Economy, Welfare and Public Services

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Commons Chamber

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

It is an honour to speak in this King’s Speech debate, and a privilege to have heard the first female Chancellor in our history deliver such a remarkable opening salvo. I will say a word not just about the King’s Speech itself, but the strategy behind it. When the Chancellor and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister launched our manifesto, there was a clear ambition at its heart to ignite a revolution in wealth creation in this country not just for some, but for all. That strategy was absolutely right, because among the worst of our inheritance is the scandal—the moral emergency —of the inequality of wealth that now scars our country.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you and I could take a walk this afternoon down to a coffee bar called Shot in Mayfair, which would serve us coffee for £265 a shot. We could go next door to a restaurant Aragawa, where they serve steak for £900 apiece. Some, if they were lucky enough, could book a night at the Raffles hotel for £25,000. These are extraordinary prices, but not unremarkable in a country that now has the highest sales of Rolls-Royces, superyachts and private jets. This absurdity of affluence sits alongside a country where, on the last figures, more than 1,000 people died homeless, tens of thousands of people are dying from the diseases of poverty, and 2.1 million people can put food on the table only because of the tender mercies of food banks. That is the inequality of wealth bequeathed to this Government. It is best illustrated perhaps by one figure: the wealth of the top 1% has grown by 31 times the wealth of everybody else over the past 14 years. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor was right to say that there has to be a revolution in wealth creation in this country—not just for some but for all.

The measures that my right hon. Friend has set out are the right ones: a plan for growth and a plan to devolve economic power out of the paralysis of Westminster and Whitehall and down to mayors and local councils. Alongside that is a revolution in planning law, infrastructure law and skills finance. I urge my friends on the Government Front Bench to maximise the amount of power held locally, because it is local people and local leaders who know best how to grow our economy. If we have a growing economy, the key is then to ensure that growth is fairly shared. That is why the employment rights Bill is so important. As my right hon. Friend said, there has not been growth in living standards for more than 14 years. That is why we need to ensure that there is a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

Alongside that, the draft equality Bill is extremely important, and I urge my right hon. Friend to go further and to use the consolidation of pension funds to inaugurate an era of civic capitalism in this country, where we use the combined £2 trillion-worth of pension savings to encourage businesses that are good, not businesses that are bad, such as those that she revealed when she was a brilliant Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, or the scandals that we exposed in the last Parliament with McDonald’s, Asda and other firms behaving in a way reminiscent, frankly, of Victorian capitalism.

Once we have begun raising incomes, we must help people build well. That is why the changes to the housing market that my right hon. Friend proposed are so important. We can underpin that and maximise investment into the infrastructure of this country by ensuring that there is a national wealth fund, but I would go further, and I ask her to look at how we can put together not just the national wealth fund but the Crown estate fund, which is set for reform under a Bill in the King’s Speech.

We could go a step further and review the whole portfolio of investments held by the Government and by UK Government Investments. The last Government made some pretty strange investments during covid, including, I understand, buying shares in Bolton Wanderers, shares in a bespoke boutique whisky company, and even, it is said in some newspapers, shares in a strange firm that organises international sex parties called Killing Kittens. I say to my friends on the Government Front Bench that it is time we had a Domesday Book that consolidated assets in this country. Let us look at what we need and what we do not. Crucially, let us look at how we maximise dividends going to ordinary working people in this country to help them build wealth for themselves.

I conclude with this: on the Government Benches, we have long known that we only deliver and maximise freedom and opportunity for people in this country, and make those freedoms and opportunities real, if there is security. There is no security without wealth, which is why the ambition that my right hon. Friend set out not simply to build a wealthy democracy but a democracy of wealth, is the right one.

Wagner Group: Sanctions Regime

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend speaks with the expertise of her position as Chair of the Treasury Committee, and I hear what she is saying. I have said that the internal review will take place. She is more than welcome to write to me in her capacity as Chair about that, and I will reply in due course.

My hon. Friend makes the point that this question is about the Wagner Group but that we are saying that we are not commenting on the cases of specific individuals. As a Government, we are absolutely clear:

“The Wagner Group is a Russia-based private military company”.

It has organised the recruitment, co-ordination and planned operations of mercenaries participating in military operations in Ukraine. It is responsible for engaging in and providing support for actions that destabilise Ukraine and undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty or independence of Ukraine.

That is why the most important question is: what are we doing to support Ukraine? Opposition Members have mentioned the Prime Minister, so let us talk about what he did as Chancellor. He was the one who put in place £2.3 billion of military support for Ukraine, which helped the Ukrainians to defend themselves against Russia so that the fight is still being fought to this day.

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

This is outrageous. The Minister has just confessed to the House that sanctions implementation is out of ministerial control. The result is that a waiver was issued for a warlord to sue an English journalist in an English court.

Let us just be clear about the sanctions indictment that this Government issued on 31 December 2020. We sanctioned Prigozhin because he was operating

“a deniable military capability for the Russian State.”

Ten months later, civil servants under the Minister’s control signed off £3,500 for business-class flights, £320 for luxury accommodation at the Belmond Grand Hotel Europe, £150 for subsistence and more. Let us be clear about what the leaked emails from that conversation show. They show that Prigozhin’s lawyers wanted to sue Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat because

“public rebuttal of the article…is one of the reasons for his sanction designation”.

The Minister signed off money for a warlord to prosecute an English journalist in an English court, to undermine the sanctions regime that he is responsible for. This is outrageous and it has to change now.

