Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Peter Kyle and Stuart Anderson

Wednesday 28th October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

The right hon. Gentleman’s intervention was longer than my speech has been so far. When I find that I agree with every word that somebody is saying, I usually sit down and listen to a bit more of it rather than trying to challenge it. Perhaps the rest of my speech will answer the questions that he raises.

In that decade, because of the predictability and certainty of growth, I think that growth policy was seen like any other policy. In other words, if there was a shelf with all the different policies of Government on it, growth would be one set of policies on that shelf. I know that there are a lot of analogies going around these days, and Liz Truss has blown a hole in analogy use as well as in our economy, but it is my belief that we now need to have the mindset that growth is the shelf itself. We cannot have successful social policies delivered in the way that all of us in this Chamber would like unless we have a solid, predictably-growing economy into the long term that provides security and prosperity and from which we can share investment fairly around the country.

We must on both sides of the House be as animated about economic growth as we are about creating prosperity, spending it and challenging the social ills in our society. We must care as much about economic growth as we do about rough sleeping, social care and international development—I say that as someone who spent my early life in international development. Tackling those issues depends on economic growth itself.

Public services are incredibly important. They are enablers of growth. We cannot have growth if people are arriving late to work, are too sick to work or are stuck on a Tory waiting list for treatment. We need to have the right skills in the right places. All of those things are absolutely essential, but we should not kid ourselves that such growth is not built on by private enterprise.

Thanks to the Prime Minister deciding that I could have some time over the summer, I was able to write an essay—now that Tony Blair has brought them back into fashion. I know that many Members will have already read it, making some of my words today obsolete, but let me refresh their minds about what I focused on. I confined the essay to my experience in Government and how we can configure Government more assiduously and dependably to unlock the economic growth that our country needs so much—focusing on what Government themselves can deliver. That experience comes from leading two Departments as Secretary of State. I saw in both those Departments that civil servants can deliver boldly when they have the authority to and when incentives align.

I will use one example—the automotive sector—to illustrate to Members the challenges that the Government face to unlock growth. Delivering support for the automotive sector means aligning energy, trade, regulation and all these different areas of policy. All are held by more than one Government Department, and each of those Departments has its own priorities. As Secretary of State in the Department for Business and Trade, at times I was prioritising the automotive sector and recognising how important it can be for growth. Let us bear in mind, when Jaguar Land Rover suffered its cyber-attack, 0.2% was taken off our GDP. When it was up and running six weeks later, 0.2% was returned to our GDP. The importance of industry is still fundamental. When the Prime Minister and the Chancellor talk about reindustrialisation, hon. Members should not underestimate its ability to deliver growth for our overall economy.

We have another asset when it comes to the automotive sector in our country. When we talk about frontier technology—I am looking for the Minister for Artificial Intelligence, who was in his place a moment ago—we think about the AI labs, most of which are in California, with some in China, but we have a frontier industry here in the UK in the automotive sector, and it is Formula 1, because 11 of the 12 teams do all their research and development and all the deployment of their vehicles right here in the UK. No other country in the world has that asset, and that filters skills through our automotive sector. The ability to grow that sector is huge, but that needs Government to work in an aligned way.

I discovered how different Departments with different priorities have oversight over things like automotive, and how sometimes they can slow down those priority areas. We need the structures and incentives in Government to be much better aligned, because we cannot have all these important sectors depending on Ministers’ ability to WhatsApp each other to sort out problems. We should have a system of Government that is already on the side of making pro-growth choices.

I want to say a few brief words about defence, which has already been raised in the debate. I am grateful to the Chancellor for the statements he has made on this. We focus on the percentage of GDP allocated to defence, but the debate cannot just be about how big a share of our economy we spend on defence; it must also be about how big an economy we have. If we were to achieve five years of 3% annual growth, 3% of our national income on defence would deliver almost the same amount of money as moving to 3.5% in an economy of today’s size.

[Stuart Anderson (South Shropshire) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Kyle]

I will continue.

That is the difference that growth can make to our national security: it does not remove the need for difficult spending decisions today, but it can give us greater strength to sustain our defence into tomorrow.

[Stuart Anderson]

I agree with the right hon. Member that it would be great to grow the economy to achieve the 3.5% spend, but the Chancellor has today set out multibillion pound in-year cuts this year—we see that in particular in the resource departmental expenditure limit budget at about 0.5% next year—so as it stands there will be far less for training and operations. That is before we even look at whether, in three-plus years’ time, the Chancellor has achieved that growth or not.

[Peter Kyle]

I agree. I realise that in seeking to make an intervention we stop listening to what is being said, but I did say before I gave way to the hon. Member that that would not be instead. I am not proposing that we look to start investing five years down the line after five years of 3% growth—of course, we must move towards those NATO targets, just as the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have promised—but if the debate is about getting cash into defence, this illustrates how there is more than one way of doing that. Immediately, yes, it is about increasing the percentage, but in the long term, on the back of economic growth of 3% and above, we could do so sustainably, and that would unleash enormous amounts of resource in addition to the reprioritisation that might need to happen.

