Oral Answers to Questions
Liam Byrne Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Gentleman. It is great to see him in his place—it is always great to see him in this place. Actually, I have had conversations on that very matter already with Kristalina Georgiera.
His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Liam Byrne Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow such a beautiful tribute.
“There is an appointed time for everything”,
says the Book of Ecclesiastes.
“A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance”.
This has been a brilliant tribute this afternoon, because amidst the mourning there has been warmth, joy and happiness, and many fond memories. I hope those memories will be of some comfort to the Queen and her family when they have a chance to read this debate.
To remember the life of one is to remember the life lessons for all. When we celebrate the virtues of a life well lived, we affirm the values of what it means to live well. Today we remember not just an individual, but an ideal; not just a man but a marriage—a father who hated fuss and a husband who treasured humour.
I first want to offer the condolences of everybody in Britain’s second city, the city of Birmingham, to Her Majesty and her family today. The Duke was not always in Birmingham, but he was always there when we needed him. He was in Birmingham General Hospital to comfort the victims of the terrible Birmingham pub bombings, which ripped the heart out of families and the heart out of our city. He was there to open the Bullring in 1964 and to open New Street station in 2015. He was there to visit for the silver jubilee, to open the International Convention Centre, and of course most recently to inspect Jaguar Land Rover, that fine maker of what will be his final chariot.
The reason I think so many people in our country mourn the Duke of Edinburgh is the sense that an era is passing, but there is an ethos that we want to endure. It is an ethos that we want to protect, preserve and pass on.
As has been said, the Duke of Edinburgh was one of the last members of that greatest generation who protected us in our hour of maximum danger. A distinguished sailor, he was saved by the Royal Navy at birth and served the Royal Navy with brilliance, courage and fortitude. With his marriage to Her Majesty the Queen, his orders changed, but his duty never did. He came to epitomise a reserved resilience, a strength in putting another first. He became not simply a touchstone for the Queen, but a cornerstone for the Queen’s family and a key stone for the institution of monarchy in our country.
What distinguished him was not simply his backbone, but his banter. He understood that, in a difficult world, humour is often the oil that keeps the wheels moving, especially when those axles are frozen with nerves. He had grit and wit. Grit and wit are what the British Isles are made of, and grit and wit were what the Duke of Edinburgh was made of.
That is why the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme was so important to so many, certainly to the three poor children in my family. It encourages the ethos of service and adventure, which is the best of our national spirit. That is not always clear to those shivering in a tent on a windswept hillside, but character education is so important for our children because it teaches them not simply about the world around them but about the world inside them—the place where values are truly hammered out on the anvil of the soul. It teaches children those words of A.A. Milne:
“Promise me you’ll always remember: you’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.”
Millions of our children know that about themselves because of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme.
My final thought is for the Commonwealth. The Duke of Edinburgh made 229 visits to 67 countries over and above those visits that he made with Her Majesty the Queen. Next year, this country, and my home city, is host to the Commonwealth games. We know that our success will be judged not simply by the medals we win but by the lives we change. What a fantastic memorial it would be to the Duke of Edinburgh if we can find a way of getting the next Duke of Edinburgh Award winners to work with Commonwealth countries around the world to carry forward the inspiration and the lessons of Prince Philip for a new generation.
I conclude with my condolences to Her Majesty the Queen and her family. St Augustine said that those who have left us are invisible, but never absent. Prince Philip will not be absent to any of us here today. He was a Duke of duty who we will remember for the rest of our time. He got to live the blessing of Tobias. He lived with the Queen long. That was because he lived in the spirit of the Book of Ruth:
“Wherever you go, I will go.
Wherever you live, I will live.
Your people will be my people.
Your God will be my God…
We shall be together forever.
And our love will be the gift of our God.”
As we remember Prince Philip today, that is a blessing to give thanks for.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Liam Byrne Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
I am here to speak for the west midlands because we have a Tory Mayor who is failing to use his voice. The truth is that covid has hit our region harder than any other region in our country, and over the last four years, life in our region was getting shorter, getting poorer and getting less safe. That is why what we needed from the Chancellor today was a Budget that genuinely levelled up this country, so that we can level up our region.
