03/04/2016 The Andrew Marr Show

This was a country which led the world in an industrial

Within weeks we could be out of both - almost completely.

The cost of protecting British steel looks horrendous.

The cost of doing nothing looks even worse.

The man at the centre of the storm - now back from Australia -

the Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, is with me.

Have he and his colleagues been naive about the realities of world

Labour's John McDonnell says it's simple -

But how much would that cost the rest of us,

So it's quite refreshing that for once in our papers review,

we're going to be talking about heavy industry.

Paul Mason, a long-time TV economics correspondent much admired

Allison Pearson, Daily Telegraph columnist, novelist and South

And Stephanie Flanders, once of this parish,

And from steel to Irons - Jeremy Irons has been telling me why

he'd buy a ticket to watch the new Batman versus

I might go and see this one because I am in it.

And we've got not one but two world class pianists playing Faure

as you may not have heard him before.

New allegations have emerged of doping at the top levels

An undercover investigation by the Sunday Times newspaper has

filmed a private doctor claiming to have provided hundreds of sports

stars with performance enhancing drugs.

The Government has ordered an inquiry into the way the UK

Anti-Doping Agency has handled the claims after they were

approached by a whistle blower two years ago.

The Sunday Times says it sent an aspiring Olympic runner to film

He claimed he had helped more than 150 elite sports people

from the worlds of boxing, cricket, tennis, cycling and football.

I have never met a clean athlete, ever.

The doctor apparently prescribed performance enhancing drugs.

The growth hormone has to be injected.

Dr Bonar has subsequently denied any wrongdoing,

saying he only treats the medical problems of sports people.

Obviously some of these treatments I use are banned

Having said that, I've worked with lots of professional athletes

The UK Anti-Doping Agency confirmed it had started an investigation,

but could not pursue it because the doctor was not governed

The Culture Secretary said he was deeply shocked and concerned

The Sunday Times has no independent evidence Dr Mark Bonar treated

Those contacted by the paper declined to comment

The Government is to require the NHS, local authorities and other

public bodies to think seriously of using British steel whenever

Public sector bodies will be told to weigh up the impact on jobs

and possible harm to the environment if they use foreign steel.

The ruling comes as a search continues for buyers of the British

operations of Tata Steel, including the Port Talbot works.

The body of an amateur sailor who died after being swept overboard

in the Pacific Ocean has been buried at sea.

40-year-old Sarah Young was taking part in the Clipper Round

She wasn't attached to a safety line when a wave hit her

Her crewmates carried out a traditional sea burial overnight,

and a minute's silence was held by everyone taking part in the race.

Brussels Airport is due to reopen today, nearly two weeks

after suicide bombers destroyed the departure hall

Only three flights are scheduled - a tiny proportion of the more

than 600 the airport usually handles each day.

Officials say it could take several months before full

Over a thousand people attended a tribute concert last night in member

-- memory of the band, viola beach. Some of Britain's biggest indie

bands performed alongside local bands in Warrington. The four band

members and their manager died in a car crash in Sweden in February.

I'll be back with the headlines just before ten o'clock.

That is the news as seen by the BBC. The news as seen by the newspaper

editors, very similar. Congratulations to the Sunday Times

on their doping story. A huge amount of red wine appeared on the expense

sheets. Money clearly very well spent. The Observer has a poll

showing Brexit is ahead in the EU referendum. Particularly worrying

for the Prime Minister is that younger voters are in favour of the

EU and most likely to vote. The Mail on Sunday has a story about foreign

aid. ?172 million was overspent last year. That would have kept Port

Talbot going for another six months. The Sunday Telegraph with another

aid story. It is about an African estate. The rest of the papers, sex,

sex and sex. We will not be talking much about any of them! Allison

Pearson, I introduced you as a South Wales woman, and you have is just --

chosen a spread in the Observer. This is about the human side. Yes,

Stephanie and Paula the economic experts. I am talking about a town I

know very well. You have got this giant plant. It is known as the

works locally. If you switch it off, you switch off life in that town.

People there are already challenged by their circumstances. When they

shot the mines. Lots of those communities did not revive. -- shut.

There is incredible deprivation. It is a tonne of great spirit. They

have produced Rob Brydon, surrounds any Hopkins, Stanley Baker, Sir

Richard Burton... It is basically eaten. It is a place of great

spirit. But they will kill it. South Wales does not need another kicking.

