Liam Byrne MP: speeches

Speeches

• 9 Sept 2026 · Jaguar Land Rover: Redundancies · Hansard source

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  The loss of 4,000 jobs at Jaguar Land Rover is a body blow for workers, families and communities across the west midlands, so I commend Richard Parker, the Mayor of the West Midlands, for moving quickly on Monday to put £500,000 on the table to help ensure that everybody gets back to work. Will the Minister pledge that if more is needed he will act to back the mayor in getting everybody back to work? More broadly, will the Minister reiterate the pledges he made yesterday in front of the Select Committee to bring down costs—especially energy costs—and leave his mind open to the necessity of implementing tariffs on China, which is exporting cars that are over-subsidised? At the end of the day, everybody in the House believes in competition, but it needs to be fair competition.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Israel and Palestine · Hansard source

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  I wholeheartedly welcome this well-rounded statement from the Foreign Secretary, and put on record my thanks to the new Prime Minister for the hard yards that I know he has put in over recent days and weeks. It is not enough to recognise the state of Palestine and then stand idly by while illegal settlers destroy the Palestinian state and the Palestinian economy. I have to correct the shadow Foreign Secretary: he did not give an accurate representation of the correspondence between Ministers and my Committee. But when Ministers came before us on 15 July, they did tell us that they lacked the legal power to fully implement the proposals that the Foreign Secretary has made today. Can he confirm to the House that he is taking on new legal powers in order to implement the full ban that he is proposing on goods, services and investment? That is what is needed to give the measures full effect, full force and real teeth, and we know that nothing less will do.

• 2 Sept 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I offer my warmest congratulations to her on her appointment to the role; she will be a brilliant Minister. She will know that many in this House welcome the update to the legislation proposed by Ministers to ban cryptoassets, but she will also know that the measures that have been proposed by His Majesty’s Government do not go far enough. In particular, they still permit money to be routed through crypto exchanges, turned into fiat and then donated on. Secondly, they still permit donations through things like memecoins. Will she look at the measures in new clause 34, which is supported by 51 Members of this House, so that over the passage of this Bill through this House and the other place, we can ensure that it is as tight and as tough as possible?

• 2 Sept 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

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  Let me start with a word of thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), who is not in her place, who said quite rightly that an awful lot has changed since the Bill was first introduced to this House. Indeed, a lot has been revealed over the course of the summer. In fact, reporting in The Times , The Sunday Times , the Financial Times , The Guardian and Byline Times has now revealed 37 different questions around the finances of the Reform party, but no doubt we will find there is an innocent explanation for all of it. No doubt there is an innocent explanation for why Mr George Cottrell passed $2 million through US-based crypto exchanges just a day or two before he moved the money to his mother, who then went on to make big donations to Reform. No doubt we will learn that Mr Cottrell was in fact on the electoral register when that money was passed. No doubt we will discover that his mother, Fiona Cottrell, declared and did not disguise the fact that the money had ultimately come from her son. No doubt there will be an innocent explanation for why loans to Reform through Britain Means Business were reclassified as donations, even though the party treasurer was not told about that. No doubt there will be an innocent explanation for why the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), who—surprise, surprise—is not in his place, did not declare a £5 million donation before he was elected to this place and went off to lobby the Governor of the Bank of England on behalf of his cryptocurrency allies. No doubt it is a complete coincidence that the man who has given Reform half of its fortune—more than £25 million—made his fortune in the crypto industry. No doubt there is an innocent explanation for all of that. I very much hope that absolutely no offences have been committed. No doubt there is an innocent explanation for all of it—and no doubt it will stink to high heaven to the British public. I very much hope that all of that has been above the law, but that is not the test for political finance regulation in this country. It is not enough to be above the law; conduct must be above suspicion. And right now, the conduct of political finance in this country is not above suspicion. That is why the measures in this Bill are needed, and that is why it will be madness if we do not use this Bill to once and for all eliminate not just cryptocurrency donations, but the cryptocurrency system from British politics. I welcome the moves that the Minister has made and the commitment she has made at the Dispatch Box this afternoon to continue to listen to the debate and ensure that the rules under the Bill are as tight as possible. However, the revelations in the newspapers over the summer underline why we must be as hard and as tough as possible. The truth is that right now, the amendments that the Government have tabled to the Bill are full of holes. Under those rules, it would still be possible to move money through digital tokens; it would still be possible to move money through memecoins like the $BRITAIN token; and it would still be possible to aggregate it, convert it into conventional currency and then donate it, for example, to Restore Britain. We know that this is not some speculative feature of the system. We know that donations that have gone to Reform have been routed through cryptocurrency exchanges like Radom. Now, I have nothing against Radom; it is clearly wholly committed to transparency, which is why it has moved its domicile from Poland to the Cook Islands—that beacon of transparency. With risks like that multiplying, why on earth would we leave loopholes open? The effect of new clause 34 would be to ban off-ramping, ban new forms of digital currency transactions and ban memecoins, which are exactly the kind of measures that Ministers now need to bring forward. If we want to take the crypto system out of political finance, this is what we need to do. The final point I want to make is about a larger hole in the Bill, which I hope we will square up to over the course of this debate. There are now Members of this House who are making more out of ad share revenue than they are from their salary. If Elon Musk decided to write a cheque to a political party, under the terms of this Bill it would be outlawed. If he decided to retweet something and generate tens of thousands of pounds in ad share revenue, it would be allowed. We have got to recognise that over the last five years £200 million has been assembled to build a media political complex on behalf of a party that thinks there is a problem with foreigners but not with foreign money. Frankly, it is time that we eliminated that kind of politics, argument and system from our country.

• 14 Jul 2026 · UK-Switzerland Enhanced Free Trade Agreement · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the Minister on deal No. 6. A very warm thanks, on behalf of the Committee, to the hard-working officials in the Department for Business and Trade and to James Squire and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office team on the ground in Berne. We very much look forward to scrutinising the deal on behalf of Parliament, with a debate that will no doubt be triggered in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act period. The Minister will know, though, that there has already been some controversy this morning, about which he could perhaps inform the House. This is, I think, the first free trade agreement to lock in exclusivity arrangements around intellectual property for pharmaceuticals. That is a precedent that the House should debate. Will he take this opportunity to put our minds at rest that the deal that he is commending to us today will not lead to higher NHS prices in future, and will not impair access to generic medicines?

• 9 Jul 2026 · NATO Summit · Hansard source

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  I very much welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement. The alliance is growing stronger by the week, but it is clear now that national security rests on economic security. Can she update the House on what conversations she had about how the allies will come together to build and enlarge an arsenal of democracy for the 21st century, whereby we collaborate on defence industrial policy and defence finance strategy on a wholly new scale that is fit for this new age of insecurity?

• 6 Jul 2026 · Foreign Interference in UK Politics · Hansard source

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  I welcome much of the Minister’s statement, but I am disappointed that there is not an outright ban on cryptocurrency donations. I cannot foresee us ever arriving at a place where the regulation is robust enough that it would be safe for cryptocurrency donations to proceed, so I would like to understand why the Minister is not proceeding with an outright ban. The point about having safeguards on the algorithmic amplification of hate during election campaigns is crucial. That affords certain candidates and certain parties millions of pounds in free publicity, and it affords them an income stream from social media platforms. Why are we not banning that now?