It is rare you ever see a House of Commons Order Paper for a Saturday. It outlines the business for the day and estimated timings.
The last time we had a Saturday sitting was for the Falklands War.
A huge thank you, too, to the House of Commons staff for ensuring things run smoothly today and the House of Commons Library team who were able to produce useful briefing documents at incredible speed.
All available online.
It was a dramatic day in parliament which has effectively ended up with the government controlling the steel industry even if it is not actually called nationalisation.
We all want a strong British steel industry and want to save these vital jobs. But there are a lot of questions for the government still to answer about why the we got to this situation, and how this legislation will be properly monitored; how much this will all cost the taxpayer; what the impact on the public finances will be; and who will be making the decisions from now on? I hope NOT the Chancellor.
The near loss of our steel sector raises further concerns about the government's bizarre energy strategy - including why we are importing coal from distant shores when we had the option of opening a new coal mine here in the UK (Labour opposed it).
And the bill today gave the government considerable additional powers. We tried to put a sunset clause in the bill that would have put a deadline on these powers but this rushed Parliamentary process today didn't even allow for our proposals to be debated.
But the government has to realise that while the bill was passed that is not a blank check and it must rescind these new powers at the earliest feasible opportunity.
