Tatas put UK PM in a fix

Cameron chairs crisis meet, says nationalisation not an answer

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron said there was no guarantee a buyer could be found for Britain’s biggest steel producer after Tata Steel announced it was pulling out, and a state takeover was not the answer.

Cameron said he was doing all he could following the Indian company’s decision to sell its British operation, a move that has put 15,000 jobs at risk and exposed the government to accusations of failing to protect the industry from cheap Chinese imports.

Tata’s biggest plant in Port Talbot, south Wales, is losing around $1.4 million a day as a result of depressed steel prices and high costs. “We’re going to work very hard with the company to do everything we can, but it is a difficult situation, there can be no guarantees of success because of the problems that the steel industry faces worldwide,” Cameron said after chairing an emergency meeting on the crisis on Thursday.

“We’re not ruling anything out, (but) I don’t believe nationalisation is the right answer.”

Cameron’s government has faced criticism over its response to Tatas’ decision, with opposition lawmakers saying it was “asleep at the wheel” when the Indian group said it was pulling out after nearly a decade in Britain.

The prime minister and Sajid Javid, the Business Minister, were out of the country when Tatas’ board met in Mumbai on Tuesday, leaving a junior colleague to respond. The opposition Labour Party and Britain’s media said the handling of the crisis had been “chaotic” after the government rowed back on an initial suggestion from a junior minister that it could nationalise the plants for a period.

“It’s absolutely extraordinary that they’ve been asleep at the wheel for this long,” Stephen Kinnock, the local member of parliament in south Wales, told Sky News on Thursday. “Why is it that the prime minister seems to be reacting to this as if he didn’t see it coming. They’re in total disarray.”

Steelmakers in Britain pay some of the highest energy costs and green taxes in the world, but the government maintains that the fundamental problem facing the industry is the collapse in the price of steel, caused by overcapacity in China.

Britain imported 826,000 tonnes of Chinese steel in 2015, up from 361,000 two years earlier. —

There can be no guarantees of success because of the problems that the steel industry faces worldwide

— David Cameron