Post Office Horizon Inquiry: Volume 1

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

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

On behalf of our Committee, I welcome this report from Sir Wyn Williams. As Jo Hamilton has said, it unmasks the full horror of what was done to the sub-postmasters, including the truth that at least 13 suicides resulted from what the Post Office did to innocent people. Sir Wyn Williams echoes almost all the recommendations our Committee has now made three times to Ministers. There are 3,000 claims still outstanding, and there are, in Sir Wyn’s words, “egregious delays” at every stage of the claims process, so does the Minister now accept that, as we have recommended and Sir Wyn has recommended, up-front legal advice needs to be provided to victims?

Does the Minister also accept that we must now, once and for all, strip the Post Office of any role in the Horizon shortfall scheme? Will the Minister commit to a date for getting rid of the Post Office altogether from that redress scheme? Today’s report makes it clear that at least 160 people in the Post Office knew exactly what was going on, and some of them came to this House and misled Members of this House not once but twice, so is it now the moment for us to commence contempt of Parliament proceedings against the leaders of the Post Office who misled us so badly?

UK Modern Industrial Strategy

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

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

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the biggest remaking of the relationship between the public and private sectors for a generation. The business community in this country will be stronger and better for the measures that he has announced today. Business will welcome in particular the huge investment in skills, access to research and development, and access to capital, but the game changer is the investment in energy that he has announced. Cutting industrial energy prices is a way to get rid of the albatross around the neck of British business. It is a big promise; can he assure the House that there is both the plan and the pound notes to deliver on it?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I warmly welcome those words from the Chair of the Select Committee. I absolutely agree with him. There is so much in the strategy, but we were so uncompetitive on energy that whether action could be taken had become a test of credibility from business. The kinds of changes we are talking about—a reduction of £35 to £40 per megawatt-hour by exempting eligible businesses from payments for the renewables obligation, feed-in tariffs and the capacity market—will make a real difference. We are talking about going from being the absolute outlier to, today, being cheaper than Italy and the Czech Republic and on a par with Germany. That is a game changer, and it has been welcomed. We will obviously have to consult; we can make the changes to the supercharger more quickly than we can introduce that support. Of course, we will have to set a threshold intensity test and make sure it goes to the sectors in most need of it, but we expect those to include the core foundational sectors as well as aerospace, automotive and all the areas where the competitive pressure is most acute. I am incredibly excited by that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

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

I very much welcome yesterday’s investment in UK energy abundance, but as our Committee pointed out on Friday, the success of the industrial strategy will depend on a plan to cut industrial energy costs now. When the industrial strategy is published, will the Secretary of State reassure us that there will be a plan to ensure that UK energy prices are internationally competitive?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I thank my right hon. Friend and the Select Committee for all their work in this area. He knows my view from the evidence that I have given. The significant increase in industrial energy prices under the previous Government is a significant issue for our competitiveness—and yes, that is something that we seek to address.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

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

Today the Select Committee writes to the Secretary of State to supply our response to his consultation on how we should respond to American tariffs. We have heard widespread consensus that there should not be retaliatory tariffs and that the approach the Government are pursuing is right, but we have also heard real concerns especially in the automotive industry among those big exporters to America and, crucially, their supply chains. Can the Secretary of State reassure the House that he is readying support packages across Government to ensure that our automotive sector does not run into serious trouble if we cannot get a deal with America soon?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

As my right hon. Friend knows, I always welcome communications from the Select Committee and the constructive and helpful role it plays in all these important matters. He is right to say that the business community in the UK strongly backs the Government’s calm and level-headed approach to these difficult issues. The automotive sector is one of our major priorities. It is the sector that has the most exports because of the brilliant success we have with automotive exports to the US. It remains an absolute priority for us in any negotiation to secure what we need, which is the continuation of access to US markets in a way that is complementary to the US and that meets the ambitions of US consumers. Frankly, I do not see any argument for making that relationship more difficult through the long-term imposition of tariffs. We are closely engaged in a number of important meetings this week with senior automotive leaders, and we will continue to prepare that, working to keep the Select Committee involved.

