It’s clearly a difficult time for steel generally but it was good today to join the First Minister on his visit to Liberty in Newport to highlight the substantial investment by Liberty Steel in Gwent. As Sanjeev Gupta said today ‘Newport has a special place in the Liberty Group and the news that we could see up to 600 jobs at the Newport plant over the next two years is warmly welcomed and he paid a special thanks to the workforce.

I spoke about Liberty’s ‘Green Steel’ plans to recycle scrap metal to produce steel as part of a debate on the future of the steel industry in Parliament last week, where we talked about the need for more Government help.  I’ve invited UK Ministers to Newport to see Liberty’s operation for themselves.