Steel Making (Scotland) (Hansard, 11 December 1989)

§ Dr. Jeremy Bray (Motherwell, South)

I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely, The future of steel making in Scotland in the light of British Steel's impending decisions on plate mill capacity. In a letter to a Mr. Lawson, published last Friday, Martin Llowach chief executive of the British Steel Corporation cast doubt on the viability of British Steel's two plate mills at Scunthorpe and at Dalzell in my constituency. He said that the plate business is a vital component of the company's concentration on and success in structural steels. He said that capital costs for entirely new mills are extremely high, and that British Steel had supported the acquisition by Davy McKee of an existing plant from abroad. That plant from Japan is now stored in the Teesside works of British Steel.

When the privatisation of British Steel was announced in the House on 3 December 1987, the then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said that the chairman of British Steel had that day made a statement saying that subject to market conditions, there will continue to be a commercial requirement for steel making"— and continuous casting at the corporation's five major plants— for at least the next seven years. The corporation also expects that, again subject to commercial considerations, there will be a similar requirement for plate rolling at Dalzell." —[Official Report, 3 December 1987; Vol. 123, c. 1107.] That statement has been quoted several times by Ministers as an undertaking—even a solemn undertaking—and it was included in British Steel's privatisation prospectus. It was not a lightly made statement. Those seven years run to 1994. Does the statement still stand?

British Steel has thrown the steel industry in Scotland into great uncertainty. The suggestion of an independent steel industry in Scotland is nonsensical without finishing mills or markets. My steel worker constituents and their families have no wish to be treated as political footballs, but Ministers and British Steel owe the House an explanation of what is going on, and the House should debate the matter urgently before British Steel goes any further.