Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The trains and all travel were in an appalling state under the previous Government, and we are clearing that up. We are fixing it, and the hon. Gentleman should welcome that.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool West Derby) (Ind)]

Q9. The parliamentary ombudsman concluded that an injustice was done to 1950s-born women and ruled that they are owed compensation, and asked Parliament to intervene to deliver justice. I have more than 5,000 women affected in my constituency. Alongside a great many Members in this House, I believe these women are owed compensation for the injustice done to them at the hands of the state. Will the Prime Minister give Members the opportunity to vote on whether they believe WASPI women are owed compensation?

[The Prime Minister]

I have just set out the factual background and the percentage who knew about the change. The simple fact of the matter is that in the current economic circumstances, the taxpayer cannot bear the burden of tens of billions of pounds in compensation. [Interruption.] Opposition Members are chuntering away, but, in 14 years, they accelerated the changes and never once spoke about compensation.

Infected Blood Compensation Scheme

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I defer to my right hon. Friend’s considerable experience and wisdom on many matters. I recognise his points, but to move on this matter in that way in this short timeframe would not be the right step. However, it would be right for us to urgently engage with him, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and others to ensure that the Government come up with the right complete response, to deal with a sensible point that Sir Brian made.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my constituents whose lives were changed for ever and the many campaigners affected by this scandal, who have fought for so many years for truth and justice. From Hillsborough to the Post Office, the infected blood scandal and many more, we have watched the state and institutions cover up wrongdoing and blame the innocent, with no accountability. How long do we have to wait for those in this place to finally act and rebalance the scales of justice, and to deliver a full Hillsborough law? Yesterday’s events show how necessary that law is to begin to end the culture of cover-ups that is shamefully hardwired into our institutions.

[John Glen]

I very much respect the hon. Gentleman’s points about Hillsborough. I am not able to answer his question on that, as my remarks are about the compensation scheme, but a number of points have been made about the incidence of public inquiries on a range of issues, and what that says about our state and its failure in different ways. As he said, considerable effort was required of individuals—which it should never have been—to apprehend the state for what has happened. These are wider matters that we will need to come to terms with, but I do not think I can do justice to his remarks today.

Civil Service Pay

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter), who is a good friend, for securing this important debate, and for her excellent speech. I hope I have pronounced her constituency right, or she will kill me.

Although I have no formal interests to declare, I am a proud member of the PCS parliamentary group. I stand in full solidarity with the civil service in Liverpool, West Derby, and across the country, who are taking industrial action as a last resort over their pay, pensions and job security. It was an absolute privilege to stand with civil servants on an historic day at the PCS picket line in Whitehall last month, with quite a number of colleagues from this side of the House. It is a position they should never have been put in.

Workers in the civil service have not had a real-terms pay rise for over 11 years. Salaries have fallen by between 12% and 23% in real terms at each grade since 2010. There would be an uproar among MPs if that happened to them. There has been a sustained pay cut—a disgraceful pay injustice that has resulted in the loss of at least £2,800 a year in pay to individual civil servants. The pay structures across the civil service are fragmented into over 200 bargaining units, a system that the FDA trade union has rightly described as “dysfunctional and broken”.

That broken system has resulted not only in low pay but in wide variations of pay across the service, equal pay issues and a gender pay gap, as well as a recruitment and retention crisis. On top of that, civil servants have been overpaying pension contributions by £500 a year since 2019. The situation is grim.

This Government’s decade of brutal and unrelenting austerity has cut our public services to the bone and forced people who deliver those services into abject poverty. One in six people in my constituency are missing meals or going without food, and that includes many civil servants. In a PCS survey of its members, 35% of respondents said that they had skipped meals because they had no food, 18% that they have had to miss work because they cannot afford transport or fuel to get there, 85% that the cost of living crisis has affected their physical and mental health, and 52% that they are worried about losing their homes as bills and inflation rocket. Forty thousand civil servants are estimated to be regular users of food banks—I have seen that myself in the pantries that we run in Liverpool—and 47,000 are claiming universal credit because the pay is so low.

Let us just reflect on those statistics. The very people we trust to ensure that the social security system works for those in need are now being driven into hunger because of the poverty pay they receive. That encapsulates 13 years of Tory rule, which has driven many members of our public sector staff into poverty. Political choices are being made that have caused so much harm and misery to our communities. I have heard Members say, “Enough is enough,” quite a lot, certainly earlier on in the Chamber for the immigration statement. Let us use those words today to frame this economic injustice for all our loyal public servants; and let us hope the Minister uses them when we talk about that economic injustice.

