King’s Speech

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

I was hoping I could agree with something there, but I am not sure I can, so I have decided to say only that I very much hope that the noble Lord will at least find something in my speech he can agree with.

I want to address the fact that we are becoming a poor relation among advanced countries, and I will say something about how we can improve Britain’s economic performance. But, rather than make a lot of detailed suggestions, I will make only one substantive point: we have been here before several times, and we got out of the mess. We were here, in a way, in 1945, and we were certainly here in the late 1970s—actually with worse problems—and we found answers: Britain’s economic performance improved dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s.

In order to find the answers for the 2020s, a number of conditions need to be met. First, the penny needs to drop among the political and bureaucratic establishment, and among the wider public, that the UK is in very serious difficulties. Secondly, we need a workable recovery plan, and considerable intellectual energy needs to be deployed by politicians to find some plausible answers to the problems. That will occur only once the penny has dropped. Thirdly, politicians will need to have enough courage to implement some pretty radical policies and to secure at least acquiescence to them from the public. None of those conditions is currently being met.

Such evidence as can be found comparing the mood of the 1970s with now suggests that, although the public are depressed about the desultory economic performance of the UK and are worried about the cost of living crisis, none of that is at 1970s proportions at the moment. The recent reversals of welfare reform by the Government tell us something about the lack of courage at the top—points being made openly now by other parts of the Labour leadership.

Labour’s manifesto scarcely amounted to a bold recovery plan. I note that Wes Streeting recently told Lord Mandelson in a WhatsApp message, which has been leaked, that the Labour Party had

“no growth strategy at all”.

I do not know whether that will become more relevant in the weeks ahead. On that last point, if people think I am making a party-political point, I say that this Administration is only as short of intellectual capital as those of the catastrophically short-termist Administrations of the Cameron and Johnson years. They have a lot to answer for.

But the rot set in earlier. Successive Governments—Conservative, coalition and Labour—have all been managing the legacy of the Brown inheritance, and far more than is generally appreciated. What do I mean by that? I mean that policy was built, or became built, around the notion that growth could be stimulated by technocratic redirection of both public and private investment by the Government and by government incentives, with the benefit of independently administered regulation of very large parts of the economy. This was, and I think it still is, believed by many to leave plenty of scope for politicians to focus on redistributive objectives. All that should take place within a relatively permissive public expenditure framework, and while tolerating the complexity that comes with deploying and extending a tax system deeper and deeper into fulfilling redistributive goals. The Cameron-led Government brought public expenditure back under control, but for the most part it failed to challenge most of the rest of that consensus.

So what might signal a break with the consensus? The main challenges are coming from the Greens and Reform. They are right to rail against the new economic establishment that now clusters around that consensus, but the solutions that they are coming forward with, such as they are, are incoherent and inchoate, and the numbers do not add up. On current evidence, the concern must be that, if they were elected, they would represent an escape from reality and a postponement of the reckoning.

I have been theorising up to now. How could what I am saying be reflected in practical policies? As a country, we have been struggling towards something of a consensus on a few of them, such as the need for a radical reform of planning, although it has been too little and too slow, and the need to rejoin the single market or something similar. There has been some dispute about that today, but it is worth pointing out that a large proportion of those who voted for Brexit thought that we were going to retain very close links. There is some agreement on the need to deploy tough regulatory tools to stimulate competition. But I do not think enough has been done there.

Several essential policies are still considered unacceptably radical. We need tax cuts, accompanied by deep simplification of the tax system, and it will have to be paid for by reductions in welfare—few dare talk about that. A number of policies would be considered political suicide—for example, the need to encourage immigration in parts of the care and health system, and to facilitate the retention of large numbers of very high-quality foreign graduates who are currently leaving once they get their degrees. Trump is busy pushing them out; surely we should have a better policy for trying to persuade them to come here. Many people also quietly agree that an unacceptable price is being paid for the crash programme of fossil fuel reduction, but there is no consensus on the policy implications of reversing it or reconsidering it.

I have named four things there: tax simplification, EU renegotiation, tolerance and acceptance of fossil fuels for the foreseeable future, and targeted accommodation of immigration. None of these is a magic bullet, but they will all make a contribution. There is very little appreciation in the political establishment of the need for a radical shift towards them, nor of the need to jolt expectations among a wider public. Plain speaking is in scarce supply. AI’s jolt to the economy and public expectations will be much bigger than anything that we are seeing delivered by the Government, who seem, extraordinarily, immobilised by their own very large majority.

Having said all that, we can see that Kemi Badenoch is doing some plain speaking—and plain speaking is not just coming from the right. Here is an extract from a recent publication of the Labour Growth Group, I think out this week or last week:

“The planning system rations land. The energy system rations power … Regulation protects incumbents while crushing challengers”.


