High Speed 2

Debate between Liam Byrne and Stewart Hosie

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[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.

UK Economy

Debate between Liam Byrne and Stewart Hosie

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie]

Indeed, and I will come to the recovery in certain areas in just a moment. The hon. Gentleman is right when it comes to the FTSE 100, but let me come to all the other indices, and we will see the real damage and how it is being played out.

It was not simply stock prices that were affected. Sterling was trading at $1.45 before the referendum. The value of the pound against the dollar fell by almost 8% on Friday the 24th—almost twice the fall in 1992, when the UK was forced out of the exchange rate mechanism on Black Wednesday.

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

Of course the FTSE 100 is going to rebound a bit, because the vast majority of the business of FTSE 100 stocks is outside the United Kingdom. If we look at indices such as the FTSE 250, which is much more domestically exposed, we see that the fall has been catastrophic.

[Stewart Hosie]

That is absolutely correct. The FTSE 250 is far more exposed to the domestic market. Whether the index moves up or down slightly at any given time, the key point is that the exposure to the UK market and the lack of confidence at the moment are precisely what is driving that uncertainty.

Finance Bill

Debate between Liam Byrne and Stewart Hosie

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Byrne]

Let us come to that point directly. If we want to understand the difference between our parties, we need only compare the recession that we have been through in the past two years with the one presided over by the Conservative party. Unemployment in this recession is half what it was during the recession of the 1990s. Furthermore, repossessions are 40% lower and company insolvencies are running at about a third of the rate reached in the 1990s recession. We Labour Members believe that it is right to act to protect people’s jobs and homes and the firms that they work in.

[Stewart Hosie]

Much as I like the shadow Chief Secretary and much as he is doing a sterling job in attacking this new nasty Con-Dem Government, a wee bit of revisionism is going on here. The UK did not lead the way. The fiscal stimulus packages in the United States, France, Japan and even Germany predated the United Kingdom’s. If there were a bit more reality in this, there would be a lot more credibility to the attacks that the right hon. Gentleman is trying to level at the new Government.

[Mr Byrne]

It would be churlish of the hon. Gentleman not to acknowledge the role that the Labour Government played in bringing the G20 to London and agreeing a £1.1 trillion package of support, as well as the measures on international banking reform. All that ensured that whereas fairly low levels of growth in world trade and world economic improvement were projected last year, we are now looking at a significantly better picture. Surely he will acknowledge that.

[Stewart Hosie]

I supported fiscal stimulus; I still support fiscal stimulus when it is necessary. The question is not what may or may not have been spun at a G20 meeting, but why the Labour Government left the UK as one of only two G20 countries without a fiscal stimulus package in 2010. I welcome banking regulation, but given that Northern Rock began to collapse in the late summer of 2007, why will the real new banking regulation that we need still not be in place until the autumn of 2012?

[Mr Byrne]

I do not know what figures the hon. Gentleman is looking at, but in the March Budget the fiscal stimulus provided by automatic stabilisers was about 4.4% of GDP. The idea that a fiscal stimulus was not sustained into 2010 is fantasy.

Finance Bill

Debate between Liam Byrne and Stewart Hosie

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie]

Although the right hon. Gentleman’s excoriating attack on the coalition Government is pretty accurate so far, will he confirm that we had a balance of trade deficit in goods last year of some £82 billion, that Labour lost 1 million manufacturing jobs before the recession and that the impact on GDP growth was to suppress it every year since 2000? Just for the sake of accuracy, will he confirm that those figures are right?

[Mr Byrne]

I have not brought those figures with me to the Chamber, but the hon. Gentleman will know that exports from this country have grown strongly over past years. That is precisely why, as we came through the crash, we said that we needed to rebalance our economy, which is why we fought so hard for investment in companies such as Sheffield Forgemasters and why we said that we needed new investment in manufacturing—all investment that has now been cut back.

[Stewart Hosie]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Byrne]

No, I am going to make another important point, on which the hon. Gentleman might want to comment. The question of business investment is vital—it relates to the argument at the heart of the Budget—and I hope that we will have a good debate on it this afternoon. Business investment is the subject of clause 1, which offers, I am afraid to say, no salvation through investment allowances, which drive up investment and which manufacturers say make the world of difference. This is what the senior economist of the Engineering Employers Federation had to say about investment allowances:

“For smaller companies…there will be cashflow consequences …that will hurt their ability to reinvest in their own competitiveness.”

That is because the Government have withdrawn such allowances.

What, then, of corporation tax? We were promised in the Budget a four-year plan to bring down the rate of corporation tax to 24%, but clause 1 offers us just a one-year plan. We do not know whether that is a wheeze to avoid an unhelpful valuation of deferred tax assets—the Chief Secretary to the Treasury was silent on that point—but is it not more likely that the Treasury is simply hedging its bets? The Government promised us certainty on corporation tax, and all we have got is more risk. The truth is that business is not going to bet on a one-year deal when this country’s recovery demands a longer-term planning horizon. The Chancellor might be a gambler, but Britain’s business community is not.