There were wild responses to my X questions on steel yesterday. Most critics were wedded to the idea that nationalising steel will provide the answer and will save the Scunthorpe blast furnaces and jobs. I fear they will be badly let down. They will send huge bills to taxpayers before closing the furnaces down anyway.
Some queried my aims for steel. I would like to keep steel making in the UK, including some blast furnace steel as well as recycled. To do this requires many changes. I have consistently called for a proper business plan , for ending penal taxes and charges on energy , for a deal with the previous Chinese owners of Scunthorpe and for well negotiated purchase contracts for public steel for rail, defence and construction public spending.
The first necessity is to acquire Scunthorpe from its Chinese owners. I suggest buying it for £1 whilst ensuring past debts rest with the previous owners. Taxpayers would take on future liabilities including responsibility for jobs and wages.
The second is to change energy taxation and subsidy to get UK industrial prices closer to US and Chinese ones.
The third is to review how long the business can run the Scunthorpe blast furnaces and when they might need major maintenance with a difficult temporary shut down .
The fourth is to develop the work in place on public sector demand for steel and see how the gap between import cost and domestic cost can be bridged.
It is obvious there needs to be some combination of subsidy and lower tax demands to price this steel back into wider use. It is also clear our steel industry is being sacrificed on the altar of extreme net zero polices. These are self harming, and result in more CO 2 worldwide as we close down our industry.
December 22, 2025
We’ve been here before, many times. The arguments laid out in this article are merely a regurgitation of well known and widely accepted truths.
The conditions that support successful business are embedded in reality. Those who argue against those facts are boneheaded idiots who simply cannot accept they’re wrong, cynical and deceitful
December 22, 2025
Realistically the government doesn’t want to save the steel industry because it upsets their net stupid nonesense. It will go the same way as the motor industry. Milibrain went to China and signed some trade agreement but it can’t be released because it’s a matter of national security even parliament isn’t allowed access. How come one man holds so much power.
Yesterday that stupid woman on TV says she can’t rule out cancelling the next general election, I thought the terms of elections was an act of parliament so does the starmerfurher intend legislation to cancel elections. There’s a very dangerous game going on here.
December 22, 2025
Two-Tier seems to be implementing Communism in the UK …. one step at a time.
December 22, 2025
Indeed wars on landlords, private health care, farmers, motorists, road users, small businesses, the self employed, property owners, pensioners, free speech, private school usuers, energy users, the hospitality industries, the non doms, the rich and half rich, anyone who works unless for the state sector… pure socialist vandalism.
December 22, 2025
an interesting mix of Fabian destruction and Commie/Marxism.
In reality trying to create an idealistic, fantasy world of everybody treating everybody else with sympathy and equality. If only!
December 22, 2025
Agree, and if anybody asked the steel industry they’g say just two thinhs are killing them (1) cheap imports and (2) the cost of net-zero energy ….so fix the tariff and tax/levy, and leave a lever sector playing field….unless our governments are actually trying to encourage the uk decline in the sector
December 22, 2025
@glen cullen – yes, and the cheap imports are from those the taxpayer funds to stop production in the UK – they get compensated and paid twice.
December 22, 2025
“unless our governments are actually trying to encourage the uk decline in the sector”
We they are either totally mad or they are indeed trying to make this sector (and the UK in general) to decline hugely! Deluded lunatics or evil enemies of the UK no other explanations are there?
December 22, 2025
Sir John,
With a government and an EU determined to have a war, we really need our own steel making industry up and running.
Too expensive energy and extortionate taxation levels are the main reasons we can’t compete with these other steel
making nations.
Reduce the levels of taxation and it would be possible to compete again.
We need to own our own essential industries and not sell them off to other countries.
December 22, 2025
@Cliff.. Wokingham. The bit I find interesting the EU is trying to organise create the funds to energise its home grown production and innovation by setting up a £130bn fund to move things forward to defend itself. Then in the last few days Germany announces the purchase of defence equipment to the tune of 50bn euros but not equipment from the EU’s dream of a European defence industry, but money to be spent on equipment already in production and available from the USA. Then the irony, Germany with its massive coastline and seaways(sarc) to be protected have now purchased more equipment, more advanced, more up to date than the UK has for its little domain. Germany will have better maritime protection than the UK
December 22, 2025
Maybe a wild idea but if steel manufacturing is really a strategic imperative why not give the steel
Industry tax free energy rather like farmers get red diesel? I think energy taxes should be lower for everyone but if that is unpalatable for the current green lobby in power surely there are solutions.
