Should the government do more to help the steel industry or....

[Zenduri]

How is this Cameron's fault... If the steel market is unsustainable in the UK due to Cheap foreign steel then why should the government be blamed or why should Joe public prop up a privately owned business with taxpayers money?

Yes it sucks that the jobs are going but please explain to me how this is Camerons fault that China is filling the world with cheap ****** steel

 

[scorza]

How is this Cameron's fault... If the steel market is unsustainable in the UK due to Cheap foreign steel then why should the government be blamed or why should Joe public prop up a privately owned business with taxpayers money?

Yes it sucks that the jobs are going but please explain to me how this is Camerons fault that China is filling the world with cheap ****** steel

UK Steel have been raising the issue of subsidised Chinese steel for the past two years - what has he done? Nothing except invite the Chinese rail industry to bid for HS2. It's not his fault that other countries are subverting the market by using unfair trading practices, it is his fault for doing nothing about it and frankly not really caring about the fate of British workers.

 

[Abraxaz1]

How is this Cameron's fault... If the steel market is unsustainable in the UK due to Cheap foreign steel then why should the government be blamed or why should Joe public prop up a privately owned business with taxpayers money?

Yes it sucks that the jobs are going but please explain to me how this is Camerons fault that China is filling the world with cheap ****** steel

Giving valuable contracts for country improvements to China I.e. hs2 the new nuclear power station. Increasing green taxes till it forces the companies into administration.

End of the day the Tories destroyed the mines with putting **** all in there place, we have skilled people stacking shelves in Milford haven after murvo shut down their plant.

If you are a engineer or work inthe engineering sector in this country you are treated like **** by the government. Who only have ****ing eyes for the rich bankers living in London.

I wonder how long it will be before the car industries move to the continent because of the distance between the sheet steel and the factories.

The only jobs for engineering professions in this country is power plants that are running on skeleton crews, oil rigs which are cutting back their work force. End of the day no other industries are going to be able to absorb these loses. So basically people that have worked their arse off far harder than any office worker is now destined to spend the rest of their life on the dole or leave the country.

Mps don't give a crap about workers

 

[ron3003]

Having the ability to produce steel goes hand in hand with having the ability to defend your country against an aggressor. Letting such an industry out of your own countries control and then to go to the wall due to some temporary market conditions is rank stupidity.

 

[sand_dune]

The answer is absolutely should not help.

 

[jono_astra]

...

 

[Brutal biff]

No, for 2 reasons:

1. Every other industry in trouble will expect the same.
2. Massive over capacity in the world wide steel industry. This will just become a race to the bottom and many of the other players have deeper pockets than us.

Money needs to go into investment in retraining the people affected. Construction is suffering huge skills shortages and this country needs a lot more houses built, motorways, rail, decrepit sewerage systems replaced and the list goes on. These are also conveniently quite hard things to import, so even if a foreign firm wins the bids, the people on the ground will be overwhelmingly British.

Which the tories will not invest in retraining for the construction industry as that would mean a workforce which as tories have a dislike for anyone who does dirty work

And as for the work force being British?

Wrong they will employ majority foreign workforce to build I've work
On building sites day in day out the number of British workers is reducing daily

 

[Danthus]

 

[Caged]

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/...ervene-in-non-banking-industry-20151020103119

 

[Greebo]

I personally think the issue is labour cost. You just can't compete with China and other countries.

In my old company we used to require certain components to be fabricated from stainless steel. The price of the raw materials is set worldwide so same in china as it is here.

One particular component cost £67 (cheapest) to purchase from a uk manufacturer. The same item cost us £16 via airmail from China or £11.50 via slow boat.

The sad thing is the component was better made and finished from China

 

[KingOfTheDaves]

I've been for a tour of the steel plant in Scunthorpe (actually been twice, living the dream). This was around 15 years ago when it was still Corus, but even back then they said that there was no way to compete with cheap Chinese steel.

As a result they focused on small batch, high-spec steel as a corner of the market they could actually operate in. All that has happened in the last 15 years is that the Chinese have gotten better at the high spec stuff leaving British Steel with no market left.

Best thing about Scunthorpe is their obsession with saying Tunneys to make sure everyone knows they are talking about metric tonnes.

 

[Lord-Jaffa]

Another 12000 jobs on the chopping block its like the government doesn't want well paying skilled labour orbis it just a obvious snub to typical labour voters.

