Parliament is being recalled on Saturday to discuss the nationalisation of British Steel, the House of Commons speaker has confirmed.
The move has been taken after the failure to reach a deal to keep two blast furnaces going at British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant, owned by the Chinese company Jingye.
The Commons is expected to sit at 11am, with MPs called back from Easter recess to discuss taking the assets into public ownership in order to preserve steelmaking in the UK.
In a statement from the House of Commons, a spokesperson said: “The speaker of the House of Commons has granted a request from the government to recall the House at 11am on 12 April for the house to take forward legislative proposals to ensure the continued operation of British Steel blast furnaces is safeguarded.”
The form of how the government may take control of British Steel is not yet known.
Earlier in the week, government sources had said that nationalising British Steel was not an easy thing to do, and would be a measure of last resort.
The last time parliament was recalled during recess was in 2021, when Afghanistan had to be evacuated during the Taliban takeover. It is also the first recall of parliament on a Saturday since 1982.
One MP said the move was “going down extremely badly” with colleagues given no warning about the need to return to Westminster, when it had been well known for weeks that British Steel was in trouble.
British Steel makes the vast majority of UK rail track and the government has been seeking a deal to keep the plant open.
The industry will be hit by a 25% tariff on steel exports to the US imposed by Donald Trump.
Talks had dragged on for three days after the government offered to buy raw materials to keep the plant running for the next few weeks while trying to find a longer-term solution.
Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, had played a leading role in the talks, along with Jingye’s chairman, Li Ganpo.
Reynolds had been due to update Keir Starmer about progress in talks on Friday, according to a Labour source.
Scunthorpe is the last remaining steelworks capable of making steel from iron ore and so is seen by some people as strategically important for the UK. However, Jingye last month said it planned to close the plant’s two blast furnaces, putting 2,700 jobs at risk. It has since refused to pay for new raw materials, with coal and iron ore deliveries to Immingham port not yet paid for.
The government had offered £500m in financial support to switch the blast furnaces for much cleaner electric arc furnaces, but Jingye had requested much more.
Talks this week are thought to have stalled when Jingye balked at conditions attached to the offer to pay for new raw materials. The delays in reaching an agreement had caused increasing alarm among workers, who feared at least one blast furnace might be forced to close as soon as next week, leading to inevitable job losses.