I am grateful for the help in the short term that will make a difference, but the truth is that, over the medium term, we saw today £66 billion-worth of tax rises—tax rises that will also fall on teachers, nurses and police officers for the years to come. I think that is the biggest tax rise that we have ever seen in Budget history, and it is so high because the growth rate for this country is coming further and further down. That is why what we needed from the Chancellor today was a meaningful strategy to go from the pandemic to the Paris agreement—a plan to reindustrialise our country and create new green manufacturing jobs, avoiding the perils that the International Monetary Fund is warning about of a K-shaped recovery where the rich go in one direction and the poor go in another.
That is what I want for our region. I want our region to be the green workshop of the world. I want our region—the youngest region in Europe—to be the place with the best life chances for young people. I want our region to be a place where we have police back on the streets, because we have seen violent crime soar by more than 100% over the last two to three years. But that is not what we got today. We have asked for help, but we have been given just 5% of the £3 billion we asked for to get our recovery moving. What did we get today? The grand total of £2 per person per week—that was it. There is £431 billion in the national capital budget. What did we get today? We should have got an extra £7.7 billion, which would reflect our population share. We got just 3% of that money today.
I am afraid that, once again, we have been left behind, looked over and left out. The towns funds that we secured today are just three quarters of what Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram got up in the north-west and just 39% of what was secured by council leaders in the east midlands. We cannot go on like this. We need a Mayor who is going to stand up and fight for our region, and in May, that is what the residents of our region are going to get.
Covid-19: Winter Plan
Liam Byrne Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend, who is entirely right to support the hospitality industry in her community, and, of course, support packages will remain in place.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab) [V]
On Friday, I met online with nurses in Birmingham who said that they had never seen so much death on the wards. They have had to bid goodbye to colleagues who have left the hospital in hearses. Many are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. We owe it to them to play by the rules to save our NHS, but we have to save livelihoods, too. I have read the action plan that the Prime Minister has published. There is one mention of the self-employed on page 39, but in the west midlands, half the self-employed are not eligible for the Government support scheme—that is 121,000 people. They are not going to be helped by VAT cuts, bounce back loans or the art and culture schemes. What they need is eligibility for the self-employment scheme, so will the Prime Minister bring forward changes to the scheme, or is he hell-bent on starving our entrepreneurs this Christmas?
The Prime Minister
Of course not, and I feel very much for those who are in a difficult position. We have spent £13.5 billion supporting the self-employed so far—I think possibly more by now. Universal credit remains there and the increase in universal credit is also intended to help those in tough times, as well as all the other provision that I have mentioned. But the best thing we can do for all self-employed people is to get our communities and our country moving again, and this winter package offers the best way forward.
Budget Resolutions
Liam Byrne Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
It is a joy to follow the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies), who has reminded us that his constituency was the home of the man who discovered gravity and of the woman who discovered how to defy political gravity, to rise to the highest office of state in our country and become one of our best known and greatest Prime Ministers.
The Chancellor came to his position at a very difficult time. He had to bring forward a Budget today that would calm many of the concerns of businesses, workers and people across the United Kingdom because of the impact of the coronavirus. He has brought forward measures to make sure that businesses have sufficient cash flow at a time of disruption and to support workers who may well be asked to make a public sacrifice by staying away from work and should not be penalised for it. There is also, of course, the co-ordination with the Bank of England to try to stabilise the situation.
The Chancellor tried to give the impression that it was quite an expansionary Budget, but when we look at terms of it, we can see that it is not really expansionary at all. Much of it was made up of past announcements, and some of it of announcements for the next five years. It is about raising spending to a certain level, rather than by a certain level. When one looks at the overall increase in total managed expenditure of around 1.8%, one can see that, given some of the things that we are facing, it is actually quite a modest Budget, with modest expenditure.