The Government’s derisory 2% pay offer for 2022-23 is an absolute insult to those civil servants and their families. Inflation is over five times as high, and food inflation is around nine times as high. Trade unions representing staff, including fast streamers, are now taking industrial action as a last resort. One-hundred thousand civil servants will take strike action on Budget day next Wednesday: a day that the Government could use—if they had the political will and leadership, Minister —to announce an inflation-proof pay rise for public sector workers to avoid the strikes.

On Friday, I received a disappointing response from the Minister for the Cabinet Office to my letter raising the issues that I have raised in this debate. In that correspondence, he said that he would

“like to take this opportunity to reiterate…our gratitude for the exceptional commitment Civil Servants and public servants have shown in supporting essential public service delivery during this challenging time.”

Yet, further on in the letter he says that he recognises that the current civil service pay uplift

“will be below current levels of inflation.”

Warm words mean absolutely nothing to civil service staff in West Derby and across the country, who are not being paid enough to live off. I am also extremely disappointed that the Minister for the Cabinet Office appeared to suggest in that letter that pay restraint is somehow linked to getting inflation under control. The FDA’s independent analysis debunks the Government’s claim that public sector pay awards cause inflation. Inflation cannot be caused directly by public sector wage rises, and there is no evidence that this can occur indirectly.

I and my constituents are dismayed by the Minister for the Cabinet Office’s correspondence, and I am appalled by the Government’s overall approach to public sector pay disputes. Rather than taking the mature and robust step of offering an acceptable settlement on pay, terms and conditions, the Government have instead taken the reactionary step of ramping up anti-strike rhetoric and placing regressive legislation against industrial action on the statute book. That is not leadership when it is needed. We must be better than this. Those loyal public sector workers deserve the Minister’s action and support. We urge the Minister today to listen to the demands of civil service staff and their trade unions, and to provide them with pay justice and improved conditions. They and our nation deserve nothing less.

Independent Public Advocate

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee. I think that this policy will create stronger advocacy on behalf of the bereaved, the victims and the families, and having panels with the right expertise, range and status will go a long way towards getting the answers.

Again, I understand the point about compulsion of evidence. There is not a theological objection to it, certainly as far as I am concerned: it is a question of reconciling competing powers when an inquiry is set up. I will, of course, look at the Justice Committee’s report and recommendations on that issue. In general, of course, inquiries are not supposed to be adversarial, which is why the rules in relation to legal aid are as they are, but we will look at this and work with colleagues in all parts of the House as we introduce these important clauses.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s acknowledgement that we need to legislate for an independent public advocate, but I am sorry to say that today’s announcement is a pale imitation of what Hillsborough families and survivors spent years campaigning on. The Government’s proposal feels like a weak signposting service. It does not have any of the powers that a truly independent public advocate would require—it feels so weak.

For me, the key question is whether this proposal would have stopped the state cover-ups of Hillsborough, the contaminated blood scandal and so many other cover-ups over the ages, and whether it will prevent further cover-ups. Unfortunately, I have to say that the answer is no, so will the Secretary of State instead adopt the Bill tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood, which is ready to go, and work with us to bring the Hillsborough law—including a fully independent public advocate—into legislation?

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for all his efforts. I am afraid I do not accept the characterisation; calling it a signposting service is quite wrong. By the way, the signposting is important, but that is the start, not the end of the role of the IPA. It will be set up as a statutory advocate for all those who have been affected, whether individual victims or on behalf of the community as a whole. As of its own status, it will be impossible to ignore.

