UK-India Free Trade Agreement

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I thought my hon. Friend might be about to talk about ceramics. He regularly speaks up—privately to me and publicly in the House and elsewhere—on behalf of his constituents, and he is right to do so. As he knows, I visited some of the businesses in his constituency, and I am keen to ensure that we do everything in our power within the Department to support, protect and enhance the British ceramics industry, which is an important part of our work. I just say to my hon. Friend that the overall impact of this agreement on the ceramics industry will be limited, because 543 out of 577 lines—steel lines, for instance—were already at 0%. The remaining 34, which we brought to 0% as part of the deal, all currently have tariffs of just 2% or 3%, and India is not a prominent source of imports for those sectors.

I accept that there are broad issues for the ceramics industry, and I have seen everything that Mr Flello, a former denizen of this place, has produced. I do not think that this agreement is the problem. There are other issues that we need to address, not least the issues that my hon. Friend raises in relation to energy costs, which are very specific to the ceramics industry.

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

The evidence that we took in the Business and Trade Committee did raise concerns about the impact of the deal on both the brick industry and the ceramics industry in the UK. The Minister knows that the Trade Remedies Authority is not really equipped with the tools that it needs to defend us in this new world; nor has the Competition and Markets Authority yet seen fit to finalise its foreign subsidy control regime, despite two years of consultation. Will the Minister at least assure the House that he will keep a very close eye on this matter, and will not hesitate to bring forward protections or trade remedies if the need arises?

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, of course. I read the report from my right hon. Friend’s Committee over the weekend, and it is a very fine report; indeed, some of what I have already said was lifted directly from it. Broadly speaking, I have the impression that the House might be content to proceed with the agreement, and the Committee was certainly content to proceed with it. As my right hon. Friend will of course know, I guaranteed to him that we would have a debate during the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 period, and we are now having a debate in the House during that CRaG period.

My right hon. Friend made a good point about trade remedies. In a whole series of sectors, we need to keep our review alert to that. He may wish to make some points later about labour in brick industry that are made in his report, but let me point out again that nearly 90% of ceramics imports from India already come into the UK tariff-free, so I am not sure that the agreement will lead to the particular problem that some in the sector expect.

The agreement goes well beyond India’s precedent in opening the door for UK businesses. As the Select Committee said in its report,

“The UK-India Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is the UK’s most economically significant bilateral free trade agreement since leaving the European Union.”

It boosts UK GDP by £4.8 billion, which is 0.13% of GDP. It boosts wages by £2.2 billion, and it boosts bilateral trade by £25.5 billion every year in the long run, by 2040. India will drop tariffs on 90% of lines, covering 92% of current UK exports, giving the UK tariff savings of £400 million a year immediately on entry into force, rising to £900 million after 10 years, even if there is no increase in trade. India’s average tariff will fall from 15% to 3%.

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

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I want to start with huge thanks to my colleagues on the Business and Trade Committee for helping to inform the debate with a report that was agreed cross-party and that provided, if anything, a reasonably warm welcome for the Government’s work in securing this free trade agreement, but with a number of caveats, which I will touch on.

Before I set out the Committee’s evaluation of the agreement, it is worth marking this moment. The Minister, who is not known for underselling such moments in the House, actually could have sold this one rather more. Although we do not know quite when he will get the Gulf co-operation deal, which is no doubt imminent, over the line, or the Swiss deal—presumably it is not too far off—this could well be the year when he crowns a number of free trade agreements signed since we left the European Union. They could, in effect, create a triple ocean system of alliances that basically brings UK free trade agreements to about 46 countries in all, home to 2.5 billion people and blessed with something like 60% of world output. That is quite an achievement.