Energy Prices: Energy-intensive Industries

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

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

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) is an enormous champion of the ceramics industry, and he is right to bring this question to the House today, but this issue is wider than simply the ceramics sector. Tata Steel has told our Committee that energy prices are the single biggest factor in its lack of competitiveness, and Nissan has told us that electricity prices at its plant in Sunderland are the highest of any Nissan plant in the world. We have recommended that the Government bring energy prices in line with our European competitors; can the Minister tell us today that she shares that ambition?

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Committee Chair for his question. Of course this is a huge issue. Under the previous Government, industrial energy prices doubled, and as my right hon. Friend says, we have higher prices than many other countries. The 3,000 people who responded to our consultation on the industrial strategy said that energy, skills and access to finance were their top three issues, so we are absolutely aware of the issue. We are looking at what support we can provide and how we can make our country more competitive, both for the people who are looking to invest in the UK and for our existing manufacturing base.

British Steel

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

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

I want to thank the Government for saving British Steel. Our Committee has been clear that it is essential for us to retain the ability to make primary steel in this country, and the steps that were taken a couple of Saturdays ago have helped derisk exactly that. The Government deserve credit for that. However, the Committee has written to the Government to say that a steel strategy needs to come forward as quickly as possible. It must be a clear, long-term vision for the industry, and there must be safeguards against the potential of a floodtide of steel from China. We need to use public procurement much more aggressively to support our local industry, energy costs need to come down, and we need a plan to keep scrap onshore. Will the Minister tell us when she plans to bring forward that steel strategy? Ultimately, what is good for the steel industry is good for Scunthorpe.

[Sarah Jones]

My right hon. Friend is of course right: the steel strategy is all the more important now than when we devised it in opposition and committed £2.5 billion for the steel strategy fund in our manifesto. We are looking at how we use that financial support, and, as he knows, at how we might do primary production. We are investigating future market opportunities and how we can increase demand here in the UK. He speaks of procurement, which of course is incredibly important. I have been talking to the procurement Minister and working on that, along with the Steel Council. We need to consider the availability of suitable sites for future investments.

Scrap is important, as my right hon. Friend says—how can we improve UK capability? Trade and overcapacity is a huge issue, and one that we share with our American colleagues, which is why we do not believe that the tariffs are necessary—we have the same problems and should try to solve them together. Carbon leakage, green steel, research and development, jobs and skills—we will develop a whole package of measures as quickly as we can. We will ensure that the plan, which we will publish in the spring, is one for the whole country and secures steel in the UK.

Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill

Liam Byrne Excerpts

2nd reading
Saturday 12th April 2025 Commons Chamber

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

Mr Speaker, I wonder whether you will forgive me for returning the debate to the Bill, which is about saving British Steel. That is what the debate should be focused on, and I commend the Secretary of State for bringing forward the powers to achieve that goal. He has acted with decisiveness, speed and certainty, and I thank him for the Bill he has presented today. He has acted in the national interest, and he has acted to safeguard our economic security. I am delighted that he has also acted in line with the Select Committee’s advice, which was tabled with him 10 days ago—as we know, that does not always happen. We urged him to maximise pressure on British Steel’s owners, not to do what was easy, but to do what was right. Today he has returned to the House with a Bill asking for the powers to do exactly that.

This legislation matters not simply because it protects 3,700 jobs in Scunthorpe, not simply because it protects 37,000 jobs in the steel supply chain across our nation and not simply because it safeguards nearly £2 billion of economic output; it matters because it defends our economy, our security and, therefore, our future. At the heart of this debate is a very simple question: can we entrust a critical national asset to a company we do not trust? I say no, we cannot, we must not and we dare not. We are presented with a very simple challenge in British Steel’s owners: we have a company in possession of an asset that we need, yet it is a partner that we do not trust. In a world where threats to our economic security multiply each day, we cannot allow that risk to fester at the heart of our industrial core.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

Does the right hon. Member agree that there is a wider issue at stake: our energy security and national security? We have seen what can go wrong with a Chinese company that we do not trust, and we see Chinese influence increasing in other vital sectors, particularly our energy industry. Should that not underline our concern and act as a warning that we do not want the Chinese to have control of our energy supply?

