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Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds has suggested that there will be a high bar for Chinese investment in Britain in the coming years after he passed emergency legislation to keep British steel in office.
Acknowledging the sensitivity of the steel industry to national strategic interests, Reynolds said Sunday: “I will not personally bring a Chinese company to our steel sector.”
Asked if there was a “high trust bar” for Chinese companies controlling businesses in the UK, he said, “Yes, we must know it.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer took the extraordinary step of remembrance of Parliament on Saturday during Easter break to approve emergency legislation allowing the United Kingdom to control the control of British steel by its Chinese owner, Jingye Group.
Reynolds told Sky News that if the government could trust Chinese companies after the treatment of Jingye’s British steel would depend on their sectors.
He said: “I think we should be clear what the type of sector is where, in fact, we can promote and cooperate, and they frankly where we cannot. I will not personally bring a Chinese company to our steel sector.”
He added that he was not accusing the Chinese state of being “directly after” recent decisions made by Jingye.
The government intervened to maintain the main production of steel in the United Kingdom and protect 3,500 jobs. While Jingye now remains the main shareholder, legislation is a main step on the road to the nationalization of British steel.
Ministers said they had to act to secure the raw materials needed to secure the two company explosion furnaces in its place in Scunthorpe continued to operate.
Officials were on Sunday working closely with British Steel’s local management to provide new Coke and Iron Hours to continue production, people close to the company confirmed.
Local steel manufacturer’s management was also thinking of working with other industry participants to secure raw materials. More than a dozen businesses had provided support for the raw material for the company over the last 24 hours, according to people.
The company said one of the people was also reassessing if it was possible to turn the decision taken by Jingye’s leaders to blank one of the ovens on a temporary basis.
“No option is out of the table now and the only concentration is holding the explosion furnace operations,” they said.
Reynolds Sunday said that while his favorite option would be to find a private sector partner to help fund the future transformation of the British Stelelik, the most likely option was full nationalization.
The intervention has led to a fresh control of the decision of the former conservative government to sell the latest strategic steel group in the UK to a Chinese company in 2020.
UK Reform leader Nigel Farage said Jingye was clearly “a bad actor” and criticized Toria, telling the BBC on Sunday: “They effectively gave a strategic industry to a foreign opponent.”
The reform is seen as Labour’s main rival in the local elections on May 1, and Farage has sought to position his party as the leading political advocate for the main industrial sectors throughout Britain.
Reynolds said the British Steel recorded £ 233m in the last financial year, but that the cost of crashing the steel manufacturer would have completely exceeded £ 1 billion.
Conservative MP for Chingford and Woodford Green, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, said Saturday that the previous conservative government “should never have (Jingye) a contract”.
“I warned them of this,” he told the MPs. “It is time for us to make sure we deal with valuable China and not accept the claim that this company is private or in no way detached from its government. This is a critical point.”