Pro-Europeans on the Government Benches will, of course, say that we can now look at the prize of what free trade agreements have brought compared with the losses entailed since we left the European Union. About £14 billion of GDP uplift is forecast as a result of the free trade agreements that we have signed. That is much less than the perhaps £140 billion hit to GDP that we have had since leaving the European Union. But I will not provoke you, Madam Deputy Speaker, by dwelling on that point for too long. None the less, this India free trade agreement is the keystone of that new architecture. It connects us to one of the world’s fastest growing economies and anchors us in the Indo-Pacific for decades to come. It is also worth saying that this is a significant moment for India, because this is not the only deal that India has signed, as the Minister said; it has also signed the EU deal, and it appears that there is a deal with the United States. India is on the cusp of the biggest transformation in its trade policy since independence. It is a country that has long been defined by its protectionism, but it now chooses to use its trade agreements as the anchors for ambitious domestic reform. If these agreements hold, as I hope they will, with the exception of agriculture, India is now moving from selective liberalisation to something approximating a near-open economy. That is a very significant moment in India’s long history, home as it is to about a sixth of humanity.

These trade deals are not the traditional kind of “Swiss cheese deals” with lots of carve-outs, delays and exemptions. India is now set to almost fully liberalise its manufacturing sector within seven to 10 years. That is a step change by any historical standard. For the first time, India has agreed deals that will be policed by powerful external partners, not just the Minister—a powerful interlocutor in any trade negotiation—but by the combined might of the European Commission.

For an Indian Government who have been protectionist by conviction for a long time, this represents an important reversal of deep nationalist instincts. As one of the world’s great homes of free trade, our nation should celebrate that. I hope that the Minister can use Delhi’s new-found philosophy in his conversations at the World Trade Organisation and elsewhere over the course of the year. Let us face it: we all need more allies for free trade in this world. If we are to build what the Finnish call “values-based multilateralism”, which is probably the best safeguard for peace in this world, India’s role in promoting free trade could be an important component. Another important dimension of that new posture relates to China. If India does indeed grow a low-cost manufacturing sector, the world will need to depend much less on China.

All in all, it is important that the UK has played its role in securing that agreement. The Committee’s report confirms that the agreement secures substantial tariff liberalisation in what is a highly protected market. As the Minister said, Indian tariffs are reduced or eliminated —by our reckoning—on 92% of UK exports by value, with around 64% of tariff lines liberalised on day one. The Government modelling, such as it is—always a bit speculative; always some interesting assumptions; always a bit long term; and always a bit difficult to pressure-test—suggests that the deal will add nearly £5 billion a year to UK GDP by 2040, and raises UK-India trade by £25.5 billion. Those are the numbers that the Minister rehearsed in his opening speech tonight.

The Committee’s analysis, however, presents more meaningful numbers for UK business. The £400 million-worth of tariff savings in year one is real revenue for UK businesses. That will flatter the bottom line, and, for businesses that are under pressure for reasons that we will set out in a report on Wednesday, it could provide much important cash flow. Those tariff savings could rise to about £3.2 billion over 10 years, as export volumes improve. There will be clear future gains for particular sectors. We think there could be a significant prize in the automotive industry, although there are implementation challenges, and clarity is required on how the quotas will work in practice.

As the Minister said, and as we heard from other hon. Members, spirits exporters will do extremely well from this new bargain. They will see reductions in the extremely high tariffs of today. As the Minister belaboured, UK firms will for the first time secure access to India’s central Government procurement market. That is a very large number. Whether our firms can genuinely compete for those new contracts is something that the Committee plans to study carefully.

When the deal was signed and first published, there was a lot of noise in the media about migration and mobility, and the Committee took a lot of evidence on that. We concluded that the agreement is not, in fact, a big migration deal, and nor does it materially change overall migration policy. As the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), pointed out well, it provides limited facilitation of mobility for skilled professionals linked to trade and services delivery. It could go much further in the future, but given where the Home Office positions itself on that policy at the moment, we accept that there will not be much progress in the near term.

The other real advances reflect years of negotiation and should not be dismissed, but the Committee wishes to underline that there are very significant risks attached to this agreement. India is not a frictionless market; tariffs were never the only barrier. The regulatory system in India is complex, decentralised and highly discretionary. Many of the barriers—be they licensing requirements or certification documentation—are at the state level, and the state-level variation, and state-level stubbornness in bringing those barriers down, will require an awful lot of work in India by His Majesty’s Government. That is why the successes of this agreement depend less on what is written in the treaty text, and far more on whether firms can operationalise it in day-to-day, week-to-week business.