[Liam Byrne]

We are here in the House to answer a very basic question: if we cannot trust a company, can we entrust to it a capability that we need, when that capability is so vital to our strength? That is one reason why the Select Committee has set up a new Sub-Committee on Economic Security, Arms and Export Controls. We will be reporting back to the House on the state of economic security in our country before the summer recess, and I look forward to the hon. Lady’s comments on that report.

The general point I want to land is this: what we value most cannot be entrusted to those we distrust most. The timing of the Bill is critical; we live in an age of intensifying insecurity. President Putin’s violence is unabated, China’s military build-up is unabated and now President Trump threatens to upend the free trading system. In such a world, to surrender our ability to make primary steel would not be a misfortune—it would be negligence.

[Rosie Wrighting (Kettering) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend will know that the Select Committee has spoken to defence companies about how necessary it is not to rely on imports at a time such as this. Does he agree that national resilience and defence rely on industrial security?

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In this debate, we need to remember that 95% of our rail infrastructure is made by British Steel. British Steel also supplies three quarters of every major construction project in this country. Thanks to the Chancellor, we are about to invest £10 billion in the rearmament of this country; much of what we need to put in place will be made by British Steel. How can we afford to let British Steel go out of business today? How can we vote against the Bill? British Steel is not simply a pillar of British industry: it is a cornerstone of our economic security.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with me, as a card-carrying advocate of industrial strategy, that this argument applies to some of our other key high-growth sectors, such as fusion, quantum and space? We have to accept that the days of easy globalisation are over and be a bit more strategic about how we support our emerging industries.

[Liam Byrne]

Mr Speaker, you know that I could answer that question all day, but you would rule me out of order, so I will confine my remarks to the Bill. However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is absolutely right, and that is why we have to work harder across the House to build a consensus about the big calls that we need to get right for our future.

British Steel faces significant headwinds, not just from Chinese steelmakers flooding the market, but from the new 25% tariff from the United States, and we have to rise to the challenge of decarbonisation, yet we in this House must keep our eyes on the prize ahead of us. The Chancellor has just committed £100 billion-worth of capital investment, we are building affordable homes at a pace not seen in decades and we are investing £10 billion in defence. There is a market to seize, but only if we have the means to supply it. British Steel cannot profit from Britain’s future if Chinese firms are allowed to kill it today.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I agree with the right hon. Member that we need a steel industry in Britain and that we need to invest in it. Does he not think that we could be going a bit further today and, instead of this temporary measure, taking the whole steel industry into public ownership so it can be what it has always been—the bedrock of manufacturing industry in Britain—and give us security for the future, free from market forces?

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne]

The right hon. Gentleman may well be right, but this is the second key point that I want to land: the truth is that Jingye is a mess. It has failed to publish accounts since 2021. Two auditors have resigned; one cited material concerns about the company’s ability to remain a going concern. Inventories cannot be verified. Cash-flow statements are missing. The company is not acting in good faith, and that is why the Secretary of State is right to take the powers that he is asking for today.

It is clear that the escalating trade war between China and the United States created the imperative to act today. It is clear that Jingye was about to move primary steelmaking capability from Scunthorpe back to China and merely use the downstream mills in Scunthorpe. That may have been good for China’s economic security, but it is not good for Britain’s national security, and that is why we need to give the Secretary of State the powers that he is asking for.

The options on the table are very simple. The Secretary of State could do nothing and watch the furnaces close; he could hope, but hope is not a strategy; or he could act, as he has done today. He has acted with strength and made a decision in the long-term interests of our country, and the House should give him its full and unabated support.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Davis]

If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not, because lots of people want to speak. I will refer to something she said in a minute, so if she really needs to intervene, I will let her come in then. We are trying to manage a disaster—a disaster for Scunthorpe, which is local to me, as members of my community work at Scunthorpe. The knock-on economic effects will be felt much more widely than in one town; this will affect thousands and thousands of people all round.

