Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:05 pm on 18 January 2017.
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. It has been, I think, a valuable debate. I know that steelworkers who have contacted us will have appreciated hearing the range of views, of opinions, in relation to the package of proposals that will shortly be put before them. I thought it was very, very indicative that the backbench Members who spoke who have steel plants in their constituency all expressed very serious concerns about the current proposals. And I think that justifies the need for us to have this debate, and to put pressure on Tata to come up with a better deal that meets these reasonable concerns that have been expressed in this Chamber today. I have to say to Caroline Jones, I disagree with almost everything she said, but she’s still a nice person. But I have to say in all seriousness, while of course, ultimately, this has to be a decision for steelworkers, we cannot, nevertheless, outsource our responsibility as the elected Parliament. If we don’t speak on something as important as this, what are we don’t to speak on? I have to say, while we won’t be supporting the Conservative amendment, I think I welcome the fact that Andrew R.T. Davies accepts the important role in having a debate on the future of the steel industry, and their amendment does importantly refer to the need for a contingency plan. Because if we accept that it is the worker’s right to reject this deal, then we, as an elected Parliament and the Government of the country, have to come up with an alternative proposal that responds to that new situation.
I thank the Members on my side for their contributions—particularly, I’d like to pay tribute to Bethan Jenkins. Nobody has been closer to the steelworkers—going back over many, many years now—and, in fact, the reason that we have said what we have said in the public domain is because steelworkers have asked us to. We recognise that there’s a range of views among the workforce as well, but it’s important that those concerns were expressed publicly. I have to say—[Interruption.] I don’t have time, unfortunately. I think the important point is that Government now has a role, in the time that’s available, before the end of the month when these proposals are going to start to be voted on—we need Welsh Government in there saying to Tata, ‘Look, there’s a real prospect that this vote could be lost unless you meet these reasonable concerns.’ That’s why we need the Welsh Government to be in there in a leadership role, trying to actually respond to what we’ve heard today.
I have to say to Lee Waters, he started off, and I was in agreement with him—this is an act of economic blackmail, and then he made the case for completely capitulating to it. There was a phrase for that—[Interruption.] I don’t have time, I’m afraid. There was a phrase for that—I don’t have time. There was a phrase for that: ‘There is no alternative’. It was a phrase we heard a lot in the 1980s. That is not the kind of politics that we should accept. There is an alternative. We heard from the Cabinet Secretary himself that there is another deal on the table from a company that is offering a 25 per cent stake to the workforce. They’re being invited in this deal to fund their own rescue package out of their own pension, well why not actually look at that other deal? There was another prospective buyer over the weekend that actually wrote directly to the British Steel Pension—[Interruption.]