Foreign Affairs and Defence

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and welcome to the Chair.

May I warmly congratulate the Defence Secretary on his new role, and strongly endorse the comments he made about Britain’s armed forces? My own regiment has recently been on the frontline in Estonia, and I want to strongly endorse the words he used. I also endorse the advice he gave to new Members sitting on these green Benches. I first sat on these green Benches—on the Government side—37 years ago, and I strongly agree with what he said. I feel that sense of honour and privilege every day in this House.

I had hoped to start by welcoming the Foreign Secretary to his place. I wanted to wish him well in discharging the immense responsibilities of the office he now holds. I have to say that I was dismayed to hear the Foreign Secretary answer questions on the “Today” programme this morning that should more properly have been answered in this House—a view that I believe Mr Speaker shares. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the Foreign Secretary will be very well served by the outstanding civil servants at the Foreign Office. I want to express my gratitude to our ambassadors and high commissioners around the world. On overseas visits throughout my tenure, I was superbly served and looked after. I also want to thank the outstanding young officials who worked in my private office.

I should like to pay a special tribute to my noble Friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton. He demonstrated clear strategic thinking about how British foreign policy needed to adapt to the world as it is today and injected real energy into British diplomacy. I hope the whole House will acknowledge that to persuade a former Prime Minister to serve as Foreign Secretary was a real benefit to our country. It was also a pleasure to serve alongside the former Members for Berwick-upon-Tweed and Macclesfield, who I am very sorry are no longer sitting alongside me on the Front Bench. They were both superb Ministers, who worked diligently at the Foreign Office.

I cannot recall a more perilous period in international affairs. I entered the House of Commons just two years before the momentous fall of the Berlin wall, which precipitated the demise of the Soviet Union and the consequent end of the cold war. It is difficult to overstate, having lived with the terrifying spectre of nuclear confrontation, the collective relief we all felt. Yet the world is once again in the grip of a galloping escalation of tensions and dangers, where the international institutions created on the heels of the second world war to defend our values and protect mankind are being undermined, the narrow nationalism that so disfigured our continent is once again rearing its destructive head, and despots and dictators increasingly ride roughshod over democratic freedoms and the rules-based order.

Putin’s brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine has brought war once again to the European continent. The Israel-Gaza conflict is devastating and risks regional conflagration. Poverty and debt stalk the global south. Yet covid taught us that no one is safe until we are all safe, while climate change is the greatest existential threat of our time. Never have we faced dangers so grave when our fates are so closely entwined. So at the very time when we need an international rules-based order to tackle these common threats—climate change, migration, terror and pandemics—we are more fragmented than ever. Divisions are hardening and debate is coarsening.

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

I am very grateful to the right hon. Member, my constituency neighbour, for giving way and I am delighted to see him in his place—on the Opposition side of the Chamber. Can I take it from his remarks that he subscribes to the view that we need not only a rules-based order, but a rights-based order? Here in our country, and indeed in Europe, the framework for those rights is the European convention on human rights. Are we to take it from his remarks that it is the policy of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition that we should remain a member of the ECHR?

[Mr Mitchell]

That is certainly the policy of the Opposition, and I hope it is common across the House that we should remain part of the European convention.

I was talking about divisions hardening and debate coarsening. Public discourse is increasingly vitriolic, be it in pursuit of single issue causes or broader agendas, from the left or the right, or driven by motives that may or may not be religious and may or may not be well-intentioned. The challenge this presents to British foreign policy is immense, but Britain has punched above its weight precisely because of our leadership role in the international system.

As His Majesty’s Opposition, our role is to hold the Government to account, but also to give the strongest possible support where we can. I hope that we can work constructively, as our two parties have done hitherto. In opposition, we will continue to make the case that Britain must be a force for good, that it is outward-looking and global in perspective, that we stand up for internationalism and co-operation, that we stand against populism and isolationism, and that we stand with the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. I am very proud of the Conservative party’s record in government on all those fronts. We stood firmly behind Ukraine, and we worked day and night with international partners to maximise the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, while supporting negotiations to secure the release of the Israeli hostages. We produced a groundbreaking White Paper on international development, which drew in the support of all political parties in tackling global poverty in a complex geopolitical environment.

War in Gaza

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Lady refers to a number of early incidents, which have been condemned. She will know that, in respect of each of those incidents, the Government have said that we want an independent and credible investigation and transparent conclusions, so that we know why and how those acts took place.

