Business of the House

Debate between Liam Byrne and Penny Mordaunt

Thursday 25th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am very sorry to hear that. This is clearly an incredibly pressing matter. If my hon. Friend gives me further details after business questions, I shall raise it immediately with the Foreign Office and ensure that he is able to speak to the people he needs to speak to in order to do his duty by his constituents.

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

Will the Leader of the House advise me on how we can bring Ministers to the House to account for their decisions on arms export licences? As she knows, the Select Committee on Business and Trade assumed responsibility for the oversight of arms export licences in January. At the beginning of April, an important legal judgment was issued by the International Court of Justice. We therefore held our first hearing on licensing arms exports to Israel yesterday. We gave Ministers 20 days’ notice to attend, together with detailed questions in correspondence. I am grateful to the Deputy Foreign Secretary for his apology to me yesterday for the Foreign Office not fielding a Minister. I have had no such correspondence or contact from the Department for Business and Trade.

This is not acceptable. Ministers are politically accountable to Parliament. This is a matter of extreme interest to the House, and it is part of Ministers’ legal responsibility that they are politically accountable. Will the right hon. Lady advise me on what steps she can take next week to ensure that a Minister answers for the judgments the Government have made?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman takes those new responsibilities very seriously. As he knows, both Departments have made it clear that they are perfectly happy to attend and be scrutinised in respect of those decisions and to answer questions on the Government’s position. Twenty days’ notice sounds like a long time, but he will understand that the Ministers in question may have travel obligations and might therefore have been unable to make the specific date. I know that he knew last Friday that they would not be able to attend the session that took place yesterday. I also know that the Deputy Foreign Secretary spoke to him and, I hope, reassured the right hon. Gentleman of his intention to field a Minister for his Committee. Even though I am not telling the right hon. Gentleman anything he does not already know, I hope that reassures him that Ministers do intend to attend. I am very sure that no stunts such as those that took place yesterday will be required to get them to do so.

Business of the House

Debate between Liam Byrne and Penny Mordaunt

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend again for his work to ensure that developments in his constituency are matched by investment in infrastructure and services, whether that is healthcare, which he has campaigned on enormously, or transport, which he has raised again today. I will ensure that the Secretary of State for Transport has heard what my hon. Friend has said, and he can raise it with him directly on 21 March. I congratulate my hon. Friend, because this is an important aspect of ensuring that, as developments progress, his community gets the services it needs.

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

The greater the scandal, the greater obligation on us to act with speed and clarity to provide remedies. Notwithstanding yesterday’s welcome news on the Horizon scandal Bill, we have not acted fast enough, and now we are not acting with enough clarity, because the Department for Business and Trade is more than a fortnight late in providing the explanatory memorandum for its supplementary estimate. No other Department has missed the deadline; only the Department for Business and Trade. We cannot see where the budget might lie for remedies and redress for the GLO—group litigation order—litigants, whose heroic tenacity actually allowed us to overturn the convictions that the Bill proposes. Will the Leader of the House join me in urging the Department to provide that explanatory memorandum quickly and, if not, may we have a debate in Government time to get to the bottom of what on earth is going on?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising that matter. I will certainly ensure that the Department has heard what he has said and that the House is presented with papers in good time to be able to scrutinise the legislation. He will know the complex issues that surround the Bill and the work that has gone on to ensure that the Bill was brought before the House in the best form possible to make swift passage through the House. There is concurrent activity to ensure that what the Bill enables is ready to be implemented once it leaves this House and gains Royal Assent. He raises an important matter. I will ensure that the Department has heard what he has said.

Business of the House

Debate between Liam Byrne and Penny Mordaunt

Thursday 19th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for all the work she is doing to carry on Sir David’s legacy, particularly with the wonderful Music Man project, with which so many Members will be familiar. It goes from strength to strength, and it is wonderful to see how it has developed.

My hon. Friend also deserves credit for the work she has done to raise awareness of the importance of attending screening. We know that early detection hugely increases the chances of defeating cancer, which is why we have invested so much in new diagnostic centres but, of course, people need to be encouraged to attend.

I thank my hon. Friend for the event she put on earlier this week. It is disappointing that props are not allowed in the Chamber, as I understand the event was on knitted bosom day, and there were knitted bosoms available for Members to wear. It is a shame that my hon. Friend was prevented from wearing them in the Chamber today.

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

I join the Leader of the House in her utter condemnation of Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel. It was not what Hannah Arendt once called “the banality of evil”; it was the calculation of evil. That is why it is right that we defend Israel’s right to self-defence.

Like the shadow Leader of the House and colleagues across the House, I am acutely concerned that 2.2 million Palestinians now face humanitarian disaster. The Prime Minister was right to say in his statement:

“We must ensure that humanitarian support urgently reaches civilians in Gaza.”—[Official Report, 16 October 2023; Vol. 738, c. 24.]

