That timeline is pressing and the Government will be as alert to it as everyone else is in the Chamber or, most importantly, among our constituents. It is good to remind us of the timeline, because it is there and the clock is ticking.
The second industrial ask is about supporting local content in major construction projects. Again, the Government are to be congratulated on making progress. Much stronger guidance is now in place, which has the potential to make real changes. I stress “has the potential” —we need to see the guidance driven through, so there
is a job for Government to do: to force it through. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon said, this needs to be driven through Government and other contractor organisations, otherwise it will remain a nice bit of guidance sat on a shelf somewhere, which will be no good to anyone. Although we recognise that the Government have moved forward on that, they need to move further—the job is started, but not done. The energy costs job was started, but it took us three years to get it done, so we need to keep up the pressure and keep our shoulders to the wheel.
The next industrial ask is about business rates and finding a way of not penalising capital investment in energy-intensive—or any other—industries. The Government admit that they have kicked any review of business rates into the long grass, but the issue needs to be addressed urgently. Business rates in the UK are up to 10 times higher than in France or Germany, which is significantly anti-competitive.
Let me turn to the industrial ask about taking anti-dumping measures. As my hon. Friends have said, the Government have been slow to get behind the wheel and get good trade defence instruments in place. At the moment the concern in Europe is about the issue of a profit margin of 1.5%, because that is a dangerous line to pursue and would not be beneficial to steel producers in the UK or elsewhere in the EU. I hope the Minister will encourage the Secretary of State to phone Commissioner Malmström to make the UK’s position clear about the need to support anti-dumping. Perhaps he has already called her, in which case it would be positive to hear what the Minister can report.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon has already said much about the threat to the UK if market economy status for China is not handled properly. The UK needs to put itself in a leadership role in Europe. The Minister often shows leadership in the House of Commons on many issues, and she and her colleagues need to show that sort of leadership in Europe to ensure that the UK steel industry has a decent future.
Finally, support for research and development and environmental improvements is a big area of need. We need the Government to look at ways in which investment can be made so that the UK steel industry produces the right quality and type of steel to win the contracts of the future. That needs investment in R and D and in future skills, and that needs to happen now. We cannot wait until those opportunities are there; we need to be in a position to take advantage of them.
I hope the Government are looking at ways to make grants available or at using contra-cyclical loans or other imaginative ways to allow such investment to take place. Unless that happens, there will not be a UK steel industry in the future. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon said in his summing up, we need a steel strategy that takes those industrial asks into account. We have ticks in boxes that show that that has started, but we now need to move that forward and get it finished. That needs more time and effort from all of us in the Chamber, including the Minister.
2 pm