[James Cartlidge]

The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that I did not, in any way, confess that Ministers have no control over the sanctions regime. What I stated very clearly is that in respect of OFSI consideration of legal fees under the sanctions regimes, these decisions are routinely taken by senior civil servants under a delegated framework. That is simply a statement of fact. On the claims for travel and other expenses, let us be clear: under the legal expenses derogation, OFSI is only permitted to issue a licence where the costs, including those relating to disbursements, have been deemed to be reasonable. OFSI therefore scrutinises the hourly fees charged by fee earners, the hours incurred and any other associated costs. It is the responsibility of the applicant to demonstrate to OFSI’s satisfaction that this statutory reasonableness test is met. If it is not satisfied, OFSI will not be able to issue a licence.

0.7% Official Development Assistance Target

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I very much hope that my hon. Friend will stay for the whole debate so that he hears the views across the House. I am sure that will be both instructive and interesting for him.

Mr Speaker, the way the Government are behaving strikes at the heart of our Parliament, as you set out from the Chair yesterday. We cannot secure a meaningful vote. Had we been able to do so yesterday, as I intimated to the House, we would definitely have won by nine, and probably by nearer 20. It is precisely because the Government fear that they would lose that they are not calling a vote. That is not democracy. When countries behave like that in Africa, we British say that they have got it wrong. The Government need to remember that the Government and the Executive are accountable to Parliament, not the other way round, and most especially on issues of supply, as the Minister—he is a very good Minister—knows. That applies in all circumstances, whether the Executive are being run by King Charles I or Boris Johnson.

The Government make two key arguments: first, that they are still spending a huge amount of money—I am sure that is what my right hon. Friend the Minister will say this afternoon—and, secondly, that we are living in unprecedented times for our economy and they will bring the 0.7% back. Let me start with the first—that we are still spending a huge amount of money. Of course, that is entirely correct, but we all promised to spend 0.7% of our GNI, not to change the target and spend 0.5%. All of us made that promise—I have seen every single Member’s manifesto at the last election, and every single elected Member made that promise.

It is arguable, at the least, that the action the Government are taking is unlawful. One of the most senior and distinguished lawyers in the country, the warden of Wadham, Oxford, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, has made it clear that the Government are acting unlawfully because they have changed, rather than missed, the target. I argue to the House this afternoon that what the Government are doing is unethical, possibly illegal and certainly breaks our promise.

On the point about the level of expenditure and the £10 billion, it is rather like buying a car and shaking hands on a deal at 15 grand, only to do a runner while the poor fellow is counting the cash after you have legged it, having handed over only 10 grand. It is not proper, it is fundamentally un-British and we should not behave in this way. It is about the girl whose school closed in South Sudan last week after the headteacher read the letter from the Foreign Office explaining that it is only temporary.

The second argument is that we live in unprecedented economic times and that the Government will bring the 0.7% back, but the 0.7% is configured precisely to take account of our economy. When the economy contracts and goes down, so does the amount of money spent under the 0.7%, and when it increases, that amount goes back up. We are talking about 1% of the money that the Treasury quite rightly spent on covid last year to sustain and support jobs, families and employment. This is 1%—it is practically a rounding error in my right hon. Friend’s books.

We offered an olive branch to the Government last night, which the Government could have accepted, and then we could all have cracked on with other things, by asking them to bring the 0.7% back next year. We accept that they are not going to bring it back this year, but we asked them to bring it back next year, when the Governor of the Bank of England says that the economy will have rebounded to pre-covid levels and growth will be strong. If the Government were serious about bringing it back when the economy improved, they would have accepted the olive branch that my right hon. and hon. Friends and I offered.

Everyone knows what this is about. It is not about the 1% rounding error in the Treasury’s books. It is about the red wall seats. The Government think that it is popular in the red wall seats to stop British aid money going overseas. Indeed, one Treasury Minister told me that 81% of people in the red wall seats do not approve of spending British taxpayers’ money overseas. But we have to be careful about the question we ask, because other polling in the red wall seats shows that 92% of people there do not approve of cutting humanitarian aid. It is also a very patronising attitude to people who live in the red wall seats, because when these dreadful famines, disasters and floods take place, it is the people in the red wall seats who are the first to raise money through car boot sales and pub quizzes to try to help those who are caught. In the words of Talleyrand, the French statesman, this is worse than a crime; it is a mistake. What my right hon. and hon. Friends and I—the so-called rebels—are trying to do is to keep the Government straight.

And so we come to this week’s G7 summit, when the leaders of the richest nations will assemble in Cornwall. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will be chairing the summit, and he goes into it in the teeth of a global pandemic, when Britain is cutting its support to the poorest. No other country represented at the G7 is doing such a thing. The French have now embraced the 0.7%. The Germans will spend more than 0.7% this year. The Americans—by far the biggest funders in the world—are seeking an increase through Congress of $14 billion in the amount that is spent. We are the only ones going backwards.

Other G7 countries are noticing what the Government are doing. Is it any wonder that, in a letter to President Biden, a dozen Members of Congress have urged him to upbraid Britain for breaking its promise? One sentence in their letter made me wince. It reads as follows:

“Cutting back on foreign assistance during the worst humanitarian crisis of our generation only undermines our collective global response.”

This is what the journalist who used to serve in this House and who probably understands the Conservative party best said at the weekend:

“Try though seasick government whips will to mount one, there is no civilised defence of this cut. This cut looks like what it is: a cheap and brutal gesture, a piece of domestic applause-seeking”.