I think both Kemi and I would agree with all that, even if we would not agree with all the solutions in that document.

I will end where I began, but I will put it differently. The UK’s problems derive from politics, and so do the solutions. It is possible, fundamentally, to improve Britain’s economic performance. We are not prisoners of the global growth rate, as has been implied on one or two occasions in this debate. It has been done before and it can be done again. What is required is a full appreciation of the problem and the guts to implement radical supply-side solutions. We are a long way from that and, until we get there, the UK will continue to struggle on in the slow lane of middle powers.

UK Public Servants: International Secondments

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Baroness has asked four questions, so I will answer as many as I can. For all of them, the answer is the same, which is that chapter 4 of the Civil Service management code outlines what conduct we expect, the disciplinary process and how civil servants should apply it. I would expect every civil servant to stick to everything within the code and, if not, to be managed appropriately.

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

Having worked in an international organisation for five years and having seen some shocking conduct, it crosses my mind that the Government could do well to ask the British-appointed directors of those organisations to keep a very close eye on what goes on with respect to standards and to report back regularly, and for the Government to make public reports where they can on such information. Will the Government consider putting such an arrangement in place?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I am not sure how many secondments would work on that basis, but we already have in place keeping-in-touch conversations, where those who have been seconded must have regular conversations with their home department, as well as everything determined within the secondment agreement. Every secondment undertaken, both into and out of the Civil Service, is done on a case-by-case basis, so there is a bespoke secondment agreement which would allow some of those conversations to be formalised.

Detainee Issues

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, we need to remind ourselves what we are talking about. In the 21st century, our country has facilitated the kidnapping and brutal torture of large numbers of people. The recent Intelligence and Security Committee report revealed 166 further cases of such facilitation. It told us that it was thwarted from investigating these, and concluded last year that the “conditions imposed” on the inquiry,

“were such that we would be unable to … produce a credible Report”.

It went on to say that its report,

“is not, and must not be taken to be, a definitive account”.

Therefore, does the noble Lord accept that this makes the Government’s decision not to proceed with an inquiry all the more unacceptable?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I begin by paying tribute to my noble friend who founded and chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition in another place. He has consistently campaigned, in another place and now here, for greater transparency on this subject.

On the UK’s reputation, it is worth quoting what Sir Adrian said in his letter about the posture we have adopted. He says:

“The Consolidated Guidance was drafted and published in 2010. It can fairly be said to have led the field internationally in terms of providing guidance to personnel on intelligence sharing in a manner that protects human rights”.


We want to build on that reputation by implementing the proposals mentioned today.

On the ISC inquiry which my noble friend referred to, I very much regret that it was not possible to find a way for the ISC to conclude its inquiry. The Government’s Memorandum of Understanding with the ISC under the Justice and Security Act 2013 permits the committee to take oral evidence from Ministers, agency heads and senior officials. The committee wanted to take evidence from junior officials, but this is not the usual practice with Select Committees—as a former chair of a Select Committee, my noble friend will know this. We offered senior officials to speak on behalf of more junior ones, but this did not turn out to be acceptable. Having said that, all relevant documentary evidence was provided to the ISC. It took 50 hours of oral evidence and had 40,000 original documents and 30,000 staff hours. I pay tribute to its thoroughness and just have to disagree with my noble friend about his conclusion that, without the further judicial inquiry, this matter remains unresolved.

Economy: Productivity Measurement

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is quite right to say that productivity in education and health has gone up. Over the past few years, productivity growth in the public sector, which had been 0.2% for the past 19 years, grew to 1.4% in 2016. We have had six successive years of improving productivity in the public sector, and health and education lead the field. The noble Lord is quite right in his other point about intangible assets. We are putting a lot of work into measuring intangible assets. This has a key impact on productivity, for example, in the information and communications sector and in the science sector. Along with investment in software and R&D, intellectual capital training is also an important intangible. It is one of the most important ones, followed by organisational capital.

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare a statistically very significant interest as chairman of the Competition and Markets Authority. If productivity and competition levels in the British economy are in decline—and there is a good deal of evidence to support that—it probably follows that competition policy is not robust enough at the moment and needs a shot in the arm, so does the Minister support the proposals designed to achieve that which I sent to Ministers last month?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord, whom I have known for 35 years, brings to your Lordships’ House his ability to propose and then drive through major economic reform. The proposals he refers to are indeed detailed, trenchant and robust, and they will inform the competition policy that the Government are working on. Not only can it benefit consumers by promoting better-quality goods and services at lower prices but it can help the economy by promoting innovation and productivity. The Government welcome his report and will be consulting on the competition review shortly, including his proposals.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to look at the tragic case that the hon. Lady describes. Our thoughts must be with Chris and Lydia at the terrible loss they experienced. As to the issue of what is happening in terms of the Greek criminal justice system, of course that is a matter for the Greek authorities, but I will look seriously at this case and see if there is anything that the Foreign Office can do.

[Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)]

President Trump has repeatedly said that he will bring back torture as an instrument of policy. When she sees him on Friday, will the Prime Minister make it clear that in no circumstances will she permit Britain to be dragged into facilitating that torture, as we were after 11 September?

[The Prime Minister]

I assure my right hon. Friend that our position on torture is clear: we do not sanction torture and do not get involved in it. That will continue to be our position.

European Council

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The deal we will negotiate will be the right deal for the United Kingdom. It will take account of the concerns and the implications for various parts of the United Kingdom—different sectors of our economy, for example. The position of Northern Ireland will be a particular one because it will be the one part of the UK with a land border with a country that will be remaining inside the European Union. Given that, there is good will and a good spirit from both this Government and that of the Republic of Ireland for ensuring that future arrangements do not entail a return to borders of the past.

[Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)]

The Prime Minister has a very difficult job on Brexit, but the Government’s policy of saying as little as possible will become increasingly unsustainable. The vacuum is already being filled by leaks not from the Commission but from her own Cabinet Brexit Committee colleagues. Does she accept that unless the Government can provide at least some clarity about their direction of travel soon, many financial and other businesses, which have been in touch with me about this, will respond to the uncertainty and plan for the worst, and that that will be at a considerable cost to the UK?

Panama Papers

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Monday 11th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I was going to call the Chair of the Treasury Committee, but he is toddling out of the Chamber.

[Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)]

Well, if you would like to call me, Mr Speaker—

[Mr Speaker]

Let us hear from Mr Tyrie. Get in there, man.

[Mr Tyrie]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sure that it will be worth waiting for.

[Mr Tyrie]

It is very good of you to give me the floor, Mr Speaker.

I do not think that the Prime Minister has done anything wrong, except, possibly, to comment on the Jimmy Carr case. Tax evasion is illegal and should be very vigorously pursued, if necessary with criminal prosecution and imprisonment. Tax avoidance is not illegal. If the Government or Parliament do not like it, there is no point in moralising. Does the Prime Minister agree that to deal with tax avoidance we need reform to close the loopholes, and vigorous tax simplification to ensure that there are fewer of them?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very glad that my right hon. Friend was detained before leaving the Chamber. I think that he is absolutely right. Tax evasion is illegal, and tax avoidance, if the Government disapprove of it, should be legislated against. That is the approach that we have taken. However, as I have said before and am happy to say again, there are some practices of very aggressive tax avoidance that I think do merit proper questions and then legislative action. To be fair to Jimmy Carr, as soon as it was pointed out that he was in a scheme to reduce his income artificially, he immediately changed his arrangements. He made that very clear, and I pay tribute to him for doing it.

European Council

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

No.

[Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)]

Is it not incumbent on those who do not accept the Budget cuts to tell us how else they would reduce the deficit?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is right. There is a series of difficult decisions that we have to take when facing an 11% budget deficit, as we were in 2010, and we still need to get this country back to surplus. I would argue that this is not some artificial target. We have to make sure that in the good years we are putting aside money for a rainy day. That is what this is all about. It does involve difficult decisions. We do not always get those decisions right—I am the first to say that—but it is very important that we stick to the long-term economic plan of getting this country back into the black.

European Council

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am certainly having that conversation. My message to businesses is: if you have a view, make sure you tell people. Talk to your customers and your suppliers, and above all talk to your employees, your staff and your colleagues, because this issue is so important.

In truth, the business voice, large and small, is very much in favour of Britain staying. Many of them have said quite generous things about this renegotiation because they recognise the dangers, particularly in the area of safeguarding ourselves against discrimination because we are not in the euro. Given that, I hope that business and enterprise will speak clearly in the next four months.

[Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)]

Much of the protection of the euro-outs in this agreement rests on a safeguard mechanism that is set out in annex 2, but as far as I can tell, that requires nothing more than that a discussion be held about the UK’s concerns at ECOFIN—not even the European Council. That leaves eurozone members free to enforce their will by qualified majority voting. Will the Prime Minister explain what—beyond the discussion, which can be ignored—has been achieved by the safeguard mechanism?