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

The Minister has said that the policy has not changed, but the facts on the ground have. Ordering the evacuation of 100,000 people is not a small operation; it is big one. He knows that the clear test for suspending arms sales is a clear risk of a breach of humanitarian law, but he has told the House this afternoon that he has no assurances that that breach is impossible because he has not seen a plan. Can he tell the House what advice he has given the Department for Business and Trade, and when, about its legal obligation to suspend arms sales now? Will he lay that out for us this afternoon, before he gives evidence to the Select Committee on Business and Trade on 21 May?

[Mr Mitchell]

The position on arms sales and legal advice is clear, as the right hon. Gentleman will be aware. He knows that we always follow carefully the legal advice, although we do not publish it, and we always act in accordance with it. He will also know that, in the light of that legal advice, as the Foreign Secretary announced on 9 April, the UK position with regard to export licences remains unchanged.

Israel and Gaza

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

The right hon. Gentleman has put his finger specifically on the treatment of detainees. As he will be aware, the treatment of detainees is governed by international humanitarian law and the Geneva convention. He will have seen what the Foreign Secretary has said about the treatment of detainees, and Britain has consistently called for an inquiry, and for transparency in that inquiry, into any alleged abuses.

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

The Minister has laid great weight this afternoon on the legal and coded process that governs the export of arms, but a new international humanitarian law compliance assessment process cell has been created in his Department. Will he publish every assessment that that cell has made of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law, and will he tell the House whether the threshold has now been reached to review or cancel any extant open general export licence for arms sales?

Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend, the former Chair of the Defence Committee, is right to focus on that issue. I also spoke this morning to Sigrid Kaag, the humanitarian reconstruction co-ordinator for Gaza, and she made it clear to me that while we have zero tolerance of these dreadful things that are alleged to have been done, we cannot operate at zero risks. The politics of logistics and distribution are a nightmare in Gaza, as my right hon. Friend knows. We will look carefully at these reports, and we will suspend any future funding until we have them, but we recognise that the UNRWA assets are essential to delivering in Gaza.

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

The ICJ ruling is incredibly serious for all sides. Can the Minister tell us today whether it is His Majesty’s Government’s analysis that Israel is operating within the measures that have been set out and, crucially, what consequences there will be if there is no observance of the ICJ’s ruling? The Minister has told us for nearly 100 days now that we have been pressing for proportionate action in Gaza, but we have not got proportionate action in Gaza, so the question for the Minister must be: what are we now going to do differently to change behaviour on the ground?

[Mr Mitchell]

I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we need to do things differently. We have been pressing very hard for these changes to be made. When he was in the region, my noble Friend Lord Cameron tried to advance the various issues epitomised in the five-point plan, which we are trying to drive forward. The right hon. Gentleman asks me specifically about the judgment on international humanitarian law. As I have said to the House before, we know that Israel plans to act in accordance with international humanitarian law and has the ability to do so. Clearly, these things are looked at all the time, but the judgments that we have made, which I have set out to the House in the past, remain current today.

International Development White Paper

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend is right on that, and of course he was one of the 26 Conservative Members who voted not to cut the 0.7%. I hope that he will be energised by the alternative means we have found—the multipliers to ratchet in enormous amounts of money. He is right in what he says about the link between defence, development and diplomacy. When he gets a moment to read to read this White Paper, he will be enthused by the lines it is taking.

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

The right hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, knows that I admire much about the mission he has set out in this White Paper, but chapter 3 needed to say a lot more about the money. He could have said more about doubling the fraction of the special drawing rights we share, as Japan is doing, which would have provided an extra £4 billion of development assistance. He could have said more about using the money we get back from the European Investment Bank to invest in building a bigger World Bank in order to unlock $200 billion of concessional lending over the decade ahead. He could have said more about leading a global initiative to keep the interest rate on special drawing rights down so that the International Monetary Fund remains as lender of last resort, rather than China. Those are practical steps that we could work on together—otherwise we end up with all mission and no model, which will not help the world’s poorest.

[Mr Mitchell]

If the right hon. Gentleman reads with care the chapter to which he referred, he will see that it is one of the most brilliant chapters in it—that is my biased opinion. The reason for that is that we have in Washington an extraordinary team of young and brilliant officials who have enormous influence in the World Bank, and he is a considerable expert on this area. As for the multipliers and making sure that we sweat the balance sheets of these multilateral banks to ratchet in huge amounts of more money, he will see a great deal to please him. If these reforms are implemented, as I believe they will be, driven hard by Britain through the multilateral sector, we will see a vast increase in funding. As for what he says about the SDRs, using them creatively is something we are keen to do. He will recall that at the spring meetings the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that Britain would use its SDRs to the tune of £5.3 billion to elevate the two IMF funds that directly deal with poverty and international development.

