Governmeny urged to buy British and Save Our Steel

Jul 1 2009 by Sue Scott, Evening Gazette

TEESSIDE MPs have swung behind a second plank in the Gazette’s Save Our Steel campaign, by calling on government to buy British.

Dari Taylor, Ashok Kumar and Vera Baird put their names to joint letters to three big spending ministries, including those responsible for defence, infrastructure and school building, as well as the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), urging them to insist British steel is used in any construction project and to bring forward as much capital expenditure as possible.

Teesside Cast Products (TCP) plant at Redcar, where the future of 2,000 jobs will be decided in August, has staggered through the past three months on the back of orders from Corus’ other downstream plants, after four international buyers walked away from an offtake agreement. Until then, the vast majority of TCP steel had been exported.

“These letters are a heartfelt plea from the three most deeply affected MPs to get that action and get it quickly. We shall be following up with personal lobbying,” said Mrs Baird.

In fact, 80,000t of steel worth £65m has already been ordered from Corus for the Government’s headline aircraft carriers project, while just over half of the 24,624.28t of steel needed for the Olympic stadium is British steel.

Mr Kumar said the Government was potentially Corus’ biggest customer.

“If all the proposals in the Building Britain’s Future programme are to come to fruition, there will be a huge demand for steel as the building blocks for such things as new power plants, bio-process plants, high speed rail lines and integrated flood defence systems for towns and cities.

“Teesside’s steel industry will benefit greatly from this approach, and this is why we are making this statement to ministers today,” he said.