On the specific functions beyond those I set out in my statement, I am very happy to keep engaging, but I think that Members need to think about the practicalities, for example with data compulsion, and how we make sure that they can be reconciled. I hope that we will be able to continue working together to make sure that victims and the bereaved, particularly of pre-existing tragedies, such as Hillsborough, but also those in the future feel they are better equipped to get the answers and accountability that they need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

The Government value the vital role that kinship carers play. Eligible kinship carers who adopt are entitled to adoption leave and pay, and employed kinship carers may also be eligible for other leave entitlements to balance work with caring, including emergency leave, the right to request flexible working, and unpaid parental leave. However, we will continue to look at this issue.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

T4. I want to share the words of one of my constituents with the House:“I am emailing you because of the unfairness of people on legacy benefits who did not receive the extra £20 a week support because of Covid… This is discrimination of Disabled people which I am one of… I could not leave my home for nearly eighteen months because of Covid, this money would have helped with heating costs.”This month, Kamran Mallick, CEO of Disability Rights UK, said:“With rising energy bills, increasing inflation and benefits pegged at a horrendously low level, millions of Disabled people are living in conditions comparable to the nineteenth century work house.”Can the Minister let me know—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Sorry. I call the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

When I was Mayor of London I always yearned to be in a position to put that through Parliament, and now I am. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend and we will ensure we give parliamentary time to make it possible. It will be a boon for cyclists and a boon for taxi drivers, and it is high time we did it.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

9. We have a humanitarian crisis of food poverty in all the constituencies represented in this House. We have more food banks than branches of McDonald’s, and people face starving or freezing in their homes at this very moment because of the horrific cost of living crisis and because of political choices made by this Government. In 2015, the Government signed up to delivering the 2030 sustainable development goals domestically, including ending hunger. Can the Prime Minister tell me who, and what Department, is responsible for delivering the goal of ending hunger domestically, and can he send me a copy of the plan to deliver it?

[The Prime Minister]

The whole of Government is engaged in that campaign. To that end, we have expanded free school meals for five to seven-year-olds, which helps 1.3 million children, we have boosted the Healthy Start vouchers by one third and, of course, the holiday food and activities programme continues to run, with a £200 million fund. The best thing we can do as a country and a society, however, is keep going with our plan for economic growth with higher-wage, higher-skilled jobs putting bread on the table of families up and down this country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alok Sharma]

My hon. Friend is a great champion for his community on this particular issue. He will know that the Government remain open to considering well-developed proposals for harnessing tidal range energy in the bays and estuaries around our coastlines. Obviously, I recommend that he also speaks to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

T3. According to Friends of the Earth, 33,000 premature deaths a year in the UK are linked to air pollution. During the COP26 climate summit, the Environment Bill passed its final stages in this House. Shamefully, it did not include legally binding targets for air quality, which were called for by so many, including hundreds of my constituents in Liverpool, West Derby. As the UK retains the COP26 presidency, will it lead by example and bring in the extra measures needed to clean up our air?

[Alok Sharma]

The hon. Gentleman raises a very important point, but air pollution has reduced significantly since 2010. Our clean air strategy proposes a comprehensive suite of actions required across all parts of Government to improve air quality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Final question, Ian Byrne.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

Q15. Next week, the 97th victim of the Hillsborough tragedy will receive the Freedom of Liverpool. Andrew Devine passed away earlier this year, aged 55, having defied the odds to survive the injuries that he sustained at Hillsborough aged 22. A coroner’s inquest in Liverpool in July ruled that he was unlawfully killed as a result of the disaster, making him the 97th victim. Following my tabling last week of early-day motion 649 on Hillsborough and the national curriculum, will the Prime Minister agree to meet me to discuss the roll-out of the Hillsborough real truth legacy project, including the addition of the Hillsborough disaster to the national curriculum and help to consign to history the narrative of lies and smears peddled by some elements of the media and the establishment over the past 32 years through the power of education?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the powerful point that he has just made. Even though 32 years have passed since that devastating tragedy, I know that the wounds remain very raw in Liverpool. The Government are committed, as he knows, to continuing engagement with the bereaved families, and to ensuring that the lessons from that tragedy continue to be properly learned and that the victims of Hillsborough are never forgotten. I am happy to ensure that the hon. Gentleman meets the relevant Minister to take forward an agenda that I think is shared by people up and down the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I always look forward to an opportunity to visit Darlington, and I share my hon. Friend’s passion for moving more jobs. When I was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, one key thing I did was seek to front-load our previous commitment to moving 22,000 jobs by 2030 and bring that forward. We now have a commitment for 15,000 of those jobs to be moved by 2024-25. It is not just the value of the jobs themselves that moves, with the welcome diversity that brings in the civil service; it also drives further jobs in the private market.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I have been contacted by bereaved constituents who have lost their loved ones to covid-19, and I would like to pay tribute to all those families in Liverpool, West Derby today in this Chamber. My constituents want answers, and they should not have had to battle with the Government at every stage to secure the covid-19 inquiry. In his new role, will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster make a commitment, here and now, to prioritising the bereaved families, meeting Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice as a matter of urgency to discuss the terms of reference of the inquiry, and ensuring that the families get the truth and justice they deserve?