Occupied Palestinian Territories: Humanitarian Situation

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

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

We are grateful to the Minister for his tireless work, but by his own analysis the aid is not getting through. I commend to him the motion passed by Birmingham City Council last night that calls for an immediate ceasefire binding on all sides, because it is the best way to save the hostages, get aid through, and let the war crimes inspectors do their work. I support that position. I do not think that he does, but could he tell us under what conditions the British Government would shift from a policy of supporting humanitarian pauses to a strategy of supporting an immediate ceasefire?

[Mr Mitchell]

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will explain to our friends on Birmingham City Council the reason the Government and indeed his own Front Bench take the view that they do about a ceasefire, but he is right that the critical thing at the moment is to focus on the humanitarian pauses, which are designed to get food to those who need it. Nothing is more important in this context than that.

Human Rights Protections: Palestinians

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Thursday 20th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I am trying to make a constructive speech, and I hope the hon. Lady will allow me to make my points in my own way. If she reads carefully what I have said in Hansard, I think she will find much to please her.

[Liam Byrne]

The Minister has just set out four sets of sins that the UK Government have protested about to the Government of Benjamin Netanyahu. He must therefore accept that our words are failing to deter egregious behaviour. When will he shift from words to deeds, to deter things from getting any worse?

[Mr Mitchell]

The right hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, underestimates the effect of today’s debate. What is said in the House of Commons will be read. He and I have focused on four particular areas, and what I am saying, and what has been said by Members on both sides of the House, speaks for itself.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) asked me to elaborate on what I said earlier, and he raised important points similar to those raised by the right hon. Members for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). Of course, some years ago and over a prolonged period, all four of us campaigned for the human rights of Shaker Aamer.

The Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority reaffirmed their joint readiness and commitment to work immediately to end unilateral measures for a period of three to six months. That includes an Israeli commitment to stop discussion of any new settlement units for four months, and to stop the authorisation of any outposts for six months. I hope that is a proper answer to the question.

The UK will always seek to advance the cause of Palestinian human rights in a manner that is fair and balanced, and that supports proportionate and fair international scrutiny of Israel.

I am conscious of the time, so I will draw my remarks to a close. I reiterate that the UK Government want to see the human rights of all Palestinians protected, as this is a vital step towards the creation of a sovereign, independent and viable Palestinian state, living in peace, security and side by side with a safe and secure Israel.

I was asked to give, without equivocation, our position on settlements. The UK’s position on settlements is absolutely clear: settlements are illegal. I was asked about recognition of the Palestinian state, and the UK will recognise a Palestinian state at a time when the Government believe this will best serve the objective of peace.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Commons Chamber

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

The global crisis of malnutrition threatens the lives of 200 million people. Will the Development Minister look to support my early-day motion 951, which seeks to welcome the Bridgetown agenda, which will transform the mission, the model and the money in the global finance development architecture? Now is not the time for half measures.

[Mr Mitchell]

The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that Government Ministers do not normally sign early-day motions, but in respect of his point about Bridgetown, there is no more important agenda around internationally. We need to ensure that we turn billions into trillions, as the rich world has promised repeatedly at recent conferences of the parties, and the Bridgetown agenda is in very large part the way we do that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. Any allegations are deeply concerning and must be thoroughly investigated. We raise concerns with both Governments, and we can do so because relations are so close and mutually beneficial.

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

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, to his place. Our ability to act as human rights defenders around the world would be much stronger if we collectively hit the G20 target of lending $100 billion of the special drawing rights issued last year. To date, the UK has committed to sharing only 20% of its special drawing rights. That fraction is much lower than France and China. What is he doing to get a grip of the Government achieving the aim of sharing a much higher proportion?

[Mr Mitchell]

The right hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, has raised with me privately the issue of SDRs. I agree that there is much more that the international community can do to use those SDRs for the benefit of the poorest people in the world, whom we wish to help. All I can say today is that those discussions with the Treasury are ongoing.

Strategy for International Development

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Commons Chamber

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

It is wonderful not to be on a four-minute time limit for a debate as important as this. I draw the House’s attention to my interests as set out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

The Foreign Secretary has inherited a complete mess on development, and I have great sympathy for her in trying to bring some order to things. We are, of course, still spending a very substantial sum on ODA as part of our development budget. However, that sum has reduced from 0.7% to 0.5%, and I want to say a word or two about that.