Of course, the difference is that when the spending comes from growth, other Government Departments’ budgets can grow as well, and working people right across the country will be feeling it in their pockets. That is why growth is one of the driving social justice issues of our time.

It is my belief that government needs to become organised around growth, and that growth needs to become the organising principle of government. In the essay that I published, I give some practical suggestions based on my time in government for what I would do if I had the opportunity.

First, the Government need to adopt a taskforce mentality when it comes to growth. The Prime Minister should back a 90-day plan to unblock investment. Of course, we need Cabinet accountability, but we have these great boards in government—experts on the Board of Trade and non-executives on Departments’ boards—and all sorts of different specialist groups and outside experts coming in and sitting on boards across Government. We should pick from those boards those people who are best placed because of their understanding of Government from the work they are already doing, and jump to a taskforce-based approach to looking at different Government Departments and the opportunities we have to act fast in Departments. They should identify areas that need legislative change, and for that we can introduce a growth Bill, if that were appropriate. I believe that it is.

Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill

Debate between Peter Kyle and Stuart Anderson

2nd reading
Thursday 21st May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Anderson (South Shropshire) (Con)]

I do not support this Bill, and I believe that the reasoned amendment is the right way forward. I will set out clearly the devastating impact that the Bill is about to have, in real time, in my constituency.

We have a great local business called Amodil. It is a British family-run business that started with a couple of people in 1976 in Cleobury Mortimer, South Shropshire. I recently went to Cleobury to meet Paul, Chris, Ben and the team, as well as Rob Cooper from the British Stainless Steel Association. The business was founded by Paul Slingsby, who at 75 still works in it today. It is the UK’s largest privately owned supplier and stockholder of stainless steel long products, with more than 1,200 customers—about 20% of the UK market.

The people who run Amodil know what they are on about, and they were completely blindsided by the announcement on tariffs. They had not been told, and none of their customers or suppliers, or the people they were involved with, knew anything about it, so they came straight to me. I have written to the Minister multiple times and had one response. He needs to sit down with the largest British business in this industry and have a serious conversation.

The big issue that Amodil faces is the tariffs on the stainless steel products it brings in that cannot be made in the UK in the required quantity or type. The Government want to protect the steel industry as an industry of vital strategic importance—I get that—and they want to protect jobs, but for the almost 1,000 jobs they will save, many thousands more will be lost, and I will say exactly where.

The UK cannot meet domestic market demand, and a huge gap will be created. Businesses such as Amodil will be forced to import, and tariffs will drive up costs by 50%. There is not the cash across the industry to absorb those extra costs without mass redundancies. The costs will be passed on, meaning that manufacturers’ costs will go up. What will happen then? The customer will buy the finished product from manufacturers overseas at a lower price, and those products are not subject to tariffs. That does not level the playing field for us.

The UK does not produce enough stainless steel of the right type or quality to meet demand. Amodil currently has 5,000 tonnes of stainless steel in stock, 2,000 tonnes of which cannot be, and is not, made in the UK. It could take up to 15 years to get some of the skills right. Large-diameter bars of a certain grade are not made in the UK and those bars are vital to key industries, such as aerospace, defence, pharmaceuticals, oil, automative, general engineering and many more. If the tariffs are put on these businesses—Amodil is the largest British business in the field in the UK and there are many others—they will be priced out of the industry. I really hope the Secretary of State can see the importance of this matter.

[Peter Kyle]

I will save the hon. Gentleman from driving home the point even more, because I understand the passion with which he speaks. With regard to Amodil, I will look into that company personally. The intention with the measures that I have brought in is to protect domestic production and the possibility of domestic production. It is not to prevent goods that we do not make here, and do not intend to have the capacity to make here, from suffering. If there is a specific issue, I will look into that, because I do not want negative impacts downstream when we do not have the capacity to produce here. The Trade Minister said earlier today that he would look into that as well. We, as a team, will look into these issues.

[Stuart Anderson]

I thank the Secretary of State for saying that. I will follow up personally with him and with Amodil to see if we can talk about a way forward. I said to Amodil, “I believe that this is an unintended consequence of what the Government are trying to do, and once I point this out clearly, there will be a way forward to look at it.” The long and the short of it— I will put my speech to one side—is that there is a certain size of rod that only the UK can make. I watched it at Amodil’s facility a few weeks ago. When it gets past that size, it is not made in this country, but it is needed by so many of those critical industries.

Looking at steel as a whole, this matter is just one part of the stainless steel industry. If the Secretary of State, or one of the Ministers, will sit with me and the team at Amodil, they will be able to see, within a matter of minutes, where the gap is and how to plug it. It is along the blanket grading for all the bars. I request a pause for, say, just six months—or if we can talk with Amodil in a matter of days—so we can sit down and look at this, because there is a massive knock-on impact that will seriously hurt the stainless steel industry, and one of the largest employers in my constituency will be massively hurt too.