[Michael Ellis]

Every death from this virus is a tragedy, and our deepest sympathies are with everyone who has lost loved ones. The Government remain steadfast in our commitment to ensuring that the families of whom the hon. Gentleman has spoken have the scrutiny of the Government’s response to managing the pandemic that they deserve. The Prime Minister made it very clear in his statement to this House on 12 May that bereaved families and others will be consulted on the inquiry’s terms of reference before they are finalised. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to write to me for more information, I will be happy to respond.

Covid-19

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I think I share my hon. Friend’s constituents’ instincts. Perhaps a cautious presumption is what I would advise them to make.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab) [V]]

Ofcom estimates that 1.8 million children in our country are digitally excluded, with a lack of access to equipment or broadband. I would place a bet with the Prime Minister that that does not include a single pupil from his former school of Eton. Digital poverty is a class issue. The Labour policy of universal free broadband that he derided in 2019 is now desperately needed. Will the Prime Minister outline how he will solve the issue of digital poverty, which is widening the already vast educational inequalities in this country, so that not one child is left behind during this lockdown?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman will of course know what the Government are doing to roll out gigabit broadband across the whole country to give every part of the country access to superfast broadband. In terms of the needs of people who do not have access to broadband yet, he will have heard what we have said about the mobile phone and internet providers coming together today to provide cut-price access for those who need it across the country. I think that is the right thing to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for this campaign. He has raised the idea with me before. What I can say is that while we will certainly look at what he says, I am very glad that we have signed the heads of terms on the Moray growth deal, delivering over £30 million of investment. I thank him for the lobbying that he has been doing.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab) [V]]

Professor Ian Sinha from Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, West Derby, recently stated that the environment a child develops in, even before being born, can affect its DNA detrimentally by 10%. This Government have been responsible for creating an environment that is pushing millions of families into food poverty, which will be shaping this terrifying outcome. To address this, will the Prime Minister—I ask him for the second time—work with me and other groups to put the right to food into law?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the issue of food poverty and of poverty generally. That is why, in answer to the previous question from the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), I made the point that we have actually been successful, as we have been championing work and employment, in getting large numbers of families out of poverty. That is what we are going to do. As he knows, we are putting up £170 million to support local councils throughout the winter, so that no child goes hungry this Christmas or over the winter season through any inattention of this Government. I am grateful to him for raising the issue with me.

Public Health

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

The Government have repeatedly failed to listen to the voices of people on the frontline in this pandemic, and to our communities’ fears about the impact of covid. The Government’s centralisation of their response, and the way that they have handed it to the private sector, has been catastrophic, and will go down in history as such. On the eve of another national lockdown, my fear, once again, is about whether a Government who are ideologically hellbent on using the pandemic as a testing bed for the promotion of the private sector over public services can listen and learn from their failings.

In Liverpool, West Derby, the community and mutual aid groups have had to step in where the Government and their friends in private companies such as Serco have failed us all. In the first lockdown, the community in Liverpool came together to form mutual aid hubs because of these failings. We distributed 48,00 visors, 37,000 masks, and thousands of aprons and scrubs to frontline workers who had been left without personal protective equipment by the Government. Fans Supporting Foodbanks and North Liverpool food bank distributed thousands of food parcels to families and other people in our community, often shielding, who have been left without adequate financial support by the Government.

In Liverpool, it was evident back in September that the pressure on hospitals was increasing due to a steep rise in covid-19 cases. Liverpool’s Mayor and, following that, the Leader of the Opposition called for a circuit-breaker lockdown, which would have been timed to run alongside the school holidays. This would have relieved pressure on our health and social care services and saved lives, but tragically that call fell on deaf ears once again.

The challenges facing our communities will be even greater over the winter, and will not be helped by this Government refusing to provide free school meals over the holidays, or refusing to reinstate measures such as the eviction ban. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that he will start to listen, and that lessons have been learned from the failings of the first lockdown? Will he finally start prioritising our public services over the interests of private companies that have a track record of failure, and will he finally start listening to the people in communities who are being hit hardest by this pandemic?