There will be immense hardship and suffering. People from the

south-east would not believe the poverty. They need help. Paul has

talked a lot about the establishment based in London, the financial

services industry not quite getting what is going on down there? It is

an ideology that says economics is about much -- economics and market

logic determines what happens at Port Talbot. In the papers today, in

the Sunday Telegraph, we have got the Tories seeming to come up with

the beginning of an industrial policy overnight. The local councils

and the NHS will be urged to buy British steel. The keyword is urged.

To make them do it you would have two Bend, float or change EU law. --

float. We have to, Kraupp with the industrial strategy. Economics

should be about people, it should be about producing coherent, nice solid

communities. That is why we have economics. Don't the French and

Germans bend the rules for their industries anyway? It is not just

about bending the rules. If Sergei Javad and George Osborne went to

Brussels and said, do not impose protective tariffs on Chinese seal

-- steel... This is a protective measure against other people's

steel. Why not now change the policy, go back to Brussels and say,

slap a tariff on the Chinese? They are flooding the market. Isn't that

a fair point? The Chinese are subsidising their steel industry

massively? This has been the challenge of geopolitics for the

past few decades. People get a lot of benefits from China moving into

the global economy, these cheap goods. When we think as consumers,

we tended to like these cheap goods. Cheaper cars, cheaper toys etc. But

when it is hitting us as producers, it is more challenging. The

government has got itself in a pickle if it does not have a

strategy on the industrial side but does have a clear strategy on China.

The Sunday Telegraph... Right now, the government have to work out what

to do with Port Talbot. Whether there is capacity to put it in a

holding operation. A steel tycoon has saved number of plants in recent

months. He is an amazing guy? Yes. He is saying he has not made a

proposition that he is going to buy the whole thing. That is too big a

thing. But he does seem to be exploring with the government, can

you keep part of this open in order to start thinking about support?

What is the strategic point of having a blast furnace in the UK?

Part of his idea is that he would get rid of the blast furnaces and

move to electric arc furnaces, which use the scrap steel to make new

steel. I am not against it. All melting of metal and pouring it into

liquid takes a lot of energy. You need in energy policy. Then you need

a policy of where it goes. I think a more coherent policy about who buys

the steel. This is what John McDonnell is talking about in the

Sunday Mirror. They have now come up with a plan. Bring forward some

infrastructure projects so we can use the steel on that. They have to

take account of national security. You can have national security on

foreign ownership. But blast furnaces make are in into steel.

That is what they do. -- iron. If you are in a scratchy situation, you

have to ask governments to imagine what would happen if we suddenly

needed some steel that we could not get from abroad. You have to think

about just that and not even the people of Port Talbot. We have a

defence industry and a car industry. It makes sense to have a steel

industry. If the worst happens and there is a war and we suddenly need

to make armaments. These are choices by government. The Mail on Sunday

has collided two very different stories. Foreign aid overspending

and steel. The Mail on Sunday is running a very interesting campaign,

which is against the loony levels of foreign aid. The government

committed to paying 0.07. We're one of the few countries that have

actually hit the target. There is a sense of time to detoxify the Tory

brand. But the mail on Sunday is on its high horse. It has a petition

with more than 150,000 signatures. They say that we were spent 172

million. The point surely is that it people are thinking if we cannot

take care of our own people, what are we doing? Just before we leave

the Mail on Sunday, there is an interesting line on Bob Geldof. It

is alleged that David Cameron is so scared of him, he has protected the

aid budget as a result. Yes, everything has to be run past him!

Say what you like about the Welsh steel workers, but they did not

bundle of a lot of dodgy mortgages and collapsed the global financial

market. 100 billion. Stephanie Flanders, bailed out. You have got a

great cartoon from the Sunday Times. Gerald Scarfe. It makes the point we

were making area about how all of this is in response to the

production that has been coming out of China. We have benefited a lot

from Chinese growth over the years. Now they have been pushing a lot of

cheap steel onto the global market. We see that threatening to stomp on

David Cameron and the Business Secretary. Again it is this issue,

the government has said it once a close relationship with China. And

every country in the world is struggling with how to maintain it

while also stopping these economic consequences. You could have a

coherent industrial strategy, and say, we are more interested in all

of those steel using manufacturers in the UK, and we have therefore

decided to let Reddish steel go hang. That would be caught here and

by the government will not say that? If you could have a principled view,

for example, against any protectionism, which would put you

at odds with part of the EU and other people, but to claim that you

are now talking about the march of the makers and that you are in

favour of supporting industry and the rebalancing of the UK was doing

the opposite, that seems odd. It is becoming a government which

says one thing and does another but lurking behind all of that is the

relationship with Europe because it is absolutely logical for George

Osborne to go and kowtow to China. This has been going on for some time

because, because the Conservatives thought that in or out of Europe we

are going to need to have bilateral relationships with the big

industrial players of the future and that's completely logical. I think a

lot of people think that if you do that any free-market way, the

Chinese don't believe in the free market, they subsidise everything.

