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.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,360 lines we hold for Liam Byrne, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 45 of 108.
“I pay tribute to the Minister and welcome her commitment to working together across the aisle, so to speak, to put a new strategy in place. The troubled families programme is very important, not least because there is a lot of money in it. That money is often focused on families in the most chaotic of circumstances, but our evidence shows that many families with alcoholic parents do not look troubled or chaotic to the outside eye—they are often functioning alcoholics. Our definition of what constitutes a troubled family may therefore need to be stretched a little in order to help those children.”
“As a result of that and the higher inflation that is now cursing fuel and food, they will be £620 a year worse off by the time of the next election. We need a plan for making sure that we do not waste £1 billion on corporate tax cuts by 2020. Let us use that money to unlock the freeze on benefits.”
“We will ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and his colleagues to come back to the House so that we can check whether they have got the answers right and their strategy sound. As the Secretary of State sets about the negotiations, I want to ensure that three things are uppermost in his mind. First, we have to ensure that those who lose out from Brexit are helped and supported. We all know that there are people who will be battered and bruised by the Brexit process—there is no point pretending otherwise—but let us make sure that a plan is in place to support them. They are not the rich; they are the poor. As has been argued, they are the people whose tax credits have been frozen.”
“Although I wish that we were not starting from this point, the people have voted. This is a democracy and I will respect the decision that was taken. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) hit the nail absolutely on the head. The people of this country did not vote for a plan or a blueprint. They did not vote to lose their jobs and they did not vote based on the full truth on the table. Indeed, the campaign was terrible, bedevilled with lies about what money would be saved and what money would be spent. There was, though, a vote to make Parliament sovereign, and we should start now by making sure that Parliament is sovereign over the plan. This must be the first debate of many, and tomorrow and in the coming days we will have the first votes of many.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden). I begin by associating myself with the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens). I wish that I was not engaged in this debate tonight. I wish that we were not having to clear up this mess. I wish that the former right hon. Member for Witney had not cut and run but was here to help us to dig our way out of this hole. I am not surprised that he left, because he offered us a political strategy that was based on the ethos and ethics of the Bullingdon club: smash up the place, put some cash on the table, and leave it to others to clear up. I am not sure where the cash is— [ Interruption. ] As the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) knows, we appear to be half a trillion pounds further in debt than we were in 2010.”
“In this debate, it is so important now that we do not listen to the devils and demons of division. Now is the time for the Government to listen to the better angels of our nature.”
“How can we possibly contemplate leaving that convention and joining the company of Putin’s Russia? I hope that, over the course of these debates, we will hear a cast-iron guarantee that there will be no exit from the convention on human rights. Finally, although tests are looming on how we protect those battered and bruised by Brexit, how we defend manufacturing, and how we ensure that there is no race to the bottom on rights, the spirit of these negotiations is important. I have to accept that we will leave a federal Europe, but I believe that now could be the start of a confederal project in which we begin to step up our collaboration with our neighbours on security, jobs, international development, science—the things that we can do together in the world.”
“The car industry in regions such as mine in the west midlands employs 49,000 people today, but it will be destroyed if we have to rely on WTO tariffs of 10%, and if we add another 10% to costs by building a border to check the 60% of parts that we import to build the cars that are created in this country. Whatever deal is put in place, it must put manufacturing first. Thirdly, we must ensure that there is no race to the bottom on rights—on workers’ rights, social rights and the rights of minorities. We have already seen the briefing that has come out from a No. 10 source that the Conservatives’ 2020 manifesto will propose exiting the European convention on human rights—that great European Magna Carta that we in this country helped to draw up after the war to stop any return to the holocaust that we marked last week.”
“I know that experts are no longer in fashion among Conservative Members, but the Office for Budget Responsibility is clear that, because of higher inflation, people on tax credits will be poorer, not richer, over the next couple of years. I genuinely believe that the Brexit Secretary does want to protect hard-working families, but let us see him put his money where his mouth is by arguing with the Chancellor in favour of unfreezing tax credits over the next couple of years. That should be our priority. Secondly, we need a real plan to protect manufacturing in this country. We must recognise that manufacturing output has not yet recovered to its level before the crash.”
“Members have called for this afternoon; free movement of human rights groups throughout Kashmir; an investigation into the 2,200 mass graves that we know are there; and, yes, finally, self-determination for the people of Kashmir. We have to make a choice in this House about whether we stand on the side lines of this debate, as impotent bystanders, or whether we are to be protagonists for change, just as we were in South Africa and Burma. One of my constituents put it to me like this: “People of Jammu Kashmir seek a peaceful resolution of the issue and want their country to become a bridge of peace not a bone of contention between India and Pakistan.” We in the House should support the motion and that basic instinct.”
