Andrew explained, "As residents may remember, the Government has provided hundreds of millions of pounds of support for British Steel in recent years, including paying the wages of staff for a long period when the previous ownership collapsed.
"Since then the government has provided huge amounts of financial support for the company's energy costs, secured British Steel greater access to overseas markets in the US and acted to keep protections in place to keep out cheap dumped foreign steel.
"Throughout all of this, myself and Scunthorpe MP, Holly Mumby-Croft, have been involved working hard on all of those issues to help support our steel works and to secure government support. In recent works this has involved working with Ministers on a further package of support due to the recent global challenges on energy and on the economy in general.
"As reports have made clear, the government is currently in negotiations with British Steel on this package, which would see the government provide hundreds of millions of pounds of additional support for Scunthorpe steel works.
"With these negotiations ongoing, we have all been a little blind sided by the news this week that British Steel have apparently stated that they will be looking to remove 800 jobs across their business.
"This is no way to behave whilst negotiations on a huge government package are still underway and it is no way to treat workers. The government rightly expects British Steel to maintain the current levels of staffing whilst these negotiations continue.
"Holly secured an urgent question in the Commons yesterday which I was happy to support her on as you will see from the video. Sadly of course, Labour preferred to play politics rather than row in and support workers and the government's efforts to provide hundreds of millions of pounds of support for the site. Support they never provided when in power!!"
You can watch a video of Andrew's contribution online here: https://www.facebook.com/andrewpercyofficial
