Speeches by Western.

“Clearly, the absence of an industrial strategy in the past five years has had an impact, so I welcome the Government’s notion of a steel plan. Given that the industrial strategy features three major elements—construction, defence and energy infrastructure—will the steel plan look not at a 10-year horizon but at one of …”

“Will the Minister update us on the zero emission vehicle mandate consultation? When can the sector expect an outcome?”

“Obviously, the work of carers is important, as we have been hearing. Can the Minister help me with one constituent’s case? He is a carer, but is now suffering from long covid and would be due PIP. What will happen to him under the points system?”

“Last Saturday was the eighth anniversary of the sad passing of PC Keith Palmer, who died in the line of duty. He died securing this place and we should remember him. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Up and down the country, as we saw last summer, police officers put themselves in harm’s way securing and making safe the pu…”

“We could be learning from this and simplifying the process.”

“There are parallels with the pandemic.”

“Is it less than half the time?”

“Is it half the time?”

“Just on that, Minister, give us a flavour. It is not our area of expertise, but procurement has struggled under Governments of all hues. You mentioned that you have been able to speed up the process. It is the same people. You talked about delegation downwards. If the time the procurement process takes in the UK is 100…”

“The situation in Ukraine has changed the view on conflict and how it is fought in the modern era. There is now a need to be more agile. What other lessons have you learned from the conflict in Ukraine?”

“The plan will identify those sectors, and it is setting out a horizon until when? It is a plan for steel in the UK over what period?”

“Minister Jones, we were talking earlier about the plan for steel. What, in the view of the Government and the market, are the greatest opportunities for UK steel in the future?”

“When will that plan be published?”

“Minister, when will the Department have established what the total opportunity market is for UK or for export?”

“I am concerned. We have heard about the UK losing its virgin steel production capacity. Is this not an opportunity for us? I do not know whether it is possible for such sites to produce armoured steel, but, given the UK’s strength in the defence sector, is that not an opportunity?”

“I want to ask you both a slightly more specific question related to this, which might just help to illustrate the possibilities of the strategy. It is around armoured steel. I was surprised to learn that Sweden and Germany are the two nations we tend to source from, but we do not produce it currently. Given that so man…”

“I mean in your work with suppliers.”

“Is there anything that needs to be done to increase industrial capabilities, in terms of scaling up production and working with partners or start-ups?”

“How are people adjusting to this?”

“I could not agree more. I am just slightly surprised, if I may say, about the horizon being just 10 years. One of the points that came out of the sessions we had with the steel producers—this will come as no surprise—was that they have one issue, which is the price of energy. How would the £2.5 billion that the Governm…”