They have just put tariffs on a steel plant in south Wales. That

will play into this. I want to talk about this, it is quite important.

Right now those in favour of Brexit, they are winning according to the

latest poll. The old are in favour, more in favour of Brexit and the

young are not according to this. That is causing some consternation

because we all know young people don't vote a lot but I think we

haven't even heard the offer we are going to be aborting on. We will

have the same thing as in Scotland, a last-minute offer and then this

all up and down will be irrelevant come down to the final week. There

is an irony because you have all the people who want to be radicalised,

they like the idea of throwing everything into the air and seeing

what happens. Young people are being much more sensible in not wanting to

put it all at risk. I am in favour of Brexit and I do not like being

called older. I should say my 16-year-old son wants to stay

because he sees the benefits of being able to go in work in Paris or

Berlin. He is going to live with more of the consequences than you

are. We are living with the consequences and I am in favour

because we cannot take care of our own people, our services are under

strain and we have 320,000 people a year coming in, how we are going to

look after them? You got into hot water last week when you said that

after the Brussels attacks we would be safer physically outside the EU,

why did you say that? Because I think it's the case, I think the

security services are doing a fantastic job and there are very

weak elements in the European security services. And they don't

need to cooperate? I think the Belgian police are finding out more

from our lot than they are from their own people and there are

serious security lapses. Two of the terrorists came to Birmingham in the

last two years. Before you say anything I think it is there to say

you are broadly speaking on the left and have not yet come out. Broadly

speaking? I am absolutely on the radical left. We are fighting

bitterly over him, one saying stay and the other saying go. I buy all

the principal arguments of leaving. But I think what stays my hand, and

I will wait and see what we are offered, is the idea of keystone

cops as demonstrated on this being replaced by Boris and Boris gets

too, Doris Johnson gets to decide the terms on which we weave -- Boris

Johnson gets to decide. This is a point made in other newspapers, if

young people don't vote, and if Labour people don't thought we could

end up leaving and I think it will be many on the left to end up

suffering as a result. We have talked about very many big issues,

let's finish with women's hour. In the mail on Sunday, when they

started women's hour on the BBC, there was great concern, they

decided it couldn't be fronted by a woman because they might be resented

by female listeners. The programme was originally for middle-class

housewives who don't want their brains to go mouldy. There is a more

from someone saying they are embarrassed talking about older

women's programmes in the afternoons, embarrassing to hear

about hot flushes and diseases of the ovaries broadcasting at 300 and

six kilowatts at 2pm the afternoon. Menopause around the clock! Enough,

I am having a hot flush at the thought.

To the weather, I will do my own weather forecast and then you can

come over me if I am wrong. Over the next few days we will get a little

bit of this and a little bit of that. You might want more details or

luckily Peter Gibbs has more in the studio, but I am right?

And incisive summary as ever, let me show you a bit more of this and a

bit more of that. Fine day ahead, but head up into Derbyshire and it's

a different story. Grey skies and mistake. We have a mixture across

most of the UK, some rain in the mix as well, showers pushing into the

South West of England, rain lingering borough good part of the

day across Northern Ireland and Northern Scotland but it will become

lighter and more patchy with time. Writers bells across southern

Scotland but the lion's share of the sunshine will be across the

Midlands, South East England and Northern England as well.

Temperatures struggling a little again, but where the sun breaks

through we could see temperatures as high as 18, maybe even 19 degrees

around London, maybe into East Anglia. If you are out and about

with out for these areas of heavy showery outbreaks of rain working

their way north across England and Wales pushing towards Scotland. That

sets the scene for the week ahead, there will be heavy April showers,

some sunshine in between but it will turn colder for most of us as the

week goes on. In summary, a bit of this and a bit of that.

The threat to the steel industry, with many thousands of potential job

losses, has brought the idea of nationalisation

It's being championed by Labour, and I'm joined now

by the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell.

You have talked about nationalised to stabilise, what does that mean?

