Part of 5. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:56 pm on 11 March 2020.
I'm very grateful to David Rees for placing this question, and to the Minister for his response. I fully appreciate that the Minister doesn't want to get drawn into detailed discussions about what turns out to be a leaked memo, but I would associate myself with what he and David Rees have said about how this looks as if it is travel in the right direction and that this is encouraging.
I'd also very much agree with the Minister that the UK Government's investment in supporting the long term future of the steel industry, and particularly in decarbonisation, is pretty woefully inadequate. I think that one of the opportunities that we were offered by Brexit, were we not, was that some key industries that perhaps could not be supported because of state aid rules could now be perhaps more strongly supported? I wonder if the Minister will undertake to raise that point with UK Ministers: that they've, in a sense, been hiding behind the whole state aid process and saying, 'We can't invest. We have to be really careful'—I'm not sure that either the Minister or I would have fully accepted those excuses. But now, of course, we're in a position where we're moving away from that and, in terms of medium term investment, we may be in a position where further investment could be made in ways that perhaps were not available to us before.
The emphasis is obviously here on the huge scale of the jobs in Port Talbot and the huge importance to that community, but I'd also draw the Minister's attention the 649 jobs in Trostre in Llanelli, in my region. Now, that isn't as many jobs, but in terms of the importance of those jobs to that community and the quality of the work, the stability of the work, we would obviously be very concerned in mid and west Wales if some of the jobs that are targeted to be lost were there, or if very many of them were targeted in Trostre. My understanding is that because it's a pretty specialised type of process that they are relatively not at risk, but will the Minister undertake today—and I'm grateful for him telling us that he'll come back to this Chamber as soon as he knows more from Tata—to specifically raise the case of the plant at Trostre and the workers there?
Because, just as David Rees has said, these are people who have worked incredibly hard; they've been prepared to make changes; they've shown a lot of loyalty and dedication to the company; and I'm sure that the Minister would agree with me that that loyalty and that flexibility deserves to be rewarded.