Posted on 21 Dec 2015
The U.K. government was unprepared for the crisis that hit the steel industry this year when cheap imports led to a wave of plant closures and thousands of job losses.
Parliament’s Business Committee blamed ministers for not having a warning system in place and for failing to push for swift action at a European Union level. In a report published Monday, it said the early focus was on compensating workers who lost their jobs, rather than saving plants.
Sahaviriya Steel Industries U.K. said in October it would close its plant in Redcar, northern England. Tata Steel Ltd., the country’s biggest producer, also eliminated positions this year.
“The government have now woken up to the steel crisis and have begun to take action,” committee chairman Iain Wright, a lawmaker for the opposition Labour Party, said in an e-mailed statement. “But this recent activity still needs to translate to concrete results for the industry and the communities they sustain. Steel is a strategic industry.”
The committee called for tax breaks to help the industry survive.
