LABOUR acted to save the last elements of primary steel production in Britain today by seizing control of the Scunthorpe plant from its private owners Jingye.

MPs were recalled to the Commons to rush through emergency legislation in a single day empowering ministers to act.

It meant the House sitting on a Saturday for the first time since 1982 and the outbreak of the Falklands War.

Labour MPs thronged the benches to hear Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds slam Jingye’s conduct and pledge to save the jobs of the 3,500 workers at Scunthorpe, the last plant making “virgin steel” direct from raw materials in the country.

He told the House that the owners had stopped paying for the materials necessary to run the two blast furnaces, which as a result would be irrevocably shut within a few days.

Jingye has not, he said, accepted offers of state assistance to keep the plant open.

“Over the last few days it became clear that the intention of Jingye was to refuse to purchase sufficient raw material to keep the blast furnaces running. Their intention was to cancel and refuse to pay for existing orders,” Reynolds said.

“The company would therefore have irrevocably and unilaterally closed down primary steel making at British Steel,” with the intention to supply its downstream production plants from China, he added.

The Bill Reynolds presented establishes emergency public control over the plant but not public ownership. Both Houses of Parliament were expected to approve the legislation today.

Nationalisation may yet happen even if only temporarily, but ministers are clearly keen to restore the blast furnaces to the private sector as fast as possible.

Reynolds said: “A transfer of ownership to the state remains on the table and it may well, given the behaviour of the company, be the likely option.

“But also our aspirations for British Steel remain a co-investment agreement with a private-sector partner to secure that long-term transformation.

“The action I seek to take today is not a magic wand or a panacea, the state cannot fund the long-term transformation of British Steel itself nor would it want to do so.”

However, left Labour MP Diane Abbott told Reynolds that, while the intervention was welcome “some of us hope that moving onto nationalisation is not ruled out.

“Privatisation certainly does not always work – the water industry comes to mind,” she added.

And Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville-Roberts contrasted the rescue of Scunthorpe with the lack of action over the closure of the blast furnaces at Port Talbot in South Wales, and said she would try to amend the emergency Bill to include action there too.

Scottish National Party leader in Westminster Stephen Flynn also pushed for comparable measures to help the Grangemouth oil refinery, which has been threatened with closure.

Reynolds insisted that the cases were not comparable. But he also told MPs that if nationalisation were to become necessary, Jingye could not expect much by way of compensation.

“We would always, in a situation where the state transfers a change of ownership to it, pay the fair market value for those assets. In this case the market value is effectively zero,” he said.

He outlined the course of talks with the company, telling MPs that the government had “offered to purchase raw materials in a way that would have ensured no losses whatsoever for Jingye in maintaining the blast furnaces for a period of time.

“A counter offer was instead made by Jingye to transfer hundreds of millions of pounds to them, without any conditions to stop that money and potentially other assets being immediately transferred to China.

“They also refused a condition to keep the blast furnaces maintained and in good working order,” he said.

Reynolds was enthusiastically backed by Labour MPs, and there is no doubt that this intervention is welcomed by many for whom the last few months have been one long agony of disappointment amidst cuts and renewed austerity.