Let me be clear, we had to have a clear way forward for the workers

and the country and get the best deal for the country, we need to

talk to the owners to get a realistic timetable for finding a

buyer. We must get guarantees such as keeping Port Talbot open. If we

don't have the leeway and timescale than as a fallback nationalisation

in the short-term to stabilise the situation and prepare the sector for

putting it as another buyer will give us the stability. But we are

also saying we have to have a level playing field. Back to Europe and

the tariffs? I am afraid we have been let down by the government, it

is one of the issues Tata said was pumping them coming to the decision

to look at close. We also need more support from George Osborne on

business rates and we have to bring forward the infrastructure process.

What about energy prices? We need to look at that, we have given some

support but on the figures we have seen the idea about the increase

regarding climate change is about 1% so it's not a key factor but it

needs like that. We know we need to restructure the company and they can

do that but there needs to be state involvement. At the moment we know

that Tata have said basically the whole thing will close, it will go

cold, workers will leave, electricity will be shut off in six

weeks maximum so it's a short timescale. We also know they have

been looking for buyers for a year and have not found anybody. Two

potential buyers talked about in the paper, one is talking about not

asset stripping but cherry picking, he does not want the blast furnaces

for example. Would that be acceptable for the Labour Party?

Part of the reason buyers are not coming forward is they have not seen

an industrial strategy in this country which depends upon steel. If

we were in government we would have a strategy and working with buyers

who had the confidence to invest. That is why I am saying bring

forward the shovel ready infrastructure projects. So go

faster with high speed to four -- high two for example? Yes, only

about one in five projects have gone on to ground for completion, we need

a better strategy. While you wait for a buyer and a buyer doesn't,

then the public will be left with this costing an million pounds a day

at the moment, possibly in perpetuity? Andrew, we know this

isn't a zero cost exercise, if it close now we could be into a cost of

one billion a year supporting people on benefits and the collapse of

local economies, we saw it with mining. We must not neglect these

communities. We need a strategy which encourages buyers coming

forward. Nationalisation in the short-term is fine but it is based

on securing the future the industry. If it led to full-time

nationalisation would it be a problem? I think we need to

recognise the best way forward is to secure a buyer as quickly as we can.

I don't think we will do that unless they see a government with

industrial strategy which is confident about the role of steel

and infrastructure that elements in future. It's all about timescales.

Buyers are put off about the disproportionate size of the pension

scheme, you think the government should nationalise the pension

scheme to make the rest more sellable? The responsibility for the

pension scheme would be there anyway because we have protection scheme

within this country. That is part of the negotiations with Tata, we

cannot let them walk away from its responsibilities. Some people will

say there is old Labour, first instinct nationalise, and before we

know where we are we are back to 1963. You have not listened to me, I

have said we need negotiations to get a realistic timetable for a new

buyer who will hopefully come forward, if it isn't nationalisation

will be a fallback. You would always expect to breaded back into the

market after that? Yes. It depends on the level of investment. Railway

franchises have collapsed and been brought back into public ownership

by this government and then put out again so it does work. If a group

like liberty wanted to buy the downstream steel-making, the more

specialist part but did not want to buy the original bit which is losing

a lot of money it might be something for the state to hang onto the blast

furnaces to keep the entire steel industry alive in the private

sector? I want to see a strategic development linked to the industrial

strategy for the long term. In that way I think we can secure the

long-term health of not just steel but the economy as well. We would

have to look at all options and see what is best for the workers, the

taxpayers and the country. We have to look at the long-term future.

This is our new politics, the strategic entrepreneurial state,

creating long-term investment, new product and new markets. We could

have a long-term steel industry partly owned by the taxpayer and

partly owned by private groups? We will look at all the options. The

government we have we are under disarray, Anna Sue Bray said all the

options were on the table and the next day the Secretary of State said

nationalisation was not an option. One other option is the German group

and it is thought they would like to buy a lot of the European operations

of Tata including the modern Dutch plant to shut down Port Talbot, what

would you say? We would need to have a guarantee about Port Talbot

continuing from any new buyer. Port Talbot have looked at restructuring

to become competitive again but it has to be linked to an overall

industrial strategy and the government has a role to play.

Whether it is money well spent or not Labour's response does involve

an extra burden on the public purse. Everyone is responsible, if the

government allows the steel sector to close it could cost us between

one and a half billion to keep people on the dole and have

economies collapse in those communities. There is not a cost

free option. We need to invest the money to turn it around and make a

sector profitable again. We will need steel again in the future if we

are to rebuild our manufacturing base and at the end of the day we

believe we'll get the best deal for the taxpayer, community and

workforce. Let me move to a Labour Party issue, fears the party has an

anti-Semitic French, there are people including Chris Bryant your

own MP, saying they are uneasy about things like that, so my question is

there is a position of opposition to the Israeli government and what it

has been doing and that can involve boycott and so forth. At what point

in your mind does anti-Zionist politics become anti-Semitism? As

soon as Jewish people start telling us there is anti-Semitism in our

party we had to set up and listen. There is no role for anyone in our

party with anti-Semitic views. I believe we should take the advice

from our Jewish friends to say how do we tackle this problem because it

is a societal problem. If it has infected any members of the Labour

Party we have to root it out and I am not having it within the party.

