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The Chinese are on a charm offensive.

They would like the rest of the world to see them as the free trade champions, the people who obey the rules

of world trade and are to be trusted more than the Americans. But this weekend the government

was forced to take direct control of British steel, amid concern that Beijing had bad intentions.

Ministers actually fear the company was planning to sabotage the whole site in order to feed

us Chinese steel at a much cheaper price. So should we trust them or should we run a mile? Welcome to the newsagents.

The newsagents. It's John. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And it sounds like there are ambulances with their

blue lights flashing and sirens blaring, rushing towards Scunthorpe with coking coal and iron ore to keep open

a steel plant, the only one left in Britain where virgin steel is made. And it comes as the government

is essentially saying, or seems coming close to be saying, we don't trust the good faith of the Chinese owners of this company.

And that's why we're having to pull every string possible to try to keep the Scunthorpe blast furnaces open.

There have been some pretty extraordinary accusations running around over the last 48 hours,

some of which have been offered a bit gingerly from the

government, but which nonetheless are still there. There is still, as we're sat here now,

a question mark over whether despite the fact the government has taken over the day-to-day

running of this works, there is still a question mark as to whether or not the blast furnaces

can be kept online because you need those essential raw materials

John that you just spoke about, the limestone, the coke and coal and so on to get there. And there is,

and has been made the accusation that the Chinese company, Jingye, purposefully played for time

to allow those raw materials to run down and slowly deplete, to put the plant in a situation

...