Labour MP Stephen Kinnock has called on under-fire Sajid Javid to quit over the Tories’ shambolic handling of the steel crisis and the Business Secretary’s plan to take a holiday in Australia.
Kinnock, local MP for the Port Talbot plant, said Javid should resign after a bizarre 48 hours in which the minister flew to Australia with his daughter before suddenly returning home and abandoning his plan to take a family holiday.
Kinnock said Javid should “consider his position” after arranging the family holiday at the end of an official visit – despite the knowledge the Tata Steel board was meeting in Mumbai this week to consider the future of the Port Talbot plant.
“If it is indeed true that Sajid Javid was not even in Australia for entirely work related reasons then I think that he probably should consider his position,” Kinnock told MailOnline.
“Sajid Javid’s choices in this matter reflect a pattern of behaviour that we have seen from this government since 2010, it is a pattern of behaviour based on a mixture of indifference and incompetence.”
Javid, seen as a rising star of the Tory party, was also under pressure after it emerged he took his daughter on the trip to Australia, albeit it at his own expense. He had planned to go on a family holiday after the end of the official visit but only spent a matter of hours in Australia before David Cameron ordered him to come back to Britain. Javid was due to go to Port Talbot today in an attempt to persuade workers he is “on their side”.
The Government’s case was undermined, however, by the European Steel Association, which confirmed ministers had been fighting European Commission proposals to impose higher tariffs on cheap Chinese steel which has been “dumped” on Europe.
“The fact that the UK continues to block it means that when the government says it is doing everything it takes to save the steel industry in the UK but also in Europe it’s not,” said Charles De Lusignan, from the association.
“European Steel and UK steel is viable so there is no fundamental reason why it shouldn’t go on for the foreseeable future.
“But action should have been taken already. We find ourselves discussing a problem which should never have arisen and would not have arisen had we modernised trade defence instruments when we had the chance.”
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