If someone was looking for the least good time to reduce this expenditure, they would definitely have chosen the date and the day upon which the Prime Minister made that decision. It was in the foothills of Britain chairing the G7 and at the time of an international global pandemic. Development leadership was really needed, and Britain was in a position to provide it. Britain was acknowledged around the world as an international development superpower and was really in a position to move the dial on these things. But what happened? The Prime Minister reduced ODA from 0.7% to 0.5%, at the very time when British leadership was really needed. Of course, the Prime Minister had also dismantled the Department for International Development, and I will come on to that in a moment, but the point I am seeking to make is that, at a time when Britain could have given real leadership—in one of the few areas where it is acknowledged, post empire, that we are a superpower and have real leadership and skills to impart—the money was reduced.

Following the pandemic, we see the scourge of famine affecting parts of our world such as the horn of Africa and all the way down the rest of the eastern side of Africa. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who is a former Secretary of State for International Development, will remember the acute leadership that DFID gave, leading other countries to stop famines and starvation in the horn of Africa. That skill has never been more needed than it is today, as we stand before a real threat to people’s lives and livelihoods, but Britain is not in a position to give that leadership.

I will make two further points on the money. I do not think I will carry the Chair of the Select Committee with me here, although I pay tribute to her leadership of her Committee and the very good work that the Committee is doing, but my advice to the Foreign Secretary, given the complete mess on Britain’s development policy, was to find the money from the multilateral programmes and not from the bilateral programmes. If she is forced to make that decision, a decision she should never have had to make, it is clearly right to take the money from the multilateral programmes, for the same reason that Bonnie and Clyde robbed banks: that is where the money is.

The big multilateral programmes such as the World Bank are where the money is, and the Foreign Secretary is therefore in my view right to take it from there, but that is not a decision she should have had to make.

[Liam Byrne]

rose—

[Mr Mitchell]

The effects of taking money from the World Bank are very severe, as I suspect my friend the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) is about to make clear.

[Liam Byrne]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, my neighbour, but I disagree with him on this point. With the International Monetary Fund, for example, where we have collectively issued $650 billion of special drawing rights, it would have been sensible for the UK to have stepped up and provided some leadership, sharing a much bigger fraction of the £19 billion we have been given. That would have encouraged the rest of the G7 to follow suit, and the G7 is about one third of the SDR issuance.

[Mr Mitchell]

On that point I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Although I do not want to put words into the Minister’s mouth, I suspect that the Foreign Office wanted to do precisely as the right hon. Gentleman has described, but the Treasury made it extremely difficult. My point is that the savage cuts made to the bilateral programmes, where food was literally removed from the plates of starving children in Yemen, show why, in the end, if the Foreign Secretary is forced to make such decisions, she is right to take the money out of the multilateral programme.

While I am on the subject, Britain has had a leadership role within the Global Fund, along with the Americans. After 2010, we made a number of substantive changes to make the Global Fund better. It is extremely good spending, for reasons that the Minister will be well aware of, and I urge the Government to ensure that we are as generous as possible on the replenishment of the fund, not least because the Americans have made it clear that they will be even more generous than they are already being if other countries put their money where their mouth is. There is a real incentive of getting far more bang for the British taxpayer’s buck in helping with the replenishment of the Global Fund.

My other point about the money, and again I hope the Chair of the Select Committee will forgive me for making it, is that I do not believe it is sensible to go in one year from 0.5% to 0.7%. The Chancellor has already committed to bringing back the 0.7% in two years’ time. The year before that, he should go to 0.6%. I say that for two reasons.

There is quite a lot of money involved, and although there is no doubt we could spend it well through the multilateral system, I do not think the British taxpayer would believe that such a big uplift in one year could guarantee that the money was really well spent, and I do not want to test their patience on this. I want to make sure that we can look the British taxpayer in the eye and say that, for every pound of their hard-earned money that we spend on international development, we are delivering 100p of value on the ground. I urge Treasury Ministers to consider bringing back the 0.6% next year and the 0.7% the year after, and not doing it in one lump, which I believe is the current plan.

0.7% Official Development Assistance Target

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

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.

Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[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.

Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [Lords]

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Thursday 11th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I will start where the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) finished, but before I do I congratulate both Front Benchers on, if I may use a sporting analogy, being thrown in the deep end in order to take the Bill through. They both spoke really well about the importance of the games and of the Bill. They also both look very fit and well following the dreadful lockdown, which has affected us all. I may be stretching a point, but perhaps we will see them both training in Sutton Park, which will play such an important part in the games.

