Teesside MP welcomes multi-billion pound boost to steel industry
Chris McDonald, Stockton North MP, says the sector's in a dire situation
Last updated 1st May 2025
A Teesside MP is welcoming the Government's £2.5 billion plan to boost the UK steel industry and help secure its future.
Over the weekend the Business Secretary made the pledge which could benefit Redcar and other places in Northern England.
Chris McDonald is the MP for Stockton North - he has worked in the steel industry for more than 20 years and said: "I think we have to be clear that the steel industry in the UK really is in a dire situation. It's shrunk from a position when I joined the industry where it supplied 80 percent, four out of five tonnes of steel that we needed in the UK, to much less than 30 percent now. The rest of that's coming in from imports and we risk being the only major economy in the world without a steel industry unless something changes.
"Everyone around the world is investing in their steel industry. They're investing to decarbonise the steel industry and we've got the opportunity now to attract some of that investment and with facilities that we have in Teesside; such as the Beam Mill at Lackenby, the Pipe Mill at Hartlepool and Skinningrove, we're already in Teesside making some of the products that will go into really growing markets.
"This is actually a proposal that I first made to the Shadow Business Secretary Ed Miliband back in 2021. Ed's now the Energy Secretary and I work in his department so he's effectively my boss now, but that over all of that time that commitment's continued and alongside it we need to attract private sector investment too.
"It needs to deliver on energy, it needs to deliver on Government procurement to buy British steel, we need to be clearer about strategically where we're going to make steel in the UK but there's a bigger thing than this that we need to do besides this plan, we need to be clear that we need to move our country away from thinking about ourselves as a service-based economy and get back to the kind of country that people want.
"Everyone from Teesside says 'we built Britain' and they talk about the Sydney Harbour Bridge and so many other examples and everyone is rightly proud of that. I think we can be proud of doing projects like that in the future too, but what that requires is for us all to recognise that we want to be a coutnry that makes things and fundamentally as well as having a steel strategy, we need that shift in Government thinking too.
"There are new industries that we're investing in that are also part decarbonising our economy too so in Teesside, in my constituency, the Government's making a big investment in carbon capturing storage, we've got companies like Alfanar investing in sustainble aviation fuel and also in hydrogen too, so these industries they need more people and a lot of those skilled people from the steel industry could work there.
"For Teesside, I don't see any reduction in the great steel making facilities that we have in Lackenby, Hartlepool and in Skinningrove. Our big opportunity would be have to steel investment perhaps in electric arc furnace steelmaking and actually grow the number of steel jobs in our region."
Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen said: “Another consultation, another strategy and the same recycled money announced for a third time. The 40,000 tonnes of steel for Heathrow, lauded by this Government, will keep British Steel busy for five days.
“Governments have promised this stuff for decades. Enough!
“Cut sky-high industrial electricity prices. Invest in building an electric arc furnaces on Teesside to create and protect jobs. Slap tariffs on steel dumping. Just do it!
“That’s how you build industrial resilience, not more Whitehall waffle. Tangible results.”