However, I welcome a number of policies that have been introduced in the Budget. I will probably get a lot of criticism now from those who share the climate hysteria that seems to have gripped this House. The pressure was on the Chancellor to impose additional costs on ordinary people who drive their cars, on businesses that rely on fuel, and on consumers who require that their food be delivered to the shops in the cheapest way possible. I am glad that he did not increase fuel duty because, of course, that would have been an imposition on the very people whom some Members of this House today have said they want to defend. They have also said that they do not want to see their standard of living affected, but those kinds of taxes would have had an impact on those people.
I am also pleased that the Chancellor has not increased the tax on red diesel for farmers. I know that many farmers in East Antrim, for whom fuel is a substantial but inescapable cost, will welcome the fact that they will not now have an additional tax imposed on it.
Having said that, this Government will still be dipping into the pockets of the people of the United Kingdom to the tune of £18 billion next year in various green taxes. The carbon tax that the Chancellor proposes to impose on gas will impact severely on energy bills. We still produce a lot of our energy, and people still have to heat their homes using gas. That carbon tax will substantially increase those people’s bills, especially when one remembers that 20% of electricity bills at present are taken up with various green levies and green costs. On top of that, some of the bill is made up of infrastructure costs, which are incurred only because of the move towards more wind energy and so on. The tax on gas will have an impact on many people, especially in places such as Northern Ireland, where we rely heavily on gas for electricity generation.
My second point relates to the Government’s announcement that they want to disperse jobs outside London. We had asked the Government to consider that during the confidence and supply arrangement that we had during the previous Administration. Of course, there has been a degree of centralisation: we have lost jobs from HMRC and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. If the Government are sincere about levelling up the economic growth across the United Kingdom, it is important that jobs are dispersed from the south-east of England to other parts of the United Kingdom, including to places such as Northern Ireland.
There was no mention in the Budget of air passenger duty—at a time when connectivity is so important and when we had discussions following the Flybe episode. So many airports across the United Kingdom depend on connectivity. We know the cost of air passenger duty on internal connectivity across the United Kingdom. Although I understand that the Chancellor could not have made a decision in this Budget because the review of air passenger duty and aviation taxes is ongoing, I hope that there will be some announcement in the future, so that places such as Northern Ireland that are heavily reliant on air transport see that additional cost—about £4.8 billion a year—reduced and are given some reliefs.
The announcements on infrastructure spending are important. I welcome the expenditure on roads and infrastructure projects across the United Kingdom. The one thing that I have some concern about, though, is that the Government are proposing to spend £110 billion on infrastructure projects by the end of this Parliament, but—as we have seen with the Heathrow expansion decision—these projects are under threat from the challenges we face due to commitments made in the Paris agreement and the Climate Change Act 2008. I believe that those who are determined to prevent the infrastructure developments that are necessary to make this country work will use the courts to try to stop many infrastructure projects that the Government are proposing. That is because all of those projects—roads, housebuilding, airport expansion, railways—will have some impact on CO2 emissions, through concrete production, steelmaking, the building process and so on.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
The broad criticism that has been levelled at this Budget is that we surely needed a plan to decarbonise the transport system and it is not yet clear from today’s presentation whether we got that.
Sammy Wilson
The right hon. Gentleman has missed my point. All decarbonisation—whether we decarbonise energy, transport or what we eat—has an implication for people’s jobs, living costs and so on, and we have to ask what the country’s priority should be. Do we really want to impose the sort of burdens that those kinds of priorities put on the people of the United Kingdom? We cannot say that we want to protect jobs, to keep standards of living up and costs of living down, and to give people the freedom to go on their holidays and to eat what they want, and at the same time say, “But let’s absorb ourselves in this carbon obsession”, which affects all those things. Members cannot have it both ways. At some stage, we will need to have a discussion about where our priorities ought to lie.
I welcome the additional money for the Northern Ireland Executive, but I repeat that there has been an increase in expenditure in this Budget of 1.8%, which the Executive will find difficult to live with given the commitments that were made in the agreement that was put in place to get the Assembly back up and running. The Executive are going to have to set priorities.
