Keir Starmer has delayed going on holiday with his family to attend an emergency session of Parliament to save British Steel.
No 10 confirmed the prime minister had been planning to jet off on the trip, expected to be to southern Europe, but is now expected to leave on Sunday instead.
It comes as MPs meet to back government plans to all but nationalise British Steel after the PM warned that the country’s “economic and national security is on the line”.
In dramatic moves in Parliament, emergency legislation needed to allow the government to take control of the company is expected to be rushed through in a single day.
MPs were recalled to the Commons a rare Saturday sitting amid government concern the future of British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant “hangs in the balance”.
The move allows the government to purchase raw materials needed to keep the plant open and instruct staff.
But the Conservatives have accused the government of a crisis of their own making, while Reform accused ministers of not going far enough and called for immediate nationalisation.
The business secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the Commons that British Steel’s Chinese owners had tried to “unilaterally” close down the Scunthorpe blast furnaces as MPs began debating the plans.
He told them : “Doing nothing is not an option. We could not, will not and never will stand idly by while heat seeps from the UK’s remaining blast furnaces without any planning, any due process or any respect for the consequences. And that is why I needed colleagues here today.”
In late December Sir Keir joined his family in Madeira on his first holiday since entering No 10.
For that trip the PM also delayed his departure following the death of his brother Nick on Boxing Day.
He had been due to travel a day earlier before his brother died aged 60 after suffering from cancer.
Sir Keir cancelled a European summer holiday planned for August after rioting broke out in the UK and tensions escalated in the Middle East.
The emergency session is just the sixth time parliament has been recalled on a Saturday since the end of the Second World War.
The last time it was recalled during a parliamentary recess on a Saturday was after the invasion of the Falklands in 1982.
