Jingye seeks full compensation for British Steel, and the Act leaves open whether any is payable

Two sentences now sit against each other.

The first is the government's. Britain took British Steel into public ownership on 16 July, and the announcement from the Department for Business and Trade says the Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Act "requires an independent valuer to be appointed to assess whether any compensation is payable." The compensation scheme itself is to be set up through regulations the department expects in the autumn. The Act received Royal Assent on 15 July, and the transfer took effect the following day through regulations signed by Industry Minister Chris McDonald.

The second is Jingye's, and it arrived on Sunday. The former owner said it will seek "full compensation through legal means to the very end," reported by Rachel Clun and Meghan Owen at the BBC. In a statement published on its official WeChat account and reported by Global Times, Jingye said the British side had disregarded its sustained investment while offering compensation that is virtually zero.

The procedural line is the one to read twice. Jingye said it has initiated consultations under the relevant bilateral investment treaty and reserves all legal rights, including the right to pursue international arbitration. Consultation is ordinarily the first formal stage of an investor-state claim. Neither the statement nor the reporting names the treaty.

The government has not disputed that a process exists. A government spokesperson told the BBC that draft compensation regulations due in the autumn would set out a process under which an independent assessor "would determine what, if any, is payable."

Some context sits underneath the disagreement. Jingye bought the Scunthorpe plant in 2020, and the works employ about 2,700 people in North Lincolnshire. The government took control of operations in April 2025 while ownership stayed with Jingye. The National Audit Office reported in March that keeping the plant running was costing the government about £1.3m a day. The department's release says that despite extensive discussions it was not possible to reach an agreement with Jingye that secured the company while delivering value for taxpayers.

China's commerce ministry said on Friday that it firmly opposes the decision and that the move had "severely undermined the confidence of Chinese companies investing in the UK," according to the BBC. British Steel was last under state ownership in 1988.