Tata Steel

Part of 5. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 4:00 pm on 11 March 2020.

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Photo of Suzy Davies Suzy Davies Conservative 4:00, 11 March 2020

Thank you, Minister. I think the fact that—this may be a leaked memo, but, obviously, you and the First Minister have been having conversations with Tata. There's an indication here, isn't there, that some granularity has been discussed here and that there must be some certainty on the part of Tata now about which parts of their operation they consider to be the most vulnerable and who's likely to be affected by them. So, the sooner we have that news, good or bad, the better, I think, not least because I think it needs to be shared with regional skills partnerships and colleges so that they can start the work on mitigation work, where, if we are going to have yet another flood of skilled people hitting our joblessness figures, then the opportunity for colleges and the regional skills partnership to plan for that would be, actually, very, very helpful indeed. And, of course, we're not just talking about employees potentially at Port Talbot, but their supply chains as well. So, my question is: what are you likely to be telling them, and when?

I agree with you that the underlying issues haven't particularly gone away. You mentioned the high energy costs; I'm not going to disagree with you on that point, but every time you mention energy costs, I'm going to mention business rates, which is something that is within the gift of Welsh Government to deal with. So, I wonder, on the back of that, if you can tell me whether—perhaps it's a bit early to answer this question, to be fair—the Bank of England announcement today about a reduction in interest rates will help Tata at all in any way, managing, at least, their cashflow, if nothing else.

And then, finally, somebody's got to mention coronavirus in this context. And we did raise it, or you raised it, actually, in your response to a question I raised at the last cross-party group on steel, about whether there were unforeseen circumstances that could be new hits on the global steel picture—obviously, coronavirus is one of those—and what steps can we take in terms of early conversations with Tata not to use this virus as an additional excuse to try and close parts of the industry that are located in the UK, actually, overall, but particularly in Wales. Thank you.