This is also a disaster for our last primary steelmaker, and steelmaking has suddenly become more important. It was always an important part of national strategy, but Mr Trump has made it a vital, unavoidable piece of national strategy. We have to create a circumstance that allows the Secretary of State and the Government to manoeuvre us through that. As Members have said, that means having an energy policy that makes the plant viable—not just viable when it is owned by the state, but commercially viable. It means having an energy policy under which we do not have the highest energy costs of our competitors, which we do now. It also means that we have to think very hard about carbon supply. At the moment, the technology does not exist that allows us to make primary steel without carbon supply, so we have to think about that. Primary steel is a strategic supply, so we cannot rely on another country for it.

I want to see this Bill used in a way that gives the Secretary of State the time to deliver those things, but it must also give this House the right to see what he is doing and how the strategies are turning out. Nobody has got this right. If those on the Government Benches want me to, I can go back to 1997 and park blame, but I do not want to do that today. I want to make this viable. We have to get our energy, environmental and industrial policies all in line to make this work.

To put this in context, last year British Steel lost about £408 million—that was the September number. This year it is about £250 million. Neither of those are small amounts of money. The Treasury would shut down an operation if we just left something like that running inside the Government for very long. We need a new strategy that cuts our carbon emissions without exporting our industry to the rest of the world. I am afraid that most of our successes in carbon reduction over the last decade or two—or three—have been by dint of exporting industries to other countries, often with much worse records than us. In this case it would be China. China has 50% of the world market already. It has massive excess in steel capacity, and its steel capacity is the most carbon inefficient there is, so we would actually be worsening the circumstances.

[Liam Byrne]

The Business and Trade Committee has taken clear evidence that we need a carbon border adjustment mechanism, so that carbon-rich steel, such as that from China, is taxed much more heavily. Crucially, what is needed on the table are the steel safeguards from the Trade Remedies Authority to guard our markets from a flood tide of Chinese steel right now.

[David Davis]

I am afraid the right hon. Member is right. The difficulty is that we are in a new world. The terrible thing is—the House will only ever hear me say this once—that Trump has a small point in some respects, and we have to deal with the world as it is.

Moving on to the sunset clause, I can imagine that the instinct is not to put a sunset clause in the Bill, because we are dealing with a difficult negotiator, and putting in a sunset clause would be putting in a backstop. When we put a backstop on ourselves, we give the other side a negotiating advantage. In his speech, the Secretary of State mentioned that the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 would be a route. For those who have not read that legislation, we spent a year putting it in place under the Blair Government, and it has recourse to Parliament at every turn: Ministers are properly controlled, it must be transparent, and so on. I suggest to him that at some point he might organise a transition to that, so that the House has greater control. The Coronavirus Act 2020 did not have that—it missed all those defences—and look what happened to the policy as a result.

This is what I would like to see: recourse to Parliament over the actions the Secretary of State takes to manage the survival of Scunthorpe and the policies to ensure its viability and, in the post-Putin and Trump era, the security of supply. We want to see all those things, and we can organise legislation to permit them. I ask the Secretary of State to take the House into his confidence and do this properly.

Scunthorpe Steelworks

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

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

May I welcome the Minister’s explicit ambition to retain primary steelmaking capability on these islands? I hope the whole House will row in with that. I also welcome the £2.5 billion that the Government have earmarked for investment in the sector. Will she, however, put a rocket up the Trade Remedies Authority? We have heard very clearly from steelmakers that they need the same safeguards against diverted Chinese steel flooding into our market that will click into place in Europe in April. It is not acceptable that we have to wait until the summer for our markets to be safeguarded in the same way. The TRA needs to act, and it needs to act now.