I agree with the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) that if money is being given to devolved Parliaments to ensure the spread of prosperity across the United Kingdom, the approach has to be co-ordinated and there needs to be some oversight of how that money is spent. I was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for a long time, and of course people jealously guard their freedom to make those kinds of choices, but it is important that the money is delivered not simply as part of a block grant for Administrations to spend on whatever happens to be the priority that week, rather than on the long-term prosperity of the country.
Overall, I welcome the Budget, although it is a modest one. It appears to spend an awful lot more money, but it represents only a 1.8% increase in overall Government expenditure. The Chancellor has made a decision to live within his resources, but there will be some consequences.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
The World Health Organisation pronounced today that the coronavirus is now a pandemic, so it is not surprising that the Bank of England and the Government have together issued a big joint package of economic stimulus, which is to be welcomed. The question is: is it the right size? The truth is that we do not know. The levels of uncertainty are extremely high, and we will need to keep this under review. I hope that the Government stand ready to come back to the House if the economic downturn that will be caused by coronavirus spirals further.
I particularly hope that the Government will keep under review the support for people on low incomes who have to self-isolate. People working in the gig economy, people on zero-hours contracts and the self-employed are particularly vulnerable, and the Government need to ensure that the measures they have announced today go far enough. It would be completely wrong if we gave tens of billions of pounds to the banks during the 2008 financial crisis but were now not able to look after people working hard on low incomes. That has to be a priority.
When I look at this Budget today, I am deeply alarmed: I am alarmed by the growth figures. I have looked at Budgets over 30 years, and I have rarely seen a Budget where the growth forecast for the British economy for the whole forecasting period is less than 2%—and that is before coronavirus is taken into account. This year, with poor world economic growth, it is 1.1%, before coronavirus, but at the end of this forecasting period, in 2023 it is just 1.3%, and in 2024 it is just 1.4%. That is a disastrous performance.
These figures are from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, and the of course the question is: what is lying behind those figures? If it is a forecast for four or five years’ time, it is not the coronavirus and it is not the world economy; it is something that is going wrong in our economy, and it is the Government who must take the blame. So what is it? When we read the OBR report, and I have been flicking through it, it suggests that—guess what?—it is the impact of Brexit and the Government’s new immigration system.
The Conservative party may not like the fact, but it is there in the OBR report. On page 8, it says that the UK’s output has already fallen by 2%, thanks to the Brexit uncertainty, and the future loss will be at least 4% of national income. This will hit the living standards of all our constituents. That is why productivity performance is down, and when our small companies are faced with a barrage of red tape at the borders, not surprisingly exports will go down and we will see small companies go to the wall. I do not see in these Budget proposals anything to help those small businesses.
Liam Byrne
The growth figures the right hon. Gentleman quite rightly draws the House’s attention to are after the Government have chucked in a £174 billion fiscal stimulus and the Bank of England has slashed interest rates to an all-time low. I would draw his attention to the fact that productivity in our economy is now absolutely broken, and that surely is a damning indictment of the economic strategy of the last few years.
Sir Edward Davey
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is the failure to invest in skills and the failure to realise that Brexit is going to damage productivity, while the attack on immigration, which is important for so many parts of our economy, will hit that too.
I worry about the self-employed and small businesses. They are suffering from the unfair business rates and they are suffering from things such as IR35. The Government are completely silently on IR35 today. They promise a reform of business rates. Liberal Democrats have been arguing for that for several years, with a well-thought-through proposal using land value tax, but the Government seem to be going to kick this into the long grass. That is not good enough when our small businesses are under such pressure.
The other issue I find disappointing is climate change. The Government have been trying to pretend that this Budget is going to take action on climate change. Let us look at it. With a fuel duty freeze again and £27 billion on 4,000 miles of road, that does not sound like a green transport policy to me. Then they announce, as though it is going to make any difference, £1 billion on green transport measures. This is completely absurd. The transport sector is the biggest sector for our emissions, and we need a completely different green transport strategy if we are to be serious about the climate. We need to make sure that we are not expanding airports, but that we are really investing in the electric vehicle infrastructure and giving incentives for electric vehicles, and this Budget does nothing for that.