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

The right hon. Gentleman is making a brilliant speech. I just want to flush out one point, which I hope will be a point of consensus. It is possible that this weekend we will get agreement on a fresh issue of $650 billion in special drawing rights. The UK will have surplus SDRs and it is possible that they could be recycled to support aid. It would be a regrettable accounting trick if that, in any way, counted towards making good the cut that has been made. Is that a point of consensus across the House?

[Mr Mitchell]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good and useful point, and the decisions made on the SDRs will be extremely helpful.

We come, finally, to the essence of all of this. Because of the way the development budget is configured, these terrible cuts are falling first and hardest on the humanitarian sectors. Let me just mention four of them. The first is girls’ education. The Prime Minister has rightly said that it is his main aspiration on these international development issues—this is strongly supported by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin)—to ensure that all girls get 12 years of quality education. That is a wonderful and noble British initiative, but what has happened to the funding? It has been cut by 25%. So on the one hand we have the words—the aspiration—and on the other we have the reality of the 25% cut. Worse than that, UNICEF, which has a fantastic reputation and which the British Government judged just a few years ago to be the most effective of all the UN agencies, has had a cut of 60%. On clean water and sanitation, which is pivotal if we are to conquer this pandemic among the poorest of the world, some 10 million people who were expecting to receive British taxpayers’ support will not now get it. Funding to the UN to save the lives of people suffering with HIV/AIDS has been cut by 80%, which is a death sentence for the people who would have been helped. Finally, we are going to end food assistance for 250,000 people. These are not people who have missed eating for a few days; they are people who are starving, and we are going to cut our support for them directly.

I have never forgotten the experience I had as Development Secretary in Karamoja, in northern Uganda, where I stood under a tree next to a football pitch, which was covered by children who were starving. There were about 200 children there and they were waiting in line. They were suffering from acute malnutrition, and British taxpayers’ money and British humanitarian workers were trying to help them. If we catch them early enough, when they are floppy but not actually medically critical, we give them Plumpy’Nut, a biscuity peanut substance that costs about a 5p a head, and they will be recovered in about an hour and probably running around playing football. However, if we miss that point, they have to go to a clinic, have a drip up and it costs about $180 to put them right.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and I thank the House authorities and Mr Speaker for the debate today. I have risen to speak because this decision seems, at one and the same time, to be a decision that dishonours our word, dismays our friends and delights our enemies.

I want to make just three points. The first is simple: this decision defaces and demeans the strategy that was set out in this House by the Prime Minister as long as 69 days ago, when he came to that Dispatch Box to present the Integrated Review to the House. He said that he was determined to build resilience at home and abroad and to tackle risk at source:

“We will be…dynamic abroad”.—[Official Report, 16 March 2021; Vol. 691, c. 161.]

He declared that 2021 will set the tone for the UK’s international engagement abroad—let us hope not, because on the eve of the G7 this Prime Minister is leading by retreating. The only dynamism he is showing is in the speed with which he is breaking his promises to the world.

The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), did not make many speeches about foreign policy, but there was a phrase she used often that was good—the notion of the rules-based order. We should have a Government who extol the benefits and the virtues of a rules-based order. However, we now have a Prime Minister who is ordering the breaking of the rules, not just with the nonsense around the international protocols in Northern Ireland, but with our international promises to the world community. One has to ask, why would anybody trust him? The truth is that he will soon discover that unless he is more hard-line about keeping his promises, our influence in the world will diminish. Once upon a time, it was known abroad that our word was our bond. That is not something to surrender lightly.

My second point is that the Prime Minister risks a serious imbalance in our foreign policy. In today’s world, defence of the realm entails a mixture of deterrence and development. President Biden has a useful guide. He says, “You talk about values. Show me your budget and I will tell you what your values are.” We now have a situation where defence spending is rising by £24 billion and development spending is falling by £4 billion—a £28 billion gap.

[Jacob Young]

When the right hon. Gentleman was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, did the UK ever meet its 0.7% target?

[Liam Byrne]

We were proud to set the ambition, and we set a critical path to doing it, because we knew precisely this—that development and deterrence are two sides of the same coin. They are essential to the defence of the realm.

The Prime Minister, when he presented the Integrated Review, boasted that we were about to send the new Queen Elizabeth carrier group on a worldwide tour. In how many of the 100 countries where we are cutting aid will that carrier group come into port? I bet that everywhere it does, we will find that our projection of power is as nothing compared with the power of a project to make poverty history.

Two thirds of the world’s poorest live in fragile, conflict- affected and violent states. It beggars belief that under the Government’s proposals, nations such as Libya and Iraq will no longer receive bilateral aid. There should be a simple rule of policy that we will not drop aid in places where we drop bombs, or where others drop bombs that they bought from us. Investing in places where we can alleviate poverty is one of the biggest investments we can make in safeguarding our security for the years to come.

My final point is simply this. The Chair of the International Development Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), helpfully set out the extraordinary range of cuts that are now being confronted. As chair of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, I asked the IMF this afternoon for an update on the sheer scale of investment that is needed to get the global community back on its feet. Low-income countries will now need $200 billion extra to step up their covid response, followed by $250 billion extra in accelerated investment as we try to move from the pandemic to the Paris agreement. We are now going to—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Sorry, we have to leave it there.

Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I had not planned to speak today, but last Thursday the good people of the west midlands decided that they needed me fighting their corner from the cockpit of the west midlands, rather than from the office of the Mayor, so this afternoon I plan to crack on with a word for the Mayor and a word for Ministers.