December 22, 2025
They have already restricted red diesel for many activities! It cannot be long before they add farmers to this list they clearly have it in for farmer and businesses in general!
December 22, 2025
@Pauline Jorgensen – that energy will still be dearer than its competitors. As the UK refuses to use it own resources so it is all imported at greater expense
December 22, 2025
Good morning.
We need cheap energy. As discussed here many times before, steel making is energy intensive. Making both energy and the raw materials for it unnecessarily expensive makes solving other issues impossible. For this to happen there needs to be a major change in government policy regarding the Climate Change SCAM. I do not see this happening.
We also have to consider what tariffs other countries may impose on UK steel. The EU is certainly to put tariffs, especially if we abolish the Climate Change Act and decouple ourselves from the CO2 SCAM.
The final thing that worries me, and it applies to other industries as well, is the loss of key / core skills. Once we lose the ability to make, create and mine things, we may never be able to recreate those industries again. It is not all about the loss of jobs. There is much, much more at stake.
December 22, 2025
Steel making is an energy intensive industry? But so are AI Datacentres – and apparently we are going to attract those here – Industries of the Future/ Green Jobs etc.
December 22, 2025
@IanT – attract a commercial activity with a cost base 4 times that of elsewhere in the World. That’s a bit like saying wind energy will knock £300 of energy bills, when they just went up another £187 this month. So milibrain now has to find £487 to keep his promise
December 22, 2025
Apparently, the lagest Data Centre in Europe is currently on the old Slough Industrial Estate (yes, I was really suprised too) – but I guess the locals won’t mind a small modular Nuclear Reactor next door to them too…
December 22, 2025
Right as usual
December 22, 2025
Buying it for £1 whilst ensuring past debts rest with the previous owners – splendid idea! Why don’t we buy up lots of businesses for £1. Google, Microsoft, Apple. They’d be happy with that, right?
Reply Of course not. The steel business is heavily loss making and with plenty of longer term liabilities which is why we can argue for a tough deal as it gets the Chinese out of of even bigger liabilities. They want out and want closure!
December 22, 2025
Starmer is a such a bad negotiator, and such a pal of China, that he’d buy it for £1bn and take on all past and future debts.
December 22, 2025
Steel industry revival will depend on fundamental changes in government policy on energy, on taxation and on the supporting measures to secure at least public sector demand as you point out. It will also depend on extreme focus by whoever is put in charge to turn it around. The steel industry is not alone. Too many businesses are failing to achieve adequate returns on invested capital. Misguided government policies contribute to this parlous state of affairs. There is no sign that this government has a clue what it is doing as it continues its rampant destruction of UK industrial capacity.
December 22, 2025
How sad is it that a Country that used to produce thousands of tons of steel for use in home production and export, is now on its knees, due to Government policy on energy, and a foreign owner who has given up because it can be made at less cost elsewhere.
If the Government had policies and a tax system which helped business, then Nationalisation would not need to be discussed at all.
As for an investigation into how long the present furnaces will last, do we not already know that, has that calculation not been done already ?
What is the criteria for nationalisation of anything, is it saving jobs, production and protection of National security ?
If it is for national security why are we covering our farms with houses and solar panels and windmills to reduce food production.
Why are we not producing enough electricity to power the nation.?
Why are we closing oil and gas fields ?
At the moment we seem to be importing everything !
December 22, 2025
“At the moment we seem to be importing everything !” Paying for it largely with borrowed money! Will this end well I wonder? When will we get the equivalent of President Javier Milei with his chainsaw!
December 22, 2025
If you think Javier Milei out there brandishing his populism like his chainsaw while his country is going down the pan – if you think that this is the way to go then heaven help us all
December 22, 2025
New and long-term consistent demand for UK steel will fund and support the industry. Nationalisation would otherwise be more likely to commit to an expensive prop-up and lead to much UK taxpayer dependency with added waste just to keep it going.
December 22, 2025
Nationalisation would also lead to a unionised workforce that thinks the UK owes them a living, with inflation busting pay rises, defined benefit pensions and redundancy proof employment contracts.
December 22, 2025
Went on a tour around the Mini factory at Cowley last year, interesting conversation with the guide with me having been an apprentice in the car manufacturing industry way back on the 1960’s 70’s.
