Business and Trade Committee
Debate between Chris Bloore and Liam Byrne(1 month, 1 week ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Liam Byrne
I am grateful to the hon. Member for the question and for his sterling work on the Committee as our inquiry has been driven forward over the last seven or eight months. I have not. It was striking to compare the evidence we took with history lessons from the 1920s and 1930s. As a country, we have developed infrastructure to tackle these kinds of threats in the past. Indeed, the forces that we assembled in the 1920s and 1930s were so important that they became known as the fourth fighting service. It was certainly crucial in helping us to stand up the Ministry of Economic Warfare in world war two with the speed that we did. We are now in a world of chokepoints, coercion and weaponised interdependence, and today’s cyber-attacks will be nothing compared with those in future. Frankly, the country is simply not ready. We have to get our skates on.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his report. I will not mention his vast experience though, because he is still young to me. Redditch was deeply impacted by the JLR shutdown, with many of our supply chains affected. My right hon. Friend talks in the report about the need for an economic security Minister and about the specific measures needed to upgrade cyber-security across our critical sectors. What powers would my right hon. Friend envisage such a Minister having, and how do Government support businesses to get up to date to meet the challenges mentioned in the report?
Liam Byrne
We have a very good Minister in place, but in a way, the report is designed to ensure that that Minister is empowered in his work and across Government. But first we must understand, and help the Minister have the powers to understand, the full breadth of the UK supply chains and where the risks are. The Jaguar Land Rover case was striking because the supply chain information was kept on the computers that went down. When the computers went down, they had to generate, I think, almost paper lists of tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers to work out who needed cashflow and who could survive without direct help. We must ensure that we have a full picture of supply chains and where the critical dependencies are, as the Japanese have been doing for many years.
Making sure that there is a proper backstop to the cyber-insurance market is important. That is why the proposals for a much bigger and better-equipped Pool Re are so important. Pool Re, as many will know, was set up to backstop terrorism insurance during the height of the IRA attacks. It now needs modernising for new times. The tax regime that we have in place today simply does not incentivise small and medium-sized enterprises in the way that we could, to draw down on subscription-based cyber-security policies. Making sure that there are the right incentives, powers and insights available are just some of the tasks that we think an economic security Minister needs to be fully empowered to perform.
UK-EU Summit: Policy Priorities
Debate between Chris Bloore and Liam Byrne
Liam Byrne
The report could not have been as well written or as strong and robust in its recommendations without the hon. Member’s input. We are grateful for the hard work he put into getting the report right. As he knows, a bespoke customs union was not a proposal we made, perhaps because it would not necessarily have swept up the Committee in unanimity. What is striking is that the measures set out in the report would have been significant enough to offset the economic damage we will suffer because of the tariffs introduced by President Trump. The hon. Member is right that in economic matters it is always wise to focus on the big numbers, and the big numbers in trade come from a better, closer, stronger relationship with the European Union.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his report and his stewardship of the Committee. My inbox was full of emails from local businesses in Redditch, relieved that after years of hesitation and no progress we are finally in a dialogue with the EU about improving access for businesses. Does he agree that, as the report states, by continuously speaking to the EU we can finally start getting rid of the red tape, as was promised to businesses by many on the pro-Brexit side, and get proper access to the markets that world-leading companies in Redditch really should be able to access freely?
Liam Byrne
My hon. Friend has consistently been a strong voice for the business community in Redditch since he joined us in the House. He is right that what has been lacking for a long time in the relationship with the European Union is the kinetic energy required to drive any bureaucracy forward.
A number of working groups were set up because of the trade and co-operation agreement. In a cross-party spirit, I should say it is important to note that the mood in Brussels changed significantly under the last Prime Minister, with the progress made in the Windsor framework. However, unless significant amounts of political attention and energy are invested, things will not move forward, and there is still a long way to go. The Committee has set out in the report where some of that progress still needs to happen, but ultimately politics is what changes things. I hope that the political energy that went into Monday can be sustained for the future.