“We in the House now have to look to other Parliaments around the world—in Europe, the developing world, the US—and begin to think about how we might construct an international alliance of parliamentarians to call for change. We all know about the limitations of the United Nations. It has not made a lot of progress in the last 50 or 60 years. Do we really believe it will make any more in the years ahead? Let us take direct action now, as parliamentarians, not on our own but in alliance with others who believe in the same things we do, and let us together campaign for some basic changes that we all want: the repeal of the special powers Act, which is in clear breach of the UN obligation to which India has signed up; a ban on pellet guns, which many hon.”
“This great continent is changing, and relations between China and Pakistan are changing. If we get this right, there is a tremendous economic prize ahead, and the principal beneficiaries could well be India and Pakistan, but not if they continue to pour money, arms and troops into the most heavily defended and dangerous border on earth. That is why both sides now surely have an interest in a solution and why we in this House have a moral obligation to help push that solution forward. I have been part of a group of people in the House who have argued for change for the last 12 years. It is time now for some honesty and candour about whether that political strategy is going to produce any more change or further advance in the 12 years ahead. I do not think it will.”
“The BBC has at least started to produce some coverage, but it is of no comparison to the kind of coverage we used to see from South Africa when I was a teenager or of the kind we see from Israel and Palestine week in, week out. We have to call on our media organisations to give us the benefit of transparency so that the world might be forced to look at what is happening. The moral arguments for a solution are pretty clear and have been well articulated this afternoon, and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr alluded to some of the geopolitical demands for a solution too. China’s new silk road strategy will see $4 trillion to $6 trillion of investment poured into the business of integrating the Eurasian landmass. Indeed, yesterday in Dagenham we celebrated the arrival of the first train direct from China.”
“The abuses perpetrated—with pellet guns, rape, chili powder—have maimed, scarred and destroyed lives, and not just among this generation; the memories of the abuse will cascade down the generations, and that will not make the solution or the arrival of peace happen any sooner; it will make it tougher and slower. In particular, we have to ask ourselves why we have learned so much about these abuses not from the mainstream media but from social media. I pay tribute to those who had the courage to post news about the atrocities so that the world and we in this House could not look away. We could see it on our phones and on our screens.”
“Of course, there have been advances around border controls, trade and transport, but the truth is that today we are not one step closer to honouring that basic requirement set out in the UN mandate all those years ago to grant the right—not the privilege—of self-determination to the people of Kashmir. Over the 12 years, among our most urgent calls have been those for the free movement of human rights observers and the media throughout the area of Kashmir, and my goodness the events of the last six months have underlined why we were so right to call for that.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the speech from the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), and I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) on securing this debate. I am proud to have been a member of the all-party group on Kashmir for the 12 years I have been in the House and to have been a secretary to it in the past. I also pay tribute to the speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) and for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), who spoke with particular power. When I look back on the 12 years I have campaigned on this issue in the House, I am afraid it is the lack of progress on which I have to remark, not on progress that is worth celebrating.”
“I just want to follow up on the incredibly important question posed by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). We are the proud authors of human rights in Europe. It is a tradition that dates back to Magna Carta. Will the Minister confirm that when the Government bring forward their proposals on a British Bill of Rights, nothing in the draft for discussion will propose that we leave the European convention on human rights or the European Court of Human Rights?”
“How does my hon. Friend think the situation will now unfold, given that the funding gap in social care in our city grows to something like a quarter of a billion pounds by 2020-21? Never has a social care system had to withstand this kind of pressure. The situation that she describes is only the beginning.”
“Ten days ago, Allan Richards was convicted in Birmingham of the most horrific catalogue of offences against children, some as young as eight. I congratulate West Midlands police on the forensic investigation that brought him to justice, but he was a serving police officer for more than 30 years. Will the Home Secretary assure the House that the inquiry into what happened will be independent, that whistleblowers will be given protection and that, if other agencies, including the Crown Prosecution Service, made mistakes, they will form part of the investigation?”
“The Minister is addressing the points raised well. If, as he says, he is looking at the lessons to be learned, will he tell the House tonight that he agrees with us that there should be parity of funding for the legal costs in this inquest? Does he agree with the parity principle—yes or no?”
“Will he therefore give this House a vote on the final package for Brexit, whenever and however it is finally negotiated?”
