Liam Byrne
MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North · Labour · United Kingdom
“The loss of 4,000 jobs at Jaguar Land Rover is a body blow for workers, families and communities across the west midlands, so I commend Richard Parker, the Mayor of the West Midlands, for moving quickly on Monday to put £500,000 on the table to help ensure that everybody gets back to work.”
“I wholeheartedly welcome this well-rounded statement from the Foreign Secretary, and put on record my thanks to the new Prime Minister for the hard yards that I know he has put in over recent days and weeks.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I offer my warmest congratulations to her on her appointment to the role; she will be a brilliant Minister.”
“Let me start with a word of thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), who is not in her place, who said quite rightly that an awful lot has changed since the Bill was first introduced to this House. Indeed, a lot has been revealed over the course of the summer.”
“The effect of new clause 34 would be to ban off-ramping, ban new forms of digital currency transactions and ban memecoins, which are exactly the kind of measures that Ministers now need to bring forward. If we want to take the crypto system out of political finance, this is what we need to do.”
“No doubt we will learn that Mr Cottrell was in fact on the electoral register when that money was passed. No doubt we will discover that his mother, Fiona Cottrell, declared and did not disguise the fact that the money had ultimately come from her son.”
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“This Friday we commemorate the 51st anniversary of the Birmingham pub bombings, where 21 people lost their lives in what is still the largest unsolved murder in our history. The families do not believe that the approach set out by the Government will discover the truth, and they think that only a public inquiry will do. Can we now have the meetings in order to hear the families’ concerns directly, and agree an approach that will not just command confidence but find the truth about who bombed Birmingham?”
“I commend the Home Secretary for getting the balance absolutely right. I think that her announcement will be widely welcomed throughout our diverse community in Birmingham, because we know that our generosity of spirit is upheld by our rule of law and the kindness that we show is protected by the justice that we share. Will the Home Secretary confirm that while we will always give sanctuary to those who need our protection, what she is advancing today is in effect a form of earned citizenship, and that only those who step up to the full responsibilities of citizenship will enjoy the full rights of citizenship of this country?”
“The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to work with Birmingham City Council to implement a one-way system on St Agatha’s Road and Bamville Road in Ward End, to ensure the safety of both residents and their vehicles on the roads. And the petitioners remain, etc. ] [P003131]”
“The petitioners therefore request “that the House of Commons urge the Government to work with Birmingham City Council to implement a one-way system on St Agatha’s Road and Bamville Road in Ward End, to ensure the safety” of children, residents and their vehicles. Following is the full text of the petition: [ The petition of residents of Ward End in the constituency of Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North, Declares that Birmingham City Council, in collaboration with local residents, must seek to address the safety of local children around Thornton School, by implementing a one-way system on St Agatha’s Road, and Bamville Road.”
“I rise to present this petition on behalf of the residents of Ward End ward in Birmingham. The petition calls on the city council to safeguard children and parents around Thornton and Sladefield schools, where I have undertaken school gate surgeries over the past month. Right now, children are at risk from dangerous driving on Bamville Road and St Agatha’s Road. Implementation of a one-way system on those roads, together with a proper study of a one-way system on Chetwynd Road and St Joseph’s Road, would ensure safer children, happier residents and fewer damaged vehicles. This is now possible thanks to the hard work of the city council and its transportation lead, Councillor Majid Mahmood, and his decision to earmark £3.8 million of the clean air zone revenue budget.”
“Following is the full text of the petition: [ The petition of residents of the Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North constituency, Declares that this constituency should be considered for support from the Government’s forthcoming Plan for Neighbourhoods funding. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to re-allocate funding under its Plan for Neighbourhoods to support Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North. And the petitioners remain, etc .] [P003112]”
“I rise to present this petition on behalf of the residents of Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North. The petitioners declare that their constituency “should be considered for support from the Government’s forthcoming Plan for Neighbourhoods funding.” In particular, we hope that we can raise money from this fund for reinvestment and regeneration in the area of Glebe Farm and Tile Cross. It is an area rich in community spirit and blessed with extraordinary community groups, but it has suffered grievously over the last few years. This funding could make the world of difference. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to allocate funding to Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North.”
