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LONDON — British MPs have approved emergency legislation empowering ministers to place British Steel under state control.
The dramatic intervention — interrupting the parliament’s Easter recess — followed a tense standoff with Chinese firm Jingye, British Steel’s parent company.
Jingye had threatened to shut its operations in the northern English industrial town Scunthorpe, resisting an offer to stock the site with the raw materials needed to keep the furnaces running. The plant is the sole remaining source of virgin steel in Britain.
The legislation subsequently went to the House of Lords, where later Saturday it was voted through without amendments.
The legislation will give the U.K. government “the power to direct steel companies in England, which we will use to protect the Scunthorpe site,” Downing Street said in a statement.
The measure will give the government the authority to purchase the raw materials needed to keep the U.K.’s last blast furnaces burning as it seeks a partner to co-invest in the site.
“I know how important steel is to the whole country,” U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a post on X. “We will act to secure Britain’s future.”
Despite multiple government offers to purchase the necessary materials, the company resisted, saying the two blast furnaces were “no longer financially sustainable,” and citing six-figure daily financial losses from keeping them open.
The government was already under pressure to support the sector after U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a 25 percent levy on all steel imports.
Ministers will hope that taking control of the site will be seen as a sign that the U.K. is stepping up to protect its workers after Starmer described Trump’s trade war as marking the end of the globalization era, and vowed to demonstrate the value of active government.
