The Ministry of Defence said no decision had been taken on the navy’s involvement and it is unclear whether ministers have made a formal request.

• Westminster and Scunthorpe come together to save British Steel

MPs and peers were recalled to parliament to push through emergency legislation to seize control of British Steel. It was the first Saturday sitting since the Afghanistan crisis in 2021.

The Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill cleared both houses in several hours. The laws empower Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, to direct the board and the staff of British Steel, and to enter the company’s premises “using force if necessary”.

Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, told MPs it had become clear that Jingye had no intention of purchasing sufficient raw materials to keep the furnaces running

PA

It was brought forward as Labour seeks to shore up its support in its industrial heartlands in the face of pressure from Reform UK, which has backed full nationalisation. The Conservatives, who allowed the steelworks to be privatised under Margaret Thatcher and are broadly against state ownership, also backed the move.

• Who owns British Steel — and will it be nationalised?

Negotiations to keep British Steel alive started under the last Conservative government but have intensified, with Reynolds locked in talks last week with Jingye on proposals for the government to pay for shipments of raw materials. It dawned on Reynolds on Thursday that the Chinese company was never going to accept the offer.

Richard Tice, the Reform MP, urged the business secretary to “show some mettle” and nationalise British Steel

HOUSE OF COMMONS

He told parliament that Jingye had demanded “hundreds of millions of pounds” on top of the government’s deal, but without any conditions to stop the company transferring funds to China, or to ensure the blast furnaces were “maintained and in good working order”.

He said it had also become clear that Jingye had no intention of purchasing sufficient raw materials to keep the furnaces running and intended to cancel orders.

He added that the company would have “irrevocably and unilaterally closed down” Scunthorpe without government intervention.

There were demonstrations in Scunthorpe where thousands of jobs are at risk if the steelworks close

RYAN JENKINSON/GETTY IMAGES

Writing for The Sunday Times, he said that without taking the powers “thousands of jobs would have been lost, as well as a crucial sovereign capability”. He added: “This government refused to be extorted by a company that repeatedly refused to act rationally.”

Reynolds told Sky News on Sunday that letting British Steel collapse would have been more expensive than stepping in to save it.

“The losses, the annual losses, net losses, in the last set of accounts were £233 million … that can be improved upon, but I am accepting your point that we would expect to lose money on this,” he said.

“I would ask the public to compare that to the option of spending a lot more money to reach a deal that would have seen a lot of job losses and Jingye remain as a partner — or the cost of the complete collapse of British Steel, easily over £1 billion in terms of the need to respond from government, to remediate the land, to look after the workforce.”

The business secretary said that he did not believe the Chinese government had directed the rejection of offers of support.

He said: “To run a major Chinese industrial company, there are always direct links to the Chinese Communist Party. You wouldn’t be allowed to run a company in China without that kind of thing.

“I’m not accusing the Chinese state of being directly behind this. I actually think they will understand why we could not accept the proposition that was put to us, in terms of losing that essential national capacity. So I’m not alleging some sort of foreign influence.”

• Jim Armitage: UK steel can have a gleaming future

Saturday brought chaotic scenes in Lincolnshire as steelworkers gathered to rally against a closure. Shortly after 8am a delegation of “six to eight” Jingye executives managed to gain access, despite their security passes being revoked.

The Chinese officials then barricaded themselves in a room, sparking mayhem. “There was a lot of screaming and shouting,” said one company source. As workers called Humberside police to remove the Chinese delegation, the group “beat a hasty retreat” and left the site.

Humberside police confirmed they had been asked to attend “following a suspected breach of the peace”. The force added: “Upon attending, conducting checks and speaking to individuals in the area, there were no concerns raised and no arrests were made.”

Staff this weekend remain on high alert, however, as they await crucial deliveries of raw materials such as coking coal and iron ore.

A shipment of coking coal was in port at Immingham, on the Humber Estuary, with no sign of it being unloaded. Sources claimed that Jingye attempted to sell the Immingham shipment to an unnamed Chinese company, starving the Scunthorpe works of crucial fuel. However, the government moved to stop this, with police said to have secured the shipment.

In parliament, Reynolds presented the plan to take control of the site as an attempt to buy time rather than an immediate move to renationalise British steel. But in response to questions he noted that nationalisation may be “the likely option” in the long term.

He faced calls from the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and Richard Tice, the deputy leader of Reform, to nationalise immediately. Tice, the MP for Boston & Skegness, urged Reynolds “to go further, to be bold, be courageous, show your cojones, show some mettle”.

There was agreement that a Chinese firm should not have been allowed to buy the company. Liam Byrne, the Labour chair of the business and trade committee, said: “At the heart of this debate is actually a very simple question: can we entrust a critical national asset to a company that we do not trust? I say no, we cannot, we must not and we dare not.”

Jingye did not respond to a request for comment.