All of the steel used now is imported since Port Talbot closed.
All of the Robots used in the production are made abroad.
Not a large manufacturing plant when compared to others years ago with it producing only 400-700 cars a day.
Last year the workers were still waiting on a decision as to the continuation of the business in the UK !
When an apprentice also visited, as part of building our production knowledge whilst in training, Vauxhall at Luton, Ford at Dagenham, Press Steel Fisher at Acton, Firestone at Brentford, Alfred Herbert (machine tools) in Birmingham, British Airways Technical Building at Heathrow, amongst many others.
Sad to see how all the above have either disappeared, or are but a tiny shadow themselves now.
December 22, 2025
and to ask the obvious question. WHY?
December 22, 2025
I never thought the answer to any question where a solution was required would be Ed Miliband but in this case – Ed Miliband and the Department for Energy Security could remove renewable subsidies on our electricity and permit fracking and other gas exploration
December 22, 2025
And Pigs could Fly!
December 22, 2025
Saving steel-making in the UK will require the cancellation of the Climate Change / Net Zero SCAM.
That would mean cancelling the Brexit/Brino/Windsor “deals” which have tied us to the EU’s Environmental Regulations and the ridiculous “not allowed to compete” clause.
So, the solution to saving steel-making requires proper delivery of the “Leave the EU and Take Back Control” which we voted for.
It won’t happen under a Labour Government and I don’t believe it would happen under a Not-a-Conservative-one either. So unless we get a Reform Government, steel-making in the UK is doomed, along with the rest of our heavy manufacturing.
Reply Conservatives have pledged repeal of the Climate Act and cheaper energy, which as you rightly say is needed to keep or create energy using industries like steel.
December 22, 2025
Reply to reply. I seem to recall the Not-a-Conservative-Party pledged to reduce mass immigration …. initially to the tens of thousands annually. Between 2010 and 2024 they imported about 8 million, which works out at 571,400 a year …. although 3 million came in the 3 years 2021-2024 after Johnson had specifically pledged to reduce it having “got Brexit done.”
I have no faith whatsoever in Tory “pledges.”
December 22, 2025
there were so many statements over those years that lulled the electorate into thinking we were in safe hands, until the clear majority woke up and thought ‘hang on, this government is going in the wrong direction and confidence in leaders is tits up’.
December 22, 2025
John, the only long term option for guaranteeing steel making continues in the UK is to introduce policies that bring energy prices down to world competitive rates.
We in the UK are fortunate, we have the natural resources to do that. we have coal sufficient to maintain steel making. We have gas sufficient to power steel making and we have infrastructure standing idle that could enable steel making.
It all hinges on energy policies.
Until we return to sensible energy provision that does not rely on weather patterns, steel making is finshed in the UK.
December 22, 2025
No one can save steel making in Britain while this government (and those before it) continue their self-righteous net zero nonsense, which has simply made energy too expensive.
Mad Ed Milliband will be overjoyed at the demise of British steel making. Greta will celebrate and we will continue the lunatic drive to reduce global co2 by 0.0004%
China will sell us the steel we need and in doing so, will take up and exceed our paltry co2 saving.
December 22, 2025
Off topic if I may. We have another very stark illustration this morning of the extent to which government is now in the hands of unelected officials. The new head of the equality and human rights commission has reportedly given a speech in which she criticised the idea of leaving the ECHR – which is now the official policy of 2 opposition parties, and could therefore be government policy after the next election. She appears also to be seeking curbs on free speech (in this instance preventing pointing out the risks of large scale migration). In the past it is reported she has called for wealth taxes to fund net zero. She is of course entitled to her views. But it is quite wrong that a quangocrat is able to use a publicly paid position to lecture us and to campaign for or against particular policies. If there is a centre right government of any description after the next election it must immediately confront and defeat the leftist blob.
December 22, 2025
Correct.
It will require referendums in addition to a GE to achieve the necessary policies to be implemented. At the moment the civil service, quangos and judiciary are prepared to refuse to carry out instructions of which they do not approve.
December 22, 2025
Uk gas prices are competitive with Europe and coal prices are international. But the government is aiming to replace steel production with electrical heating when generation from reliable sources is falling and costs are increasing. It has to be the zealots under the leadership of Mad Ed who are trying to prevent the use of coal and gas. The latest figures show that the UK has the highest industrial electricity prices and they are still increasing in line with renewables.
