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Teesside Steel Industry

It is an honour to be here with you today, Mr. Cook, and I congratulate my hon. Friend and praise him for the great work that he and other Teesside MPs have done on this issue. The reality is that we need to keep this plant going. If we are ever to deliver the low-carbon economy that we have promised for the north-east, and develop things such as underground gasification of coal, carbon capture and storage, and sequestration of CO2, we need to develop skills, not lose them. We should not consign them to history as has happened to so much of our industry in the north.