Liam Byrne MP: speeches

Speeches

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I am incredibly grateful to the Father of the House for giving way, which is characteristically generous. I think we would both agree that his inspiration and mentor, Nigel Lawson, was not a hoary old socialist, but, of course, he was the one who equalised the top rate of tax and the rate of capital gains, and I did not see people fleeing the country back then.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  We aimed to get the right balance between spending restraint, budget rises, growth and time. Balancing those four ingredients was at the heart of any Budget judgment, and our judgment would have halved the deficit within four years and seen debt falling by 2016. Our obsession was to avoid the double-dip recession that had been experienced in Japan and to ensure we escaped the perils of widening inequality that we had seen in the United States. Mr Osborne chose a different path, and he was supported by the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), to whom it is my pleasure to give way.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Correct. In a way, that is the point that I am gently trying to make to the House, with a very brief and, everyone will be pleased to hear, soon-to-conclude lesson in the fiscal consolidation of the last 14 years. Austerity, a bungled Brexit and chaos left us with a growth rate that fell from an average of 3% in the Labour years down to 1.6% over the last 14 years. We had tax forecasts that failed time and time and time and time again; living standards that simply did not rise in the last Parliament; productivity growth that collapsed from about 2% a year to about 0.5% a year; inequality that soared; and, as I have just rehearsed, debt that multiplied to an extraordinary £2.7 trillion. In the old days, we used to have debates about whether the roof had been fixed while the sun was shining. The reality is that for the last 14 years, the Conservative party has been trying to patch the roof by ripping out the foundations of our economy. That approach has drawn to a close today. We have only got through the last 14 years because of the ingenuity, fortitude, kindness and compassion of the people we represent. Those people deserve a better approach and that is what they got from the Chancellor today. We have an approach that Alistair Darling would have well appreciated: a Budget balanced not simply in the numbers, but in the balance of interests. If we look at the numbers in the Red Book, we can see the guts of that different approach. Everybody knows—we might as well be honest in the House today—that the original sin of the British economy is a failure in the investment rate. Over the last 14 years, the approach to trying to stimulate development has relied on tax cut after tax cut after tax cut after tax cut. Today, the Chancellor has ended the insanity of trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. The capital investment delivered by this Budget will see £104 billion extra being surged into the economy. The Chancellor was absolutely right. Last week, at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, we heard a clear message from the IMF that unless we raise the fixed rate of investment in our economy, we are not going to improve living standards or the growth rate, and we are not going to pay down the debt, so the Chancellor’s approach is extremely welcome. The Budget forecast shows that over the forecast period, we will now see the rate of fixed investment increase in our economy by between 6% and 7%. That is still probably not enough to catch up with our competitors, but it is a hell of a good start and, crucially, it is a departure from the failed economic philosophy for stimulating investment of the last 14 years. After 14 years of failure, it was time to try something new, and that is what the Chancellor has given us today. That allows us to strike a new bargain with business. We can say to the business community, “Look, we will put £104 billion extra of capital investment into the economy. We will make sure you have the roads, the railway systems and the digital infrastructure that you need for your markets to function. We will make sure you have a workforce that is actually healthy and well, fit for work and well-trained. We will make sure there is investment in the skills you need in your business, and we will make sure your workers stand a hope in hell of getting a home somewhere near their work. We will make sure there is investment in research and development.” Why? Because if we put all of that together, we will have the greatest entrepreneurs in the world. Our entrepreneurs have been making history by inventing the future since the age of the industrial revolution, but they need good people, good ideas and access to capital markets, which they do not have today. This Budget begins to make that available.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Let us be really clear about what has been bequeathed to this Government. The right hon. Gentleman is right that back in 2010, at the height of the financial crash, the deficit went up. What happens in a financial crash is that the economy has a heart attack: spending continues, because to cut spending would be to deepen a recession and turn it into a depression, tax receipts fall off a cliff, and the role of Government is to sustain a country through that kind of crisis. The deficit rose to £154.4 billion, yet today how much interest do we pay on the debt we have been bequeathed? We pay £104 billion in interest alone, which is almost the entirety of the deficit we had back in 2010. It is important for the House to recognise that that happened because Mr Osborne chose a balance that was different. He chose to load his austerity programme on public spending cuts. Actually, he eventually arrived at the same settlement that Labour proposed in 2010, but he took four or five years to get there and he put the economy into recession. If memory serves me correctly, he blamed it on some light snow. That austerity programme was followed by a Brexit that was bungled, and then the chaos of the former Prime Minister.

• 29 Oct 2024 · Israel: UNRWA Ban · Hansard source

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  I utterly condemn this decision by the Israeli Parliament. Tens of thousands of people have died as a result of Israeli firepower, and now thousands more will die as a result of an Israeli-induced famine unless the world acts. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that if this decision is put into effect, it will be a breach of international humanitarian law? A track record of honouring international law is required if we are to keep arms export licences open.

• 17 Oct 2024 · International Investment Summit · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 17 Oct 2024 · International Investment Summit · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman gives way with characteristic generosity. The truth is that the International Monetary Fund forecast growth for this year at about 0.5%, that families were about £1,200 worse off on average at the last election than in 2019, and that since 2010 the national debt has more than doubled, to £2.3 trillion. I suggest that those three metrics represent not a good inheritance, but a bad one.

• 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?