If there is a real area on which we need to see significant Government expenditure, it is refurbishing the housing stock. We all know that that is where a huge amount of the emissions come from, and we all know that that is where there are easy wins that will reduce our constituents’ fuel bills, tackle fuel poverty and create jobs in every community. Why are the Government not doing that? They should of course bring back the zero- carbon homes laws that we passed and the Conservatives abolished, but, no, they are not keen on real action on climate change.
Then there is the Government’s announcement on carbon capture and storage. I was the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change when we were pushing this, and there was a £1 billion set-up fund, with a competition with two projects, with several billions of pounds running forward. We were the world leaders because we have a comparative advantage with our amazing engineers, with the North sea in which to store a lot of the emissions, and with our oil and gas industry and the skills from it.
Instead of exploiting that, what happened in 2015, when the former Chancellor, George Osborne, had his way? He cut that project overnight, not even telling Shell, which had shelled out £30 million. It was a disgraceful act against climate action. We need CCS, not just to green our power sector, but to green our heat sector and our industry. We could be world leaders, but that was a disastrous policy. The idea that these projects, which the Red Book claims will take the next 10 years, are a replacement for the level of ambition that we once had, is frankly shocking. The Government have failed very badly on the green agenda.
Finally, I wish to talk about the care sector. We need a care revolution in this country, not just in care for the elderly, but in care for adults with learning disabilities, which makes up the biggest, and fastest rising part of local authority expenditure. I speak as a father of a disabled child who cannot walk or talk—he only said “daddy” two years ago, and he is 12—and I worry about what will happen to him when my wife and I are gone. Obviously, I am trying to ensure that I make provision for my son, but I am lucky enough to be able to do that. Hundreds of thousands of parents of special needs children will not be able to make such provision, and the state will have to work out how we care properly for those adults, who will be of working age for many years.
We have not even begun to debate that issue. Instead, we have a care sector on its knees. Care homes are closing and there are shortages of care staff. That is partly because of Brexit—I say that because it is true—partly because of immigration restrictions, and partly because of the Government’s failure to address issues of social care. The “Interim NHS People Plan” stated that dealing with the nursing shortage is the single biggest and most urgent need for us to address, yet the Government have not done that. Social care, whether directly in the NHS or through local authorities, is one of the massive issues facing our country. We must debate it and get a grip on it, but this Budget does not do anything. It is an astounding omission.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this Budget debate. I am only sorry that the former Chancellor and the former Prime Minister are not in their places, because I wanted to tell them how much I enjoyed the comedy of their remarks. I wanted to underline how extraordinary it sounded to Opposition Members that the Conservative party was now boasting about its credentials for fiscal management.
We have had a £174 billion fiscal loosening to deliver a rate of growth over the forecast period that is well below the trend rate of growth that we are used to in this country. As the OBR made crystal clear in its publications earlier today, the Chancellor was on course last year to achieve a balanced budget in the medium term. Now in the medium term, the deficit is forecast to stretch to £60 billion. We therefore have this massive, great fiscal loosening—before the impact of coronavirus is factored in—to deliver a trend rate of growth that is anaemic.
As the Government somehow managed to avoid saying, this Budget is also not only unsustainable but deeply unfair. That is not my analysis; that is the Treasury’s analysis. When we look at the decile analysis of how this Budget actually affects our constituents—surprise, surprise—the richest 10% are hit by about 150 quid a head, but the bottom deciles are hit by between £250 and £350 a head. Even as the Government give away £174 billion, they find a way to ensure that the bulk of the burdens, such as there are, is actually paid by the poorest in our society. What that means in constituencies like mine is that when I go into the Kingfisher food bank in Shard End or when I talk to the teams running the Aston and Nechells food bank, they tell me that demand is going through the roof yet again. Well before the summer holidays, we now have food banks running out of food once more. That is why it is so disappointing to see a Budget that not only punishes the poor but does nothing to remedy the terrible injustices of the universal credit regime that is greatly punishing the poorest people in our country. The Government really should have taken the time to address that.
