LONDON: The UK was “naive” to allow its sensitive steel industry to fall into the hands of a Chinese company, Britain’s business secretary said on Sunday (Apr 13) after the government took control of British Steel.
But Jonathan Reynolds said he did not suspect the Chinese state of trying to tank the plant in northern England, the country’s last factory able to make steel from scratch.
The government rushed urgent legislation through parliament on Saturday to stop the Scunthorpe plant’s blast furnaces from turning off, after its Chinese owners Jingye said it was no longer financially viable to keep them burning.
Jingye bought British Steel in 2020 and says it has invested more than £1.2 billion (US$1.5 billion) to maintain operations but was losing around £700,000 a day.
“As a country we’ve got it wrong in the past,” business and trade secretary Reynolds told Sky News on Sunday, blaming previous Conservative leaders for allowing Chinese companies to run sensitive infrastructure. “It was far too naive about some of this,” he said.
He argued a balance was needed. Some sectors were “more sensitive than others”, he said, adding that “a lot of UK-Chinese trade is in non-contentious areas”.
Discussing the troubles with the Scunthorpe plant, he said: “I’m not accusing the Chinese state of being directly behind this.
“I actually think they will understand why we could not accept the proposition that was put to us, in terms of losing that essential national capacity. So I’m not alleging some sort of foreign influence.”
He later told the BBC that Jingye had turned down an offer of support of around £500 million, instead requesting more than twice that amount with few guarantees the furnaces would stay open.