I am glad that the Minister sought to take this bull by the horns in his opening remarks, because we are being asked to debate a treaty at a time when the Department for Business and Trade is seeking 40% reductions in export support staff. He went out of his way to stress that those headcount reductions would not be in India—I think that was the guarantee that he gave the House. That is important because those officials are responsible for helping firms to navigate the rules of origin, quota management, regulatory blockages and enforcement failures. They will also be required to staff a lot of the working groups that he and his counterpart will oversee. I worry that the reduction in export support staff in the United Kingdom will deny firms in Britain the knowledge and connections they might need to exploit the full possibilities of this new agreement.

[Iqbal Mohamed]

The UK is well regulated: we have auditing and verification, and there is a level of trust in the system for products, services, food, pharmaceuticals and agriculture. I am a big fan of India—my heritage is Indian, and my family is from India, so I am not here to criticise India unnecessarily—but the culture of compliance there is not on the same level or as embedded as it is in Europe and the UK. We would need more audits and external inspections to confirm that the products coming to our shores meet our standards, and for that the Government must invest more in resources, not reduce team sizes. Does the right hon. Member agree?

[Liam Byrne]

The hon. Member is exactly right. When the Committee published our report, we lamented that there was not a full-scale, full-blown implementation plan alongside the proposals. To a degree, those are difficult things to write, because it is difficult to forecast how quickly the treaty will go through the ratification process needed in India, for example, but we heard evidence that some markets—not least in automotives—had been chilled. Of course, if people know that there are huge tariff and price savings on the way, why would they not delay their purchase rather than make it today? We think that there could have been some wisdom in at least attempting an implementation plan, not least a resource plan that goes alongside the treaty—and perhaps even something tabled in time for tonight’s debate, to reassure the House that the Government will watch the implementation of this deal like a hawk.

The Select Committee has decided to go to India in March to understand how this deal will be implemented in real life. If our export support work is hollowed out, the consequences will be predictable: smaller exporters will walk away, utilisation rates for the treaty will remain low, and the headline gains will fail to reach the wider economy and benefit the constituents who sent us to this House to debate this treaty. I hope that the Minister will, as quickly as he can, rustle up an implementation plan to tell us how the agreement will be implemented. I very much hope that he will be able to align the ambitions for the treaty with the level of resource that he and his Department are investing in it.

The House will want to know that the Committee also tested the treaty against the deals secured by our allies in the European Union and the United States. Compared with the EU-India deal, it seems that the UK has moved faster and secured earlier liberalisation on some tariff lines. We have liberalised 92% of the value of our exports, while the EU has secured 96.6% of its exports, but both were for roughly the same level of market access offered to India—offers covering over 99% of India’s exports by value to the UK and EU markets.

The EU deal obviously covers a much wider volume of trade than we deliver with India, so the EU will therefore enjoy much bigger total tariff savings and a much bigger quota access, particularly for the automotive sector, among others. However, as the Opposition spokesman rightly flagged, there was limited progress on services—we flagged that, too. Services are the lifeblood of the British economy and of our exports—we are a services superpower. The EU’s negotiating position appears at first blush to be broader and deeper, but the final outcomes will remain unclear until the final text is published.

Compared with the United States, the contrast is different again. It appears that the White House has prioritised strategic leverage and tariff pressure over comprehensive liberalisation, extracting concessions through market power, not through traditional FTA approaches. The UK has chosen a different path: ruled-based, negotiated commitments and long-term engagement. I think that choice can work for us, as long as we are ruthless about ensuring good implementation.

We are sceptical about the level of services mobility that has been delivered, and about the absence of a bilateral investment treaty—we think that is a significant gap in our long-term framework. We also recognise that policy volatility and regulatory risk still matter. In particular, India’s record on investor protection remains uneven, and its tax administration is still too often used in a way that is, frankly, weaponised. Ensuring that we have good ways to monitor and escalate this will be important if the deal is to be a success.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) flagged up, some UK sectors, like textiles and ceramics, will face increased competitive pressure, and although the agreement does contain binding human rights provisions, the responsibilities of UK firms do not end at the border. Being strong on human rights protection, upgrading the dysfunctional Trade Remedies Authority and pressuring the Competition and Markets Authority to publish a foreign subsidy control regime would be extremely welcome.