To the Mayor, Andy Street, I offer my warmest congratulations. In a year of tragedy, he, too, was hit by personal tragedy, but despite that he continued to work and campaign with grace under pressure. Grace under pressure is what Ernest Hemingway called courage, so I congratulate the Mayor both on his conquest and his courage. He has now earned the right to lead and, I hope, also heard the duty to listen. Forty-six per cent. of my region voted Labour. Labour controls the three great cities of the west midlands, along with the borough of Sandwell.

We also now have challenges, which are multiplying. Healthy life expectancy was falling in our region before covid hit. We have the worst youth unemployment in the country. We have the worst unemployment in the country. Exports were falling £2 billion a year before covid struck. That is why we need the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his colleagues in Cabinet to work with the Mayor and Labour leaders in the region to now back some of the most popular ideas that we proposed, which were to lead green Britain and to bring back industry. Once upon a time, our region was the workshop of the world. In this century, we have the potential and the ambition to become the green workshop of a greener planet. There is a win-win to be had with the Government’s 10-point plan, but there are five action points that we need the Minister to drive through in the weeks and months ahead.

First, as the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), said in a brilliant speech, we have to get the gigafactory built at Coventry airport. There are 16 gigafactories already up and running or being built in Europe. In jeopardy are 110,000 jobs in the automotive industry. The window is closing fast and, Chancellor, we need to act quickly.

Secondly, we have to devolve the budget for retrofitting. The green homes grant is what is known in Treasury parlance as “a shambles”. We have to devolve at least £4 billion to the west midlands so that we can make sure that everybody not only has a roof over their head, but has a home that is warm and a home that is green. In so doing, we could create hundreds of thousands of jobs for people without work.

Thirdly, we need a new deal on skills. Apprenticeship numbers have collapsed by 40%. We will have to retrain a generation or two of workers, but at the moment we have the ridiculous situation of the Department for Education handing unspent apprenticeship budget back to the Treasury. We have budgets such as the national skills fund and the national prosperity fund all being dictated from Whitehall. Just hand the whole thing over to the west midlands and trust the people of the west midlands to implement these plans properly.

Fourthly, we need to devolve energy powers, because there are currently firms in the Black Country that have power cuts in the middle of the day because our energy system is so outdated. Fifthly, we need a new deal on transport, because there is a £1.1 billion black hole in our transport spending proposals. Those are the five necessary steps for which the Chancellor should be taking personal responsibility if he is serious about levelling up not simply the country but regions like the West Midlands.

Finally, I wish to make an unashamed special plea for the people of east Birmingham, the part of the country I serve, where five generations of my family have lived and worked. It is the place with the worst unemployment in Britain. I want to work with the Mayor, Labour leaders and the Chancellor to drive through the proper gateway around the new hospital for Arden Cross, because we know that health policy is economic policy. We need the new east Birmingham tramline—all 13 km of it—finally to be built. We need to retrain workers for an ambitious programme of retrofitting. High Speed 2 needs to be instructed to hand back the land at the second biggest industrial site, at the heart of three constituencies with high unemployment, so that we can crack on with building jobs. Crucially, we need the Chancellor’s support for a new towns fund based around the Bordesley action plan.

East Birmingham is a place the size of Nottingham—it could be the fifth or sixth biggest city in the country. Not all fairy tales begin with the words “Once upon a time”; some fairy tales begin with the words “When I am elected”. What we now need from the Government, the Mayor and Ministers is action, not words.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). We do not agree on everything and I have spent the past two years working hard for his opponent, Andy Street, who was elected last Thursday, but I thank him for what he said and for what was a decent and fair campaign in the West Midlands that dignified democracy and did all the main candidates considerable credit.

First, I am a fan of the mayoral system and think that Andy Street will be best placed to secure the right economic judgments and the jobs, training and levelling up. As has been said already in this debate, levelling up is not just geographical but generational. This is first young generation since the world war one that does not believe it will be better off than its parents’ generation. That is an important issue. The devolution of power—which is, of course, part of the answer to the constitutional questions about Scotland, Ireland and the United Kingdom—is very important and it works well in the West Midlands. I strongly encourage the Chancellor to give Andy Street every possible support in the work that he is doing.

In particular, in the royal town of Sutton Coldfield we would like levelling-up funds. I hope very much that we will be in the second tranche, because public spending is critical to securing successful development, sometimes in places that are ostensibly quite well off but need that spending if they are to succeed. Areas such as mine have to go through Birmingham City Council and there are inevitably political difficulties and differences of emphasis. I urge the Treasury to consider that.

Secondly, on the 0.7% aid target, I very much hope that the Chancellor will have heard yesterday the words of the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May); the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley); and others in the House. The Gracious Speech quite rightly calls for girls’ education, which is probably the most effective way of changing the world, but on girls’ education—the Prime Minister’s particular priority—we have seen a 25% cut, with funding set to fall from £789 million in 2019 to a projected £400 million this year. That is a very substantial cut. Funding for UNICEF, which looks after children and was assessed in the British Government’s multilateral aid review to be the best UN agency, has been cut back by 60%. These are very serious issues.

[Liam Byrne]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words. Does he agree that at the G7 and later this year at COP26, Her Majesty’s Government would stand a far better chance of encouraging sign-up to the new International Development Association programme if, ahead of those important events, they were prepared to commit to the 0.7% target?

[Mr Mitchell]

The right hon. Gentleman knows very well my strong support for the 0.7%. The point that I am making is that the damage being done to Britain’s reputation, quite apart from the damage to the poorest people in the world, is very severe indeed. I worry that the Treasury does not fully appreciate these factors.