I will speak briefly today, because there is so little in the Budget for the people of the west midlands. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, we have a Tory Mayor in our region who has boasted for some time of his special influence in No. 11 and No. 10 Downing Street. If only we saw any evidence for that. We already have the second- worst funding deal of any metro Mayor, and this is a Mayor who promised that we would be the fastest-growing region of the country. In fact, we are the slowest. He promised that youth unemployment would be wiped out. In fact, unemployment is going up. He promised that we would be building homes, which is something the Prime Minister celebrated today. In fact, the number of homes for social rent built last year fell by 19%, and is down by 80% since 2010. This is a Mayor who is not delivering for the people of the west midlands. We should have had a Budget that made good his failures, but we did not get the Budget we need.
Officials in my region tell me that our Mayor has made some £2 billion-worth of promises. The only problem is that there is a £1.2 billion black hole in his budget. On top of that, there is a £900 million hole in funding for the transport schemes we have been promised. There are also question marks about the £4.6 billion-worth of programmes and projects that are now rated by the combined authority as either amber or red. This is an absolute shambles. The Chancellor boasts of his intention to level up. We should have had a Budget from him that actually fills the black hole in the budget of our Tory Mayor in the west midlands, and we did not get it.
Let me give some simple examples. The levelling up fund promises £4.2 billion over five years, but it does not start until 2022 and it has to be shared by at least eight different mayoralties. That means our share may be, at best, something like £100 million, which comes nowhere near the £1.9 billion black hole that still exists in the budget of the west midlands after today’s transport announcements on new bus routes and, indeed, the metro line that I have campaigned for in my constituency for some years.
Only 20% of the tramline is funded. It is literally a tram to nowhere, because our Mayor failed to persuade his colleagues in No. 10 and No. 11 to sign the cheques that were promised.
Liam Byrne
I will in a moment.
We cannot build the new homes we need unless we start investing in remedial work on brownfield land, but the £400 million, at best, has to be spread between eight mayoralties. That means we might have about £50 million coming into the west midlands, but our brownfield fund is £100 million short. The money we may get tomorrow, the day after or in the coming years will not come close to remedying the budget gaps we have today.
This Government have sought today to persuade us of their fiscal credentials, while avoiding the blunt truth that, by the end of the forecast period, they will have doubled the national debt, failed to deliver the growth we had in the past and failed to deliver for regions like mine in the west midlands.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), because I did not spot in his remarks his declaration of interest as the opponent of the fantastic Andy Street in the west midlands mayoral contest, which coloured his remarks—
Mr Harper
I was teasing. It is also a great pleasure because one would not know from listening to the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks and criticism of our economic record that he was, of course, the outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury who had to write the note reminding us all that there was “no money”. [Interruption.] I hear the groans from Labour Members, but it is worth reminding them that the difficult decisions we had to take from 2010 onwards were all because we were left an unsustainable budget deficit, the highest in the developed world, and it had to be dealt with.
Liam Byrne
The right hon. Gentleman is a sophisticated thinker, so I will give him a sophisticated intervention. The judgment that had to be made in 2010 was how we closed the deficit. We said that one third of it should be closed by spending cuts and two thirds of it by taxes. The former Chancellor George Osborne changed that judgment, seeking to close 90% of the deficit with spending cuts. That slowed the economy and meant that instead of having falling debt by 2016 we still had rising debt. The judgments were wrong, which is why things went off track.
