Could I thank the Member for his questions? There is little with which I would disagree. What is absolutely crucial is that there is a long-term sustainable and secure future for our steel jobs. It’s right to say that Tata have said that they wish to sell; that remains their board’s position. I’m not sure that that is necessarily a position that will hold forever and a day, if I can put it that way. I can well imagine that the workers in Port Talbot and the other plants would be concerned if it were the case that Tata were to continue without there being guarantees put in place as to what Tata’s plans would be for the future. If the UK Government put financial help on the table, I would expect them—and I’ve not heard of any particular sum—to receive in return guarantees as to Tata’s future investment in the Welsh steel assets. To do otherwise would seem to me to be difficult to defend.

With regard to the pension scheme, he’s right: the pension protection fund is a fund that was set up to deal with pension funds that have, effectively, crashed because the sponsoring business had crashed. This is not the case here. We would not, in any event, support the British Steel pension fund going into the pension protection fund. The alternative that’s been put forward is still hugely difficult as far as beneficiaries are concerned, and the message that it will send. If, for example, there’s a deal where Tata remain, where there’s substantial financial support for Tata, and the pension liabilities are removed, the message to every other business in the UK is, ‘Well, let’s do the same thing’ and I don’t think that the public finances can deal with that. At the beginning of this process, the intention always was that the pensions issue would be dealt with in order to assist a new bidder and a new buyer. To do it for an existing company is fraught with hazard, as he rightly says.

I hope that the UK Government are not considering political considerations at this stage, but rather are considering the future of our jobs and our communities here in Wales, and elsewhere in the UK. It’s difficult at this stage to see if the Steel Council could conduct an independent assessment, given the scale of the non-disclosure agreements that are in place with regard to the seven bidders. It is hugely important, however, that the bidding process is examined in some detail. Tata have assured me that that will happen, that they will examine the bids very carefully, and, ultimately, of course, Tata have a global reputation that’s good. They surrender that reputation at some cost to themselves, and they know that. So, from my perspective, whatever the outcome is—and I want the outcome to be a sustainable and secure future—Tata will need to demonstrate that they’ve played fair by the workforce and they’ve created the conditions where the industry has a future. And, as I say, that reputation is worth something to them. They emphasised that to me in the meetings that they have had.

The fact that the timescale has stretched is encouraging to the extent that it means that Tata are looking, to my mind, at the bids very seriously, but there are, as he will know, a number of hurdles that have yet to be overcome. The support that we offer as a Government is still there. I have spoken on several occasions to two of the bidders and listened to their plans, and, to my mind, both those bidders are serious bidders. I say once again that it’s important that Tata give the bids full consideration, that they look to sell the assets at a fair price and provide a future for our steel communities, and it’s vital that the UK Government look to the long term, rather than thinking that a short-term solution is durable, because it’s not. We need to think not about the next few months, or indeed about the next two or three years, but about how we construct the future for our steel industry for the next decade and beyond.