Industry Minister Sarah Jones says the prime minister is “acting in the national interest” by recalling parliament on Saturday to create emergency legislation to grant government control of British Steel. Both the Commons and the Lords will break from Easter recess for a highly unusual Saturday sitting to debate a Bill aimed at blocking the company's Chinese owners, Jingye, from closing blast furnaces at its Scunthorpe plant. Report by Blairm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00The immediate need is for us to secure the blast furnaces.
00:04So we have the raw materials and the blast furnaces continue to operate.
00:09That gives us the time to look at the future and decide what needs to be done.
00:15And the Prime Minister has been clear that all options remain on the table.
00:19What we are sure of is that we are not going to repeat the mistakes of the previous government.
00:24We are still making halved in this country where we saw the catastrophic closure of the red car plants.
00:31And we are intervening to make sure we keep the blast furnaces open and give ourselves a chance of a future.
00:39We have been negotiating in good faith with Jingye.
00:42We have done a private sector deal in Port Talbot.
00:45We believe that there is a credible option there for the private sector to come in
00:50and transform that site into a viable profit-making site.
00:55If that is not an option, the Prime Minister has been clear that all options remain on the table.
01:00We have negotiated in good faith.
01:02We do not take lightly the fact that we are spending taxpayers' money.
01:07We need to make sure we're spending it in the right way,
01:10which is why we were hoping to do a deal with Jingye where they would invest and we would invest.
01:15That has not come to pass.
01:17We need to give ourselves the options of a future and we need to stand up for British steel.
01:22And that is what the Prime Minister is doing today, acting in the national interest,
01:27securing primary steel-making in this country and saving British steel.