US vice president says Trump ‘loves the UK’ and is working ‘very hard’ with Keir Starmer on a trade deal
Business and trade minister Sarah Jones has said it is the government’s preference to involve another private firm in the running of British Steel, rather than permanently nationalise it.
Appearing on Sky News, she said that “we’re being really careful to do this correctly because we don’t want to be spending taxpayers’ money in a way that would be in any way wasteful”, adding “that’s why our preference is for a private sector partner to come in.”
At the moment, I’m not going to say yes or no to anything that isn’t at the moment on the table or being looked at.
Whatever the future for Scunthorpe, we want to make sure we can keep primary steel-making, we can keep steel-making in our country and we can grow that industry, not see the continued decline that we’ve had over recent years.
We have been really clear on steel that securing the future of the site in Scunthorpe is not just important for the 2,700 people who work there, but also because we know that demand for steel in the UK is growing. We know there’s a market there.
We need more steel for the 1.5m homes that we want to build, for the clean energy, for the railway, for Heathrow, I could go on. So we know that there is an industry there that we need to support, but that can be viable into the future.
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