The final point I want to flag is an issue that came up during the Minister’s appearance in front of the Committee, and I have not heard enough tonight or since he came to the Committee about its progress. The reality is that India remains one of the biggest customers of Russian oil. That money is fuelling Putin’s war machine, and as recently as January, His Majesty’s Government had not introduced controls that were in place in the European Union to ensure that oil derivatives made from Russian oil were banned from this country. Indeed, when Politico reported on this earlier in the year, it noted that something like one in six units of Britain’s aviation fuel imports were derived from Russian oil. That is not something that the Minister will want to tolerate for very long. For a long time, he has been one of the leading voices in the House in standing up to Putin and the evil of Russia, so I hope during the wind-ups he will say more about exactly what he is doing, along with his colleagues, to ensure that we are stopping the possibilities of importing Russian oil derivatives from India.

In conclusion, our overall take is that this is a good deal that is in the UK national interest, but I do want to supply one final note of dissent. When the CRaG legislation was introduced to the House in 2010, it was always the intention of Parliament that when free trade deals came for debate, there would be a votable motion. That would allow Parliament to exercise the licence that it was promised to delay ratification if it was discontent with the terms of an agreement before us. I am grateful to the Leader of the House and the Minister for ensuring that there is a general debate tonight, but it is not a debate on a votable motion. If this Parliament is to be a strong watchdog and guardian of the Executive, it is important that what were once prerogative powers are transferred to us, here in this House. I hope that this is the last debate on a free trade agreement that takes place on a general motion; in a democracy, we decide things by voting.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

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

May I welcome the deal with the United States to set zero tariffs on pharmaceutical exports? Together with the British Business Bank’s investment of £100 million in biotech, that is a real boost. However, the US offer was for just three years, whereas the price adjustment we have promised for the NHS is permanent. When the Secretary of State met the Secretary of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative in America last night, what assurance did he get that the Americans will not come back and reimpose tariffs on UK pharmaceuticals in three years’ time?

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree with the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee; this is a really good deal in many ways, not least because, as somebody who has benefited from medical advances that have happened in the past few years—I received immunotherapy that had been licensed only a week before I went to the GP with my stage 3 melanoma in 2019—I know how important it is not only that the UK has a strong life sciences sector, but that people can access those drugs through the system in the UK. I think this is a good deal. I am afraid I cannot answer his precise question about what conversations the Secretary of State had last night, because I was having discussions with another country about another deal, which we might be able to announce very soon.

Business and Trade Committee

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

We begin with the Select Committee statement. Liam Byrne will speak on the publication of the 11th report of the Business and Trade Committee, “Toward a new doctrine for economic security”, HC835, for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I will call Members to put questions on the subject of the statement and then call Liam Byrne to respond to those in turn. Questions should be brief and Members may ask only one question each.

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

It is a privilege to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. Let me record my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for making time for this debate; to a brilliant team of Select Committee members—it is a privilege to serve alongside them—and to a first-class team who help to ensure that the Select Committee does its work so expertly. The report we present today sounds a note of agreement, but is also designed to sound a warning. The note of agreement is this: we agree that national security is economic security. But the note of warning is stark: we do not find that our economic security regime is fit for the future.

If we think about the risks we faced this summer, with the Jaguar Land Rover cyber-attack, which ended up costing a £1.5 billion state guarantee; the struggles that our Dutch allies went through with Nexperia; and the struggles that our American allies went through in the spat with China over rare earth technology exports, we can now see that the question of economic security is front and centre for businesses and policymakers, each and every day. The warning that we sound is that the risks are going to multiply significantly over the years to come.

The threat surface that most businesses now operate is much bigger than in the past. Artificial intelligence is going to transform cyber-aggression. We now have states and state-backed actors operating in this space. This is all at a time when our country is going to seek to entice around £100 billion extra in inward investment, much of it from abroad and much of it in our energy infrastructure. What Ciaran Martin calls the private ownership of public risk is about to expand exponentially. Yet, right now, we simply do not have the defences in place that we need.