“I also welcome the Secretary of State to his place, but may I say to him that many of us wanted rather more detail than a few more reheated old soundbites? We know the old slogan “Brexit means Brexit”, and what we got this afternoon was an essay on how waffle means waffle. May I commend to him the approach of the Japanese Government, who have not simply spent the last seven weeks setting up a Brexit commission, but gone to the lengths of reporting its results? I hope that that diligence and speed will inspire his work in his Department over the months to come. I want to press the Secretary of State on his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle). He made a big play in his statement of his ambition, which I share, to restore parliamentary sovereignty.”
“I join in the hymns of welcome to the new Leader of the House. When might we have a debate about the Government’s new life chances strategy and how it might help children of alcoholics? Like many other hon. Members I am the child of an alcoholic and grew up knowing what that particular hell is like. But I was lucky. Overall, children of alcoholics are three times more likely to contemplate suicide and to become alcoholics themselves. This issue is no longer marginal. It affects 2.5 million children in our country, which means that one in five children are the innocent victims of drink. We could not change things for our parents, but we can change things for our children. This Government could help, and we should debate how.”
“Let me join in the congratulations to the Secretary of State on her appointment. Why is there no duty on the new office for students to promote collaboration? The crisis that we confront in this country is around technical education, not higher education. If we want to grow the number of students on level 5 apprenticeships, we need to transform the level of integration and collaboration that exists between further education and higher education. Why is that dual-track system not being encouraged by placing a duty to collaborate at the heart of the office for students?”
“The Secretary of State is being characteristically generous in giving way. Is it her expectation that many of our great further education colleges that are already providing higher education will be able to acquire their own degree-awarding abilities, in a much more generous way than is currently possible, as a result of this change?”
“Would my hon. Friend underline how important this point is? For many of the communities we serve, further education is the critical springboard into higher education. In the great city of Birmingham, we have the grand total of just 100 young people on level 5 apprenticeships. We cannot change that number unless we radically increase the way in which further education and higher education work together. That is why this element of the Bill needs highlighting as so important.”
“Is it not incumbent on the Minister to give a categorical assurance to the House that where rights and entitlements proscribed in royal charter are deleted, they will be reinstated by the Government?”
“That is why we needed more than a halfway house from the Secretary of State this afternoon; we needed a Bill that repositioned higher education as the powerhouse it needs to be for our country’s future.”
“Crucially, we need a new partnership between further education and higher education. We should be emulating the best practice in the United States, where it is possible to do the first couple of years of a degree at a further education college before moving on to finish it in a couple of years at a world-class higher education institution. That is why the duty to collaborate is so vital, and why it is such a problem that it is missing from the Bill. We have been burying our scientists with our sovereigns since the death of Sir Isaac Newton. There is no other country on earth that would get BAFTAs for films about its great scientists. We are one of the world’s great science powers, but our position is in jeopardy.”
“We need a holistic review to put in place a single, comprehensive dual-track system for technical education. That means everyone from the age of 14 learning some kind of technical education; it means rebuilding the careers service; it means high-quality, gold-standard apprenticeships with everyone studying English and maths up to the age of 18; it means a new degree of specialisation in our colleges, with the creation of institutes of technical excellence; and it means an apprenticeship system that gives at least half of our young people the chance to take a technical apprenticeship up to level 5. We know how to run those apprenticeship schemes because great British companies such as Jaguar Land Rover and BAE Systems are doing so. The only problem is that they are harder to get into today than Oxford University.”
“We have a rise in unqualified science teachers in our classrooms; a careers service that the CBI says is on “life support”; a further education system that was cut by 40% over the course of the last Parliament; and an apprenticeship system that is growing the number of level 2s, but delivering the grand total of just 100 apprentices on level 5 in my home city of Birmingham. Today, just 2% of apprentices go on to level 5 study, and there has been a 40% fall in the numbers on HNCs, HNDs and foundation degrees. Those who are seeking a professional and technical path to higher education from the age of 14 up to the age of 21 go through a system that is overseen by Ofqual, Ofsted, the AQA, the Education Funding Agency, the Skills Funding Agency and now the office for students. It is, quite frankly, a dog’s breakfast.”
“We just forgot to do it for ourselves. The noble Lord Percy reported to this House in 1944 that “the position of Great Britain as a leading industrial nation is being endangered by a failure to secure the fullest possible application of science to industry…and…this failure is partly due to deficiencies in education.” The problem is that what was true in 1944 is true today. We do not have a strong dual-track system that takes a student in a constituency like mine and leads them on to the very highest level of technical education.”
