Comparing Port Talbot with Scunthorpe ‘not entirely fair’, says union official

Comparing Port Talbot with Scunthorpe is “not entirely” fair, a trade union national secretary has said, as he accused the previous government of being “asleep at the wheel” over steel.
GMB national secretary Andy Prendergast said the Labour Government in Westminster was “willing to take the bull by the horns” to keep the Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, plant going.
His comments followed an extraordinary sitting of Parliament on Saturday – the first of its kind since 1982 – when MPs agreed to give Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds new powers to control steelworks in England.
Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader Liz Saville-Roberts described Saturday as a “bitter day for the people of Port Talbot” and accused Labour of paying back its voters in the town “by Tory-style deindustrialisation”.
Mr Reynolds told the Commons that blast furnaces in South Wales “are not available to be saved”, after they closed last September.
Electric arc furnace
The UK Government has backed plans for a new £1.25 billion electric arc furnace at the Tata steelworks in South Wales, with the switch-on due in 2027.
Asked whether it was “unfair” of the Government to take control of the works in Scunthorpe but not in Port Talbot, Mr Prendergast told the PA news agency: “The difficulty is it’s not entirely a fair comparison largely on the basis of the majority of stuff that under Port Talbot happened under the previous government.
“Frankly, when it came to the industrial strategy, they were asleep at the wheel.
“You know, when you look at steel specifically, they oversaw our steel industry shrink to half the size it was.
“I think the steps being taken in Port Talbot were belated but welcome by the current Government, but I think it’s a little bit of an unfair comparison.
“This was our last blast furnace, it was a different situation, and we have a different government at the wheel, and we’re thankful that we actually have one willing to take the bull by the horns and actually do something which was notably lacking under the last government.”
‘Deindustrialisation’
Ms Saville-Roberts criticised the Government’s decision on Saturday, when she told MPs: “People in South Wales have been loyally voting for Labour for decades.
“Does this Labour Government therefore feel proud that those votes have been paid back by Tory-style deindustrialisation in Port Talbot?
“Plaid Cymru has consistently called for nationalisation, but the Labour First Minister of Wales (Eluned Morgan) rejected our calls.”
Plaid’s Commons leader had earlier said that the Government “could have taken exactly the same legislative action” in Port Talbot as they did in Lincolnshire.
“The blast furnaces have already closed at Port Talbot,” Mr Reynolds replied.
“They are not available to be saved. That situation has moved on.”
‘Botched’
Conservative shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith accused the Government of pursuing a “botched nationalisation plan”, adding: “This is a failure on the Government’s watch, let’s be crystal clear what today means: we are entering a tunnel with only one exit. This is a botched nationalisation plan revealing the Government has no plan.
“In government we acted to secure Port Talbot and were negotiating a plan, including British Steel’s preferred option of an electric arc furnace in Teesside. That would have limited job losses and kept Scunthorpe running in transition.”
Cardiff Bay’s economy, energy and planning minister Rebecca Evans MS said in response to the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act that she recognised “the UK Government needed to take action”.
Ms Evans said: “The transition to an electric arc furnace at Port Talbot builds a bridge to a more sustainable future for the company.
“We want our steel sector in Wales to thrive and the transition now taking place at Port Talbot provides a clear and set path for a long-term future.”
The Welsh Government minister added that from the UK-wide £2.5 billion national wealth fund for steel, “it is critical that Welsh-based steel companies benefit from the fund through capital investments and through policy developments that can further secure the future of the industry and create meaningful jobs”.
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Not like the uion crachach to protect the status quo either. All at the top protecting their own interests and not their members either

Wales has been done over firstly by Tories, then by Labour and now the Trade Unions – who are supposed to be on our side. I think it is obvious that the English trade unions are as much English nationalists as Labour (very right-wing), Tory (even more right-wing) and Reform (extreme right-wing). It really doesn’t matter to Wales who is in power in England anymore, they will all do over Wales, it is simply a matter of by what degree they will do us over. For the record I’m a trade union member (UNISON), I’ve never contributed to the Labour… Read more »
I agree with everything you say 100%
Maybe somebody can enlighten me, but I am fairly (say, 100%), sure that steel is not made in blast furnaces.
Blast furnaces produce pig iron which is then used to make steel either in an electric arc furnace or a basic oxygen furnace (isn’t Wikipedia wonderful?
).
Why do my comments about Wales being betrayed by the Trade Unions and Labour keep getting deleted?
They don’t. I can read them.
I’ve made other comments.
None of your comments have been deleted.
I can see them also, and agree with your comments. Da iawn chdi!
This website seems to have heavy caching so occasionally you’ll see old versions. In a web browser on a PC, holding down control and pressing refresh can magic up the missing content.
Are Labour really trying to pretend that they didn’t brand calls to nationalise Port Talbot as “fantasy politics” and took swipes at Greens and Plaid in the process?
Obviously (but not in Whitehall it seems) the UK left itself exposed by reducing primary steel to a single site. With two sites under different ownership both owners were constrained by the other. Government could have ensured private sector profitability by subsidising energy or increasing steel import tariffs on unfair markets. The real problem here is not the political parties in government but the influence of the Treasury which time and again puts extreme short-termism before economic strategy and national security. We saw the same when they closed the Rough gas storage to save a billion which left the UK… Read more »
More hollow words (to borrow from Martin Shipton’s weekend piece) from Welsh Government and the unions. Just watched Jo Stevens on TV spinning the same falsehood that she negotiated a better deal than the Tories – she didn’t. They had months to discuss with Tata before taking office when it was obvious they were going to win the general election. They did nothing except use steel as a political stick to beat the Tories. I hope Port Talbot (and the rest of Wales) remembers this next May.
What an absurd suggestion. A political party can’t negotiate on behalf of the government until they’re in government. Where Labour are failing Port Talbot now is the lack of any Bilbao-style regeneration project. A few crumbs to pay off those immediately affected and training for non-existent jobs does nothing to replace the economic black hole that’s been created.
The fact of the matter is that the country, as a whole, has been mismanaged across virtually every area. Look at any government-run department over the past 50 years or more, and the neglect and dereliction are plain to see across all sectors under state control. Judiciary, prisons, education, transport, NHS, local authorities—it’s the same story across the board with Wales under the control an unelected assembly of inept individuals suffering especially badly. Manufacturing has been decimated throughout the UK, There are now far too many layers of government—local authorities, the Welsh and Scottish governments—all overseen by an inept group… Read more »
What changes do you propose?