The Chancellor generously gave way to me earlier and I asked him whether he would consider reinstating the 0.7% once the economy reaches pre-covid levels. He said that the damage that was done might be too great for that. I hope very much that he will think about those words. He also mentioned that we have given £400 billion of taxpayers’ support—quite rightly and highly effectively, thanks to his successful stewardship—to our efforts to combat covid. On the cut that he has made to 0.5%, we are talking of 1% of that £400 billion, but the damage that this is doing to Britain’s reputation, quite apart from the damage it is doing to the poorest people in the world, is very savage indeed.

I therefore urge the Chancellor to announce as soon as he can that we will stand by our promise that we made just a year ago in the general election and by the promise that the British Government made on the floor of the General Assembly at the UN, and that we will no longer seek to balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world.

The third point that I wanted to make was mentioned in the Gracious Speech, and it is about social care. I am obviously disappointed that the Government have not yet set out quite how they wish to proceed on this matter, but it seems to me that this is a major and important reform that needs to be agreed by all parties. Like pensions legislation, it has a long tail. However, much of the work has already been done by Sir Andrew Dilnot. I hope that the Government will look carefully at those plans and decide whether they are able perhaps to tweak them, but to implement them.

In my constituency, we have big plans for the Royal Sutton Coldfield Cottage Hospital, but those plans require us to understand what the national social care priorities will be. I hope that this legislation will come forward, possibly with the assistance of my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) and his experienced Select Committee, who might have a role in assisting the Government in refining those plans and aspirations.

The final point that I want to make is about assisted dying. I am the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on choice at the end of life, and I know that there are very strong feelings in the House on this issue. I greatly respect those who completely disagree with me on the matter, not least since I have completely changed my own mind since I first entered the House many years ago.

Those of us who are supporting Dignity in Dying want a very tight and narrow change made to the law. We believe that this could be the great liberal reform of this Parliament; 84% of our constituents want to see this sort of reform introduced. Significant advances are being made in southern Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany and Australia, so I ask that we as parliamentarians consider allowing our constituents who are terminally sick and within six months of dying to be able to exercise their own choices, and not be forced to endure a level of pain and indignity that they do not wish to suffer.

Lockdown: Economic Support

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I recognise the point made by my hon. Friend. I have spoken about the impact on the sectors to which he refers. That is why such a comprehensive package of support has been set out, including through the job retention scheme, which will now run until 2 December; the generous support for the self-employed; the cash grants of up to £3,000 per month for businesses; the £1.1 billion of council support; and the plans to extend the various loans, and indeed the future fund, to the end of January. This all recognises the wider pressures to which he refers.

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

Unemployment here in the west midlands is soaring to a level that we last saw in the 1980s, but our Mayor has proved so ineffective that we have failed to secure 95% of what we have asked for in our recovery plan. Yesterday the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist called on Governments to bring forward large-scale investment to kickstart demand. In May, the Government set out their capital budget of £358 billion over the next five years. When are the Government going to allocate that capital budget, will the Chief Secretary maximise what is brought forward into the eye of the storm to kickstart demand for next year, and will he, for the first time, guarantee that the west midlands, at long last, will secure its fair share of that money?

[Steve Barclay]

I am slightly surprised to have a question from a former Chief Secretary that does not recognise the infrastructure investment that the Prime Minister set out in the summer and that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor updated the House on through his summer economic update, including the £2 billion going into green jobs and public sector decarbonisation, and the massive investment in High Speed 2, in road investment strategy 2, and in control period 6 through the various rail schemes that the Government have committed to. We are accelerating the delivery of that infrastructure through Project Speed.

The right hon. Gentleman is right to speak to the fact that there is a jobs challenge, and I think the concerns about the pressure on employment are shared across the House. That is why it is so important to get the right training package in place. That was addressed by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor on 24 September with his winter plan setting out schemes such as the kickstart scheme, which is up and running and is already delivering results. That is how, together, we will weather the storm in terms of bringing forward infrastructure investment but also reskilling people where they do lose their jobs.

Economic Update

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The analysis published today shows that we have reduced the scale of losses for working households by up to two-thirds in general, but the support for the poorest households has been the highest. He will find that in the distributional analysis published today. It demonstrates what we believe is important at a time like this—to protect the most vulnerable in our society. I know that is something that he feels very deeply, and I share that feeling.

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

The country expects us to pull together now to get our country back on its feet. In that spirit, let me welcome the investment that the Chancellor has announced today for young people and for the hospitality trade. My observation, though, is that of the money he has brought forward, the capital is only about 5% to 6% of the budget that he has earmarked for the next four or five years. What that means in my region is 50p per person per week invested in so-called shovel-ready projects. That is not enough.

But crucially, there is a gaping hole in today’s announcement where support for manufacturing should be. We have 330,000 people across the west midlands on furlough in construction, manufacturing and the car business. I believe that the sharp ends to the furlough arrangements will put many people out of work, and there is no subsidy scheme for new cars of the type that has been announced in France and Germany. We want to be the capital of green manufacturing. I fear that, from today, we are now looking at manufacturing meltdown.

[Rishi Sunak]

When it comes to capital investment, it is important to put in context what our existing budgets were for this year. I announced £88 billion at the Budget for this year. That represents a 20% increase on our capital investment plans in the previous year and, as a percentage of GDP, the highest amount that we have invested in capital since the ’70s. The starting base level for our capital investment is already exceptionally high. We have brought £5 billion of additional projects forward into this year, but, taken in the round, it will be the most we have ever spent on capital in real terms for a very, very long time.