The core argument of our report is that just as we need a whole-of-society approach to defence, so we now need a whole-of-society approach to our economic security, but we do not have the systems in place to deliver that today. That is why change is needed over the years to come. In order to help understand precisely the gaps, we worked together with experts at the Royal United Services Institute, gathered lots of evidence, took lots of witness testimony and heard from Ministers. What that basically revealed is that many of our allies, such as Japan, but also in a way the European Union, have legislative backing for many of the regimes that they have in place.

Our allies in Japan in particular, who have had to think about this for a lot longer than we have, have a very sophisticated set of defences and state machinery. Equally, we could find very durable institutions in the United States and real policy innovation in the European Union today. In this country, we have a number of strategies, which are growing in number, but frankly do not really add up to a comprehensive regime for economic security.

There have been welcome advances, not least the critical mineral strategy that was published this week, but the risk is that ad hoc papers become strategy by stapler, where we have policy papers published that are not durable for the long term. That is a problem, because only the public sector and the private sector working together can mobilise the kind of investment that is needed to transform the country’s resilience for the threats we will face in the future. We argue therefore that, just as we comprehensively overhauled the doctrine to tackle counter-terrorism after 7/7 with the publication of CONTEST, we now need a new doctrine of economic security in order to ensure that there is a whole-of-Government and whole-of-society approach, all pointing in a similar direction.

We conclude that it does not make a great deal of sense for policy to be guided by a hard definition of economic security, because things are going to change: this is a dynamic environment, and a hard definition might entail more risks than it solves. However, we believe that this doctrine should be shaped by a set of strategic principles in the years to come. Colleagues across the House will have many ideas about what should go into that. We conclude that our approach should be guided by six Ds: diagnose, develop, diversify, defend, deter and dovetail.

On diagnosis, we think there should be a long-term technology forecasting centre in Government that supplies not just Government but the private sector with, if not intelligence, then certainly insight, to shape their understanding of risk in the future. We need to build on the work of the National Cyber Security Centre to create a proper platform where public and private sectors can work together in new ways to understand the risks that the country confronts.

We need to specify the sovereign capabilities that we need to develop as a country. Two or three are defined in the strategic defence review, but that is about it, and the defence industrial policy promised some further definitions. We cannot understand what we are going to decouple from allies—or in some cases from enemies—unless we have a more sophisticated understanding of the sovereign capabilities that we need as a country. We then need to line up the national wealth fund and other resources behind this understanding. We also need to modernise the “Managing Public Money” framework so that Ministers, like the excellent Minister in his place today, are not hidebound and forced to issue ministerial directions every time a strategic investment is needed, as was the case with Jaguar Land Rover and the nationalisation of British Steel.

Our third D is diversify, which is well understood. We need to diversify supplies of critical minerals and diversify our critical supply chains, too. The targets for critical minerals published on Monday were important, but there was no investment plan to go with them. We cannot do this alone; we can only do it by acting with allies.

We then need to better defend our infrastructure, including our critical national infrastructure and our cyber-infrastructure, in both the public and private sectors. That is why we think that the mandatory reporting of ransomware attacks is a good idea, and why we think we should be radically expanding the work of Pool Re so there is a backstop to the cyber insurance market, which there currently is not. We need capital allowances to be modernised, so there are real incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises to invest in cyber-security. Critical SMEs should probably enjoy access to Government support too.

In the field of deterrence, we need to ensure that we can fast-track investment into our country from trusted sources. That is why a trusted investor scheme would make a lot of sense. We need to explore anti-coercion instruments in the way that the European Union has. We need to name and shame those involved in sanction breaches much more aggressively than we are today. Crucially, we need to make sure we have the right skills in both Companies House and the National Crime Agency. It is ridiculous that there is something like a £28,000 gap between the pay that someone in the National Crime Agency can get and the pay that someone in an equivalent police force can get. That is not the way to ensure that we have the right people on the frontline. We note with concern that Companies House has a 20% vacancy rate in its digital workforce. That is a real risk.