One Labour councillor talked about Jewish people being aggressive

towards Palestinians. You can be critical of the Israeli state but

you must not allow that to be used by anti-Semites. We have too rooted

out and we will do. Thank you. In two new movies that couldn't be

more different from each other, Jeremy Irons plays a father figure

to gifted, troubled men. The Man Who Knew Infinity casts him

as a Cambridge don helping a young Indian maths genius to cope

with racism and his own brilliance. When we met, however,

Jeremy Irons started by telling me In Batman versus Superman,

he reinvents Bruce Wayne's butler. Irons explained why his Alfred

is a special ops sidekick He has the power to wipe out

the entire human race and if we believe there is even a 1%

chance that he is our enemy we have I believe that Bruce Wayne's

parent's, when they were worried about their little boy

being kidnapped, and then they died of course, and he became

their guardian, would have chosen someone - I remember going to dinner

with John Paul Getty in the country and two very nice gents opened

the gates for me as I drove in, drove my car away, a very nice

gentleman took my coat and another very nice gentleman gave me a glass

of champagne on a tray. And I later discovered

they were all SAS. They were there to guard

this wealthy man. I thought, yes, if I was Mr

and Mrs Wayne I would choose somebody who had special services

training, who could deal with any difficult situation

and so we thought let's make Alfred So this is the butler

as action hero, really? Well, it is, except I don't do much

action because we have other action heroes,

we have Superwoman, we have Batman, Alfred is not necessarily -

although I do get to fly And indeed I got to drive

the Batmobile which is very difficult to reverse

because there is no, Thermal imaging is showing me two

dozen hostiles on the third floor. Why don't I drop you

off on the second? This is a film which clearly has

to be for adults as well as kids and teenagers and so forth,

if you are walking along the streets is it the kind of film

you would go and see? I might go and see this

one because I'm in it! But normally I am not really

a superhero aficionado, They are not ones I tend

to go and see. Although I have to say when I sat

through this I came out thinking, God I have had a meal

and a half, you know? Let's talk about the other film,

The Man Who Knew Infinity which is about the Indian

mathematician Ramanujan who was an extraordinary figure,

turn-of-the-century, And your character Hardy,

is a professor and again it is a bit like, it is a bit like Batman

and Superman in that it is you and a younger man

and you are in a slight Yes, GH Hardy, also one

of the few sort of 15 great He wrote a small book called

A Mathematician's Apology, and reading that I realised that

pure mathematics is sort of half It's an extraordinary subject

and that is what excited me about it, when I read

Mathematician's Apology. And I thought, well, I feel the same

about the arts as this. So, I wanted to play a man who had

this wonderful internal passion, an academic, somebody quite out

of touch with his emotions. Who finds himself becoming

enormously attached to this young Indian, who was quite out of place

in Cambridge and not very welcome But because of their shared passion

they sort of grow together in a very God and I don't exactly see

eye to eye. So if I prepare for

rain then it won't. I am Hardy and I am spending

the afternoon in the library! You see, I am what

you call an atheist. I was really touched,

I mean, I wanted to do the movie because Matt Brown,

who directed it, who I met about four years ago,

and who gave me the script, He had been trying to get it

off the ground for ten A story of two mathematicians,

who would go and see that? But I thought he sees something

in this and I was fascinated So, when we finished making it

and I watched it I thought, yes, it has something

very special, this film. We have talked a little bit

about politics before together, it's a very strange time

we are living in in this country. We are going through a time

when everyone is pushed against the wall and asked

what side are you on, But I think like many of us

you are one of those people who have been agonising a lot, finding it

a difficult, difficult decision. My instinct is always

to want local politics, politics to be made nearer me

so I can have more influence and I have felt that Brussels,

too far-away, I don't elect these people, they spend an awful lot

of money travelling between Brussels and wherever it is and it seems

wasteful, overblown, But, I feel at the moment,

we have such a crisis in Europe with both our economy

and the refugee situation, I think we have to hold together

and try to spread reasonableness and cooperation between our group,

and better organisation. If one believes in that,

which I think probably is the way I am going at the moment,

then we should probably stay in and try from the inside

to change things. I do believe a lot of people