Coronavirus Bill

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 23rd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I am now glad that I teased the hon. Gentleman, because it got something very useful on the record. If I may pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), it is why I tabled amendment 6, which recognises that the Government need these new powers and that parliamentary counsel have created a 320-page Bill in what sounds like a matter of days—in truth, they did it in an astonishingly short amount of time. They have done it at a time, however, when scientific evidence is, to put it mildly, fragile and likely to change. It has changed already in the past two weeks and is likely to change again as different tests, different vaccines and so on become available. Scientific evidence will change. Economic analysis of future outcomes is unbelievably uncertain and the societal effects are completely unknown. The Bill is guaranteed to have flaws, even with the best draftsmen in the world.

Amendment 6 therefore proposes that instead of the sunset being two years, which anyway is too long, it would be one year. We invite the Government to write a new Bill in nine months. If they think the Bill is perfect in nine months, put it back again and we will put it through again, but this time, with three months for the House to consider it. Remember, the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 took a whole year to go through both Houses, so with three months we would have proper democratic approval of the process.

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

The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. There will, of course, be many things that we learn, not just things we need to take out of the Bill but critical measures that we need to put in, so flexible legislation will be essential as we go through the emergency and learn things.

[Mr Davis]

I agree. I think the Government have done a pretty good job so far in the face of unbelievably difficult judgments and decisions. The Americans talk about drinking from a fire hose, which is how every Minister in this Government must feel because of the information and problems arriving on their desk every day.

The right hon. Gentleman is right that there will be changes in the science and in the economics. We will also know, frankly, what worked and what did not work in the previous nine months. If we then allow Parliament three months to scrutinise it, we will get good, solid law that is well supported on both sides of the House. We will have the sort of debate we have had today, which has been one of the better debates I have heard in years because both sides are committed to the same cause.

Finally, I recommend that colleagues read the report on this Bill published at lunchtime today by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of the House of Lords. That expert Committee considers our legislation and makes recommendations to the other House, and it is led by Lord Blencathra—those who have been here a long time may remember him as David Maclean, a tough, no-nonsense Security Minister at the Home Office. The Committee’s analysis is very clear and very straightforward, and it is not a libertarian fantasy. This is the conclusion, the last five lines of a five-page report:

“We anticipate that the House may well wish to press the Minister for an explanation about why the expiry date was not set at one year, thereby enabling the Government to exercise the powers needed in the immediate future while allowing a further bill to be introduced and subject to parliamentary scrutiny in slower time.”

A House of Lords Committee has arrived at exactly the same conclusion on this Bill as my amendment proposes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I hear what the hon. Member for Wycombe says, but this has to operate on the ground, and we are all hearing various stories of what is happening in the universal credit system. It may well be what the Government intend, but that has to be implemented right across the country.

The Government must stand beside each and every person to get through this. We of course support the principle of doing whatever it takes, but that has to mean whatever it takes for each and every person. Let me say a word about the food supply—this is in clauses 23 to 27—and the power to require information. The Government require a strategic approach to the profiteering and unnecessary stockpiling—all of it. We have to ask people to think of others in what they are doing, but I also say to the Minister that the Government may well need a more strategic approach on that.

[Liam Byrne]

I will be brief. In all emergencies, there is profiteering, and in countries such as the United States, where it has been prevalent for a long time, two thirds of states have legislation in place to stop profiteering. We need it here now because it is hitting the poorest communities hardest now.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that profiteering is affecting people now. We have heard some examples from across the House and, clearly, that issue needs to be seriously considered.

I turn now to what all this means taken together—I will draw my remarks to a close, Dame Eleanor, because I know that you wish other people to come in. This is an unprecedented change in the relationship between Government and Parliament, and Government and people. First, I say to the Minister that the imperative is to protect everyone and support them in this time of peril. We ask people to make sacrifices and we must support them, too. Secondly, the need for safeguards in this legislation is paramount. I hope that the Minister will look in particular at the suggestion that I made on the six-month review and that being amendable.

We are not seeking to divide the House, but we hope very much that the Government will heed what has been said, and we, of course, reserve the right to pursue these matters further in the other place.

High Speed 2

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Westminster Hall

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

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on securing the debate and on giving the House a chance to confront a couple of important choices. She is right to say that nettles need to be grasped and bullets bitten, but I think she has chosen the wrong nettles and bullets, and I will explain why in the next few minutes.

As is traditional now, the argument against HS2 is couched in terms of value for money. In any value-for-money calculation, the money is easy to calculate, but the value is much harder to put your finger on. There were arguments in a previous debate about the Treasury Green Book, which is not a wide-ranging analysis. If we measure what we treasure, we will clearly see that HS2 is one of the best value-for-money projects that this country has contemplated for many years.

[Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Liam Byrne]

I will in a moment.

Coming from Birmingham, what I treasure above all is jobs. We have had the slowest jobs recovery since the financial crisis of any city region, and HS2 will bring lots and lots of jobs, not at some distant point in the future but over the next five years. It will bring something like 33,000 jobs around Curzon Street and 77,000 jobs around Birmingham Interchange, in addition to the 30,000 jobs that will be created on the line at peak. This is the most important fiscal stimulus outside London and the south-east. Indeed, if we were to cancel HS2, I would bet my bottom dollar that we would put the midlands back into recession within a year.

[Sir Patrick McLoughlin (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman, with his local knowledge, describe what is happening around Curzon Street now, and what has happened around Curzon Street for the last 20 years?

[Liam Byrne]

The former Secretary of State is right to make that point, because a number of significant businesses are now relocating to what is the worst unemployment hotspot in the country; the worst unemployment and youth unemployment in the country is in and around east Birmingham. We have a chance ahead of us to wipe out that youth unemployment, but only if we grasp the nettle and drive through HS2.

