Business and Trade Committee

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

We begin with the Select Committee statement. Liam Byrne will speak on the publication of the 11th report of the Business and Trade Committee, “Toward a new doctrine for economic security”, HC835, for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I will call Members to put questions on the subject of the statement and then call Liam Byrne to respond to those in turn. Questions should be brief and Members may ask only one question each.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. Let me record my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for making time for this debate; to a brilliant team of Select Committee members—it is a privilege to serve alongside them—and to a first-class team who help to ensure that the Select Committee does its work so expertly. The report we present today sounds a note of agreement, but is also designed to sound a warning. The note of agreement is this: we agree that national security is economic security. But the note of warning is stark: we do not find that our economic security regime is fit for the future.

If we think about the risks we faced this summer, with the Jaguar Land Rover cyber-attack, which ended up costing a £1.5 billion state guarantee; the struggles that our Dutch allies went through with Nexperia; and the struggles that our American allies went through in the spat with China over rare earth technology exports, we can now see that the question of economic security is front and centre for businesses and policymakers, each and every day. The warning that we sound is that the risks are going to multiply significantly over the years to come.

The threat surface that most businesses now operate is much bigger than in the past. Artificial intelligence is going to transform cyber-aggression. We now have states and state-backed actors operating in this space. This is all at a time when our country is going to seek to entice around £100 billion extra in inward investment, much of it from abroad and much of it in our energy infrastructure. What Ciaran Martin calls the private ownership of public risk is about to expand exponentially. Yet, right now, we simply do not have the defences in place that we need.

The core argument of our report is that just as we need a whole-of-society approach to defence, so we now need a whole-of-society approach to our economic security, but we do not have the systems in place to deliver that today. That is why change is needed over the years to come. In order to help understand precisely the gaps, we worked together with experts at the Royal United Services Institute, gathered lots of evidence, took lots of witness testimony and heard from Ministers. What that basically revealed is that many of our allies, such as Japan, but also in a way the European Union, have legislative backing for many of the regimes that they have in place.

Our allies in Japan in particular, who have had to think about this for a lot longer than we have, have a very sophisticated set of defences and state machinery. Equally, we could find very durable institutions in the United States and real policy innovation in the European Union today. In this country, we have a number of strategies, which are growing in number, but frankly do not really add up to a comprehensive regime for economic security.

There have been welcome advances, not least the critical mineral strategy that was published this week, but the risk is that ad hoc papers become strategy by stapler, where we have policy papers published that are not durable for the long term. That is a problem, because only the public sector and the private sector working together can mobilise the kind of investment that is needed to transform the country’s resilience for the threats we will face in the future. We argue therefore that, just as we comprehensively overhauled the doctrine to tackle counter-terrorism after 7/7 with the publication of CONTEST, we now need a new doctrine of economic security in order to ensure that there is a whole-of-Government and whole-of-society approach, all pointing in a similar direction.

We conclude that it does not make a great deal of sense for policy to be guided by a hard definition of economic security, because things are going to change: this is a dynamic environment, and a hard definition might entail more risks than it solves. However, we believe that this doctrine should be shaped by a set of strategic principles in the years to come. Colleagues across the House will have many ideas about what should go into that. We conclude that our approach should be guided by six Ds: diagnose, develop, diversify, defend, deter and dovetail.

On diagnosis, we think there should be a long-term technology forecasting centre in Government that supplies not just Government but the private sector with, if not intelligence, then certainly insight, to shape their understanding of risk in the future. We need to build on the work of the National Cyber Security Centre to create a proper platform where public and private sectors can work together in new ways to understand the risks that the country confronts.

We need to specify the sovereign capabilities that we need to develop as a country. Two or three are defined in the strategic defence review, but that is about it, and the defence industrial policy promised some further definitions. We cannot understand what we are going to decouple from allies—or in some cases from enemies—unless we have a more sophisticated understanding of the sovereign capabilities that we need as a country. We then need to line up the national wealth fund and other resources behind this understanding. We also need to modernise the “Managing Public Money” framework so that Ministers, like the excellent Minister in his place today, are not hidebound and forced to issue ministerial directions every time a strategic investment is needed, as was the case with Jaguar Land Rover and the nationalisation of British Steel.