Finally, we need to dovetail what the Government are doing with what the private sector is doing. That is why we need new spaces in which they can work together. We also need to dovetail what we are doing with what our allies are doing: we call for an alliance of free-trading democracies to work together, like the work of the UK and the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership—the Minister has just returned from a CPTPP meeting. The work that we are pioneering in the South Korean trade deal is a good example of the kind of thing that we should be doing more generally. We need almost to be driving forward an economic security union with our closest neighbour, and of course our allies in the United States need to be drawn into this work too.

We need to make sure that the blueprint has a backbone. That is why we call for a cross-Government Minister and an office of economic security to bring everything together, the restoration of the sub-committee on economic security in the National Security Council, and parliamentary oversight through the reform of section 54 of the National Security and investment Act 2021. We think that much of that should be enshrined in a Bill.

We have done this before. After world war one, we comprehensively modernised the state to combat the world of economic warfare. That is a wise lesson and a wise experience to guide us in new times.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. In my short time in Parliament, perhaps the most terrifying thing I have heard so far is the evidence we took on the Business and Trade Committee that state actors are joining forces with criminal gangs to attack this country in the cyber-theatre. From his vast experience, has the right hon. Gentleman ever delivered a report quite so urgent and time-sensitive?

[Liam Byrne]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for the question and for his sterling work on the Committee as our inquiry has been driven forward over the last seven or eight months. I have not. It was striking to compare the evidence we took with history lessons from the 1920s and 1930s. As a country, we have developed infrastructure to tackle these kinds of threats in the past. Indeed, the forces that we assembled in the 1920s and 1930s were so important that they became known as the fourth fighting service. It was certainly crucial in helping us to stand up the Ministry of Economic Warfare in world war two with the speed that we did. We are now in a world of chokepoints, coercion and weaponised interdependence, and today’s cyber-attacks will be nothing compared with those in future. Frankly, the country is simply not ready. We have to get our skates on.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his report. I will not mention his vast experience though, because he is still young to me. Redditch was deeply impacted by the JLR shutdown, with many of our supply chains affected. My right hon. Friend talks in the report about the need for an economic security Minister and about the specific measures needed to upgrade cyber-security across our critical sectors. What powers would my right hon. Friend envisage such a Minister having, and how do Government support businesses to get up to date to meet the challenges mentioned in the report?

[Liam Byrne]

We have a very good Minister in place, but in a way, the report is designed to ensure that that Minister is empowered in his work and across Government. But first we must understand, and help the Minister have the powers to understand, the full breadth of the UK supply chains and where the risks are. The Jaguar Land Rover case was striking because the supply chain information was kept on the computers that went down. When the computers went down, they had to generate, I think, almost paper lists of tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers to work out who needed cashflow and who could survive without direct help. We must ensure that we have a full picture of supply chains and where the critical dependencies are, as the Japanese have been doing for many years.

Making sure that there is a proper backstop to the cyber-insurance market is important. That is why the proposals for a much bigger and better-equipped Pool Re are so important. Pool Re, as many will know, was set up to backstop terrorism insurance during the height of the IRA attacks. It now needs modernising for new times. The tax regime that we have in place today simply does not incentivise small and medium-sized enterprises in the way that we could, to draw down on subscription-based cyber-security policies. Making sure that there are the right incentives, powers and insights available are just some of the tasks that we think an economic security Minister needs to be fully empowered to perform.

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[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

Order. This is just a reminder that the debate must end at 10 minutes to 2.

