They have accused Business Secretary Sajid Javid of “taking his eye off the ball” and say the PM needs “to get a grip” of the negotiations.
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Representatives from every plant in the country have been meeting in London to discuss how to tackle the crisis facing the industry.
“It’s the beginning of the dialogue, how the dialogue progresses will become clear this week”, Liberty House Executive chairman Sanjeev Gupta said in a Bloomberg TV interview yesterday.
Gupta is set to return to London from Wales this evening to continue the negotiations.
Mr Javid will hold talks with Mr Mistry to discuss details of the sales process for the firm’s United Kingdom steel operations as British government seeks to find a solution to the steel crisis.
The meeting comes amid reports that Marc and Nathaniel Meyohas, the brothers behind the Greybull investment firm, are putting the finishing touches to a buy-out of Tata’s Scunthorpe steelworks.
Mr Jones is expected to hold talks with Mr Cameron in Downing Street on Tuesday.
He has not yet carried out due diligence on the business which includes the huge Port Talbot plant in south Wales but said that site could be saved if the giant blast furnaces were replaced with facilities to process imported slab steel into higher grade product or make steel from scrap metal rather than iron ore.
Wales’ economy minister has warned against “cherry picking” in the sale of Tata Steel’s United Kingdom operations.
Britain’s government is meanwhile working on a plan to take on some pension liabilities and reduce energy costs to make a deal more attractive to a potential buyer.
“It has been a train wreck they have allowed to drive off the cliff”, the MP said, but questioned whether the Government’s backing of steel would last beyond May’s elections.
“If the company, its people, its workers and the government would be willing to consider my suggestions, then I’m willing to engage in a discussion about what role we will play in that”, Gupta was quoted as saying by The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
Yesterday Mr Jones put £60m of Welsh funding on the table, which would be used to support any temporary nationalisation of the industry while a buyer is found.
Javid is holding meetings with the Welsh government, trade unions, and Liberty House before flying to Mumbai to meet Tata.
Business minister Anna Soubry is due to visit Rotherham steelworks on Monday.
“Steel producers in the United Kingdom need to operate on a level playing field with the rest of the world and I will be asking for assurances that the United Kingdom government will negotiate a realistic tariff regime at the European Union level to mitigate steel-dumping”. The Welsh Government has committed to doing what we can within our available powers and resources, and now its time for the UK Government to act.
Asked if redundancies could be avoided, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “That would definitely be my objective”.
Welcoming the talks, Port Talbot steelworker Tony Price told Sky News: “I think the best thing is that the general secretary is pulling us all together so we’re all singing off the same hymn page”.
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“You would expect the UK Government to have been engaged with other potential investors”.
