UK Steel Industry

My hon. Friend has been a fantastic champion of the steel industry generally, and particularly in fighting for SSI and for it to be retained. She will know that EU state aid rules are often a smokescreen for lack of political will. An excellent programme on BBC 1 this week, “Inside Out North East and Cumbria”, looked at the plant closures here and compared them with how the Italian Government could keep steel plants open. There is a lack of political will, because that could have been done. SSI could have been at least mothballed.