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely can answer that, and I think it is an important question. There are two things here. First, a set of principles is set out in section A on economic governance, and they are principles of non-discrimination, no cost, and no disadvantage. Crucially, paragraph 4—this was of real concern to the Bank of England and I know it will be of concern to my right hon. Friend’s Committee—makes it clear that the financial stability of member states whose currency is not the euro is a matter for their own authorities and own budgetary responsibility. Those principles are very important, and what is exciting about this is not only that they have been set out for the first time, and not only has Europe for the first time accepted that there are other currencies inside the European Union, but those changes will be incorporated into the treaties. The mechanism is something over and above a new way of ensuring that issues are raised, should we wish to raise them, at the level of the European Council. We do not have that protection today, but making the principles part of the treaty—already an international legally binding decision—is hugely important. If my right hon. Friend listens to people who speak on behalf of financial services, the Bank of England and others, he will recognise that this is really important progress for Britain.

ISIL in Syria

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)]

Intervention will succeed only if it is part of a coherent military strategy and a coherent political strategy. Both are needed. I have yet to hear them in the statements from Ministers, although I very much want to hear them.

First, on the military strategy, degrading ISIL’s capacity from the air will achieve little unless it is followed by effective use of ground forces. But President Obama has ruled out committing ground troops, as has the Prime Minister, so the question of where those troops are going to come from is paramount. The Prime Minister appears to be insisting that Assad, who still has significant forces in theatre, has no part in the future of Syria. In that case, the ground war rests largely with the Kurds, who are less well organised than they are in Iraq, and on the reported 70,000 non-extremist fighters, but the reality of those seems to have faded somewhat in recent days.

Secondly, and even more important, there is the political strategy. Before military action can be justified, we need to have arrived at the point where the main intervening powers are agreed at least about the broad outlines of a settlement. But that is not evident either. In fact, the military action that has recently been taking place in Syria vividly illustrates the absence of a strategy. A handful of outside powers are attacking or assisting a patchwork of different opponents, some of whom are fighting each other. The political objectives of the western powers and current military action to further them and the political objectives of the Russians are contradictory. The Russians have attacked the groups that the west sees as the potential salvation of Syria. The US and France want to remove the regime that the Russians have been seeking to entrench.

For military action to have a reasonable prospect of succeeding, we will need agreement among the major powers about the use and objectives of air power, about whom we are and are not targeting, about how the boots on the ground will get there, and about whose boots they will be.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend refers to the objectives of air power. For those of us who have been listening to the debate, there is a feeling that those arguing against the motion have failed to answer the question of whether they support the action in Iraq, where since last September air power has been deployed very effectively in restricting ISIL’s progress and defending Baghdad against terrorists.

[Mr Tyrie]

I agree with that. There is a fundamental difference between Iraq and Syria. Iraq is a democracy, at least of sorts, and it has invited us in and is sharing with us the enduring responsibility for what goes on there. If we engage in Syria, we will be picking up the enduring responsibility for a failed state.

A political plan is absolutely essential. That will require at least a measure of agreement on a policy for regional stability. That can be achieved only in collaboration with the Russians, and probably the Iranians. There are some grounds for cautious optimism in that regard. I have very little time to talk about it but, in a nutshell, I do not think that there is enough.

In the absence of both a military and a political strategy, the west might only succeed in supressing ISIL temporarily. In time, an equally virulent Islamist-inspired, anti-western militancy may well return.

The ruling out of western ground forces is very significant. It tells us that, after Iraq and Afghanistan, the west appears to lack the will, and perhaps the military strength, to commit the resources that might be needed to construct a new order from the shaken kaleidoscope of Syria. As in Libya, it would be relatively easy to remove a brutal dictator from the air, and perhaps also to suppress ISIL, but it would be extremely difficult to construct a regime more favourable to our long-term interests.

We do not need to look into a crystal ball to see that; we can read the book. The result of over a decade of intervention in the middle east has been not the creation of a regional order more attuned to western values and interests, but the destruction of an existing order of dictatorships that, however odious, was at least effective in supressing the sectarian conflicts and resulting terrorism that have taken root in the middle east. Regime change in Iraq brought anarchy and terrible suffering. It has also made us less safe.

Above all, it has created the conditions for the growth of militant extremism. We should be under no illusions: today’s vote is not a small step. Once we have deployed military forces in Syria, we will be militarily, politically and morally deeply engaged in that country, and probably for many years to come. That is why the Government’s description of the extension of bombing to Syria as merely an extension of what we were already doing in Iraq is misplaced. We simply have not heard enough from the Government about exactly what the reconstruction will mean.

The timing of this vote has everything to do with the opportunity to secure a majority provided by the shocking attacks in Paris. Everybody feels a bond with the French, but an emotional reflex is not enough. Military action might be effective at some point, but military action without a political strategy is folly. We have yet to hear that strategy, so I cannot support the Government’s motion tonight.