Business secretary to speak after MPs pass emergency law aimed at saving British Steel – UK politics live

Parliament approved emergency legislation giving Jonathan Reynolds power to required British Steel to keep Scunthorpe plant going

Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds is being questioned by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on her Sunday politics programme.

He said the intervention yesterday was “dramatic” but was needed to secure Britain’s “economic security” . He said if nothing was done the blast furnaces and steel production in the UK “would have gone”. His officials are on site right now, the business secretary added.

Ministers wanted to develop an industrial strategy – that includes domestically produced steel – before allocating any cash to individual sectors. But the crisis at British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant brought forward a decision about what kind of steel industry the UK needs.

The plant, which is the last remaining maker of mass-produced virgin steel in England and makes a range of products, from girders for the building sector to train tracks, needs raw materials within the next fortnight, including iron pellets and coking coal, or else it faces the prospect of the furnaces cooling to a point where it is neither easy nor cost-effective to bring them back.