Gavin Grey: UK correspondent on the race to keep British Steel furnaces running

Last-minute efforts to keep British Steel operating are to be carried out today, as the plant races to secure a supply of raw materials.

The Department for Business and Trade said officials are working to keep British Steel operational - and ensure all staff at the  Scunthorpe site will be paid.

UK correspondent Gavin Grey says efforts are in place to keep it open - but things still feel quite touch-and-go.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And Gavin Gray are UK correspondence with me. Hey Gevin, hey,
he man.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Lovely to have you back.

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Mate, It's lovely to talk to you. Thank you very much. Yeah,
how are we going with British Steel?

Speaker 2 (00:11):
A very very touch and go At the moment, the
government called an emergency sitting of Parliament on Saturday, the
first time since the Falklands War that's happened back in
the early eighties, and both houses the House of Lords
and House of Parliament sat in order to pass through
emergency legislation to take over British Steel. Today, the rush

(00:31):
is really on to secure the supply of raw materials.
It now materializes that the company which had bought British Steel,
a Chinese company, had stopped buying any more raw materials
to make the steel, and indeed was selling off some
of the stocks of the ingredients, the iron ore and
coal and other raw materials were selling those off. So,

(00:52):
in other words, they were deliberately running the plant down
that the government said it couldn't allow. That's why it
took this emergency work. They believe that it's the only
place in the UK where you can make prime steel,
in other words, not from recycled metals, but from the
ores themselves, and they said this is far too important
to let go. So this relationship with the Jinghi the company,

(01:14):
well it certainly looks very fractious, but the government determined
to try and keep it going. But the moment those
raw materials run out, the danger is those blast furnaces
will not reopen and listen.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Despite all of the big talk from this new government,
it's not managed to do anything about the number of
migrants crossing the channel, has it.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
No. The slogan was We're going to smash the gangs,
referring to the people smaggling gangs. Well they have made
no improvement at all. In fact, the number of migrants
arriving in the UK after crossing the English Channel has
reached a new record for the first four months of
the year. In other words, since this new government has
been in. Over the weekend the total went over eight

(01:55):
thousand and fifty well less than halfway through April. It's
already high than these seven five hundred and sixty people
who crossed the channel over the first four months of
last year, and that was a record high at the time.
So the big question pressure on the government to do something.
What can it do well. Clearly the plan to smash
the gangs is not enough on its own. I appreciate

(02:17):
these things take time, but I do think this government
and successive governments or predssessing governments have really misunderstood the
level of angle that people are having, particularly when they
hear migrants in France say we want to get to
the UK because in some cases, you know, we want
to be put up in a hotel. Well, that bill

(02:38):
is costing sixteen million New Zealand dollars a day and
this government seemingly has not got the numbers staying in
hotels down either.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, amazing, Okay, how's it going in Birmingham?

Speaker 2 (02:50):
With great difficulty? So Birmingham has had a rubbish strike,
a bin strike since the middle of March. The row
is over and it's a row with unions. And this
is interesting because of course the government, the labor government
here is supported by a lot of unions and vice versa.
So this is an awkward one for it. This is

(03:11):
Birmingham City Council, which is a labor run council, is
now having to appeal to neighboring authorities to help and
is having to pay them. And now they're even calling
in the army to help tackle the crisis. Now, don't
get me wrong, this isn't soldiers doing the manual work.
This is military planners called in to help tackle the
mounting piles of rubbish. Seventeen thousand tons of rubbish are

(03:36):
said to have accumulated across Birmingham over the first four
weeks at the strike. A recent negotiation did not work.
The unions walked away and couldn't get an agreement with
the council. The government's trying sort of not to get
involved because it doesn't look very good on it. Of course,
being a labor council and supporting the unions, but what

(03:56):
a mess. People are reporting terrible problems with burma and
rats and frankly with warm weather. It's been pretty disgusting
for the people at Birmingham.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Can imagine. Kevin, thank you very much. Check you in
a couple of days. Look after yourself. It's Kevin Gray,
are UK correspondent.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
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