Time to put the UK first

Since privatisation the steel industry has lurched from one crisis to another because it is operating in an international market economy.

UK Infrastructure projects should be built using UK steel the country can ill afford further job losses in our manufacturing industry.

We now have China producing cheaper, perhaps more inferior-quality, steel produced by low-paid workers working in unsafe conditions in order to power the authoritarian Chinese Government.

The Chinese Government are fascists in how they deal with free speech and trade union rights.

In modernising the steel industry there should be a low tax regime for UK steel producers on profits, national insurance and energy costs.

The trade liberalisation that the European Union imposes upon the UK economy should be stopped because it is bankrupting the UK and is actually creating unemployment in one of the commanding heights of the economy.

The UK should leave the European Union and impose a 350 per cent tax rise on foreign steel.

The steel industry cannot compete with foreign producers who pay less wages than their UK equivalents.

I say it is time to back UK steel not foreign steel.

Time to put the UK first.

Oliver Healey

by email