PLAID CYMRU has accused the UK government of failing to support Welsh steel communities equally, after it emerged that nationalisation is being considered for British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant—but was ruled out for Port Talbot.
The party has renewed its call for public ownership of the Port Talbot steelworks following comments from Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who said nationalising British Steel remains an option to save jobs at its loss-making Scunthorpe site.
Plaid’s economy spokesperson, Luke Fletcher MS, said: “If it’s good enough for Scunthorpe, why wasn’t it good enough for Port Talbot?”
In September last year, Tata Steel closed its two blast furnaces at Port Talbot with the loss of 2,800 jobs. The closure followed a £500 million support deal with the UK government to help the firm transition to greener steel production—but nationalisation was not considered.
Fletcher, who represents south-west Wales, told BBC Radio Wales: “We were asking for nationalisation to be looked at until we were blue in the face. Labour promised that having governments in Cardiff and Westminster would save Welsh steel—but in the end, the deal they offered wasn’t much different to the Conservatives’.”
Back in 2016, the Conservative government said nationalisation was not an option for Port Talbot. The £500m package announced last year under Labour was broadly the same as the one proposed by the outgoing government.
Plaid’s Swansea spokesperson, Dr Gwyn Williams, said nationalisation could have allowed Wales to adopt hydrogen-based steelmaking, like Tata is doing in the Netherlands.
“Tata are using green hydrogen at their Dutch site but have refused to do the same in Wales,” he said. “Plaid believes Wales deserves world-class green technology to build a sustainable economy for future generations.”
On Thursday, Tata said it had taken a major step forward in decarbonising its operations at Port Talbot, signing contracts with Clecim and ABB Limited to deliver a new pickle line—specialist equipment used in modern steel processing.
Meanwhile, British Steel’s Chinese owner, Jingye, has said the Scunthorpe site is losing £700,000 a day. Around 2,700 people are employed there and the plant is home to the UK’s last blast furnaces.
Talks to try to secure the future of the site are expected to resume this week, with the UK government reportedly offering to buy coal to keep the furnaces running. On Wednesday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed that “all options” are being considered—including nationalisation.
Carrie Bone, UK steel editor at Kallanish Commodities, told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast that both Tata and British Steel were in similar situations—facing major losses and needing to modernise.
She noted that Tata accepted the £500m offered by government, while British Steel reportedly turned it down and asked for £1 billion.
“You can understand why the government might be hesitant to offer that much,” she said. “It’s not clear why nationalisation wasn’t considered for Tata, but there are thousands of jobs at stake—and the optics of letting the UK’s last blast furnace close are politically very difficult.”
The UK government has been approached for comment.
