Department for Business and Trade

Joe Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne]

Well, there was an awful lot more money than there is now. We certainly did not have a debt interest bill of £100 billion a year, which is what the bill has risen to, and why so many difficult choices are having to be taken. At that time, we were beginning genuinely to consider how to create single, pooled funds that came together from different Government Departments. A challenge for us in the House is that we have to reflect on the fact that we reinforce silos in Government, and do not reinforce joined-up Government. This estimates debate is a good example: we are considering the accounts of the Department for Business and Trade, but in an ideal world we would also have here Ministers from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Treasury, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and a couple of other Departments, and we would ask those Ministers how they were working together to deliver a joined-up offer to our business community, because businesses have not got time to muck around and deal with all the red tape; they are trying to build a business.

[Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way—he has given way a few times already. When I speak to businesses in my constituency, I pick up that young people who want to remain in the most rural communities simply cannot get to the jobs that they want to get to, and that businesses in rural settings have real trouble accessing a lot of the help that he refers to. Does he believe that one of the particular sins of the past 14 years is that the business climate has been unfriendly to business, and particularly unfriendly to small rural businesses?

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend is right, but we have to look to the future. We have to understand how Government will connect together and ensure a transformation in regional transport and connectivity. So many parts of our country are bedevilled by a lack of internet connectivity, so they cannot access the kind of applications that might give them access to artificial intelligence, for example, or to international markets. They cannot get access to the internet full stop. We have to think boldly about how we join Government together in a revolutionary way.

Finally, I wanted to mention the Post Office. When we look at these accounts in the round, we see a 44.8% increase in the amount allocated, taking the figure up to nearly £6 billion a year. That is partly driven by £444 million for the British Business Bank, but it is overwhelmingly driven by about £1.3 billion extra for the Post Office. The good step has been taken of increasing funding for the Post Office compensation scheme, but that money is still not going out the door fast enough. I accept that that has improved, but the Committee will return with some tougher questions for Ministers in the light of their response to our recent report.

My final point, which I urge on both the Minister and his colleagues in the Treasury, is that we cannot transform the Post Office into the organisation it could be by drip-drip-dripping the funding for modernisation through to it. The Post Office needs a proper five-year to 10-year funding plan so that it can genuinely become the organisation that it could be. When these accounts were published by the Department, they were qualified and late. I know that civil servants have to work hard to iron out a number of problems, and we have asked the permanent secretary for monthly updates on how he is doing in bringing the kind of clarity that this House should expect. I thank the civil servants and the Department for the extraordinary work that they do; they are absolutely mission-critical to the hopes of so many of us in this country and to our becoming the fastest-growing economy in the G7.