Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood]

I really do not have time.

It was the Prime Minister’s personal intervention—he sent back early drafts of the roll-out strategy—that brought together the NHS, the armed forces and the private sector to get vaccines out quicker than other large countries did.

We can be proud that when Russian troops invaded one of our European partners, our Prime Minister did so much to lead international support for Ukraine. It is simply not credible to imagine that Britain would have stood as firmly against Russian aggression if it had been led by a man whose response to an assassination attempt on the streets of Salisbury was to demand that evidence be sent to Moscow.

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

Was it the right response to that poisoning to fix a meeting with a former intelligence agent of the KGB—a meeting without officials, minutes, or any report to this House of what the hell happened?

[Mike Wood]

I will tell the right hon. Gentleman what the right response was: it was to co-ordinate the biggest diplomatic response since the end of the cold war. The Prime Minister, then Foreign Secretary, got more diplomatic responses than have been seen in decades. The Prime Minister has many achievements of which he should be proud. His successor will have a strong foundation to build on, thanks to the decisions that he has taken over the past three years.