“We have not had that information yet, and the hearing is on Monday. What steps can you advise me to take to get the information that the Committee needs?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You rightly expect the Executive to provide timely information to this House. On 13 August I wrote to the Secretaries of State for Defence, for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and for Business and Trade to ask for important information about the legality of F-35 exports. We want that information ahead of a ministerial appearance before the Business and Trade Sub-Committee on Economic Security, Arms and Export Controls on Monday. This is important, because the Al-Haq judgment handed down by the courts on 30 June made it very clear that under our constitution, the acutely sensitive and political issue of the legality of exports is a matter for the Executive—who are democratically accountable to Parliament and ultimately the electorate—and not for the courts.”
“Will the Minister reassure the House that all the lessons from how the M&S case was handled have been learned, and that the state will bend over backwards to ensure that JLR has every assistance it needs to get back up and running, and to prosecute the guilty?”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Widnes and Halewood (Derek Twigg) on securing this urgent question, and warmly welcome the Minister to his new role. This is an extraordinarily serious issue, and the Business and Trade Committee will soon table its recommendations on tackling economic harms such as this. Many companies such as JLR now confront a much bigger threat surface, and the peril of state-backed threats. That is why this will be a much bigger issue in the future, and why companies in this country will need more than new laws. They will need new investment incentives to clean up legacy infrastructure that is currently not safe enough. When we took evidence from Archie Norman and Marks & Spencer in the wake of that cyber-attack, we were given a distinct impression that more could have been done by agencies to help M&S.”
“The Government have set out a plan to recognise Palestine. They must now follow it through—to uphold international law, challenge claims of annexation, and show that we in this country match words with deeds. My constituents call for recognition as part of a plan to stop this barbarity and killing and to surge in aid and release the hostages. The petitioners therefore “request that the House of Commons urge the Government to recognise Palestinian statehood.” Following is the full text of the petition: [The petition of the residents of the constituency of Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North Declares that the residents believe that the UK should recognise Palestinian statehood. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to recognise Palestinian statehood. And the petitioners remain, etc. ] [P003108]”
“I rise to present this petition on behalf of the residents of Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North. The petition declares that my constituents believe that the UK should recognise Palestinian statehood. For too long now, we have witnessed the most unimaginable horror inflicted on the men, women and little children of Gaza, as the Government of Mr Netanyahu seek to create a desert and call it peace. This is an existential moment for the Palestinian people. The International Criminal Court has described war crimes and crimes against humanity. We in this House cannot now turn away. We have a duty to act as a country, and we have a responsibility to act now. One hundred and forty countries have recognised Palestine. We should act, and we should act unconditionally, unreservedly and urgently.”
“I congratulate the Minister on saving Britain’s real engineering from years of financial engineering which was not in the best interests of this country and was more in the interests of the self-enrichment of the people behind it. The question for us today, though, is what steps the Government will now take to ensure and safeguard a growing, thriving industry. Will the Minister reassure the House that she will use us on the Committee to oversee the liabilities that the Department has taken on? Crucially, will she set out when she expects those lower energy costs to kick in, when she expects the tariff barriers in the United States to come down, and when she will tie together the steel strategy, which I hope she will publish as soon as possible, for the House to debate?”
“And the petitioners remain, etc.” Following is the full text of the petition: [The petition of residents in the Castle Bromwich Ward of the Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North Constituency, Declares that the scale of parking violations around Castle Bromwich Infant School has worsened significantly in the last 12 months, with cars parked illegally over drives, pavements, and double yellow lines. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to work with Solihull Borough Council to increase the frequency of parking enforcement around the school at drop-off and pick-up times, and to reinstall a road sign on Hurst Lane North to deter cars from parking illegally. And the petitioners remain, etc.] [P003101]”
“Most crucially, however, dangerous parking poses a serious safety risk to the children who have to cross the road with very poor visibility because of the selfish parking. The petition states: “The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to work with Solihull Borough Council to increase the frequency of parking enforcement around the school at drop-off and pick-up times, and to reinstall” the road safety signs “on Hurst Lane North to deter cars from parking illegally.”