inside want things to be improved so maybe we would have fellow

conspirators if we stayed in. A busy man, Jeremy Irons -

he's also on stage at the Bristol Old Vic until 23 April

in Long Day's Journey Into Night. The Business Secretary has been

hammered in the press, for being out of the country

as 15,000 steel workers faced And the Government generally

is accused of a lack of engagement Have ministers simply

got their priorities wrong, You have said steel is absolutely

vital to UK manufacturing. Can we take it that you regard this as a

vital strategic interest for the UK? It is absolutely vital. It is vital

for our economic and national security. I do not want to live in a

country where we have to import all of our steel. We will do everything

we can to keep steel-making at Port Talbot and to help workers. This

plant is going to stay open as long as you are Business Secretary? I

will do everything I can to keep this plant open. Not quite the same

thing. Maybe we can talk about the global challenges. There are some

things we cannot change. There are a lot of tools we have in our box. We

have been working on them for months. We have known about this

potential announcement for a while. That work will pay off. When did you

know that Tata Steel were going to close Port Talbot? A few weeks ago

Tata had informed us they were reviewing their entire steel

industry in the UK. They were considering closing Port Talbot.

That would have been devastating up that happened. When I first heard

that, my number one priority, and of course this was all behind the

scenes, very commercially sensitive, was to work with Tata, whether in

India, the UK, and convince them that it is not in their interest as

a responsible company, and to allow an open sales process. That is what

we managed to achieve. You presumably knew that this Tata board

meeting just after Easter in Mumbai was the crunch moment. Why were you

in Australia? It was an important meeting but when they made their

announcement we did not anticipate they would go that far with the

news. The strength of the announcement and how far they went,

particularly in terms of timing, was much further than we expected. That

is why I turned around and came back and my first visit was to Port

Talbot. Stephen Kinnock said everybody knew this was coming. He

went to Mumbai and is confused about why you did not go. Stephen Kinnock

and others would not have been involved or had known about the

discussions we had been having with Tata four weeks since we first heard

about their concerns with Port Talbot. When we heard what they had

said and how far they went in their announcement, that is why we came

back. You came back of your own volition? Of course. Any business

trip I make, you always have to be ready to change your plans. That is

what I did. Tata have said this is a four week process and within six

weeks they would expect to close the steel mill. The workers will be out

and the thing will be cooling down. It is a tight timescale? That is why

I was actually worried when I heard about the announcement. As I have

probed that and worked with them, they have not said that. They know

it will take time. They know it is not just a matter of weeks. When

they talk about weeks, that is the period you would take to get

so-called expressions of interest, find out who is interested. Then it

will take much longer after that to work out a deal. That will be with

Tata itself. It will involve me and the government. There will be a

period of time, probably months, when people are trying to find some

way of saving this. During that period of time, the company is using

-- losing ?1 million per day. Tata wants to get out and you cannot stop

them leaving. There may be a period where you have to temporarily

nationalise the industry to keep it alive. Tata shone they are a

responsible company, irresponsible seller. -- Tata have shown. IC Tata

issuing a working document. Alongside that, we are also going to

have two offer support to eventually clinched a buyer and to give this

steel plant a long-term viable future. To be absolutely clear, if

there is a period between Tata washing their hands of it and a

buyer coming along, will the government stepped in to pick up the

wage bill and keep the thing going for a period of time? I do not think

nationalisation is a solution. Even for a a few weeks or months? I also

think it would not be prudent to rule anything out. I do feel though,

for a lot of reasons, after talking to Tata, that there will be enough

time to find the right buyer working with the government and being able

to take this forward. But you cannot know that to be the case. I am

wondering if the government will pick up the tab to allow a sale to

go ahead? We will look at everything we can do to allow a sale going

ahead and I would not rule anything out. There is a confusion about

nationalisation. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have said

everything is on the table. But nationalisation is not the answer.

