Oral Answers to Questions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the excellent work that the Holocaust Educational Trust does, and the youth ambassadors. I have met some of these youth ambassadors, who have understood the importance of learning the lesson from the holocaust, and understood the importance of acting against antisemitism wherever it occurs—and, indeed, wider racial hatred. As my hon. Friend says, the survivors from the holocaust have given their time to ensuring that nobody is in any doubt about where man’s inhumanity to man can lead. They have done a really important job. I pay tribute to them and to their continuing work. It is important that we all recognise the terrible things that can happen when we let antisemitism occur. We should all be fighting against antisemitism wherever it occurs.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

In the cold of Sunday, Kane Walker was found dead on the pavements of Birmingham. He was 31, and he became one of over 2,600 homeless people to have lost their lives in the last five years. When will the Prime Minister recognise that the scale of homelessness today is a moral emergency, and that we cannot wait until 2027 for this Government to end homelessness for good when we need action now?

No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What my right hon. Friend experienced last week was appalling. I understand that she has experienced other incidents more recently. I absolutely agree; everybody in this House holds their opinions and views with passion and commitment, and everybody in this House should be able to express those views with passion and commitment and not feel that they will be subject to intimidation, harassment or bullying. That is very important, and I am sure that that sentiment commands approval across the whole House. Once again, I am sorry for the experiences my right hon. Friend has gone through.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister give way?

[The Prime Minister]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, and then I will conclude.

[Liam Byrne]

I am grateful to the Prime Minister for giving way. She must recognise that she has built a cage of red lines, which produced a deal that was overwhelmingly rejected by this House. We rejected the deal because we rejected the cage. This afternoon, she has yielded nothing about how any one of those red lines will change. If she is not prepared to change, how on earth can we in this House continue to place a shred of confidence in her?

[The Prime Minister]

The point I made last night and have repeatedly made today is that I will be talking to people across this House—to my own colleagues, to the DUP and to other parties, as there are different groups of people in this House who have different views on this issue—to find what will secure the confidence and support of this House for the way in which we deliver Brexit.

It was serendipitous that I allowed the right hon. Gentleman to intervene just at the point at which I was going to say that if the Leader of the Opposition wins his vote tonight, what he would attempt to do is damage our country and wreck our economy. Of course, it was the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) who left that note saying, “There’s no money left” after the last Labour Government.

[Liam Byrne]

I was naive to honour a Treasury tradition that went back to Churchill with a text that is pretty much the same, but I was proud to be part of a team that stopped a recession becoming a depression. This is the Government who—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Stop trying to shout other Members down. Calm yourselves.

[Liam Byrne]

The Prime Minister was a member of the party that backed Labour’s spending plans up to late 2009, and she has presided over a Government who have doubled the size of the national debt.

[The Prime Minister]

We did see what was happening in terms of the financial crisis and its impact, but the Labour party in government had failed to take the steps to ensure that the country was in a position to deal with those issues.

What would we see if Labour won the vote tonight? It would wreck our economy, spread division and undermine our national security. As I said earlier, on the biggest question of our times, the Leader of the Opposition provides no answers, no way forward and nothing but evasion, contradiction and political games. This House cannot and must not allow it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the chance to speak in this debate.

The essence of our argument was laid out with force, passion and eloquence by the Leader of the Opposition. The Prime Minister is this afternoon charged with the greatest political failure in modern times. On the most important question that this country faces, she has secured the biggest defeat that Parliament has ever delivered. That alone should be grounds for her to go. How on earth does she think she is going to command a majority in this House when she cannot command a majority on the biggest question of the day?

The truth is—the Leader of the Opposition made this point eloquently earlier—that the Prime Minister’s failure of leadership stretches well beyond the failure of her policy on Brexit. It is often said that we campaign in poetry but we govern in prose. For me, the best definition of our poetry was set out back in 1945, when we offered that plan to reconstruct a war-weary nation and win the peace.

At that time we said, “What we need in this country is industry in service of the nation.” Do we have that today? The Chancellor himself is the first to berate the terrible rates of productivity growth in our industry, which are worse today than they were in the late 1970s when we used to call it “British disease”.

We said that everyone in this country should have the right, through the sweat of their brow, to earn a decent life. Yet half the people in work in the west midlands are in poverty. There are now people going to food banks who never thought they would be in this position.

