It was “a bad deal” for workers, taxpayers and the steel industry, insisted Jonathan Reynolds when he was in opposition at the start of the year. You can see what the business secretary, as he is now, meant: £500m of state aid for Tata Steel at Port Talbot to build an electric arc furnace to produce greener steel did not obviously scream “bargain” when the company would simultaneously be shedding 2,500 jobs.
The question, though, was whether it was the best deal that could be done in tough circumstances. Tata said it was losing £1m a day, seemed determined to close both old-style blast furnaces on the site, and held a strong hand in the negotiations. The UK still needs a steel industry in the age of decarbonisation and the hard reality is that no company is ever likely to invest in large-scale cleaner technology without a heavy helping of public money.