Mr Harper
I fundamentally do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman on that, and I will come on to say a little about tax in my remarks. I do not agree with him because the tax burden is very high and was then. I forget which Opposition Member alleged this, but we have never said that the financial policies of the Labour party in government caused the financial crisis, as that was a much more complicated problem. Our criticism of the Labour Government, particularly under Gordon Brown as Chancellor, was that they assumed when they made their spending judgments that there would be perpetual economic growth and that there would never be a downturn. The root problem is that they were spending too much money, assuming that the tax revenues would continue forever, and when the financial crisis happened and the tax revenues fell, we were spending too much money. That had to be dealt with and we had to make the necessary decisions.
Liam Byrne
I just want to say that the Conservative party backed our spending plans up until November 2009.
Mr Harper
I do not agree with that either. We had to make some difficult decisions when the crash happened and they were the right decisions. As the Chancellor set out today, because we made those difficult decisions and put the economy in good shape, we are well positioned to deal with the challenge facing the country and the challenge of tackling the coronavirus.
Oral Answers to Questions
Liam Byrne Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the excellent work that the Holocaust Educational Trust does, and the youth ambassadors. I have met some of these youth ambassadors, who have understood the importance of learning the lesson from the holocaust, and understood the importance of acting against antisemitism wherever it occurs—and, indeed, wider racial hatred. As my hon. Friend says, the survivors from the holocaust have given their time to ensuring that nobody is in any doubt about where man’s inhumanity to man can lead. They have done a really important job. I pay tribute to them and to their continuing work. It is important that we all recognise the terrible things that can happen when we let antisemitism occur. We should all be fighting against antisemitism wherever it occurs.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
In the cold of Sunday, Kane Walker was found dead on the pavements of Birmingham. He was 31, and he became one of over 2,600 homeless people to have lost their lives in the last five years. When will the Prime Minister recognise that the scale of homelessness today is a moral emergency, and that we cannot wait until 2027 for this Government to end homelessness for good when we need action now?
No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government
Liam Byrne Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
What my right hon. Friend experienced last week was appalling. I understand that she has experienced other incidents more recently. I absolutely agree; everybody in this House holds their opinions and views with passion and commitment, and everybody in this House should be able to express those views with passion and commitment and not feel that they will be subject to intimidation, harassment or bullying. That is very important, and I am sure that that sentiment commands approval across the whole House. Once again, I am sorry for the experiences my right hon. Friend has gone through.
The Prime Minister
I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, and then I will conclude.
Liam Byrne
I am grateful to the Prime Minister for giving way. She must recognise that she has built a cage of red lines, which produced a deal that was overwhelmingly rejected by this House. We rejected the deal because we rejected the cage. This afternoon, she has yielded nothing about how any one of those red lines will change. If she is not prepared to change, how on earth can we in this House continue to place a shred of confidence in her?
The Prime Minister
The point I made last night and have repeatedly made today is that I will be talking to people across this House—to my own colleagues, to the DUP and to other parties, as there are different groups of people in this House who have different views on this issue—to find what will secure the confidence and support of this House for the way in which we deliver Brexit.
It was serendipitous that I allowed the right hon. Gentleman to intervene just at the point at which I was going to say that if the Leader of the Opposition wins his vote tonight, what he would attempt to do is damage our country and wreck our economy. Of course, it was the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) who left that note saying, “There’s no money left” after the last Labour Government.
Liam Byrne
I was naive to honour a Treasury tradition that went back to Churchill with a text that is pretty much the same, but I was proud to be part of a team that stopped a recession becoming a depression. This is the Government who—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Stop trying to shout other Members down. Calm yourselves.
Liam Byrne
The Prime Minister was a member of the party that backed Labour’s spending plans up to late 2009, and she has presided over a Government who have doubled the size of the national debt.
The Prime Minister
We did see what was happening in terms of the financial crisis and its impact, but the Labour party in government had failed to take the steps to ensure that the country was in a position to deal with those issues.
What would we see if Labour won the vote tonight? It would wreck our economy, spread division and undermine our national security. As I said earlier, on the biggest question of our times, the Leader of the Opposition provides no answers, no way forward and nothing but evasion, contradiction and political games. This House cannot and must not allow it.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
I am grateful for the chance to speak in this debate.