Our third D is diversify, which is well understood. We need to diversify supplies of critical minerals and diversify our critical supply chains, too. The targets for critical minerals published on Monday were important, but there was no investment plan to go with them. We cannot do this alone; we can only do it by acting with allies.

We then need to better defend our infrastructure, including our critical national infrastructure and our cyber-infrastructure, in both the public and private sectors. That is why we think that the mandatory reporting of ransomware attacks is a good idea, and why we think we should be radically expanding the work of Pool Re so there is a backstop to the cyber insurance market, which there currently is not. We need capital allowances to be modernised, so there are real incentives for small and medium-sized enterprises to invest in cyber-security. Critical SMEs should probably enjoy access to Government support too.

In the field of deterrence, we need to ensure that we can fast-track investment into our country from trusted sources. That is why a trusted investor scheme would make a lot of sense. We need to explore anti-coercion instruments in the way that the European Union has. We need to name and shame those involved in sanction breaches much more aggressively than we are today. Crucially, we need to make sure we have the right skills in both Companies House and the National Crime Agency. It is ridiculous that there is something like a £28,000 gap between the pay that someone in the National Crime Agency can get and the pay that someone in an equivalent police force can get. That is not the way to ensure that we have the right people on the frontline. We note with concern that Companies House has a 20% vacancy rate in its digital workforce. That is a real risk.

Finally, we need to dovetail what the Government are doing with what the private sector is doing. That is why we need new spaces in which they can work together. We also need to dovetail what we are doing with what our allies are doing: we call for an alliance of free-trading democracies to work together, like the work of the UK and the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership—the Minister has just returned from a CPTPP meeting. The work that we are pioneering in the South Korean trade deal is a good example of the kind of thing that we should be doing more generally. We need almost to be driving forward an economic security union with our closest neighbour, and of course our allies in the United States need to be drawn into this work too.

We need to make sure that the blueprint has a backbone. That is why we call for a cross-Government Minister and an office of economic security to bring everything together, the restoration of the sub-committee on economic security in the National Security Council, and parliamentary oversight through the reform of section 54 of the National Security and investment Act 2021. We think that much of that should be enshrined in a Bill.

We have done this before. After world war one, we comprehensively modernised the state to combat the world of economic warfare. That is a wise lesson and a wise experience to guide us in new times.

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[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member on the report. As I am sure he knows, I responded to his request for comment. My question is about the security of financial services. He says that diversification is one of the solutions to the risk of cyber- attack. My worry is that, if we put all our eggs into the basket of an increasingly electronic-based financial services market where high street banks retreat behind electronic walls, that does not just result in vulnerable and digitally-excluded customers struggling to access financial services, but creates a big national risk. It is a problem for our communities where banks are retreating—in Cornwall, there will be only one Lloyds bank left next year—and for the security of the nation as well.

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

Order. This is just a reminder that the debate must end at 10 minutes to 2.

[Liam Byrne]

I was very grateful to receive the hon. Member’s email. He is absolutely right. The shutdown of branches all over our country is a really serious problem that creates real risks. One answer is to ensure that we lean in behind the Post Office plans to create banking hubs, not just in a couple of hundred high streets, which is the proposal of the main banks, but in thousands of locations across the country. The Post Office has in place an agreement with the banks until about 2030, but the future thereafter is not clear, so I hope that Ministers can take up this point in the Department for Business and Trade to ensure that we lean into the plans that the Post Office has developed to transform the availability of banking services on thousands of high streets up and down the country.

Harland & Wolff

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Today’s news is welcome. My right hon. Friend knows how vital the FSS ships are to our Royal Navy. RFA Fort Victoria, our only remaining solid store support ship, is due to be decommissioned in 2028, yet even before this rescue deal, new FSS ships were not due to enter service until 2032. Is there any scope at all to accelerate that and close the capability gap?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her expertise and insight on this matter. I understand the point that she makes, but it is perhaps one for my colleagues in the Ministry of Defence. I will ask them to engage with her on those ambitions to remedy the absence of capability, but I believe that that would be challenging.