[Liam Byrne]

I was very grateful to receive the hon. Member’s email. He is absolutely right. The shutdown of branches all over our country is a really serious problem that creates real risks. One answer is to ensure that we lean in behind the Post Office plans to create banking hubs, not just in a couple of hundred high streets, which is the proposal of the main banks, but in thousands of locations across the country. The Post Office has in place an agreement with the banks until about 2030, but the future thereafter is not clear, so I hope that Ministers can take up this point in the Department for Business and Trade to ensure that we lean into the plans that the Post Office has developed to transform the availability of banking services on thousands of high streets up and down the country.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Chris Bryant)]

I warmly commend the Committee on producing its report. I take no offence at the demand that there be a separate economic security Minister, even though I think the Culture, Media and Sport Committee demanded, when I was the Minister responsible for tourism, that there be a separate tourism Minister as well—there seems to be a growing theme. I am very glad that the Committee agrees with the Government on the need for mandatory reporting of cyber-attacks. It seems to me that until we have a full understanding of the pattern of the problem that there is in the nation, we will not really be able to seize the opportunity. What shape does my right hon. Friend think the legislation that he proposes might take?

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[Liam Byrne]

This is a very good point. We want to ensure that there is an enshrinement of the principles of the Bill, so that the private sector has clarity, certainty and confidence in the durability of the economic security regime that we operate in this country. In the inquiry, we heard overwhelming evidence that businesses frankly do not know whom to ring when there is a problem. They did not know whether there were particular spaces where they could work together, certainly with agencies but also with economic security services more generally. Providing clarity, certainty and durability is the only way in which we will be able to mobilise the scale of long-term finance that we will need in order to upgrade the resilience of this country for new times.

[Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his help and work on this issue. I want to ask his opinion on the efficacy of our arms export control regime. We had two sessions in which we were looking into the F-35 in Gaza, and essentially it seems like the UK has outsourced its arms export controls to the Americans for F-35 replacement parts. Also, we continue to sell a lot of weapons to the United Arab Emirates, and it has been widely reported in the international press that the UAE is arming the Rapid Support Forces, which is creating enormous numbers of atrocities in Sudan. Does the right hon. Member think that our arms export control criteria are up to scratch?

[Liam Byrne]

I think there is a real opportunity in the course of the next year to modernise the way we export arms, and we will need to do that because of the simple reality that the definition of an arm in new times is very different. Many of our allies talk to us, as members of the Committee, about the need to strengthen in particular intellectual property export controls in the future. In a world where ideas can be weapons if they are, for example, novel artificial intelligence programmes, we have to take a much broader approach to this in the future. It is not clear to us that the way we license weapons and control adherence to licence conditions is strong enough, so it is an area to which the Select Committee will need to return. Again, if we are upgrading our economic security defences, I do not think we can do that, in the world in which we live, without comprehensively upgrading our arms control systems too.

Jaguar Land Rover Cyber-attack

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes and Halewood (Derek Twigg) on securing this urgent question, and warmly welcome the Minister to his new role. This is an extraordinarily serious issue, and the Business and Trade Committee will soon table its recommendations on tackling economic harms such as this. Many companies such as JLR now confront a much bigger threat surface, and the peril of state-backed threats. That is why this will be a much bigger issue in the future, and why companies in this country will need more than new laws. They will need new investment incentives to clean up legacy infrastructure that is currently not safe enough.

When we took evidence from Archie Norman and Marks & Spencer in the wake of that cyber-attack, we were given a distinct impression that more could have been done by agencies to help M&S. Will the Minister reassure the House that all the lessons from how the M&S case was handled have been learned, and that the state will bend over backwards to ensure that JLR has every assistance it needs to get back up and running, and to prosecute the guilty?

[Chris Bryant]

The single most important thing we can do is ensure that we end up prosecuting the guilty and that people are sent to prison, such as the gentleman—well, the person—in the United States of America who was recently sent down for 10 years as part of one of these networks, which was important. I am a Minister in the Department for Business and Trade, but the Minister for Security, my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis), and the Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Kanishka Narayan), who is on the Front Bench, are actively engaged in these discussions, and we must ensure a cross-Government approach. I look forward to what we will hear from the Business and Trade Committee. I was intrigued by what my right hon. Friend was saying about investment incentives, and I hope he might come up with some clever idea that we could put into practice once he has produced his report.

On the main point about whether we have learned all the lessons from M&S, I certainly think we have. I have read Archie Norman’s evidence to the Committee, and I hope that M&S has also learned the lessons that he laid bare. I hesitate in trying to make too immediate a connection between one case and another, because as my right hon. Friend will know, I do not want to prejudge what has happened in this particular set of circumstances.

