Business and Trade

The Government committed to updating Parliament on British Steel every four sitting weeks for the duration of the period of special measures being applied under the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act 2025.

The Government’s priority remains to maintain the safe operation of the blast furnaces at British Steel. Government officials are continuing to provide on-site support in Scunthorpe, ensuring uninterrupted domestic steel production and monitoring the use of taxpayer funds.

On funding, the position remains that all Government funding for British Steel will be drawn from existing budgets, within the spending envelope set out at spring statement 2025. To date, we have provided approximately £370 million for working capital, covering items such as raw materials and salaries. This will be reflected in the Department for Business and Trade’s accounts for 2025-26.

We continue to work with Jingye to find a pragmatic, realistic solution for the future of the site. Once a solution is found, we will terminate the directions issued to British Steel under the Act and make a statement on the need to retain, or repeal, the legislation. As we have stated previously, our long-term aspiration for the UK steel sector will require co-investment with the private sector. Across the steel sector, private sector involvement enables modernisation and decarbonisation and safeguards taxpayers money.

The impact assessment relating to the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Act 2025 published on 22 January focuses on the rationale and impacts of the Act, namely providing optionality to address the risk that financially distressed owners could trigger unmanaged closures of major UK steel assets leading to irreversible loss of domestic steelmaking capability.

The IA can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/steel-industry-special-measures-bill-2025-final-impact-assessment

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Our plan to make work pay will modernise our employment rights legislation, extending the employment protections already given by the best British companies to millions more workers across the country. Strengthening this underlying framework will help build an economy based on fair competition between businesses, greater productivity in the workplace, job security for workers, and fair reward for hard work.

We are taking a phased approach to engagement and consultation on these reforms. This will ensure all stakeholders have the time and space to work through the detail of each measure and to help us implement each in the interests of all.

Following the launch of consultations on trade union recognition, fire and rehire, agency work, tipping, and flexible working earlier this month, we are today launching consultations on trade union detriments and collective redundancy. Alongside a programme of direct stakeholder engagement, these consultations will support us in determining how best to put our plans into practice.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 establishes stronger protections from detriments for workers taking industrial action, in order to ensure they are treated fairly and respectfully. It prohibits the use of “detriments of a prescribed description” for the sole or main purpose of penalising, deterring or preventing a worker from taking part in official industrial action.

The power in the Act enables the Government to make regulations to either prohibit all detriments, or to prescribe the detriments that are prohibited. The consultation will seek stakeholder views on the benefits and challenges of these two options. It will run for eight weeks and close on 23 April 2026. Following consultation, the Government will develop their final policy position, with the intention to make regulations and deliver the resulting policy by October 2026.