Post Office Horizon Scandal

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I know that the Minister means well and that he also understands that my affected constituents have had enough of being told that the Government are working hard to get them the justice they deserve and promises of swift compensation. One of my constituent’s claims was submitted in October. She heard the Minister say in January that all claims would have offers within 40 days, but she still has not had an offer. She is right to conclude that the allegations of delaying payments to benefit the Treasury are true, is she not?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am sorry that the hon. Member has taken that tone, but that is not true. As I set out, I think Henry Staunton has got this completely wrong. It is not the case, and there has never been any situation while I have been in this role—my predecessors have said the same—where we have tried to delay compensation. If the hon. Member wants to write to me, I am very happy to look at an individual case. Our commitment on the GLO scheme is that once we have received a full claim, we will respond to 90% of cases within 40 days. Some cases are more complex, but I am very happy to look at her specific case, as I have for other Members when people have contacted us directly. I am very keen to make sure that we get a resolution to her constituent’s case as quickly as possible.

Local Radio: BBC Proposals

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) for doing a great job in setting out the details of all of our concerns here today.

I have never made any secret of my love for BBC Radio Newcastle. No matter where I am, I always tune in. My love of local radio is shared by many, not just in the north-east but right across our country, because local radio matters. Many of us struggled through covid. Unlike those making the rules and breaking them, we stuck to them and it hurt us. We missed our loved ones. We cried alone for lives lost and we tried to do our best to help our communities.

The familiar local voices on the radio every day gave comfort, brought reassurance, and connected people in a way that no other medium was able to do, especially when different parts of the country were under different covid regulations. Under the BBC’s proposals, I just cannot imagine how radio from 2 pm onwards coming from a different part of the country could have accurately conveyed, at that time, the right information for all the areas that it was expected to cover.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

Local BBC stations such as our much-valued BBC Radio Berkshire are invaluable because not only do they hold local politicians to account, but they give voice to local people who would not otherwise be covered by the national media. I appreciate that the Government have cut funds to the BBC, but does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must give reassurances to the good people of Slough and others in Berkshire that they will not lose out on that BBC Radio Berkshire output?

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[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Just before the hon. Lady replies, let me just say to her that the Annunciator is showing her as representing Westminster North. That is clearly not true, is it?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

That is not me, no.

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He has pre-empted a point that I will make later in my speech.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

As somebody who understands the ins and outs of local government, does my hon. Friend agree that BBC local radio, which often takes a much more detailed approach to a problem than other media, is very important to those who want to follow local government decisions? It often provides really good scrutiny—much better, in fact, than that provided nationally.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. At a time when people are losing faith in politics and politicians, it is vital that all voices are heard, not just in this place but in local government.

Disgracefully, the BBC started these cuts during the pandemic, asking more than 100 staff to take voluntary redundancy, stripping back the schedules, forcing all shows to have four-hour slots with solo presenters, and axing specialist programmes. That set the scene for homogenising practice at all local stations, making it easier for the BBC to make the cuts that it wants to make now and merging everything from 2 pm onwards. For the nation’s flagship broadcaster to introduce those changes without consulting the fee-paying public is pretty galling.

As a fee payer, I am angry that my views were not sought, but I am angrier about the loss of jobs and talent at the BBC that these changes will cause, and the loss of service to my fantastic constituents. Digital exclusion in the north-east is the highest in England. The north-east is the region with the highest proportion of disabled people, and my area of south Tyneside has the largest elderly population in the north-east, a group who have already been battered by the changes to the over-75s licence fee. Those are the very groups who not only listen to local radio but rely on it the most. When the BBC’s director general appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, he said that the changes were “critical for local democracy”, but when it comes to the north-east he is simply wrong—these changes are quite the opposite.

The director general also claimed to have empathy with striking staff, yet MPs across this House have heard how disgracefully staff have been treated, how he is presiding over a toxic culture of fear and paranoia and how the reselection interviews related to the cuts in local radio have been embroiled in workplace bullying. Little wonder that in a recent survey, less than one quarter of BBC television and radio staff said they had confidence in the their senior leadership team. I pay tribute to those workers, and their union, who have bravely spoken out not just for themselves but for their 5 million-plus listeners—more than listen to Radio 1 or 5 Live.