David Cameroon is a complete and utter *****

Yeah, David Cameron's fault that the price of steel has tanked.

This is the same thing as the coal mines in the past. Overseas cheap slave labour, we just can't compete with this.

It's a terrible situation really.

 

[Danthus]

Yeah, David Cameron's fault that the price of steel has tanked.

This is the same thing as the coal mines in the past. Overseas cheap slave labour, we just can't compete with this.

It's a terrible situation really.

You have ignored the energy costs and green taxes.

In the here and now what has Cameron done?

 

[Abraxaz1]

Yeah, David Cameron's fault that the price of steel has tanked.

This is the same thing as the coal mines in the past. Overseas cheap slave labour, we just can't compete with this.

It's a terrible situation really.

Steel production and purchasing is cyclic.

China is flooding the market with below cost steel to wipe out steel mills during lull so when the demand increases they can charge what they want.

But hey it's only the working class so they can go **** themselves in Tory Britian.

I like how the BBC cares more about what the pm is eating at the banquet, whilst people who had a job a week ago are now wondering how they will put food on the table.

 

[Greebo]

I must admit that there is something to be said for temporarily supporting an industry so you dont lose it forever.

Same is said of the milk industry. Milk is cheaper to bring in from abroad so let all the farmers go bankrupt, we dont need them. Thats all fine until milk gets into short supply and we cant import enough and we dont have a home milk industry anymore.

As said with the steel, China is deflating the steel price at the moment but it will come back up.

 

[alx]

You have ignored the energy costs and green taxes.

In the here and now what has Cameron done?

Problem with the green taxes is that you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand people want active measures to try and reduce green house gases/global warming but on the other hand want industry to survive and thrive.
Unfortunately sometimes the two don't go together.

 

[Aldav]

I don't know enough about the steel industry to know if government can, let alone should, help.

If this is a case of bridging over a short-term problem then a case could be made. But if it's a long-term structural issue, then it may not be. Sometimes, we just have to accept that the world has moved on. For instance, we used to employ thousands in cotton mills, or the hat industry. Now, such mills are largely computerised, and what staff there are are in low wage cost countries. Same for hats. Instead of dozens of bustling companies, we have a handful doing design, marketing and a little finishing and the rest is imported from the far east.

It might be worth government support if it might actually work, but there's no point if it won't, and then, taxpayer money would be better spent softening the blow, retraining, and so forth.

 

[Danthus]

We are bout to embark on a huge rail infrastructure project, which needs steel.

Hmmmmm.

 

[PlacidCasual]

I've been for a tour of the steel plant in Scunthorpe (actually been twice, living the dream). This was around 15 years ago when it was still Corus, but even back then they said that there was no way to compete with cheap Chinese steel.

As a result they focused on small batch, high-spec steel as a corner of the market they could actually operate in. All that has happened in the last 15 years is that the Chinese have gotten better at the high spec stuff leaving British Steel with no market left.

Best thing about Scunthorpe is their obsession with saying Tunneys to make sure everyone knows they are talking about metric tonnes.

In my experience high quality Chinese steel remains a myth. Chinese quality control for valve forgings is crap. We spend time trying to find out which European manufacturers are rebadging Chinese forgings and avoid them like the plague. We regularly find extreme duty valves from Chinese steel to be unsafe.

 

[joeyjojo]

Part of the reason it is uncompetitive is high energy prices. The massive investment in green energy has caused high electricity costs.

...I'm referring to the fact that whilst a lot of western countries and thus companies are bound by green taxes, developing nations often forego them in the name of profit. It makes their products cheaper and thus more likely to sell.

Increasing green taxes till it forces the companies into administration.

You have ignored the energy costs and green taxes.

We haven't got high energy prices in the UK, nor are the prices much related to "green taxes".

Domestic electricity prices in the UK are below the median for the G7 & EU, and the proportion due to taxes is the second smallest (behind only the USA).

http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/entry/why-the-argument-for-green-taxes-is-as-strong-as-ever

Ofgem reckon "environmental and social" costs < 9% of the total domestic bill.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24646527

Assuming businesses tariffs look similar to domestic ones, "green taxes" don't make up that much of the cost, nor are the costs that high compared to many countries.

I think Greebo is probably closer to the answer, that the labour costs are making UK operations uncompetitive.