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Parliament was recalled from its Easter recess to sit on a Saturday for the first time since the Falklands War of 1982 to pass a bill to take control of British Steel, which amounts to no more than the works at Scunthorpe owned by the Chinese company Jingye since 2020. Scunthorpe, which employs 2,700 directly and thousands indirectly, is the last plant in Britain capable of making virgin steel. The bill, passing through the Commons and Lords, received the Royal Assent on the same day. The race against time was to supply the blast furnaces with coal before they were ruined by going cold; supplies from the United States were unloaded at Immingham docks, 25 miles away. The Secretary of State for Business, Jonathan Reynolds, received powers to give orders to the board and staff. He said in the Commons that Jingye would have ‘irrevocably and unilaterally closed down primary steelmaking’. Later, asked about finding a buyer for the works, he said: ‘I wouldn’t personally bring a Chinese company into our steel sector.’ A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Lin Jian, said that Britain should ‘avoid politicising trade cooperation or linking it to security issues’. Pressure for nationalisation was supported by the Greens and Reform.
GDP grew by 0.5 per cent in February, more than expected; a 0.1 per cent decline in January was also revised to zero. Army planners were lent to Birmingham, deep in tons of rubbish from the dustmen’s strike; striking members of the Unite union overwhelmingly rejected council peace terms. On one day 656 migrants crossed the Channel in small boats, bringing the year’s total to 8,064. Hashem Abedi, serving a 55-year sentence for his part in the Manchester Arena bombing, was named as the prisoner who allegedly sent three prison officers to hospital by attacking them with hot cooking oil and stabbing them.
Wera Hobhouse, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath, who flew to Hong Kong to see her newborn grandson, was detained at the airport and deported. Bangladeshi authorities issued an arrest warrant for the British Labour MP Tulip Siddiq, whose aunt, Sheikh Hasina, was deposed as prime minister last year. The former Conservative MP Craig Williams and 14 others were charged with betting offences by the Gambling Commission. The King and Queen made a private visit to the recuperating Pope and celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary during a state visit to Italy. The Duke of Sussex visited a centre in Lviv, Ukraine, where the wounded are rehabilitated. Michael Gove, the editor of The Spectator, was made a peer in Rishi Sunak’s resignation honours list. Mark Harper, Simon Hart, Alister Jack, Eleanor Shawcross, Victoria Prentis and Stephen Massey also received peerages.
Abroad
President Donald Trump of the United States acted unpredictably, one moment raising tariffs on imports from China to 145 per cent, then suspending for 90 days any tariffs of more than 10 per cent on goods from the rest of the world. Then US Customs announced that smartphones and computers would be exempted from tariffs; two days later Mr Trump said: ‘They are just moving to a different tariff bucket.’ Financial markets responded to the sudden changes like the Atlantic to passing storms.
Steve Witkoff, the US envoy to the Middle East, and President Vladimir Putin had their third meeting this year while Mr Trump urged the Russian leader to ‘get moving’ on a ceasefire in Ukraine. The next day, Russian ballistic missiles struck Sumy in Ukraine as people were on their way to church on Palm Sunday, killing at least 34. Mr Trump again blamed Ukraine for starting the war: ‘You don’t start a war against someone 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles.’ Ukraine’s European allies met in Brussels. Iran and America held talks in Oman over Iran’s nuclear programme. Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, died aged 89. Four men pleaded guilty to trying to smuggle giant African harvester ants out of Kenya to be sold as pets.
Israel’s war against Hamas would ‘expand vigorously to additional locations throughout most of Gaza’, according to Israel Katz, the Israeli defence minister. An Israeli strike badly damaged al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, run by the Anglican Church. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Britain’s Chief of the Defence Staff, had visited China, it emerged. State media warned people weighing less than eight stone to stay at home during a spell of windy weather in Beijing. CSH
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