The essence of our argument was laid out with force, passion and eloquence by the Leader of the Opposition. The Prime Minister is this afternoon charged with the greatest political failure in modern times. On the most important question that this country faces, she has secured the biggest defeat that Parliament has ever delivered. That alone should be grounds for her to go. How on earth does she think she is going to command a majority in this House when she cannot command a majority on the biggest question of the day?
The truth is—the Leader of the Opposition made this point eloquently earlier—that the Prime Minister’s failure of leadership stretches well beyond the failure of her policy on Brexit. It is often said that we campaign in poetry but we govern in prose. For me, the best definition of our poetry was set out back in 1945, when we offered that plan to reconstruct a war-weary nation and win the peace.
At that time we said, “What we need in this country is industry in service of the nation.” Do we have that today? The Chancellor himself is the first to berate the terrible rates of productivity growth in our industry, which are worse today than they were in the late 1970s when we used to call it “British disease”.
We said that everyone in this country should have the right, through the sweat of their brow, to earn a decent life. Yet half the people in work in the west midlands are in poverty. There are now people going to food banks who never thought they would be in this position.
Above all, we said to the people of this country that they should be able to live and raise a family free from fear of want. Well, on the doorstep of this Parliament people are dying homeless, including one of the 5,000 people who have died homeless over the last five years. Many people in this House know that I recently lost my father to a lifelong struggle with alcohol after he lost the woman he loved to cancer, a few years older than me. I know at first hand how a twist of fate can knock you down, but for millions of people in this country, a twist of fate knocks them on to the streets, on to the pavements and into the soup kitchens where I work in Birmingham on a Sunday night. That is not the sign of a civilised and decent country, and it is something of which this Government should be ashamed.
When the Prime Minister took her seals of office, she had the temerity to stand on the steps of Downing Street and say to an anxious nation that she was going to tackle the burning injustices of this country. She said that she was going to tackle the burning flames, yet those flames now rage higher than I have ever seen in my lifetime. She now leads a Government of shreds and patches, and the Opposition say that this country deserves better and that she should do the decent thing and resign.
European Council
Liam Byrne Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
The Prime Minister has said today that she is determined to frustrate another vote of the people, and she has done her level best to frustrate a vote in this Parliament. Does she understand why so many people here think that she is trying to confront and bully this House with a last-minute choice between her deal and no deal, even when she knows the catastrophic cost of no deal for swathes of our industry?
May I ask the Prime Minister to clarify for the House this afternoon the simple fact that, when it comes to a meaningful vote in January, this House will indeed be able to rule out no deal and, if necessary, extend article 50?
The Prime Minister
The motion will, of course, be amendable when it comes before the House in January. However, I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that this is about ensuring that we can get the assurances from the European Union—that is what we are working on—and bring them back to this House, having listened to the concerns that have been raised by Members of this House.
Electoral Commission Investigation: Vote Leave
Liam Byrne Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Chloe Smith
No, we will not be re-running the referendum; we will be continuing to deliver its result. However, the hon. Lady reminds us that her Select Committee—an organ of this Parliament—is also conducting an ongoing investigation into fake news. There is another part of the larger set of issues that I am referring to that I want us to be able to look at together.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
This House is the guardian of free and fair elections. It is now clear that this referendum result was corrupt because it was bought, quite possibly with Russian money. Which Minister will now ask the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider a joint enterprise prosecution so that it is not just the staff of these campaigns that are prosecuted but the governing minds as well?
Chloe Smith
The police have already received references from this investigation, and I think that stands for itself.
Leaving the EU
Liam Byrne Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Although I recognise the good intentions with which my hon. Friend asked that question, I suspect that it did not quite receive the full approval of the entire House.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
The Prime Minister should have sacked her Foreign Secretary some time ago, given that he is someone who put himself before his party. She now risks putting her party before her country. How can she possibly persuade us that she can negotiate with strength with Brussels when it is clear that she leads a divided House and is struggling to take back control of her Cabinet, never mind anything else?