“I rise to present a petition on behalf of residents of the Castle Bromwich ward in my constituency. It calls for Solihull metropolitan borough council to take action on the increasing number of parking violations in the area of Castle Bromwich infant and nursery school, where over the last 12 months parking practices have deteriorated. This is extremely inconsiderate: it is blocking residents’ drives and destroying the grass verges, and it is incredibly unfair on those who live locally. To make matters worse, when parking wardens visited they told the school staff that they were limited in the enforcement action that they could take because one of the “No parking” signs on Hurst Lane had fallen down.”
“The Business and Trade Committee’s inquiry on small business is still open for evidence from Members from across the House. On Tuesday, we took evidence from the chief executive of Ofgem, who made it perfectly clear that a complete collapse of regulation in the years after covid led to thousands of businesses across our country paying higher energy bills than they needed to. Can the Secretary of State assure the House that the small business strategy, when published, will contain a strategy for bearing down on the energy rip-off that is challenging small businesses across our country?”
“I welcome the measures to take out dark money from our politics, but they will mean nothing unless we move forward aggressively to ban cryptocurrency donations in British politics. They are used for money laundering and to disguise dark money. They have no role in British politics. Will the Minister confirm that the elections Bill will ban cryptocurrency donations?”
“They have knocked on every door, they have sat with Ministers, they have won legal battles, they have crowdfunded representation, and they have taken their case to Westminster, Brussels, Dublin and Belfast. They have formed the group Justice for the 21, led by Julie and Brian Hambleton, whose sister was killed that night. Together they have done what so many others have failed to do: they have had the courage and the will to keep the flame of truth alive.”
“The relatives of the victims were left to grieve in silence, and were lied to by the police and by politicians alike. For decades they were shut out of justice, ignored, patronised and disbelieved. In 2019, a jury at the resumed inquest concluded that the 21 victims were unlawfully murdered and that the IRA was responsible, yet the jury was not allowed to consider who precisely carried out the bombing. The question of who bombed Birmingham, who murdered the 21, and who committed the largest unresolved murder on these islands, was ruled out of scope, so today the truth remains buried. This is a wound that has never really healed. Since 2012, the families of those who died have fought with extraordinary courage and dignity in the search for truth and in the quest for justice.”
“Today, it is still the largest, worst, unsolved mass murder in our nation’s history. To this day, not one person—not one—has been brought to justice for this atrocity. That is why I rise today to call for a statutory, judge-led public inquiry into the Birmingham pub bombings under section 1 of the Inquiries Act 2005. We all know what happened that night. We know that the bombs were planted by members of the Provisional IRA. We know that a warning was phoned in, and we know that it came too late—that it was chaotic, inadequate and fatal. We know that the Birmingham Six, members of the Irish community in Birmingham, were arrested, tortured and convicted of a crime they did not commit. They spent 16 years in prison before the Court of Appeal quashed their convictions in 1991.”
“Fifty-one years ago, on 21 November 1974, two bombs exploded in the heart of Birmingham, at the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town. Twenty-one lives were lost and 220 people were injured. Families were destroyed, futures were stolen, and scars were left that never healed. In those two pubs, the Provisional IRA murdered 21 souls. James Caddick, John Jones, Stanley Bodman, John Rowlands, Charles Grey, Jimmy Craig, Trevor Thrupp, Michael Beasley, Thomas Chaytor, Marilyn Nash, Stephen Whalley, Eugene Reilly, Desmond Reilly, Maureen Roberts, Pamela Palmer, Anne Hayes, Maxine Hambleton, Lynn Bennett, Jane Davis, Paul Anthony Davies and Neil “Tommy” Marsh all lost their life. They were sons, daughters, parents, brothers, sisters—innocent people murdered in cold blood in Britain’s deadliest act of terrorism before 7/7.”
“I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member for that intervention, and for his support for my call. He knows as well as I do that time after time, at every turn, the families were met with barriers, bureaucracy and broken promises. They were told that they could not get legal aid. They were told that their case was not part of the reconciliation, or the legacy of the troubles. They were told to wait until West Midlands police pursued leads that led precisely nowhere. They were told again and again to be quiet, but they would not be quiet and will not be quiet. This House should not sit quiet while their search for justice is unfinished.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Member for bringing that point to the Floor of the House, and for backing my call. This campaign is not about vengeance. It is about truth and justice. It is about the right to truth and accountability. Our system of law and order, and our democracy, should work for all, not just the powerful. We have to ask in this House why, after all this time—after 51 years—there has not been a public inquiry. Let us be clear: this cannot be a desktop review. This cannot merely be looked into by an independent panel. It must be a judge-led statutory public inquiry, with the full power to summon evidence, compel witnesses and hold institutions to account. Why? Because these grieving families have been failed time and again, and after 51 years, it is enough.”