Those two things cannot be entirely compatible, can they? What we have

said is that when you look at situations like this,

nationalisation is rarely the answer. You heard a moment ago from

John McDonnell, who, it seems to me nationalisation is his plan. That is

not our plan. Our plan is to find a commercial buyer. All of the best

steel companies in the world are privately run. Every steel company

in Europe is privately run. When you speak to the unions at Tata, they

know their best hope for a long-term viable future is with a good

commercial operator. We know of two potential buyers. Liberty steel have

been clear they would like to buy some of the more specialist steel

working plans up and down the country but they are not so keen on

the blast furnace. Would an offer which cherry picked the operation be

acceptable? I do not think I can get into that detail now. I want to see

steel-making continue. Save as many jobs as possible. I want to find a

buyer for the whole of the business. Of course there will be helped that

needs to be provided. Because we have been working on this for weeks,

I have thought very carefully about the kind of help we can provide. I

can give you a flavour. Mr Gupta, for instance, has talked about some

kind of partnership where he buys bits of the steel industry he wants,

but the blast furnaces, they stay in public ownership, so there is a

joint private, public deal. Would you be against that?

I'm not going to talk about any potential buyer, it is early days,

let's get Tata to put out their official bottom and then we will

engage with any potential buyer who will come up with combination of

things they would like. I have made our interests clear which is to

protect Port Talbot and as many jobs as possible and make it viable for

the long-term. But what we have been looking at four weeks, any buyer who

comes along will want to look at what I have referred to as the

plant, pensions and power supply. Very good, I would like to talk

about all those. You want get too much out of me because a lot of them

will be commercially sensitive but it is to give you a flavour, these

are the things we have thought of and have started working on. I hope

you will have the official document from Tata and on top of that the

help the British government can provide and then you have the

makings of a successful deal. Let's talk about those three things, power

supplies or electricity, the green levy which beers down heavily on big

British industries, makes it about twice the price that German

competitors for instance are paying. The Germans and the French and

others are much sharper and more ruthless about excluding the big

heavy industries from higher energy prices caused by green policies than

we are, and you do something about that? We have done it already.

Really? We have already started being energy intensive industries

compensation for the climate change policy costs in energy. We have paid

180 million already. But those costs of Tata are twice what they would be

in Holland or Germany. Let's remember... The most expensive

energy in Europe. It's an important component and we have already

started paying compensation. Can you do more? That is exactly what I have

done already, we want to move from compensation to exemption of those

costs and I announced that a few months ago and it is already in the

works. When it comes to poor poor but, specifically Port Talbot, more

needs to be done on power but I cannot get into the detail but any

potential investor would want to see movement. You also mentioned the

plant, the company wants something to be done about business rates and

there was a plan to exempt heavy industry from business rates but it

did not go in the budget. That is a crucial thing you need to look at

again isn't it? Because the continental steel companies have

totally different regime which is much more attractive for investment.

I'm glad you brought that up, if we had done that it would have been

England wide, because the UK Government is only responsible for

England when it comes to business rates. The total costs would have

been a couple of billion but very little would have gone to the steel

industry, so it wouldn't have been well targeted and I prefer a more

targeted approach. When it comes to Port Talbot that is within the Welsh

government, not the government in London. Something everyone says,

potential buyers being put off by the huge pension problem, not

problem but the cost of the pension bill, could the government step in

and nationalise the pension side of it to make the plant more

attractive? Nobody is talking about the nationalisation of pension

schemes but it's something I recognise is a challenge. This is a

long-running pension scheme which goes back to the British steel base,

it was expensive the way it was initially set up and it's important

to retired workers and current workers and we don't want to do

anything which would jeopardise them and what they expect from it but

it's an issue and we have been looking at it and directed nice it

is one of the things we need to work on potential buyer. It is said the

German company wants to buy the whole lot so it can use the Dutch

plant that Tata operate and closed import all that, what would be your

message to them? -- closed import all that. Steel making continues in

Port Holbert as it has done for many years. -- Port Talbot. There is a

change in procurement rules which began months ago, when people say

that this government has not done anything about this until now, we

have been doing so much, we talk about energy compensation, we became

the first of the EU 28 countries to change our procurement policies to

allow for economic and social factors to be taken into account.