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and his contribution through the Select Committee session we had yesterday. The TRA announced yesterday that it will widen its review of UK steel defences. It has accepted the challenge from UK Steel to do just that and is acting. The Secretary of State and others will be looking to make sure our steel defences are as strong as they need to be. Today’s news about Scunthorpe sits alongside the wider issues about tariffs and the global trade of steel. We need to make sure we are helping in that space too.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee, Liam Byrne.

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

President Trump’s new tariffs are double trouble for Britain’s steel and aluminium suppliers. They will dent £350 million of sales, but they also risk swamping the UK with over-subsidised Chinese steel diverted from America. What is the Secretary of State’s game plan now to redouble defences for our UK metal makers?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am incredibly grateful to the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee for that question. He is right to say that the challenge here is not just the direct trade we have with the US, but the impact of trade diversion. He knows we already have 16 anti-dumping, anti-subsidy measures in place against 14 separate product categories. Once the annual tariff-free quota is hit, a 25% tariff applies to those. I can tell him and the House today, though, that I will support UK Steel’s application to the Trade Remedies Authority for a review of the steel safeguards—we do have to think about what will be coming—and a new one for the aluminium sectors.

Employment Rights Bill

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and declare my membership and financial interests in trade unions, as I have done throughout the passage of the Bill.

I thank Members from both sides of the House for their contributions to yesterday’s debate. I look forward to another good debate today as we work together to ensure that the Bill works in practice for workers and businesses of all sizes across the whole country. Similarly to yesterday, I will use my opening remarks to explain to the House the amendments put forward by the Government in parts 4 and 5 of the Bill.

The Government are moving a number of amendments that represent a significant step forward in modernising our industrial framework. Amendments to clause 50 will strengthen the provisions of trade union access rights. They will ensure that the framework functions effectively and delivers on our commitment to modernise working practices. They will streamline access provisions by allowing a single Central Arbitration Committee member to make a fast-track decision on whether access should take place. In making a decision about whether it is a single person or a panel that will consider the application, the CAC will be required to have regard to the complexity of the case, as well as whether the proposed terms of the agreement are model terms. Various criteria will be prescribed in secondary legislation following consultation.

The amendments will also clarify that supporting a worker is a legitimate purpose for access, and they will provide a power to bring forward secondary legislation to make further provision as to how the CAC is to determine the level of penalty fines for non-compliance with access agreements. They will expand access rights, enabling access agreements to cover communicating with workers in ways that do not involve entering premises—for example, connecting digitally using technology—therefore modernising our antiquated industrial relations framework.

New clause 39, new schedule 2 and associated amendments insert new provisions into the Bill, replacing clause 51, and will address unfair practices and access arrangements in the recognition and derecognition process. The amendments will extend the application of unfair practice protections to the point at which the CAC accepts an application for recognition or derecognition, and will ensure that employers cannot increase the size of the bargaining unit for the purposes of the recognition application after the application is made. That will end the deliberate gaming of the system that we have seen in recent years.

The amendments will also delete the second test for determining an unfair practice complaint, which currently requires the CAC to consider how an alleged unfair practice may have affected workers’ votes in the recognition, or derecognition, ballots. They will extend the time limit in which unfair practices can be reported after the ballot closes to five working days. They will ensure that an employer cannot recognise a non-independent trade union after receiving a request for voluntary recognition from an independent trade union as a means of thwarting the independent trade union’s subsequent application to the CAC for statutory recognition.

We will bring forward and formalise the process for agreeing access arrangements between the employer and the union during the recognition and derecognition process. These amendments will streamline the recognition process, reduce opportunities for unfair practices to occur, and ensure that unions that seek recognition have a fair and transparent statutory route to enable them to do so.

Today’s amendments on industrial action rules will reduce the costly, complex and bureaucratic requirements on unions in relation to industrial action and ballot notices, while ensuring that employers have the necessary notice and information to prepare for industrial action. New clause 42 will simplify notice to employers of industrial action ballots and industrial action, reducing the chance of spurious challenge and making the information required more proportionate. New clause 43 will extend industrial action mandates from six to 12 months, reducing the need for repeated ballots. Amendments to clause 61 will mean that the notice period for industrial action will be set at 10 days, giving businesses time to prepare and safeguarding workers’ rights. Amendments to clause 58 will mean that the 50% ballot turnout threshold repeal will be subject to commencement on a date to be set in secondary legislation.