“While the coroner accepted assurances from the Government Legal Department that relevant documents had been disclosed, widespread doubts remain about whether information held in the Home Office, Foreign Office or Ministry of Defence was, in fact, made available.”
“My hon. Friend is exactly right. She speaks with such passion and eloquence about this issue. She knows as well as I do how deeply the families feel their pain. Since the exoneration of the Birmingham Six—the men who were tortured, framed and imprisoned—no one has been held to account for that failure. Since 1991, no new suspects have been brought to trial. Since 2019, even though witnesses have admitted that they knew who was responsible, no one has been compelled to testify, despite the fact that men like Michael Christopher Hayes, a former member of the Provisional IRA, confessed in a 2017 BBC interview that he accepted “collective responsibility” for what he called a terrible tragedy, and despite Witness O and Chris Mullin indicating in their evidence to the inquest that they had knowledge of those responsible for the murders.”
“In November 2024, on the 50th anniversary, Justice for the 21 renewed its call, and that call was backed by a cross-party group of MPs, mayors, lawyers and campaigners. I wrote again to the Home Secretary in spring this year. I have not yet had an answer about a decision on whether an inquiry will be launched, which is why I have asked for this debate tonight. I am asking not for special treatment, but for equal treatment—for Birmingham to be given the justice that has been offered to the victims of so many scandals, where we have set up inquiries to get to the bottom of the truth.”
“We are seeking an independent inquiry that is resourced to ensure the effective participation of the families, and that asks openly, without constraint, fear or favour: who bombed Birmingham? We are seeking an inquiry that examines the role of the police, the criminal justice system and the state, both then and since. We have to be clear, Madam Deputy Speaker, that this crime is not covered by the legislation and the agreements that secured peace in Northern Ireland, and that means something important. It means that the Home Secretary has the power right now to order this inquiry. There is no legal obstacle; the only question is whether there is the political will. In April 2024, eight Birmingham MPs wrote to the Home Secretary to demand this inquiry.”
“It is how we tell the victims and their families that they matter, that their loss matters, and that their loved ones will not be forgotten. Crucially, it is how we learn. If we cannot learn the lessons of the past, the risk is that we repeat them. We say often in this House that justice delayed is justice denied. It has been 51 years since that terrible night: 51 years of injustice; 51 years of doors closed and backs turned. I say that is long enough. I want to be very clear with the House tonight about what we are seeking. We are seeking a statutory public inquiry under section 1 of the Inquiries Act 2005. We are seeking a judge-led process, with full legal powers to compel witnesses and evidence.”
“No one from the state has ever been held accountable for the failings of the investigation, the imprisonment of the innocent or the denial of justice to the families. By contrast, at the urging of this House, we have rightly ensured for victims of Hillsborough, the infected blood scandal, Grenfell, Windrush and the Post Office scandal that we got to the bottom of what happened, and what caused the pain for so many victims. Why not Birmingham? Why are the people of Birmingham not given the justice that they deserve? It is time we sent the message from this House that there can be no more excuses. A public inquiry is not just a legal tool, but a national act of conscience. It is how democracy apologises with honesty.”
“The thrust of what the hon. Gentleman says is right. I will come on to some reflections on that in just a moment. We know that there are documents that were not provided to the inquest. Key individuals involved have died, but there are allegations that at least two of those responsible are still alive and living free, and that their names can be found in books in the House of Commons Library. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) said, as the years pass, memories fade and witnesses die, and the trail of truth grows cold. That is why it is time to act now. Let us look at the facts. This is the largest unsolved mass murder in British history. No statutory inquiry has ever been launched into what happened.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right: this is about the past, this is about truth and this is about justice, but she is right to say that this is also about the future. This is about whether we, in this House, believe in justice without exception, justice without delay, and justice that does not stop at the doors of power. It is about whether the Government of this country will look the people of Birmingham in the eye and say, “We hear you. We see you. We believe you, and we will not rest until you get the answers that you deserve.” Let us honour the memory of those 21 souls who never came home that night. Let us stand with their families and speak for a city that is still scarred by the silence. Let us at long last do what we should have done decades ago: let us hold a public inquiry into the Birmingham pub bombings.”