“It is not even clear to me whether we have a 10-year framework for science funding any more. I certainly see nothing in the Bill about how we will strengthen a position that is becoming extremely serious. At a time when so many of our universities are having huge holes punched in their science base and science funding because of the decision to come out of Europe, we needed an awful lot more from the Secretary of State this afternoon about how we will tackle the looming crisis. The third challenge that I want to touch on briefly is the one that troubles me most: why is there nothing in the Bill to address the revolution that is needed in the technical education system in this country? We know how to design good dual-track technical education systems. How do we know that? Because we did it for Germany after the second world war.”
“A few years ago, the Royal Society put it rather well, when it said that “unless we grow smarter, we will grow poorer”. If the global race is anything, it is a science race, and today we are falling behind. By 2019, China will become the world’s biggest science player. Right now, we are already losing the race for the good high-tech jobs of the future. We will not fix such a strategic challenge if we are languishing at 23rd out of 33 OECD countries. Our big competitors around the world—Japan, Korea and countries in Scandinavia—are now spending 3% of GDP on science each and every year, while we spend something like 1.3% of GDP on science. In fact, we would need to crowd in funding and add public spending totalling £23 billion if we were to bring science spending in this country up to the level of our strongest competitors.”
“I would like a bold revolution in the way we bring together Unionlearn, the Workers Education Association and the Open University, so that it is possible for workers to go from ABC to PhD in their workplace. In a world where someone can get a massive open online learning course beamed to their smartphone, that is surely possible, but we do not have the qualifications system we need to make that a reality, nor is policy in the right place. The second big challenge we confront is on the science base. Quite frankly, although we are all grateful to Sir Paul Nurse for the heroic job he has done in overhauling the governance of the science base, there is nothing in the Bill to confront the big strategic challenge for science in this country, which is the fact that we are plummeting down the league tables when it comes to science spending.”
“The basic message was pretty simple: the student loan system as currently set up is not fit for purpose, and it is certainly not fit for the future. The Minister has proposed a number of measures to ensure a degree of transparency, not least freezing the thresholds for student loan repayments, but the truth is that we need a wholesale overhaul of the transparency of the system. We need the system to work well, but, quite frankly, too often we are looking through a glass darkly when we try to figure out what is going on. Like many right hon. and hon. Members, I am disappointed that there is not enough in the Bill about lifelong learning, and I am very disappointed that there is nothing in it about workplace learning.”
“The level of productivity growth that blights our economy today is actually worse than it was at the end of the 1970s, when we used to call it the British disease. The problem with the Bill, however, is that it does nothing to address the big strategic challenges that confront students, our science base and our skills system. I will touch quickly on each. First, let me talk about students. We all know that there is still a big debate to be had about the financial viability of the student loan system. This afternoon is not the occasion to rehearse the fragility of the Ponzi scheme that now underpins that system, but I often used to debate with the Minister’s predecessors whether Britain could look forward to a debt write-off of £70 billion or £80 billion.”
“I want to pick up where my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) left off. The truth is that much in the Bill is long overdue. Much of the proposed legislation is necessary, but the truth is that the Bill was written for a very different time and in a very different era. The risk is that the Minister is presenting to the House a halfway house that will leave us with the task of having to come back to some big strategic questions to finish the job. The Secretary of State was absolutely right to underline the necessity of the Bill. We need the strength of our higher education institutions today like never before. In this post-referendum era, we will have to get a lot better at making things a lot more efficiently.”
“Of course the FTSE 100 is going to rebound a bit, because the vast majority of the business of FTSE 100 stocks is outside the United Kingdom. If we look at indices such as the FTSE 250, which is much more domestically exposed, we see that the fall has been catastrophic.”
“We need to ensure that we are equipped in this House with a method of coming to agreement and making sure that the right plan for a new relationship is on the table.”
“Quite frankly, that beggars belief. We are blessed in this House with the European Scrutiny Committee, which does a good job. It is charged with scrutinising individual instruments of EU legislation that come before us. It is, of course, chaired by that neutral and commanding figure the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash). However, it is not equipped to look at the big picture nor to look at the principles that we need to agree. I therefore hope the Prime Minister will take seriously the call from Opposition Members for a new Joint Committee of both Houses to try to get to the bottom of the 6,500 instruments we might need to incorporate into UK domestic law, give or take those aspects we do not like. Parliamentary sovereignty has just been voted on, but Parliament cannot be sovereign if Parliament is blind.”
