LABOUR pressure group Momentum called yesterday for the party to commit to the permanent public ownership of the steel industry.

Momentum slammed the government’s “wilful inaction” which led to the current crisis, threatening 40,000 jobs in the industry and supply chain. 

But the group that grew from the campaign to elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader said that Labour needed to put forward a coherent and progressive remedy.

“Public ownership will give working people control over a strategic asset to develop our economy, build homes, improve our national infrastructure and support public services, as well as safeguard the workers and communities that built the steel industry,” Momentum said in a statement.

“We are not calling for control from Whitehall but a genuinely democratic public ownership, run by workers and communities with strategic input from the state.”

Shadow business secretary Angela Eagle accused the government of being “asleep at the wheel” of the steel industry in an address to Parliament’s press gallery yesterday. 

“They have given us lots of tea and sympathy over the last few months as this situation has got worse, but they have done very little practically to help get what is a cyclical industry through very difficult times,” she said. 

But Ms Eagle declined to back the idea of a permanent public stake in the industry. 

“Tata has been a good owner of the steel assets in this country. They have invested billions of pounds in them,” she told the Star.