“Will the Minister commit to a date for getting rid of the Post Office altogether from that redress scheme? Today’s report makes it clear that at least 160 people in the Post Office knew exactly what was going on, and some of them came to this House and misled Members of this House not once but twice, so is it now the moment for us to commence contempt of Parliament proceedings against the leaders of the Post Office who misled us so badly?”
“On behalf of our Committee, I welcome this report from Sir Wyn Williams. As Jo Hamilton has said, it unmasks the full horror of what was done to the sub-postmasters, including the truth that at least 13 suicides resulted from what the Post Office did to innocent people. Sir Wyn Williams echoes almost all the recommendations our Committee has now made three times to Ministers. There are 3,000 claims still outstanding, and there are, in Sir Wyn’s words, “egregious delays” at every stage of the claims process, so does the Minister now accept that, as we have recommended and Sir Wyn has recommended, up-front legal advice needs to be provided to victims? Does the Minister also accept that we must now, once and for all, strip the Post Office of any role in the Horizon shortfall scheme?”
“The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to work with Solihull Council to take immediate action to ensure that traffic calming measures are installed on the slip road off Water Orton Road, in Castle Bromwich, Solih u ll. And the petitioners remain, etc.] [P003087]”
“The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to work with Solihull council to implement traffic-calming measures on the slip road off Water Orton Road following a spate of road traffic incidents. Following is the full text of the petition: [ The petition of residents of the Castle Bromwich Ward, Solihull, Declares that traffic calming measures need to be put in place on the slip road off Water Orton Road in the Castle Bromwich Ward to ensure the safety of local residents; further that Solihull Council need to act on the concerns of residents, following several recent road accidents as a result of road users using the slip road to circumvent the speed calming measures on the main road.”
“I rise to present this petition on behalf of the residents of Water Orton Road, in Castle Bromwich in my constituency. It calls on Solihull council finally to take action to tackle the out-of-control speeding on the slip road off the Water Orton Road. Although Solihull council’s intention to tackle speeding on the main Water Orton Road was admirable, it has unfortunately diverted the problem to the slip road. This has made life for many of my constituents a misery, with resident Helen Rogers telling me that inconsiderate, selfish drivers are leaving locals intimidated and frightened for their safety. Let us not wait until there is a fatality. We must take action immediately.”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the biggest remaking of the relationship between the public and private sectors for a generation. The business community in this country will be stronger and better for the measures that he has announced today. Business will welcome in particular the huge investment in skills, access to research and development, and access to capital, but the game changer is the investment in energy that he has announced. Cutting industrial energy prices is a way to get rid of the albatross around the neck of British business. It is a big promise; can he assure the House that there is both the plan and the pound notes to deliver on it?”
“Above all, I think that our plan is practical, and I have no reservation in commending it to the House.”
“I very much welcome yesterday’s investment in UK energy abundance, but as our Committee pointed out on Friday, the success of the industrial strategy will depend on a plan to cut industrial energy costs now. When the industrial strategy is published, will the Secretary of State reassure us that there will be a plan to ensure that UK energy prices are internationally competitive?”
“My final message is that we should draw a lesson from our history. Over the course of the last century and since the days of Joseph Chamberlain, there have been geopolitical shocks every 20 to 30 years that have forced us to think anew about the sovereign capabilities that we need, which always leads to conclusions about how we remake the state for new times. We are at exactly such a moment in our history, and yesterday gave us some heart that there is investment going into the things that business needs. This Government want to invest in growth, good jobs and good wages, but the potential of this country will be squandered unless we now build on the kinds of ambitions that we heard yesterday and implement the steps that our Committee has set out.”