“What I think most voters told us in the referendum is that we have become a world of very rich elites and very remote elites. People have had enough of it; they want a different settlement. We need to move with speed in this House to set out the principles for a new special relationship with our closest neighbours. The sooner we agree those principles across the House, the better. I am glad the Chancellor set out a couple of principles, but I hope that he agrees, and that when the Chief Secretary to the Treasury winds up the debate he will agree, that we ought to have been better prepared. We were told yesterday by the Prime Minister that there is a new EU unit, yet somehow the Government have forgotten to include the Home Office in it, as if somehow immigration was not an important feature of this debate.”
“Let us be honest that we have already seen promises that were made in the campaign being broken into shreds, tatters and little pieces. It is a job for all of us to hold to account the leaders of the leave campaign who made promises that now appear not to be honoured. We need to hang those promises around their necks in the months ahead because, frankly, our democracy cannot withstand too many more broken promises. The guilty men and women who made those promises must be held to account in this House. I wanted to speak in the debate because I want to say that we need to honour the people’s decision. They have given us a stark lesson. We know how to globalise, but we do not know how to make globalisation work for the majority of voters.”
“I welcome today’s debate and the tone that we have heard this afternoon. After what has been all too often a foul-mouthed debate over the past couple of months, the tone of constructive engagement and working together is very important. It is down to the leaders in this House to put the decency back into our democracy and, like many others, I was shocked to hear the statements, tweets, messages and incidents that hon. Members read out during our proceedings on the statement earlier today. We just cannot have that in this country; we are not going to have that in this country. It is a responsibility on all our shoulders to ensure that in the communities we serve we stamp it out, and we stamp it out fast. Part of a decent democracy is that people honour their promises.”
“It would be an error to slam the door to this country closed and lose our place in the world as a great trading nation, which would inevitably lead to the unravelling of the United Kingdom. We need great British moderation now more than ever. We must have no more pie in the sky from politicians with no intention of honouring their promises, which is why I hope this place continues to lead such debates.”
“There will be countless other burdens regarding which Britain has to step up and say, “Yes. We are going to take on the obligations that come with sharing this part of the world.” The Prime Minister was right to say that we will not turn our back on Europe. We have to send a very clear signal that we will be not just good neighbours, but the best of neighbours. In the debates that come, there will be an iron relationship between reform of free movement, access to the single market and the integrity of the United Kingdom. If we are to maximise the integrity of the UK and to keep our trade balance good, we have to keep changes to free movement to an absolute minimum.”
“That is why I believe we need to introduce the minimal possible restrictions on free movement and the fewest fetters possible. When it comes to the free movement of trade and of capital, we must ensure that our rights to tax revenue are protected. We have made progress over the past few years in ensuring that multinationals pay their fair share of tax, but heaven knows we have an awful long way to go. We know that hundreds of billions are sheltered by European companies in tax havens. We have to deepen collaboration and co-operation with Europe to ensure that people pay their fair share. Finally, we need a big debate about sharing the burdens of our neighbourhood. Good neighbours do not shirk their duties, whether on climate change or common border protection.”
“It was this country, and one of our greatest Prime Ministers, that helped to found the Council of Europe. Over the decades that followed, we were among the most important authors of the European convention on human rights, and we are the proud co-authors of the European Court of Human Rights. We must ensure that there is no race to the bottom on workers’ rights, and that we do not enjoy second-class human rights in this country. Fourthly, we obviously have to try to maximise free trade, free movement of goods and free movement of capital throughout the single market. We will need to be honest that we will pay a price for introducing restrictions on migration. We need to think carefully about what price we are prepared to pay.”
“Of course, there is the huge question of how, as part of a new agreement on fair movement, this country steps up to its international obligations to help refugees struggling due to war in the middle east. We should be doing far more to help Europe with the burden of giving safe haven to refugees fleeing war zones and make that part and parcel of our proposals for fair movement. Within all that, we have to be careful that we do not damage the free movement of ideas, which is why I always argue that students and scientists should be exempt. Alongside that, we must ensure that co-operation on ideas, intellectual capital and intellectual property protection are part of the new arrangements. Thirdly, we must ensure that there is no race to the bottom on workers’ rights and human rights.”
“I said at the time that it would be a long struggle to get such reform, but the sooner we started, the sooner we would finish. Surely we now have to take that lesson and begin putting on the table serious proposals for the reform of free movement. There are a million and one choices to make. We have to start by honouring the rights of those who are already here. We cannot retrospectively tamper with the rights of people who have already made the life-changing decision to move home. There are then questions about restrictions on low skill or high skill, how long visas should last, whether visa rights should lead to rights of settlement and citizenship, and what access to benefits should be enjoyed for taxes paid in.”