Speciality Steel UK: Insolvency

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Please, it is not acceptable on either side of the House to take advantage of the Back Benchers who want to get in. You have a set amount of time. If the Minister can stick to it, I expect the shadow Minister to do so. If the Minister goes over time, I do then grant time the other way. Please do not do this again.

Let us come to the Chair of the Select Committee.

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

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The Minister needs to respond. It’s been that long that I had forgotten.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liam Byrne]

I congratulate the Minister on saving Britain’s real engineering from years of financial engineering which was not in the best interests of this country and was more in the interests of the self-enrichment of the people behind it. The question for us today, though, is what steps the Government will now take to ensure and safeguard a growing, thriving industry. Will the Minister reassure the House that she will use us on the Committee to oversee the liabilities that the Department has taken on? Crucially, will she set out when she expects those lower energy costs to kick in, when she expects the tariff barriers in the United States to come down, and when she will tie together the steel strategy, which I hope she will publish as soon as possible, for the House to debate?

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my right hon. Friend for those helpful questions. He reminded me that the shadow Minister had asked about the US. Of course, we are in a position where the world has tariffs of 50% on steel and aluminium; we have 25%. We are working with our US counterparts to reach a conclusion to those negotiations. My right hon. Friend will know that the President is due to come to the UK and, of course, we will be doing all we can to get that negotiation concluded at pace.

My right hon. Friend asked about energy costs. We are seeking to ensure that there is a viable steel industry into the future and that those companies currently talking to the official receiver about wanting to take over and invest in Liberty can do so in a way that will make them money. On the charges we are reducing—the 60% to 90% super-charger extension for network charge relief—to give an example, it will mean about £4 to £5 relief per tonne of steel produced. We know that Liberty is not producing what it can at the moment, but two or three years ago it would have been producing about 300 tonnes of steel per year, so it would have saved up to £1.5 million on its energy costs. That is a substantial reduction and something that I am sure he will welcome.

On the liabilities, of course we want to be as honest, open and transparent with the House as we possibly can. A lot of the liabilities are with the creditors at the moment. We want to come to the House as soon as we can to ensure that we are setting out the costs that we incur. My right hon. Friend is right that the steel strategy this year needs to be bold, and we will of course look to the work that his Committee has done to help us in that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

The shadow Secretary of State talks about vulnerable people. Which Government left one in eight young people not in education, employment or training, while net immigration hit 1 million? It was absolutely shameful, and we will take no lessons from Conservative Members. He talks about tackling barriers; who gave us the highest industrial energy prices in the developed world? The Conservative party. Who is dealing with that? Who has put millions into skills and training, finance, and the tools that local areas need? Those are the things that businesses want.

The shadow Secretary of State also talks about the Employment Rights Bill. I regret the Conservatives’ knee-jerk ideological opposition to it; they could have been pragmatic. The Bill was a manifesto commitment, and we will deliver our manifesto commitments in full. There are issues on which we have to get the balance right, such as probation periods and the future monitoring of zero-hours contracts, and the commitment is of course real. Pragmatic engagement would have been a more constructive way forward than this knee-jerk ideological opposition.

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

The Business and Trade Committee’s inquiry on small business is still open for evidence from Members from across the House. On Tuesday, we took evidence from the chief executive of Ofgem, who made it perfectly clear that a complete collapse of regulation in the years after covid led to thousands of businesses across our country paying higher energy bills than they needed to. Can the Secretary of State assure the House that the small business strategy, when published, will contain a strategy for bearing down on the energy rip-off that is challenging small businesses across our country?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am always grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee for his helpful and pragmatic work and engagement. I recognise the issue that he has highlighted. A lot of small businesses were locked into uncompetitive contracts after covid, and the legacy of that has been very difficult. Of course, we will always look at measures to address that. Fundamentally, we must break the link that means that gas sets the price of electricity in the UK. There are no shortcuts to that; we have to get enough clean energy on to the system to make that possible, which is exactly what the Government are doing.

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.