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The United Kingdom government decided to confiscate the control of British steel before it had evaluated the costs for taxpayers, asking questions about the final price of saving the last two ovens of the country.
Jonathan Reynolds, Secretary of Business, issued a “Ministerial Directorate” to cancel the concerns of his own officials to maintain the operations of the steel manufacturer in difficulties in his main site in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, letters published in the exhibition of the government website.
The ministers intervened in early April by approving emergency legislation to take control of British steel, which uses some 3,500 people in the United Kingdom, including 2,700 in Scunthorpe.
Reynolds responded to Gareth Davies, permanent secretary of business and commerce, after the official warned the minister on April 12 that he could not guarantee that the money of the taxpayers spent in the rescue of steel was to fulfill their responsibilities.
Davies said the Government had had to act so speed that it did not have time to gather the “necessary evidence” to ensure that the expense was in line with the four government evidence.
Government spending tests require that the cost of the intervention be compared with alternative proposals or “do nothing” to verify that it represents “value for money.”
The evidence also requires that there is a sufficient legal basis to take measures and meet high standards of public conduct, in addition to being feasible, so the measure can be implemented “with precision, sustainable and the planned time.”
The ministerial instructions, which are rare in British politics, are formal instructions that tell the departments that continue with an expense proposal despite the objections of a permanent secretary, the highest official in a ministry.
This is this year’s first address, after two in 2023 and two in 2024 throughout Whitehall.
British Steel was the subject of a ministerial direction in 2019, when the company collapsed in insolvency and then Business Secretary Greg Clark sought to continue taxpayers to keep it under state control while looking for a private buyer. Subsequently, the company was bought by the Chinese company Jingye in March 2020.
The government approved emergency legislation this month after it was clear that Jingye planned to close the two British Steel blast. The closure would have left the United Kingdom as the only G7 nation without the ability to make steel from raw materials.
Subsequently, Reynolds supervised the delivery of raw materials to the British Steel Scunthorpe site to guarantee the continuous operation of the two ovens.
The business secretary has said that the company’s nationalization remains a “probable option”, although officials and other industry experts are preparing an “investment case” to attract a third -party buyer for British Steel. The hope is that it can be found that another private company faces the company, although officials admit that this will only happen with some form of government support.
The conversations between the government and Jingye about a support package for taxpayers to help you invest in greenest technology founded earlier this month after the Chinese company rejected an offer of £ 500 million by Reynolds.
Jingye was looking for up to £ 1 billion on support for the £ 2 billion project to close the two underpants and build two electric arc furnaces.