“On research and development, £22.6 billion a year was promised by 2029, and there are targeted funds for advanced manufacturing, defence innovation, the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, and the new Edinburgh supercomputer. Those are good beginnings, but without a clear plan to diffuse the best ideas to every corner of our economy, we will not get the uplift in productivity that this country needs. There are without doubt big challenges, but what gave us heart as we took evidence over the course of this year is that business, trade unions and consumer groups are up for the challenge. They genuinely believe that we can become the fastest-growing economy in the G7. In 32 conclusions and recommendations, we set out very clearly the steps that Ministers could and should take in order to unlock the possibilities of the future.”
“On capital access, the British Business Bank is now set to receive almost £3 billion in order to crowd in tens of billions of pounds more, and the National Wealth Fund will grow to almost £30 billion, but we have to simplify access to that finance for businesses that need it. On energy, we had confirmation of investments in Sizewell C, offshore wind and small nuclear reactors, but we need lower energy costs in the here and now. On skills, there will be an extra £1.2 billion by 2028 for 65,000 more learners, but the skills governance reforms that we need were not quite clear enough, and business needs those reforms pronto.”
“We propose new legislation to put the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council on a statutory footing, with the Prime Minister chairing meetings at least once a quarter. We propose that the Regulatory Innovation Office be expanded and moved to the Cabinet Office, and that it take on the role of a clearing house to make sure that there is somewhere that business can go in order to highlight ridiculous conflicts between rules and regulations that just hold back growth day after day. We also propose hardwiring the link between the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council and the new Council of the Nations and Regions. Yesterday, we saw some progress on a number of our recommendations—our Committee is nothing if not influential with both the Treasury and the Department for Business and Trade.”
“There has to be cheaper energy, because we heard overwhelmingly that our energy prices are simply uncompetitive. There must be devolved skills funding where mayoral areas can prove that they are fit for purpose, to help manage and organise technical education. There needs to be much wider diffusion of research in order to spread prosperity. Above all, there has to be leadership from the very top, driven by the Prime Minister himself, and there have to be new ways in which we cut through the incoherence of regulation that bedevils business today. We propose a bold devolution of power, money and responsibility, particularly to mayoral areas where they can prove that they are up to the task.”
“In this report, we set out practical steps for how we can achieve every single one of those ambitions, and we then set 10 tests by which the forthcoming industrial strategy could be best judged. There must be vision, so that we can steer effectively. There must be metrics, so that we can judge progress effectively. There should be grand challenges set out by the Government to help galvanise a rally around national purpose and the possibilities of the future. There has got to be procurement reform, so that the £350 billion that the state spends each year drives domestic demand in new ways. There has to be trade alignment to connect our strengths with the global marketplace into which we sell. There has to be far better access to scale-up finance, to stop businesses being lifted and shifted—largely to the United States.”
“We need an ambition that is as great as the challenge before us, and we argue that that means mobilising public and private action around the grand challenges—the moonshots that are going to define the next century. We argue that we should maximise domestic demand through a dramatic overhaul of our public procurement system. We need to maximise foreign demand for the things that we make here through the trade deals that we strike with our allies around the world. We need to rewire the institutions of our economy in skills, energy, finance and innovation, and we then need to transform Whitehall itself by devolving power where we can, cutting red tape and putting regions back in control of their own destiny.”
“We have a broken system of procurement that squanders £350 billion every single year—£1 in every £6 of our GDP. We have a chronic skills gap that locks out millions from the potential jobs that they could get stuck into, and which denies firms the skills that they need to grow. We have blocks on innovation diffusion that hoard breakthroughs with superstar firms. We have a finance system that all too often starves scale-ups of capital, and we have a Whitehall machine that is over-centralised, risk averse and too complex to drive change at the speed that the modern economy demands. Those are not conditions of growth; they are conditions of decline, and this country needs to rally to fix them fast. We therefore argue in the report that the industrial strategy has to break through the confines on growth.”
“In a world that is crying out for energy, we are on the cusp of building green energy abundance. Time and again throughout our long history, these isles of wonder have made history by inventing the future. Even now, we have the future potential in our grasp in a way that we have not had for decades, but this report is a sobering read, because its conclusion is that our performance right now is very different from our potential, and promise is not going to be delivery. Unless we remake the state for a new age and renew the partnership between public ambition and private enterprise, we will squander the riches that could lie within our grasp. Our Committee has found that we are trapped by obstacles of our own making. We have sky-high energy costs that are driving away industry.”