Nationalisation normally costs taxpayers dear and ends in failure
By johnredwood on April 13, 2025
HS2 our fully nationalised railway has cost a fortune and will never reach the North as planned. The Post Office sends taxpayers large bills for its losses and put key employees in prison based on false charges and a botched computerisation programme.
Today Mr Reynolds, Business Secretary, has total powers to run British Steel, a company owned by the Chinese. So far he has co operated with the steel workers to exclude the Chinese management. Mr Reynolds has no experience of running an industrial business. He has presented no business plan to Parliament and has no announced budget to pay the huge losses reported for the current business. I have been responsible in the past as a company chairman for a steel rolling mill and other industrial plants. My advice to Mr Reynolds is - 1. Make employee safety and employee engagement your first task.
Understand you need more orders for british steel than the Network Rail order. Construction and defence orders need increasing with ways of offering high quality and better value for money. Customers need persuading. They do not owe you a living
Understand you cannot make this work without much cheaper energy. This business has been pulled down by the needless closure of UK coal mines and by the mad pursuit of dear energy. The current nonsense that gas prices are the problem overlooks the painful fact that electricity in the UK is four times the price of gas per unit of energy. Net zero ideologues think closing steel furnaces, coalmines and fossil fuel power stations is good news. They deliver us into the hands of China as we need to shift to imports.
So Where is your business plan?How much will it cost? How do you avoid spending money now which could go to the Chinese owners? How can you run it against the wishes of the owners? Are you going to force the owners out? What legal liabilities will rest with UK taxpayers? Why was there nothing in the new Act about the split of the money once you start paying bills?
The Act is a botched mess. The draconian powers against the owners are coupled with complete muddle on who will in future be responsible. You cannot be in charge on odd days when you fancy it or see a need to intervene. You need to sort out who is in charge and what the plan is urgently with the owner.