What is the best way for us to debate the strategy next week? It seems to many of us in this House that an urgent, negotiated cessation of hostilities, binding on all sides, will be required to ensure that we meet the Prime Minister’s objective. We know that the United States and Egypt are working hard to secure that, so it would be good for us to understand how the UK Government are helping to achieve that objective.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising this very important matter, and I congratulate him on his recent election as Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

I repeat what I said earlier: it is incredibly difficult to negotiate a ceasefire with a terrorist organisation but, of course, we want to ensure that innocent civilians are protected and are given the support they need. The UK has a vital role to play in that, not just through diplomatic channels, but through the expertise that Government and our non-governmental organisations have. I am very conscious of the fact that Parliament is about to be prorogued and that Members will want to be kept informed when the House is not sitting, and I shall certainly bear that in mind. He will know how to apply for a debate in the usual way and that Ministers will want to keep the House informed.

Business of the House

Debate between Liam Byrne and Penny Mordaunt

Thursday 16th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

This is a serious matter and I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising it and for all the work that the all-party group is doing. Many Departments will touch on this issue, but primarily it is about healthcare. If the sentiments that sit behind his question are to be fulfilled, it should remain that Department that is in the driving seat on this policy.

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

Can we have a debate in Government time on the activities of short-selling attack group Viceroy Research and its leader Fraser Perring? I am told that it is working hand in glove with Boatman Capital, which launched the short-selling attack on Babcock International while it was overhauling our nuclear submarines. Mr Perring is a not infrequent visitor to Moscow, and is now targeting Home REIT, which provides homelessness services, including to homeless veterans. We must ensure that short-selling groups are not another weapon in Putin’s arsenal. Where there are links between short-selling attack groups and the Kremlin, we need to know.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question on a very important matter. I will ensure that the Security Minister has heard his concerns. He is overseeing the strengthening of the architecture in government to identify what is going on behind particular deals. I do not have details of the case that the right hon. Gentleman raises, but he will know that in recent years we have strengthened capacity in government to spot what is going on and to ensure that everyone is wide-eyed about it. I will raise this case with the Security Minister.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Liam Byrne and Penny Mordaunt

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

No. Given the hon. Gentleman’s support for a programme motion that has given me six minutes to respond to a Bill that takes hundreds of pounds off thousands of his constituents, he will forgive me for carrying on.

Some 206,000 disabled people will be £62 a year worse off as a result of this Bill. The Government have been caught red-handed trying to keep the truth from this House.

I am glad that today we have had an extensive debate on child poverty, because we were told nothing about how many children and how many working parents would be hurt by this Bill. Only in the past couple of weeks has the truth finally emerged. I want to put on record Labour Members’ gratitude to the Child Poverty Action Group for ruthlessly exposing the impact of the Bill and the cumulative impact of other measures.

The Secretary of State spent some time casting doubt on the strategy for tackling child poverty, which I seem to remember he voted for when he supported the Child Poverty Act 2010. On 24 November 2004, the Prime Minister said:

“I believe that poverty is an economic waste and a moral disgrace. In the past, we used to think of poverty only in absolute terms… That’s not enough. We need to think of poverty in relative terms.”

The Chancellor was even blunter when he said to the News of the World: “We’re all in this together. I’m not going to balance the Budget on the backs of the poor.” That encouraged the Secretary of State to wade in on “Sky News” in June 2010, when he said that “you have” to make savings

“but protect the poorest and that’s my absolute priority.”

How hollow those words ring tonight.

The truth is now before us: 200,000 children will be pushed into poverty as a result of this Bill. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, the measures in this Bill, alongside other measures that have been introduced, mean that 1 million children will be pushed into poverty by this Government. That will be the Secretary of State’s legacy. He spent all those years trying to persuade us that the Conservative party was finally a party that cared about poverty, and now, because the Chancellor needed a new year’s dividing line on welfare, he is accountable for putting 1 million children into poverty. It is well and truly clear that the nasty party is back.

This is about not just children but their mothers. A fortnight ago, my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) published a list of 106 battle- ground constituencies. In those seats, there are 150,000 mothers who will be hurt by this Bill, losing £180 a year. In fact, as a result of measures put through by this Government, they are now losing £1,400, and tonight Members on the Treasury Bench voted to allow that to continue. They were given the chance to protect those 150,000 mothers and they chose not to. Over the next few months, we will be getting in touch with mothers in those constituencies and making it very clear that their Member of Parliament had a chance to protect their maternity pay and chose not to. Right now, the price of children’s clothing is rising by 4.5% and food prices are rising by 3.6%. Working mothers going on to statutory maternity pay are losing £180 a year at a time when someone on £1 million a year is getting a £2,000 tax cut. How are Government Members going to justify that to people in their constituencies?

[Penny Mordaunt]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?