The Local Economy of Aberavon

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:35 pm on 23 March 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:35, 23 March 2021

Llywydd, I thank David Rees for that supplementary question. Of course, this is an anxious time for steelworkers. My colleague Ken Skates attended a meeting of the UK Steel Council—long delayed, but finally meeting on 5 March. He also met with Liberty Steel on 18 March and raised all these issues again at a quadrilateral meeting, involving the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of the UK Government, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, on the same day. And the point that the Welsh Government always make, Llywydd, is the strategic significance of a steel industry—you cannot hope to be a modern economy, let alone a manufacturing economy, without having an indigenous steel industry. That is the significance of the work that goes on in the Member's own constituency. Now, there, the Welsh Government continues directly to support efforts at Port Talbot to secure the sort of decarbonised future for the steel industry that David Rees has long supported. The Steel and Metals Institute at Swansea University, which my predecessor in this job opened in February 2018, focuses on reducing carbon emissions in the steel industry. The ASTUTE Institute, again at Swansea University, using £23 million of European funding, focuses on advanced sustainable manufacturing technologies that can help to secure a sustainable future for the steel industry. Here in Wales, the Welsh Government does everything we can to support that industry directly, but also to make the case that only the UK Government can deliver a sector deal of the sort that the steel industry requires, and we make that case to them whenever we have the opportunity.