The Bill provides an optimistic and encouraging moment because, as the hon. Lady said, it gives us a chance to look beyond the acute challenges that our country is facing at the moment and is genuinely something to look forward to. Boy, are we going to need it. Quite apart from the games, the sport, the fun and the excitement, all of which mean so much to so many people around the world, for us in the west midlands it is about the boost to our local economy, which we all know we must maximise. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create thousands of jobs, new homes and a massive improvement to the public realm.

At a local level in Sutton Coldfield, we are delighted that our historic park is going to come into active use. It is the place where King Henry VIII used to hunt and where soldiers undertook their training in trench warfare before heading off to the western front in the first world war, and it was also visited by Her Majesty the Queen and 30,000 others to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the scouting movement in 1957. In Sutton Coldfield, we will proudly host the triathlon for the games.

In a virtual meeting with the leadership team of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth games, I was pleased to hear about the progress. Nearly three quarters of a billion pounds is involved, and it will leave a tremendous legacy. Locally, I was pleased to hear from the leadership of the Commonwealth games committee that co-operation with Royal Sutton Coldfield Town Council under its leader Simon Ward has been going so well.

My constituents will hopefully benefit greatly from the improved infrastructure in our park, which I believe is the largest municipal park in Europe. It will improve the facilities to be used, including for future events. The gain is not just for businesses locally, but for jobs, community projects and volunteering. The games will require 10,000 local volunteers to welcome people from all over the Commonwealth, as well as to perform in the opening and closing ceremonies and to host athletes and teams at sporting facilities for training purposes. In Sutton Coldfield, we are deeply grateful for the opportunities and very excited by the prospects.

We need to ensure, as the Minister made clear, that all the different organisations involved play their part and work together from now on until the games open. I have worked extremely closely over the past three months with Birmingham City Council and, in particular, with the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). He and I co-chair a committee that tries to bring together all the local interests in order that we can tackle some of the problems that affect us across Birmingham.

I will leave others to underline the importance of the council’s role and local government, if I may. Instead, I want to refer to the role of the Mayor and the West Midlands Combined Authority, which is absolutely crucial both for the games and for the legacy. I have seen what the London Olympics have done for the east end of London. In particular, through the legacy that went on afterwards, including with the International Inspiration programme chaired by Lord Coe, I saw the huge ability of sport not only to energise children and improve education, also to help health, education and vaccination in the developing world. There is a huge importance to focusing on the legacy that will follow in all its many forms.

I salute the efforts of Andy Street, our Mayor. He was teased, I think, by the right hon. Gentleman earlier about the so-called black hole in the budget. I have said to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I have, through the miracles of modern technology, been able to elicit a response from the Mayor. He said this:

“There is no black hole. Every year, the West Midlands Combined Authority has lived within its budget—both in-year finances and also within investment ceilings. It has been well managed and for example at last week’s board the annual finance review was fully accepted. Citizens of the west midlands have not paid a penny for a Tory mayor, but over £2 billion of new Government cash has been brought into the region since Andy Street was elected. Yes, we are still short of funds for some investments, but they are steadily closing as further new investment comes in.”

Those are the other words of Andy Street, delivered through me to the House on this important point this afternoon.

[Liam Byrne]

That was a fantastic defence of the Mayor, and it only lacks the very best wishes conveyed to the Mayor of the West Midlands on the occasion of his birthday today. None the less, all I would ask by way of intervention is for the Mayor to speak to his finance director, because during the transition talks before the mayoral elections were cancelled, it was not my analysis that revealed the £1.2 billion black hole; it was the analysis of his finance director. Admittedly, it took her three weeks to crunch the numbers and produce that figure. This is a gentle ask, I suppose, that we work together to try to repair this rather large hole that the WMCA finance director herself has identified.

[Mr Mitchell]

It is extremely decent of the right hon. Gentleman, given his current position, to send his best wishes to the Mayor on his birthday. I am sure the Mayor will receive them, if not from one of us Conservative Members then over the airwaves. I reassure the right hon. Gentleman and the House that the Mayor of the West Midlands needs no lectures on financial success, financial ability or financial probity: he ran John Lewis, one of the most respected and most brilliant retail organisations in the country. I have no doubt whatsoever that we are all grateful for that experience, which he is sharing with the people of the west midlands through his mayoralty.