Local radio employs some of the best journalists we have in the country. Anyone who is in doubt should just re-listen to the disastrous round of interviews that the previous and brief incumbent of No. 10 did last year. She underestimated and undervalued those journalists, just as their employer is doing now. We are now in a scenario where the BBC is blaming the Government, as its revenue is down from the licence fee freeze, and the Government are simply saying, “Well, that’s up to the BBC.” The reality is that with these changes the BBC is not adhering to its own charter, it is not delivering on contributing to social cohesion, and at the same time—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Sorry, but we have so many people to speak.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Sorry, I thought I would have an extra minute.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We did actually put more than that up.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

13. What his Department’s (a) budget and (b) timetable is for the delivery of 40 new hospitals.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

15. What his Department’s (a) budget and (b) timetable is for the delivery of 40 new hospitals.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Barclay)]

The Government are committed to building 40 new hospitals, which is why we have confirmed an initial £3.7 billion for the first four years of the new hospital programme.

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[Steve Barclay]

I or another member of the ministerial team will, of course, meet the leader of Manchester council to discuss this. We are making progress. The hon. Gentleman will have seen progress, for example, at the Royal Liverpool and the Northern Centre for Cancer Care, but I confirm our commitment to the 40 hospitals programme and hope to say more on that shortly.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I heard the responses from the Secretary of State, and it must be really hard for him to keep up the pretence about these mythical hospitals. Here is the reality of what is happening in hospitals around the country. South Tyneside District Hospital was award winning. Despite widespread opposition from all of us at the Save South Tyneside Hospital campaign, we have seen a loss of key services and a downgrading of other services. Despite the work of the amazing staff, the hospital now requires improvement. Why is his Government forcing that decline?

[Steve Barclay]

The Government have committed an initial £3.7 billion, which indicates our commitment to the new hospital programme. As I said, I will have more to say on that shortly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We are pleased that across York and North Yorkshire we are about to get our own Metro Mayor; I am sure he is working hard to bring that kind of governance to his area too, because it clearly delivers opportunity right across the country. As he knows, the FDI stock in the UK is worth £2 trillion, which is the second highest amount in the world. I am sure the opportunities would be beneficial to the hon. Gentleman’s constituents should he strike that kind of deal.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

12. What recent progress she has made on a free trade agreement with the US.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Nigel Huddleston)]

We recognise that the US is not currently focused on FTAs. However, we stand ready to resume negotiations when they are ready. In the meantime, we are working to improve the trading landscape, including by removing US steel and aluminium tariffs and lifting the US ban on British lamb and beef. We are also working with the US on areas of shared interest that include digital trade, small and medium-sized enterprise support and supply chain security.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

The reality is that there has been no real progress and, despite all the previous rhetoric, there remains no free trade agreement with the US. Does the Minister think his suggestion that this is the fault of the US President will help or hinder future negotiations?

[Nigel Huddleston]

As I said, the US is not currently negotiating FTAs, not just with us but with any other country. We are working and we have very good dialogue with one of our closest allies in so many areas, including economically, culturally and militarily, and that dialogue will of course continue. As I said in my previous answer, we are working in many areas, including steel and food, to create opportunities, alongside work in respect of the memorandum of understanding. Considerable progress can be and will continue to be made, even without an FTA.

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[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I said earlier, food and drink is our largest manufacturing sector—larger than aerospace and automotive put together. He is right to point out the opportunities for dairy in our free-trade negotiations, and that will be taken forward as the negotiations progress.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

T5.   Banks and insurers are using environmental, social and governance criteria to block companies that work in the defence industry, stifling jobs, skills, innovation and UK exports. Why have the Government done nothing about that?

[Nigel Huddleston]

The hon. Lady raises an important point, but we are trying to work across all sectors—industry by industry and sector by sector. We have clear processes, particularly when it relates to arms. We are trying to seek opportunities for fair trade across the world, whether it is imports or exports, and we will continue to make sure that we do so on an ethical basis.