Above all, we said to the people of this country that they should be able to live and raise a family free from fear of want. Well, on the doorstep of this Parliament people are dying homeless, including one of the 5,000 people who have died homeless over the last five years. Many people in this House know that I recently lost my father to a lifelong struggle with alcohol after he lost the woman he loved to cancer, a few years older than me. I know at first hand how a twist of fate can knock you down, but for millions of people in this country, a twist of fate knocks them on to the streets, on to the pavements and into the soup kitchens where I work in Birmingham on a Sunday night. That is not the sign of a civilised and decent country, and it is something of which this Government should be ashamed.

When the Prime Minister took her seals of office, she had the temerity to stand on the steps of Downing Street and say to an anxious nation that she was going to tackle the burning injustices of this country. She said that she was going to tackle the burning flames, yet those flames now rage higher than I have ever seen in my lifetime. She now leads a Government of shreds and patches, and the Opposition say that this country deserves better and that she should do the decent thing and resign.

European Council

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has said today that she is determined to frustrate another vote of the people, and she has done her level best to frustrate a vote in this Parliament. Does she understand why so many people here think that she is trying to confront and bully this House with a last-minute choice between her deal and no deal, even when she knows the catastrophic cost of no deal for swathes of our industry?

May I ask the Prime Minister to clarify for the House this afternoon the simple fact that, when it comes to a meaningful vote in January, this House will indeed be able to rule out no deal and, if necessary, extend article 50?

[The Prime Minister]

The motion will, of course, be amendable when it comes before the House in January. However, I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that this is about ensuring that we can get the assurances from the European Union—that is what we are working on—and bring them back to this House, having listened to the concerns that have been raised by Members of this House.

Electoral Commission Investigation: Vote Leave

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

No, we will not be re-running the referendum; we will be continuing to deliver its result. However, the hon. Lady reminds us that her Select Committee—an organ of this Parliament—is also conducting an ongoing investigation into fake news. There is another part of the larger set of issues that I am referring to that I want us to be able to look at together.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

This House is the guardian of free and fair elections. It is now clear that this referendum result was corrupt because it was bought, quite possibly with Russian money. Which Minister will now ask the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider a joint enterprise prosecution so that it is not just the staff of these campaigns that are prosecuted but the governing minds as well?

[Chloe Smith]

The police have already received references from this investigation, and I think that stands for itself.

Leaving the EU

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Although I recognise the good intentions with which my hon. Friend asked that question, I suspect that it did not quite receive the full approval of the entire House.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister should have sacked her Foreign Secretary some time ago, given that he is someone who put himself before his party. She now risks putting her party before her country. How can she possibly persuade us that she can negotiate with strength with Brussels when it is clear that she leads a divided House and is struggling to take back control of her Cabinet, never mind anything else?

G7

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, we in the UK look at those issues and take our own actions, but the impact is likely to be much greater when we are able to work jointly and co-operatively with others to ensure that, around the world, we are addressing these issues. That is exactly what the G7 communiqué committed us to do.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The overwhelming majority of people in this House will welcome the overwhelming majority in the G7 agreeing not to let Russia back to the top table, but Russia is now seeking to exert its influence through the back door, and we learnt about the scale of that over the weekend. The Prime Minister says that it is an Electoral Commission inquiry, but the Electoral Commission does not have the legal power to summon the information that it needs. If she can set up a rapid action taskforce abroad, why can we not have a rapid action taskforce here at home? Why can we not put the Electoral Commission on it along with the Metropolitan police, because that is the only way we will find out whether Arron Banks’ millions were in fact Moscow gold?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said earlier in response to a question, of course if there is a suggestion of criminal activity, it will be a matter for the police as to any investigation that would be undertaken. The question whether or not electoral laws have been met is of course a matter for the Electoral Commission, but as the right hon. Gentleman might recall, from the police’s point of view, they have operational independence, and it is not for politicians to tell the police what to investigate.

Tributes: Baroness Jowell

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

Tessa Jowell was one of the greatest entrepreneurs in public life that we have seen in this country for decades. She was such a brilliant idealist not because she could talk with people late into the night about the newest ideas or the latest trends in thinking, but because she thought that the best thing to do with ideas is turn them into action. She was a practical idealist unlike any that we have seen for many years.

