PM promises talks with Tata on Port Talbot steelworks future

UK ministers will talk to Port Talbot steelworks’ owners, after warnings the plant could close without a deal for subsidies to reduce carbon emissions, Prime Minister Liz Truss has told BBC Wales.

The prime minister promised discussions with Tata about the future of the plant, which employs 4,000 people.

She said it was “very important” to keep steel production in the UK.

Ms Truss also defended the mini-budget, after market turmoil followed the measures announced last Friday.

Welsh Secretary Robert Buckland has urged people to remain “calm” amid the turmoil sparked by the Government’s mini-budget announcement.

Yesterday, September 29, Ms Truss told BBC Wales political editor Felicity Evans: “It is very important that we maintain our economic security and we maintain steel production in the United Kingdom and, of course, the government will talk to Tata about how best to do that.”

In July, it was reported that Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chair of Tata Group, the owners of the steelworks at Port Talbot, threatened to close operations if the Government does not agree in the next year to provide £1.5 billion of subsidies to help it reduce carbon emissions.

Tata Steel UK employs 8,000 people nationally, including 4,000 at Port Talbot.

In the-then run-up to the selection of the next Tory prime minister, the Community union took over all advertisements on the website ConservativeHome, and called on the candidates for the Tory leadership to commit to protecting thousands of jobs at Tata Steel and across the steel sector.

Under the Jonson administration,  Welsh Secretary Sir Robert Buckland said it is “only right” that a decision on taxpayer support to safeguard Tata’s UK steel plants will have to wait until the new prime minister was in place.

‘Missed opportunity’

Measures in Friday’s ‘mini-budget’ are a ‘generational missed opportunity,’ and the ‘eye-watering’ £45bn in tax cuts could have been used to truly ‘level-up’ Wales, think-tank the Institute of Welsh Affairs (IWA) has said.