Turning to political fund ballots, new clause 40 and associated amendments remove the requirement for unions to hold a ballot every 10 years on maintaining a political fund. Instead, unions will provide reminders about members’ right to opt out every 10 years, ensuring transparency without imposing costly and time-consuming ballots.

The Bill will bring together the various agencies and enforcement bodies that enforce employment rights in the new Fair Work Agency, so that where employers are not doing what is right, a simplified and strengthened enforcement system will protect workers and ensure justice in the workplace. The Fair Work Agency needs the right tools to do the job. A series of amendments form a package that will give the Fair Work Agency the tools that it needs to hold all employers to account more effectively. That is fair for workers and businesses.

The Government are moving amendments to introduce new powers that are key to the Fair Work Agency’s core enforcement role. New clauses 44 to 56 create a civil penalty regime. Under the regime, enforcement officers will be able to issue notices of underpayment, and impose a penalty on employers who have underpaid individuals, in breach of statutory pay rights that are within the remit of the Fair Work Agency. As a result, the agency may be able to help workers get the money they are owed more quickly than if they had to go through an employment tribunal. Where proceedings before the tribunal are necessary, we want the Fair Work Agency to be able to support individuals and ensure that the tribunal’s time is used as effectively as possible. New clause 57 does that by enabling the agency to bring proceedings before the employment tribunal if individuals are unwilling or unable to. Under clause 58, the agency can also offer advice and assistance to individuals bringing employment-related cases before the courts or tribunals.

The Government are also moving amendments to upgrade the powers that the Fair Work Agency will need to tackle labour abuse effectively. The Bill Committee heard from stakeholders, including Eleanor Lyons, the UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, about bad practices in the social care sector. The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority is prevented from investigating many cases because they do not meet the modern slavery threshold. The Fraud Act 2006 covers situations that amount to labour abuse but fall short of being modern slavery. Today we are bringing forward two amendments that will deliver the Government’s commitment to give the Fair Work Agency the strong powers that it needs to tackle labour exploitation. We will enable Fair Work Agency enforcement officers to use their powers to investigate such cases, helping the agency to protect the most vulnerable in the workforce. We will also give enforcement officers the ability to issue special warnings following arrests. In practice, that means telling suspects that if they refuse to answer questions about certain items or their whereabouts, that could be used against them in court.

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

Only 21 employers have been prosecuted for national minimum wage violations since 2007. The measures that the Minister is bringing forward will improve enforcement. He touched on the Modern Slavery Act 2015, but he did not address the points made in the debate yesterday. Will he use this opportunity to say more about the Government’s intention to update the Modern Slavery Act?

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will start with my declaration of interests, as a former member of the Confederation of British Industry and a current member of the trade union Unison.

I will try to introduce a few points of consensus to the debate. I am old enough to remember when Conservative Members such as the former Member for Harlow were writing pamphlets for think-tanks such as Demos with titles like “Stop the union-bashing; why conservatives should embrace the trade union movement”. Of course, that was an echo of something that Harold Macmillan famously used to say in the 1950s: “We used to think that we could not have a modern industrial society without trade unions. I still think that.”

I think we would all benefit from a little acknowledgment that industrial relations in this country have not been in a good place. In 2023 more days were lost to strikes than at any point in the past 30 years, and the Office for National Statistics calculated at the back end of 2022 that 2.5 million days had been lost to strike action. That is not a record that any one of us in this House should be proud of. It is incumbent on all of us to modernise industrial relations in this country, so that we are not divided in the workplace in this way.

