London (AP) – United Kingdom legislators returned to Parliament from their Easter break on Saturday to approve an emergency rescue of the last reference factory of the country that produces steel from scratch.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer summoned legislators for the unusual Saturday sitting, only the sixth from War II, to support a bill aimed mainly to block Chinese owners of British Steel, Jingye Group, from the closure of Northore’s furniture in the steel process.
The bill gives the Secretary of Business Jonathan Reynolds the power to direct the Board and the Company’s workforce, ensure that their 3,000 workers receive the payment and order the raw materials necessary to keep the underfrees in operation.
Jingye has said that the Scunthorpe plant is losing 700,000 pounds ($ 910,000) per day as a result of challenging market conditions and higher environmental costs. The recent decision of US President Donald Trump to impose 25% of tariffs on imported steel has not helped.
After Parliament approved the bill, Starmer went to Scunthorpe to meet the workers, who felt clearly relieved that the Steelmaching heritage of the city has been preserved, which extends about 150 years.
“You and your colleagues for years have been British Steel’s backbone, and it is really important that we recognize it,” said Starmer. “It is their work, their lives, their communities, their families.”
The relief in the city was obviously during the Soccer Party of Scunthorpe United, where the crowd in the ATTIS Arena cheered some boxes of steel workers on the playing field. The team is known as “The Iron”, a reflection of the identity of the city.
Starmer had been under pressure to act after Jingye’s recent decision to cancel the orders of the iron granules used in the high furnaces. Without them and other raw materials, such as coke coal, the furnaces want to have to close for good, potentially, in a matter of days, since they are extremely widespread and expensive to restart once cooled.
That would mean that the United Kingdom, which at the end of the 19th century was the power of Steelmaching in the world, would be the only country in the group of seven industrial nations the ability to make its own steel from zero instead of Grener Admanders, which from its part of the blastones of forged materials.
The repercussions would be huge for industries such as construction, defense and railroad and would make the country depend on foreign sources for the so -called Virgin Steel, a vulnerability to which the legislators of all political parties in AT.
“We could not, we will not and we will never remain strangely, while the heat filters of the high furnaces of the United Kingdom without planning, due process or any respect for the consequences, and that is why I needed cheeks here today,” said Reynolds.
Reynolds criticized Jingye for making “excessive” demands of the government in discussions in recent months, and that without government intervention, the company would have “irrevocate and unilaterally closed the manufacture of steel in the British.”
He thought that the legislation does not transfer the property of the plant to the state, Reynolds admitted it that it was a future possibility.
It is not clear what role Jingye will have, owner of British Steel since 2020, in the daily functioning of the Steelworks. But if you cannot comply with the new laws, the company and its executives could face legal sanctions.
