Scottish taxpayers to pay another £100 million every year to keep an English steelworks in business as Scotland no longer produces any crude steel, just recycles old stuff, only weeks after hearing we must also contribute around £100m every year to save an English oil refinery so that it can replace a Scottish oil refinery to refine oil almost entirely from Scottish waters
Thanks to Dottie once more for alerting me to this.
In the Guardian yesterday, the above, and:
Ministers have lined up special managers to run Liberty Steel’s South Yorkshire operations if they are put into administration, according to a revelation at the high court in London.
The development shows that the government is ready to step in immediately to secure the continued operations of the Speciality Steel UK (SSUK), which employs 1,450 people at the group’s operations in Rotherham and in Stocksbridge.
There’s no estimate in the article of the cost to the Treasury of the above commitment but hundreds of millions must be the starting point for a steel mill of that size and labour force. Grok estimated £929 000 000 per year.
Where will that money come from? A devolved budget for England? As you know, no such thing. It will come from the wider UK tax revenue, Scots are responsible for around 10% of so we’ll be paying around 10%, hidden no doubt within the reduced 2026 settlement of the budget for Scotland, of the above nearly £1 billion.
Scotland no longer produces crude steel and merely recycles old steel, at Dalziel in Motherwell.
The above follows this, from 6 July 2025:
British taxpayers could be on the hook for more than £1 billion following the collapse of the Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire.
HMRC is said to be owed £250m in unpaid taxes, while the facility’s decomissioning costs could be up to £3bn.
The refinery is at risk after its owner, State Oil, filed for insolvency on Monday. The Official Receiver has reached a deal with the commodities trading giant, Glencore, that will ensure supplies of crude oil to the refinery.
Ministers have pledged to provide “short-term funding” to cover the operating costs of the facility as a sale process and potential wind-down gets underway.
The urgency of ministers to save the refinery has caused anger north of the border as the government did not make any attempt to underwrite the costs of the Grangemouth plant which has now closed. However, these concerns have been mainly on social media, with little comment coming from the SNP on the issue.
So, to save an English oil refinery so that it can replace a Scottish oil refinery to refine oil almost entirely from Scottish waters, the Scottish taxpayer must contribute, pro rata with one tenth of the UK population around, one tenth, £100m?
Add the billions Labour has already given to Tata Steel to keep some of its work in Wales going, there’s a pattern here and it’s all bad news for Scotland.
One thought on “Scottish taxpayers to pay another £100 million every year to keep an English steelworks in business as Scotland no longer produces any crude steel, just recycles old stuff, only weeks after hearing we must also contribute around £100m every year to save an English oil refinery so that it can replace a Scottish oil refinery to refine oil almost entirely from Scottish waters”
ENGLAND KNOWS THAT SCOTS WILL SOON BE “TAKING INDEPENDENCE”
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
ENGLAND KNOWS THAT SCOTS WILL SOON BE “TAKING INDEPENDENCE”
SO THEY SO THEY SORTS TO THE OLD TACTICS
TAKE ALL SCOTTISH MONEY POSSIBLE ‘NOW’
AND EVADE ANY WORLD RULINGS ON THEFT
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