HUNDREDS of steelworkers protested outside Parliament today as Unite leader Sharon Graham warned that their industry stands on the “very precipice.”

Company chiefs joined workers from across Britain to call for much-needed support as new GMB figures revealed that a staggering 146,500 steel jobs were lost between 1981 and 2021, 79 per cent of all the posts in the sector. 

Ms Graham said: “We stand on the very precipice for Britain’s steel industry.

“It’s time our politicians stepped up to the plate and took action to save our most vital of industries. How can it be that Belgium produces more steel than Britain?

“There has been criminal negligence in flogging off the industry in a privatisation that has proved calamitous, a private equity scam that didn’t work.”

She said the collapse of the steel industry “would be a catastrophe” for British manufacturing, resulting in 40,000 job losses, adding: “Every British major infrastructure project should be legally committed to using British steel on their projects.”

Roy Rickhuss, general secretary of steelworkers’ union Community, said that “we can’t bury our heads in the sand” about Britain becoming net zero by 2050, but the government is “way behind” other countries in Europe in investing in green steel technology.

Labour MP Stephen Kinnock, whose Aberavon constituency includes Britain’s biggest steelworks, Tata at Port Talbot, joined the rally and said: “Hundreds have come down today to send a crucial message to the government: Britain: we need our steel.”

Also among the marchers was Gareth Stace, director-general of trade body UK Steel. 

Paul McBean, 61, who works at British Steel in Scunthorpe, said: “We are in dire need of some help.

“What we want is a 50-50 partnership between the companies and the government, because going green is going to cost just British Steel alone between £2 and 3 billion.”