Business Secretary Sajid Javid on UK steel crisis: I should have been at crucial Tata meeting

He told the Business Select Committee of MPs that Tata in India had told the Government in mid February it was 'seriously considering' closing its steel operations in the UK, including Port Talbot.

Mr Javid said his focus following the warning was to persuade Tata not to close plants immediately, but to give time to find another buyer.

Pressed by committee chairman Iain Wright on why he had not travelled to Mumbai for the crucial board meeting on March 29 rather than go on a trade mission to Australia, Mr Javid said he did not believe a decision to immediately close the plants would be taken.

"You were blind sided by this. You looked like you were on the back foot after the Mumbai announcement and you were in crisis mode," said Mr Wright.

The crisis has put the future of 11,000 Tata Steel workers in the UK at risk. Most work in South Wales and the north east, but around 800 are in the Black Country.

Nearly 600 work at the Wednesfield Steelpark, headquarters of Tata Steel's UK distribution network, with the rest at sites in Brierley Hill, Walsall and Wednesbury.

Mr Javid told the committee he was doing everything in his power to help a successful sale of Tata's business, but stressed he could not change the price of steel globally.

As the two-and-a-half-hour hearing neared its end, Mr Javid told MPs: "This is a big economic challenge for the country. I don't want to live in a country where we have to import all our steel.

"For the thousands of steelworkers and their families and friends affected by this, the message is that we are doing everything we can."

Earlier, a top Tata Steel official blamed 'structural weaknesses' in the UK for its decision to sell its assets and said it would not have made the shock move if it was making money.

Bimlendra Jha, chief executive of Tata Steel UK, said he could not confirm a claim by Sajid Javid that the company had planned to close the giant Port Talbot plant immediately.

The board had only decided to try to find a buyer for the business, he told the Business Select Committee. He told MPs there was no set deadline for selling the loss-making assets, but made it clear that Tata could not continue to 'bleed' indefinitely.

And Mr Jha warned that if the pension fund liability at Tata is not taken care of there would be no buyer for the business, adding: "If we don't solve it we are staring at some very bad consequences for the taxpayer. We are staring at a huge economic and social disaster."

The fund has 133,000 members, assets of £14bn and a funding deficit of £485m. He added: "We would not be selling the business if we were not losing money," saying that the UK had structural weaknesses around energy prices and business rates.

If energy prices were the same as in Germany, Tata would be £40m better off, he said. Mr Jha told the select committee a timescale had been set out for different stages of the sale but told MPs there was no 'ultimate' date. He said there was an 'accelerated' timescale, but this was partly to reduce uncertainty in the industry.