She was tremendously persistent, but with that persistence came the wisdom to know that sometimes progress did not always happen in a straight line. She had one of the best political sat-navs in the business. She knew that if you hit a roadblock, that was not the end of the story. You just had to figure how you went on round it.

She had tremendous passion, but she matched that with her compassion. She knew that this business is a contact sport and that many of us are perfectly capable of self-inflicted wounds sometimes. She was never one to judge. She was always the one—the first—to ring you, to hug you, and to tell you reassuringly that it is always darkest before dawn.

Above all, though, it was her political style that many of us will remember. I was taught at the beginning of my political career that there are two kinds of politicians: those who try to divide us and those who try to make change happen by bringing us together. With the Olympics, as with so much in her life, she brought the whole world together to make progress. Sometimes we on this side of the House ask ourselves how futures are really built. Tessa Jowell provided the example, not just with her words but with her deeds.

[Mr Speaker]

Thank you so much.

National Security and Russia

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We have been looking at the overall question of the threats to national security; we do that within the national security capability review. Of course, the modernising defence programme has come out of that, and it will look at the threats that we face and at the capabilities that we need in relation to that, but that will be set in that wider context of the overall national security capabilities that we need to defend ourselves in the future.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister will know that, since General Gerasimov updated the playbook of Russian active measures, intervention in democracy abroad has been one of the mainstays of Russian activity around the world. Our national security strategy does not include an explicit objective to defend the integrity of our democracy, and our election law defences are hopelessly out of date. Will she now update that national security strategy and, crucially, update the election law, so that our regulators have the power to keep our democracy safe?

[The Prime Minister]

We take very seriously the need to ensure that we keep our democracy safe and that we have free and fair elections at all times in this country. The right hon. Gentleman is right—as I was about to go on to say—that Russia has meddled in elections elsewhere. We do look at, and are updating, the arrangements in our electoral law in a number of ways.

It is absolutely right, as I have said, that we have updated the national security issues. We responded to the terrorist attacks that we saw here in the United Kingdom last year by setting up the national security capability review, but that review and, of course, the modernising defence programme will look at the overall threats that we face.

Salisbury Incident

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I reiterate my hon. Friend’s comments about the armed forces. In fact, I did mention them in my statement, but let me again praise the work that they did, alongside our emergency services, in relation to this incident, as well as what they do for us day in, day out. I assure my hon. Friend that we will look very carefully at any further measures that we should be taking in response to the incident.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister should know that if by Wednesday she concludes that we are indeed embattled, she will find both unity and resolve across the House as we face down a common threat.

Twelve years ago, in the aftermath of a wave of al-Qaeda-inspired attacks, we transformed the capacity of Governments to co-ordinate and fight back against extremism. May I urge the Prime Minister, in respect of the measures that she will introduce on Wednesday, to think radically about how she will create Government capacity to co-ordinate our response to this new level of threat, including new safeguards against the abuse of social media, which we know is part of the Russians’ active measures playbook?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his remarks, and for the tone in which he made them. He is right: after the attacks by al-Qaeda, it was very clear that the then Government were putting in place a whole new structure of response in terms of counter-terrorism. UK Governments have been consistently looking at hostile state activity for many years, but in our national security capability review, as we look at our ability to react to the threats that we now face, we will of course ensure that the structures within Government are such that it is possible to co-ordinate properly the actions that we need to take.

European Council

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to say that we have already had a number of productive engagements on the issue of future trade with countries across the world, notably with India and America, but with other countries, too. We have had discussions with Australia, New Zealand, China and other countries across the world. There are real opportunities for the UK once we leave the European Union, and we will be making every effort to ensure that we take those opportunities.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister’s offer is a step in the right direction, but it is long overdue. As a former Home Secretary, she will know that it is impossible both to grant the rights she proposes to 3.2 million EU citizens and to fulfil her target of reducing net migration to tens of thousands. Can she confirm today that she has set aside this fanciful target and is going to propose instead to follow the Chancellor’s advice about a Brexit that is rich in jobs?

[The Prime Minister]

We all want to ensure that the deal we come to with the European Union will ensure that we have the comprehensive free trade agreement that sees growth, prosperity and jobs here in the UK. That is the aim, but also we will be able to see jobs being brought here as a result of the trade arrangements we will be making around the rest of the world.