As such, I welcome the measures in this Bill. I hope that the Minister will seize the moment—not only the fact that we have the Bill, but the advent of an industrial strategy that will introduce governance arrangements that get businesses and unions around the table to talk about economic growth in our country. That is a big opportunity; it is a big moment in which we can bring our country together around a modern industrial strategy. I hope that once the Minister has got this Bill done and has had a little bit of a rest—maybe gone on holiday for a bit—he will think about how the Government will then publish a modern industrial strategy for the future, backed by the restoration of some of the data that we used to have in this country, such as the workplace employee survey. We had that until about 2012, when it was stopped. We need to be more thoughtful about harmony in the workplace, because that is in the interests of the constituents we serve.

[Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) (Con)]

The right hon. Member used the term “modernising industrial relations”, which sounds a little like a euphemism. Taking him at his word, however, is he not therefore surprised that the pay rises that have been given to doctors, train drivers and a number of other unions since this Government came in have not been accompanied by any requirement for increased productivity? If we are to have modernised industrial relations, surely the increased pay that unions want should be combined with the productivity gains that this country needs.

[Liam Byrne]

The hon. Member will no doubt have heard the remarks made by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster at the weekend. I suspect that the hon. Member, like every Member of this House, will see some pretty radical steps taken in the comprehensive spending review to improve the efficiency of the civil service. Of course, the civil service grew very significantly in the years after covid, and now it has to be reinvented for new times. I am confident that those productivity gains will come.

My second point was to draw the House’s attention to some of the evidence taken by our Select Committee. That evidence is contained in our report, which I commend to all hon. Members. What struck me about the evidence we heard from the most productive firms in the country, such as Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, was that those are world-beating companies—some of the most productive companies in our country—and what characterises the workplace arrangements of all of those companies is that they have very long-standing, robust and deep partnerships with good trade unions. Those trade unions help make decisions, help de-conflict things and help businesses thrive and succeed. That is why stronger collective rights are important.

We also took evidence from companies where, I am afraid to say, there was not that harmony, such as Amazon. It has had to call ambulances to its warehouses 1,400 times in just five years. We on the Committee received whistleblower evidence from workers who were literally having to urinate into bottles because they did not dare take time out from their tasks to go to the bathroom and back. We heard all kinds of whistleblower complaints about injuries being sustained, and pay is rising much more slowly than sales.

When we had executives from that company in front of us, they could not—or would not—tell the Committee why strike action had been taken by workers in their firm. If a company executive cannot explain to a Select Committee of this House why so many of their workers are on strike, that is not a story of harmony or a recipe for success. That is why the measures that the Minister has brought forward in this Bill to improve the opportunities for trade unions to organise—in a way that was recommended by the former Member for Harlow, actually—are a good thing.

The Minister has gone some way in recognising recommendations made by our Committee, such as improving the window in which complaints can be heard beyond 24 hours, bringing in template access agreements and strengthening the role of the Central Arbitration Committee in dispute resolution. There is just one further step that I suggest, which is the subject of amendment 282. We suggest that access rights for trade unions should include digital access rights, because in the modern workplace, of which Amazon is a case in point, there simply is not an opportunity for workers to get information about the opportunities to join a trade union and make a fair choice one way or the other in the way that there could be in the modern economy.

My final point is about enforcement. The first factory Act passed by this House was the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act 1802. It was celebrated in parliamentary history as an Act that failed because there was no enforcement attached to it. Enforcement of this Bill is essential if it is to succeed, but labour market enforcement today is much too weak. Just 21 employers have been prosecuted for minimum wage enforcement since 2007, despite the fact that we all know that abuses of this sort are taking place in our constituencies.

Spending on labour market enforcement has been flat since 2014, and we are well off the International Labour Organisation target of one labour market inspector for every 10,000 workers. New clause 82 in my name would require the Secretary of State to set out a road map for reaching that ILO target, for ensuring there is greater use of penalties where appropriate, and for much stronger partnerships between the Home Office, the police and the Fair Work Agency. We cannot have a situation in this country where the best of British firms are being undercut by the worst labour market practice.

In conclusion, I welcome this Bill. Some of the amendments that have been tabled would improve it, but ultimately we have to remember that if we want to create a genuinely pro-business, pro-worker economy, the measures in this Bill are long overdue.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.