Steel pledges come too late

PROMISES by government to help the steel industry have come too late for more than 1,200 workers whose jobs are on the line at Tata Steel’s operations in Motherwell, Cambuslang and Scunthorpe.

The Indian-owned group is expected to confirm the job losses next week.

It follows the collapse of SSI UK’s steelworks in Redcar, which went into liquidation earlier this month with more than 2,200 redundancies.

The latest woes in the sector came as ministers, industry representatives and unions met for a Steel Summit in Rotherham where business secretary Sajid Javid promised to help.

The Tata Steel job cuts were labelled ‘devastating‘ by CBI director-general John Cridland. ‘We’ve been talking about the challenges we’re facing in the UK for many months – surging imports, compounded by the strong pound and uncompetitive policy costs’, Tata said.

Roy Rickhuss, general secretary of union Community, said it ‘emphasises the need for government action.’

The Steel Summit saw the government promise to support a compensation package for the industry, which has been hit by green taxes.

Gareth Stace, director of UK Steel, said: ‘While it may have been too much to expect immediate decisions, we are cautiously optimistic that the urgent recommendations we have made – from compensation to cut the cost of energy to tackling the unfair dumping of steel by China – are all now at the top of the Secretary of State’s to-do list. But I cannot emphasise enough that there is an urgency here and very little time before we start to see more job losses.’