers threatened, literally, on your constituency's doorstep?"

Replying, Mr Blair expressed his sympathy for steelworkers whose jobs had been axed by Corus, and promised everything would be done to help them.

Meanwhile, people in Redcar are under no illusions about what it will mean if their town's steelworks closes.

"Close those works and this town is dead," said Redcar traffic warden Rob Scott, the son of a steelworker.

He added: "But while we have a chance, we have hope."

People in east Cleveland, where about 60 per cent of the Teesside steel workforce lives, know that the local works at Redcar, Lackenby and Hartlepool must compete with cheaper producers of steel in China and Russia to survive.

"This is a disaster," said local man Bob McKenzie. "We have had decades of decline but this time things will be harder."

Pensioner Joan Herbert said: "At least we have got a chance," while 22-year-old Scott McKenzie, of Dormanstown, said: "I just feel sorry for the people whose jobs are threatened."

Sylvia Blakemore, manager of the Crown and Anchor pub, said: "Without Corus there really is nothing. It is a ridiculous decision by Corus."

It is a familiar story for the people of Consett, in North-West Durham, who lost a long battle to save their steelworks.

Consett has survived, despite 4,000 jobs going when the steelworks closed in 1980, along with another 6,000 in the years before and after.

That is consistent with estimates that about 10,000 jobs would go across Teesside if the works closed, because of the knock-on effect on dependent companies.

However, Stephen James, senior lecturer in economics at Teesside University, points out that the area survived 20,000 jobs being lost from steel in the early 1980s. This time, unemployment is lower and there is much more diversity, he said.

Rob McCullen, of the North-East Chamber of Trade, has surveyed a number of businesses dependent to varying degrees on Corus.

He found that many had diversified or found new markets since the last threat to the steelworks two years ago.