Reply Given carbon taxes/emissions trading/windfall tax UK gas prices are so much dearer than US/Chinese prices. They are not globally competitive thanks to extra taxes.
December 22, 2025
Gas prices are competitive with other European countries which still make steel using coal and with lower electricity prices.
It’s the use of home produced coal that they want to stop because they think expensive electric arc furnaces are greener. But of course that is also too expensive here without direct subsidies.
December 23, 2025
Plus with current tech electric steel is inferior in many ways and unless you have loads of cheap low carbon electricity is uncompetitive and not even low CO2 not the CO2 is the issue they have exaggerated it to be. Not even the main greenhouse gas! Just one of millions of factors that affect the climate.
December 22, 2025
It used to be called a “Business Plan” Sir John.
The problem is there is no one who a) understands why one is needed b) knows how to write one and c) is willing to look beyond the next election.
December 23, 2025
Indeed plus they have no real grasp of the science or economics or practicalities of the steel industry or indeed any other industries look at the NHS and their mad plans for electric ambulances, fine engines, aircraft, defence systems and other total lunacies!
December 22, 2025
Short answer – NO
As you say;
This vital industry is just a pawn, just a step on the path to a third world economy. It’s only significance now is that we allegedly cannot afford it. So it will sink into the mire like so many other dependent industries, dragging down as they will, what remains of our industrial base along with them.
The theatre around our loss of steel making is purely to make it appear that someone in authority cares.
December 22, 2025
What UK Steel Industry? If it is foreign owned it is no a UK Steel Industry. In practice what we have is 2 of the worlds major producers sponging off the UK Taxpayer and as a consequence keeping their home production viable.
What we don’t have is the quality steel production the country is desperate for to keep us safe and secure to supply our defence industry.
Nationalisation(Never ever trust Governments) is not the answer, but their is a massive case, imperative even to ensure that a home grown structure evolves. I would be happy for my money to be invested/used in support of a UK workforce and management buy out.
Those already on site and the communities they support will respond better than any government or foreign purchaser – they have a proper invested interest.
December 22, 2025
In a similar vein and as a lesson to be learnt from the foreign sellouts. The UK’s only remaining Helicopter producer sold by another UK hater Michael Heseltine to what is essentially the Italian Government has announced in the last week that unless the UK Government forces the UK Taxpayer to hand over money to them they are off. With the intention to close down the UK facilities, loss of jobs, removal of the site(they don’t want competition). They also expect the MOD to honour contracts sending UK Taxpayer money to support the Italian Treasury with the contract being fulfilled from Italy.
As it was with the bizarre Boris Johnson give away of our steel industry, he organised that the UK Taxpayer will pay Foreign producers to stop quality steel production in the UK, for them then to import the same banished steel from their home markets – we still needed the steel. The UK Taxpayer once again forced to prop up foreign regimes to support political vanity
December 22, 2025
I’m all for buying British Steel for a pound and leaving the liabilities with the current owners but I suspect a substantial amount of those liabilities are owed to UK companies. I doubt if there is the bottle within Government to take real action just more can kicking. To re-establish steel making in this country we need to get energy costs down to a level that it can compete around the world and just as important ensure that Government contracts and other UK steel fabricators are required to use British made steel.
December 22, 2025
Is there anyone in the Government with a brain? It is the Government which is killing UK steel production, with the left and right hand doing different things. Proper Steel from Blast furnaces is essential to the security of the UK.
Will we have any industry left when this shambles of a Government is kicked out? The absolute nonsense of Net Zero will destroy the economy of the UK, and I don’t hear any MPs demanding it stops!
December 22, 2025
@Keith from Leeds – you felt the need to ask?
December 22, 2025
I see that the EU, in return for allowing a small proportion of IC-engined car production to continue past 2035, (5%, but that’s bound to increase) are requiring the cars be built from EU-produced low-carbon steel. That seems only sensible.
Unfortunately we will not have any car industry left well before 2035 unless this squalid government changes course..
If Streeting were in charge, we would have to copy the above EU policy anyway, and a Reform-led government would allow IC-engined cars to continue indefinitely. Either way, the current government is pursuing a car policy that’s obviously a disaster for the country. It must already be doing great damage to what’s left of the industry.
Who is causing this creeping disaster ? Is it Miliband or is Starmer signed up for it as well?
December 22, 2025
Would specifying British-only steel to be used for UK infrastructure and defence contracts be compliant with WTO subsidy and trade rules ? I would suspect the EU might challenge that.