That makes it far more likely that when it comes to British purchases,

British government purchases in infrastructure for example that

British Steel will be used. That's already been happening when you look

at National rail 99% of its steel is British, Crossrail, the biggest

infrastructure structure in Europe, all British Steel. We both know the

big picture is the huge quantity of under priced, cut priced dumped

Chinese steel. That is a big problem. The Americans put up huge

tariffs to protect their steel industry and we have not done it,

you, have not -- have been leading the charge against tariffs on

Chinese steel. There is so much misinformation on this. This says

the UK is the ringleader in a blocking minority of states

preventing a proposal on the modernisation of Europe's trade

defence instruments. So much misinformation. Is that true? It is

misleading, let me explain why. First of all the UK has been the

leader in getting more done when there is evidence of dumping and

imposing tariffs. You have small specialist tariffs but they are tiny

compared to what the Americans... Let's look at the results of those

tariffs, where they have been introduced, tariffs were introduced

on Chinese wire rod and imports are down to virtually no in the UK. If

you look at stainless steel flat products, Harris introduce and

imports down 90%. The industry came to me about Rebar, and they wanted

tariffs imposed and I led the charge with Europe for that. They were

introduced months ago. It is clearly nothing like enough. This time last

year imports of Rebar from China are down 99%. We need more of it. The

tariffs which have been introduced are working but what I do agree with

is that the EU can work faster in its investigations. And we must help

the EU to raise tariffs if there is dumping. The current policy, the

tools in the box that the EU has are enough to introduce the tariffs but

they say you can have any tariff at any level as long as it removes the

injury to UK industry and that's what we want. Will we see higher

tariffs against Chinese steel? You will see them imposed more quickly

and tariffs which are effective. The head of the UK steel industry body

says this is a deeper crisis than we have seen for a generation, we need

to scrap the lesser duty rule, we need to see tariffs robust enough to

stem the flow of Chinese steel because he says we are drowning in

it. I think what everyone would agree with is that tariffs need to

be high enough to prevent the dumping, stop the injury and we 100%

agree with that and we have pushed for more action than any other EU

country. To finish off because you raised, the earlier court, what that

is talking about, other countries often talk about a wholesale

re-writing of the tariff rules and that is not about steel, that is

about having a more protectionist Europe which is in no 1's interest,

not businesses or consumers. You are a free trader, you talk about free

trade in as D'elia, you would accept it's not free trade, the Chinese are

subsidising their steel to the extent they are destroying cars and

tariffs are acceptable. There have been many examples, we should level

the playing field with the right level of tariffs, no question about

that. Would it be easier to save the industry if we were not inside the

EU? No, if you listen to the industry itself, the head of UK

steel said a couple of days ago because people were suggesting that

was the case and I don't know where it comes from but he wanted to make

it clear that F, he said it is a distraction and if Britain left the

EU the steel industry and he believes more widely industry would

be worse off. I was reading your statement about why you are remain

supporter and I don't think I have ever read more begrudging, self

lacerating assessment, you said you don't like Europe or being part of

it and if we were starting now we should not join, but on balance it's

just about better to stay. Your side of the argument seems to be losing

and even David Cameron's great collection guru Lynton Crosby thinks

there is a strong possibility of the remain side losing the referendum,

are you not heading towards a self-made catastrophe? I think

Jeremy Irons is proof that the vast majority of people in Britain have

had a think about this carefully. The result of a referendum, who

knows what it will be but I am pleased we are having it. I think

it's the right decision and I would like us to remain and I have set out

the arguments, especially economic arguments but it's a decision for

British people. There is no sense of creeping panic in the remain

campaign? No, this has not been argument about what makes Britain

successful, it is what makes Britain better off, I think Britain can be

successful either way but it is what is in the best interest of our

prosperity and mixers most prosperous and for me the answer is

clear. We have heard from a Sajid Javid the politician, a lot of

people are saying you are a hardline Thatcherite free-market coming from

a financial background and don't care about manufacturing or the

steel industry in particular, what do you say to those people? That it

couldn't be further from the truth. Judge me what I have actually done

in the few months I have had this job, coming up a year. Look at the

fiscal statements we have had and how it represents the policy of my

department, in the first budget in June I introduced the apprenticeship

leading. Many people called it one of the most interventionist policies

there has ever been in the space of skills and that's an example of how

I want to turn skills around. When it came to the spending review, more

money for the auto industry, the aerospace industry and a big change

in how weak operate with industry. Thank you very much.

Now over to Ben for the news headlines.

The Business Secretary has been addressing criticism that the

government failed to do more to safeguard the UK steel industry,

Sajid Javid said he would offer state support to clinch the right

commercial buyer for Tata steel British operations. He also said the

government does not believe nationalisation is the answer. John

McDonnell criticised the government for not having an industrial

strategy and said short-term nationalise Asian would help to

stabilise the current situation. -- nationalisation.

We will be asked if the minimum wage is a mixed blessing and is the

anti-terrorism strategy in schools backfiring? And witchcraft, do we

understand it? We have which is here to help us debate it. -- we have

which is. Next week I'll be joined

by the incomparable We leave you now with the piano duo,

Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva. Their new Stravinsky

recording came out on Friday, and they're going to play us out

with Faure's Dolly Suite,