Our low denomination coils, 10p and less are plated steel, they stopped making pennies out of bronze about 16 years ago, and had to switch to using stronger dies to mint them.
Our half penny was scrapped in the 80s, I was pleased to see them go, there was talk in the media of scrapping 2p and 1p, and were various, mostly inane arguments against it, such as it would cause inflation with prices being rounded up, people would be less likely to drop their change in charity boxes, and phrases like "the penny dropped", penny for your thoughts and "spend a penny" would go out of use. There's currently plenty of coins in circulations with usage of physical currency declining, so the government currently have no plans to scrap them.