December 22, 2025
@Roy Grainger – unfortuantly the steel required for defence and infrasructue projects was banned from being produced in the UK by Paliament. For defence the primary supplier is France, then Germany and Sweden
Parliament has decreed the end of the UK
December 22, 2025
I support the strategic need for a steel industry, virgin and recycled. First you must open at least one coalmine and then revert to home grown fossil energy operating to a business plan that delivers electricity at US prices. The customer base then needs to be directed to buy British. Railways, runways, and the defence industries use a lot of it. My pet project of overhead existing motorways, 4 lane viaduct car motorways could use a lot of hjgh quality steel.
However, a government intent on its war on rural UK and hound trailing, but happy with its Mengleresque puberty blocking of premenstrual children cannot be trusted on anything.
December 22, 2025
We first need to understand the problem by a) deciding on the objects which we collectively want made and b) calling in the engineers to tell us how best to make those objects. This suggestion is made against the background of lots of innovation going on in both materials (eg carbon ceramic replacing steel brakes on vehicles, composites replacing steel wheels and brakes, graphene (c.200x stronger than steel) etc) and also in manufacturing processes (eg 3D printing, aluminium rolling, foundries (www.foundrylab.com)) – these developments get compounded by the use of AI to assist the discovery of new materials (eg http://Www.matnex.ai).
December 24, 2025
Very interesting. I remember from university our lecturer in materials liked to say all the other fields depended on his materials especially electronics. It truly is the foundation of all of engineering and manufacturing.
Answering your question requires market research, which I suggest would not take very long, only a few months.
December 22, 2025
Forget the economics we need steel making for national security. There is no climate crisis. Happer & Wijngaarden have demonstrated using the IPCC’s own radiative warming theory that there is already sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to cause all the greenhouse gas warming feasible. A phenomenon known as saturation which also applies to all the greenhouse gases including the biggest of all, water vapour, which is never mentioned and for which there is as yet no call for the dehydration of the atmosphere. And Shula & Ott have a convincing argument that the IPCC’s radiative warming theory is invalid at the planet’s surface as the IR radiation energy emitted by the planet and absorbed by the greenhouse gases is lost through collisions with non-IR molecules, nitrogen and oxygen, rather than through radiation. A phenomenon demonstrated by the Pirani gauge, a simple device invented in 1906, to measure pressure.
December 22, 2025
Off topic.
A £14m taxpayer-funded scheme to deploy a fleet of hydrogen-fuelled delivery trucks across the South East has collapsed just five months after it was launched. Under the HyHaul scheme set up by Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, three hydrogen refuelling stations were to be set up along the M4 – supplying a fleet of 30 lorries delivering to factories and stores.
However, millions of pounds of taxpayer cash now hangs in the balance after the project was scrapped owing to reluctance among trucking companies to commit to the vehicles. The collapse of HyHaul is just the latest of several hydrogen schemes recently abandoned as hype around the net zero fuel fades.
Other scrapped projects include H2Teesside, a project pioneered by Ed Miliband where BP planned a plant to turn natural gas into hydrogen, burying the waste CO2 from the process under the North Sea.
The oil giant shelved the plans earlier this month after it clashed with separate plans backed by Sir Keir Starmer to construct the largest data centre in Europe.
The Government has also abandoned its hydrogen towns scheme under which whole communities would have seen natural gas blended with or replaced by hydrogen.
December 22, 2025
The thing that hits home the reality of life in the UK is the
Freedom of Information figures released from HMRC, which show that of all new jobs between 2019 and 2023
487,900 went to Indian nationals
278,700 went to Nigerian nationals
257,000 went to UK nationals
That’s correct the Indian outsourcing movement is comprehensively decimating the jobs market here, by importing workers, and offshoring British work to India.
On what planet do our ruling classes think this is good?
December 24, 2025
All very sensible. I would suggest also looking at ‘low carbon’ steel making technologies and processes. Most steel producing countries, apart from China, are facing similar difficulties. Australia is maintaining steel production while also investing in upgrades with these types of technologies and processes.
A policy decision also needs to be made on pricing of energy to balance domestic and industrial needs, in effect transferring costs from one sector to t’other.
December 24, 2025
PS. After an initial study , materials research needs to be continual as new materials are being developed all the time. Industry should do this itself. Government should concentrate on removing the regulatory and structural barriers to innovation.