Business of the House

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

I thank the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee for, as ever, giving us a full outline of all future Backbench Business debates. I look forward to us speaking on Monday, when the right hon. Gentleman comes to the Modernisation Committee to discuss the future of Backbench Business and how we can all ensure that Back Benchers continue to have the opportunity to raise the issues they want to in this House and elsewhere. I join him in wishing everybody a happy Gujarat Day on the 65th anniversary of the creation of the state of Gujarat. I am sure that many colleagues will want to go to the Grimond Room later with him.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

Can we have a debate in Government time about how Ministers can back our brilliant mayor Richard Parker in creating a mayoral development corporation in east Birmingham to build the east Birmingham tram? Under the last Government, Birmingham lost £1 billion in support and was left as Britain’s capital of unemployment and child poverty. High Speed 2 could bring tens of thousands of jobs to change that situation, but the residents of east Birmingham have to be able to get those jobs. That is why we need wholesale regeneration and a mayoral development corporation. It would be good if Ministers showed how they could support that.

[Lucy Powell]

I join my right hon. Friend in welcoming the brilliant work of the Mayor of the West Midlands, Richard Parker. My right hon. Friend will know about the importance of national transport infrastructure to our great cities like Birmingham, and about the importance of making sure that we have local transport infrastructure, like trams. The tram network in Greater Manchester is a really fine example of that. Unless we ensure that local people like his constituents can access the great job opportunities of the future through good local transport, we should not be endeavouring to do these things in the first place. I join him in wanting to see trams in Birmingham, and in particular in his constituency in east Birmingham. That would make a great topic for a debate.