Labour lining up new directors for British Steel ahead of nationalisation

The Government is lining up new directors for the board of British Steel ahead of its expected nationalisation.

Emergency legislation was used to take control of the firm’s Scunthorpe plant in April last year after Chinese owners, Jingye, reportedly threatened to turn off the blast furnaces.

Jingye said it was losing hundreds of thousands of pounds a day running the plant.

The site houses the UK’s last two operational blast furnaces, nicknamed Bess and Anne.

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Their closure would have meant Britain was unable to produce virgin steel. Once switched off, blast furnaces are extremely difficult and expensive to restart.

Since April 2025, the site has, in effect, been under state control.

Last month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he would seek to bring it into public ownership. Legislation is currently underway to achieve this.

Sky News has reported that the Government has drafted in headhunters to recruit an independent chair along with non-executive directors, although Whitehall sources contacted by the channel denied this would lead to a change of executive leadership.

A spokesman for the Department for Business and Trade said: "Securing the long-term future of the UK steel sector is in our national interest.

"While this will require both public and private investment, we’ve taken the first step towards securing steelmaking by introducing legislation which will grant us powers to take ownership of British Steel."

The Government has spent more than £500million running the plant since last April. But the efforts to nationalise it have angered Beijing, which has warned it will "take strong measures to protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies".

Jingye has said it will seek compensation, reportedly of more than £1billion. Sir John Redwood, former Secretary of State for Wales, said that the Government needed to "produce a convincing business plan" for the plant.

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He said that because of the costs that would have been involved in shutting it, including environmental issues and redundancies, compensation shouldn’t be necessary.

Writing for the Institute of Economic Affairs, he said: "It is important both that the Government reaches agreement about the acquisition, and that it does not pay compensation for the transfer of title to the plant.

"This is not going to be easy as the Chinese are clearly unhappy about what happened in 2025.

"The UK should not want to get a reputation for seizing foreign-owned assets when it suits it, as that would put off much-needed inward investment."

But he said more clarity was needed on the plant’s future, particularly with the drive to decarbonise.

Under Net Zero plans, the UK has moved away from blast furnaces in favour of electric arc furnaces, which produce steel from scrap rather than virgin steel.

Lord Redwood wrote: "Surely they owe it to the employees in Scunthorpe to tell us what the future is for blast furnace steel in their planned Net Zero world? They owe it to taxpayers to tell us what it is likely to cost."

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