[Graham Stringer]

My right hon. Friend makes a brilliant case. If anything, he underestimates the result. When the Transport Committee went to France to look at the impact of the TGV, it found that the go-ahead cities that used the high-speed lines got huge extra investment that had not been calculated in the original assessment. Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds are all go-ahead cities, so I expect more jobs than my right hon. Friend says.

[Liam Byrne]

Precisely. If we measure what we treasure, and if we treasure jobs, HS2 is, frankly, a project that we need.

However, that is not all I treasure; I also treasure tangible action to decarbonise our economy and our region. I want the west midlands to lead the first zero carbon revolution. Back in 1712, when the Newcomen engine was demonstrated up at Dudley castle, we sparked the carbon revolution the first time around. We need a radical plan that allows us to move trucks off the road and on to rail. Only with the capacity that comes with HS2 can we reopen 36 new freight lines that can take a million lorries off the road each year. We cannot de-clog the M6, the M5 or the M42 unless we get that freight off the road. It is impossible to see how we can drive forward the decarbonisation of a sector that contributes 40% of our carbon emissions each year if we do not drive ahead with HS2.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s aspirations, but for Scotland. To meet the UK-wide net zero carbon targets we have set for 2050, we need to make sure that these new rail lines work for the entire country. Does he agree that we need to review HS2, not only on its business case, but on making sure that it works for the entire United Kingdom and connects the powerhouses in the midlands with the true northern powerhouse, which is of course Scotland?

[Liam Byrne]

I am all for that, so long as it does not introduce a moment of delay in driving this forward. Frankly, our economy cannot have any further delay.

I treasure a project that puts the west midlands at the centre of this economy. I particularly treasure the speed, which will result in a journey time of something like 65 minutes from Birmingham International to Canary Wharf, the most important business site in the country, via the connection at Old Oak Common.

The right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire advanced the traditional bang-for-buck argument, which is that if we got rid of HS2, there would be plenty of bucks left for other kinds of projects. I have to say that that is not fiscal realpolitik at all. The fiscal realpolitik will mean that money currently earmarked for HS2 will be quickly absorbed into other projects, and Opposition Members will be forgiven for worrying that it will disappear into the £10 billion-a-year tax cut proposed by the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson).

The right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire was right to demand choices, but the choices that she proposes are wrong. The real strategic transport choice that this country must confront is not between HS2 and other rail network lines, but between planes and trains. We should drive ahead with HS2 and cancel the ludicrous decision to build a third runway at Heathrow airport for £14 billion. We could use half that money to build a high-speed loop and take passengers from Heathrow to Birmingham, where there is already untapped capacity for 17 million passenger movements a year.

Around the world, a trillion-dollar high-speed rail revolution is under way, and we are being left behind. It is time that this country got on with it.

[Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)]

I call Victoria Prentis. Please be brief. Then I will call the Front-Bench spokespeople.

Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bradshaw]

I do beg my hon. Friend’s pardon.

I hope that one of the Committee’s early inquiries will be into Russian interference in the UK. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have been raising questions about this for the past year, during which the evidence of Russian interference in the American presidential election became credible and compelling. Until recently, the UK Government gave every impression of not wanting to talk about it, but mounting evidence on both sides of the Atlantic of covert Russian propaganda and social media activity, and the role of dark money in our democracy, makes it imperative that the Intelligence and Security Committee looks at this as a matter of urgency. The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee has already launched an inquiry and the Electoral Commission is conducting investigations into Russian-backed interference in the referendum, including with regard to social media and the funding of the pro-Brexit campaign and its main financial backer, Arron Banks.

The American investigation into alleged collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, led by Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller, has also now reached Britain. The FBI has named Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader, as a person of interest, and Mueller has indicted a former Trump campaign operative, George Papadopoulos, who had meetings in London with a UK-based academic, Josef Mifsud, to discuss the latter obtaining dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Kremlin. We know that Mr Papadopoulos has had access to British Ministers, and that Professor Mifsud has met the Foreign Secretary, although that was at first denied.

While it is imperative that the Government and their agencies give the fullest help and co-operation to the Culture Committee, the Electoral Commission and the Mueller investigations—although I know this is not his area of responsibility, I would be grateful if the Minister could assure the House that that will be the case, especially as I have been told that the Mueller team was in London recently and was not happy with the co-operation it was receiving from the UK authorities—it is the Intelligence and Security Committee that has much freer and direct access to our intelligence and security services and can question them directly. That is why its reconstitution is so important.

Despite the mounting evidence of recent months, the Foreign Secretary was still insisting last week that he had seen no evidence of Russian interference, but on Monday the Prime Minister said, or at least implied, something very different in her Mansion House speech. She excoriated the Putin regime for hacking, interfering in elections, and spreading fake news to sow discord in western democracies and threaten our international order.

It would be helpful to the Houses of Parliament and the country as a whole if the Government would end this confusion now. Is Britain among the countries that the Prime Minister had in mind when she made her speech? Indeed, it would be rather odd, given the uniquely disruptive impact of the Brexit vote and Putin’s well publicised desire for it, if Britain alone were immune from the Kremlin’s intentions. If the Government will not clear this up, I hope the ISC will. I hope that the ISC will also use its good offices to ensure that the Government and all their agencies give every assistance necessary to the other UK bodies investigating these matters and to Robert Mueller’s team.

