Liam Byrne MP: speeches

Speeches

• 17 Oct 2024 · International Investment Summit · Hansard source

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  I, too, congratulate the Government on an extraordinary achievement in securing £63 billion-worth of investment, which is a tremendous vote of confidence not only in this Government but in this country. My hon. Friend is right to say that a big part of this is the stability dividend, but she is also right to say that resetting our relationship with our closest neighbours in Europe must also be a big source of appeal. Did she hear that feedback at the investment summit?

• 11 Sept 2024 · Port Talbot Transition Project · Hansard source

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  I am not yet Chair of the Committee, Mr Speaker, but fingers crossed. I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement. I hope the whole House will recognise that what he has brought us today is not a set of sound bites but a strategy. In the long term, that strategy will benefit from a stronger cross-party consensus, so I hope that it can be the subject of a future Select Committee inquiry. The Secretary of State puts his finger on the key issue: to safeguard the future of the steel industry, we need to de-risk the demand for steel in this country. What reassurance can he give the House about how we will use procurement and, crucially, the creation of a bigger offshore wind industry in this country to drive demand that will keep the furnaces going at Port Talbot and elsewhere? This country pioneered steelmaking; now we need to reinvent its future.

• 9 Sept 2024 · Post Office Horizon: Redress · Hansard source

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  I add my congratulations to Sir Alan Bates and Lady Suzanne on what looked like a very happy day. I welcome what the Secretary of State has set out for the House this afternoon. When our Select Committee reported back in March, we said that trust in the Post Office was fundamentally broken and that the appeals scheme needed to be independent. This is an important step in that direction, but sub-postmasters have told me this morning that there is still a problem with the time it takes to get offers back when an offer is contested. The claimant’s lawyers have a fixed amount of time to put in a claim; when that claim is contested, it is taking far too long for Addleshaws, in particular, to come back and provide a second offer. What comfort can sub-postmasters take from the Secretary of State’s announcement today? This whole House agrees that justice delayed is justice denied.

• 5 Sept 2024 · UK Steel Manufacturing · Hansard source

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  President Biden has just vetoed the foreign acquisition of US Steel, because he understands that it is vital to have sovereign capability in ensuring the manufacture of virgin steel. The reality is that at the end of the last Parliament we were unable to establish clarity around that objective from the last Government. Can the Minister tell the House today whether it is the policy of this Government to seek to ensure that this country carries on with its ability to make virgin steel?

• 5 Sept 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  What thought has the Secretary of State given to attending the Williams inquiry? The Post Office scandal is unfinished business. It is now vital that we not only learn the lessons, but accelerate redress for the innocent and, crucially, punish the guilty fast.

• 2 Sept 2024 · Council Funding · Hansard source

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  Council funding in Birmingham is inadequate because of a set of sadistic directions based on speculative estimates of equal pay liabilities. No one believes those estimates, not even the lead commissioner, so will the Minister revisit those directions quickly and meet with Birmingham MPs to help us to get them right?

• 30 Jul 2024 · Post Office Horizon · Hansard source

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  I welcome the answer provided by my hon. Friend. He will remember that, when the Select Committee reported just four or five months ago, we noted that 80% of the budget for redress had not been paid out. We suggested to the now shadow Secretary of State a number of measures to put into the Bill to speed up the process. Those amendments were rejected. Can the Minister now assure us that he has a grip on this and that we will now begin to see cheques in the post much faster?

• 22 Jul 2024 · NATO and European Political Community Meetings · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the Prime Minister on his flying start on the world stage, and on his determination to build not simply a rules-based order, but a rights-based order rooted in what Churchill called the great charter and we call the European convention on human rights. We want its freedoms and liberties to be enjoyed by the people of Ukraine, but that will take victory over Russia. It will need more than courage; it will need resources. Did he discuss with international colleagues the need not simply to freeze Russian assets, but to seize and put them to work in defeating once and for all the tyranny of President Putin?

• 22 Jul 2024 · Economy, Welfare and Public Services · Hansard source

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  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.

• 18 Jul 2024 · Foreign Affairs and Defence · Hansard source

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  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?