Anna Turley – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Anna Turley on 2015-11-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what action can be taken within state aid rules to secure assets of national strategic significance to the British economy.

Anna Soubry

A Member State may purchase or invest in an asset on purely commercial terms, as commercial investment is not subject to state aid rules. However, any subsequent injection of funds would be subject to the rules, unless it too was on commercial terms. It should be noted that the state aid rules apply equally to nationalised and privatised companies. With losses of over £600 million in just over three years and hundreds of millions in debts, commercial terms for SSI UK would have been impossible to meet.

More generally, it is possible to give a variety of types of aid under the rules including aid for research and development, and environmental protection. Restructuring and rescue of steel however is prohibited.