The Mayor has personally lobbied for £21.3 million to support the TTI—tourism trade and investment—programme to maximise the Commonwealth games opportunity, and that is, of course, in addition to the Mayor’s pivotal role in securing for Perry Barr, in respect of the games, £165 million of housing infrastructure fund money, which will help to regenerate a swathe of north Birmingham and leave a legacy of additional housing. All that was agreed in the March Budget this year, and last week, on 5 June, the West Midlands Combined Authority signed off a further £2.6 million as a regional contribution to the programme.

Given the current economic impact of covid-19, all that will have even greater significance, as it will enable us to raise the profile of the region’s businesses and to promote trade and work to secure jobs. In that respect, I particularly welcome the focus that the Mayor, the WMCA and all its partners have placed on using the opportunity of the games to accelerate and improve regional skills and employment opportunities. To help to achieve that, we have the new Commonwealth jobs and skills academy; the Mayor has put £1 million of the devolved adult education budget into funding technical skills for the development for the games.

The £100,000 skills hub in Perry Barr, in partnership with the main contractor, Lendlease, is very encouraging. We know that the construction industry in our region will need 50,000 more trained staff by 2030. The hub, funded by the WMCA, offers local people free skills training and a guaranteed job interview once a 20-day course has been completed. We hope the programme will help 4,600 young people and 2,600 unemployed people to gain skills, experience and then jobs. The games will also benefit, along with the rest of us in the region, from the wider transport investment programme that the Mayor is promoting, including the expansion of the metro network and investment in the rail network.

Having looked at severely local and regional aspects and aspirations, I wish to end by considering the international dimension, to which the hon. Member for Wirral South referred towards the end of her speech, and the Commonwealth itself. By ensuring that the world-class games succeed and bring pleasure to millions, perhaps billions, of people around the globe, Britain underlines the community of nations that is the Commonwealth. It is a north-south organisation, a family of countries co-operating in many different ways. At a time when narrow nationalism is rampant and the case for the international rules-based system is severely on the back foot, let us hope that the games will remind us all that we have much to gain from international co-operation and much to lose when the structures that sustain it breakdown.

Police Station Closures: Solihull and West Midlands

Debate between Liam Byrne and Andrew Mitchell

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Westminster Hall

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

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. Not so long ago, the Government invited us to believe that it was possible to cut crime and cut the police at the same time. Over the last couple of years the idiocy of that idea has been exposed for all to see. The truth is that crime—violent crime in particular—is now rising, and on the streets of my constituency there is real concern about the growth of dealing in drugs out on the streets, often in broad daylight. When people report that problem, the police simply do not have the resources to respond in the way that the community wants and expects.

In the west midlands, as I know from my constituency, we are blessed with some of the greatest police officers in the business. It was five years ago that I had to go and give thanks to PC Adam Koch, who had literally thrown himself onto a knifeman in one of our mosques in Ward End. He put his life on the line to protect the lives of the worshippers in that mosque. Today, we have great police officers such as Sergeant Hanif, who leads an extraordinary team across east Birmingham, cracking down on drugs and drug dealing, seizing the proceeds of crime and taking firearms off the streets at every opportunity. The relationship of trust that he has built with the community has transformed the amount of intelligence coming in to the police and the effectiveness of the police in response.

What great police officers such as Sergeant Hanif and PC Adam Koch need is a Government who are on their side, rather than a Government who are determined to cut their service to ribbons. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) so eloquently put it, West Midlands police is now the smallest it has been since it was created in 1974. It has suffered real-terms cuts of something like £145 million. The idea that somehow different decisions on the precept could have corrected a cut on that scale is frankly fanciful. Given the rise in crime that we have in the west midlands, and the fact that we are one of the most dangerous hotspots for counter-terrorism policing in the country, it beggars belief when we put that risk of harm alongside the cuts we have had, which are so different from the financial settlements that other police forces have enjoyed.

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

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Liam Byrne]

I will happily give way; perhaps my close neighbour can tell me how it is that Hampshire can enjoy a different settlement from the West Midlands police force when we have a threat assessment that is so very different.

[Mr Mitchell]

I just want to be clear: the right hon. Gentleman refers, quite rightly, to the fact that the west midlands is a hotspot for some of the specialist terror policing, but will he also acknowledge that the Government have, quite separately, given significant increases of funds for that very purpose?

[Liam Byrne]

There has been a provision for counter-terrorism policing, but, as the right hon. Gentleman knows better than I do, neighbourhood policing is the frontline of the fight against terrorism in this country. The stronger the frontline, the safer we are. In the west midlands, our frontline is being cut to shreds.