Additionally, I urge the ISC to include the issue of dark money and the role of think-tanks in any of its deliberations on this matter. We know that more than £400,000 was donated during the EU referendum to the Democratic Unionist party by the Constitutional Research Council. The CRC has also given money to hard Brexit-supporting MPs, including the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker). It was reported last week that the fine the Electoral Commission imposed as a result of the DUP donation resulted from a failure to disclose its source. That is not acceptable.

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

My right hon. Friend is making a brilliant and forensic speech, and he is to be commended by us all for pursuing this matter over the past year. Does he agree that a priority for the ISC should be to get to the bottom of whether foreign money was donated to the election campaigns and to the referendum campaign? A gap in the law means that the Electoral Commission is not empowered to investigate foreign actors and foreign money, and their influence on our democracy and this House.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. Our legal framework is completely outdated for meeting the challenges that we face.

There is a further issue that I hope the Government will address. They have promised to close the loophole in Northern Ireland, where political donations remain secret for historical reasons, but that is completely unacceptable. It is quite clear that Northern Ireland has recently been used as a channel for such donations. The Government, to their credit, have said that they will change the law. Every single party in Northern Ireland— except the DUP, I think—believes that such a change should be retrospective. That would allow us to go back to the time of the referendum so that we would know where the money came from, and we could have full confidence in the integrity of our political and democratic process.

I also urge the ISC to look at the Legatum Institute, its relationship with the Government, and the background of its founder and main funder, Christopher Chandler. It should also consider the activities and funding of political organisations such as Conservative Friends of Russia, now renamed as the Westminster Russia Forum.

I come now to my final and perhaps most important point: the relationship between our intelligence and security services and those of our closest ally, America; and the relationship of each with their respective Government. President Trump is at war with his intelligence community. He has made it abundantly clear that he would sooner believe Putin than his own intelligence and security professionals. That is shocking, but it would be even more worrying for us if that breakdown in relations were mirrored here and had a negative impact on the vital work of our agencies and the extent of their co-operation with their US counterparts.

When the news website BuzzFeed ran a series of articles recently about unexplained Russia-related deaths in Britain, its head of investigations, Heidi Blake, was inundated with American intelligence sources complaining that they did not think their British counterparts were taking these incidents seriously. If that is true, it is extremely worrying.

Until recently, British Ministers have gone out of their way to avoid talking about Russian interference. They might have been worried about doing anything that might cast doubt on the legitimacy of the EU referendum result or embarrass President Trump, from whom they hope to get a trade deal to save them from the Brexit disaster.

I hope the ISC, now that it will finally be reconstituted, will be able to reassure itself and this Parliament that our intelligence and security services continue to act freely within the law, unhampered by any narrow political concerns of Ministers, and that their vital co-operation with their US counterparts has not been affected by the breakdown between the latter and their President. This issue goes to the heart of the security and integrity of our democracy and political system, and I wish the members of the Committee well in their important work ahead.

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

I want briefly to add to the Intelligence and Security Committee’s to-do list, because it is important that there should be a rapid study—with conclusions brought to the House, when appropriate—of what is a rapidly emerging 21st century propaganda operation for which a playbook emerged during the elections in Europe and in America, and in our recent referendum campaign. That involves some reasonably sophisticated techniques in fabricating division and discord on social media platforms such as Twitter, which are then imported into social media networks such as Facebook, with significant—often dark—money behind them, to spread messages that are quite simply not true.

The impact of that is often to undermine democracy, and we in the mother of Parliaments have a particular duty to ensure that the new techniques are fully exposed and that commensurate action is taken against them. We have talked about the gaps in our laws, and we must make sure that the disinfectant of sunlight shines right the way through the elections we have had so that those laws can be fixed.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I speak not only as a former member of the ISC, but as someone who was involved in the 1980s in trying to counter what were called active measures—the use by the Soviet Union of agents of influence and organisations to try to have an impact on British public opinion. The difference between then and now is that it was then quite easy to expose who was behind the influence operations, but now that is much harder because the internet allows concealment.

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that one of the main antidotes to the concerns expressed in this debate is that the intelligence agencies, and particularly the new technological arm of GCHQ that deals with the internet, should work to expose who is behind the messages that are coming through? We cannot stop messages getting through, but we can neutralise them by showing up their provenance.

[Liam Byrne]

The right hon. Gentleman is exactly right. There are well-sourced reports that there have been at least two briefings about Russian interference to the Prime Minister, if not the Cabinet. It is not clear what action was taken in response, but it is now quite clear that dark forces have new techniques. We recognise their fingerprints in some of the referendums and elections that have played out in our country and elsewhere, but let us be under no illusion that their job is not done. They will continue to try to influence debates in this House because they want to change the political environment in which we debate the terms of Brexit, for example. The faster the ISC can do its work and expose, in an appropriate way, what is truly going on, the better for all of us.

Paradise Papers

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. As I have pointed out a few times already, we are currently looking at reporting standards. We are also looking at various recommendations coming out of the BEPS regime, some of which were covered in the Finance Bill, to stop flagrant tax avoidance, sometimes on the part of some of the largest corporations in the country. As I mentioned earlier, the Labour party sought to kill that Bill on Third Reading.

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

When I asked officials at the Department for International Trade whether tax transparency was required in our trade treaties, they said that this was a novel idea, and it was certainly not included in the text of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. It is exactly this kind of secrecy that lets the rich hide billions while the people pay. Will the Minister ensure that we demand and insist on tax transparency in every single trade treaty presented to this House in the future?

[Mel Stride]

As the right hon. Gentleman will know, we are committed to country-by-country reporting, which we will push forward with multilaterally. As for our future trade treaties, they are for the future and for the Department for International Trade.