Recommendation 10

We wanted to understand how the intervention would impact the Department’s other activities, such as support for the eight priority sectors in the industrial strategy including work on digital transformation, but the Department could only say that several of those critical sectors depend on a secure and resilient steel supply. So far, the Department says it has not had to request additional budget from HM Treasury with most of the funding coming from HM Treasury reserves. However, some £95 million underspending on other Departmental projects has allowed unallocated funding to be repurposed to support British Steel. It denied this was a sign of surplus money in the Department.30 It said the intervention would create pressures on its budget in future, and that it would need to manage this through the spending review process.31