YouSaid · the spoken record
Liam Byrne
We hold 35 passages that may be Liam Byrne’s. We do not publish them until we can confirm who spoke. See the correction.
On the record 2004–2026
hansard · podcast
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“That is why the proposals for a much bigger and better-equipped Pool Re are so important. Pool Re, as many will know, was set up to backstop terrorism insurance during the height of the IRA attacks. It now needs modernising for new times. The tax regime that we have in place today simply does not incentivise small and medium-sized enterprises in the way that we could, to draw down on subscription-based cyber-security policies. Making sure that there are the right incentives, powers and insights available are just some of the tasks that we think an economic security Minister needs to be fully empowered to perform.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We have a very good Minister in place, but in a way, the report is designed to ensure that that Minister is empowered in his work and across Government. But first we must understand, and help the Minister have the powers to understand, the full breadth of the UK supply chains and where the risks are. The Jaguar Land Rover case was striking because the supply chain information was kept on the computers that went down. When the computers went down, they had to generate, I think, almost paper lists of tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers to work out who needed cashflow and who could survive without direct help. We must ensure that we have a full picture of supply chains and where the critical dependencies are, as the Japanese have been doing for many years. Making sure that there is a proper backstop to the cyber-insurance market is important.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I was very grateful to receive the hon. Member’s email. He is absolutely right. The shutdown of branches all over our country is a really serious problem that creates real risks. One answer is to ensure that we lean in behind the Post Office plans to create banking hubs, not just in a couple of hundred high streets, which is the proposal of the main banks, but in thousands of locations across the country. The Post Office has in place an agreement with the banks until about 2030, but the future thereafter is not clear, so I hope that Ministers can take up this point in the Department for Business and Trade to ensure that we lean into the plans that the Post Office has developed to transform the availability of banking services on thousands of high streets up and down the country.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is a very good point. We want to ensure that there is an enshrinement of the principles of the Bill, so that the private sector has clarity, certainty and confidence in the durability of the economic security regime that we operate in this country. In the inquiry, we heard overwhelming evidence that businesses frankly do not know whom to ring when there is a problem. They did not know whether there were particular spaces where they could work together, certainly with agencies but also with economic security services more generally. Providing clarity, certainty and durability is the only way in which we will be able to mobilise the scale of long-term finance that we will need in order to upgrade the resilience of this country for new times.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Again, if we are upgrading our economic security defences, I do not think we can do that, in the world in which we live, without comprehensively upgrading our arms control systems too.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think there is a real opportunity in the course of the next year to modernise the way we export arms, and we will need to do that because of the simple reality that the definition of an arm in new times is very different. Many of our allies talk to us, as members of the Committee, about the need to strengthen in particular intellectual property export controls in the future. In a world where ideas can be weapons if they are, for example, novel artificial intelligence programmes, we have to take a much broader approach to this in the future. It is not clear to us that the way we license weapons and control adherence to licence conditions is strong enough, so it is an area to which the Select Committee will need to return.”
House of Commons27 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Alongside that, we have to step up the mobilisation of capital on a completely different scale.”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Conservatives saddled this country with an extraordinary £1 trillion of debt more than the situation we left. That is why we are paying £1 in every £10 in interest rates today—it is because they more than doubled the national debt.”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have sat on both Front Benches and on both sets of Back Benches, and over the years I have seen the selective amnesia that bedevils debate in this place, and the problem of unreliable narrators, but I have to say that I have never seen amnesia on as epic a scale as I did from the Leader of the Opposition today. It is quite well established that back in 2010, I thought the numbers were a little bit tight. I thought difficult decisions were going to be needed, which is why we left a judiciously balanced Budget—two thirds spending cuts, one third taxes rises—that would have halved the deficit in four years and brought debt borrowing down by 2016. That, of course, was not the strategy pursued by the last Government, and what difference did that make?”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not know what Budget the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) was reading, but it was not the Budget that was put on the table this afternoon. I think the Chancellor got the judgment exactly right today. She had a difficult inheritance, a difficult hand and difficult decisions to take, but she got the calls absolutely right. Under the Budget, growth this year and business investment over the course of this Parliament are forecast to rise, and inflation is coming down. Forecast interest rates are coming down, energy bills for our constituents are coming down, and child poverty is set to collapse. That means that 8,900 people in my constituency will be better off because of this Budget—a Labour Budget delivered by a Labour Chancellor this afternoon. I have been in this House for 21 years.”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Before we hear any nonsense about covid, let us remember that 80% to 90% of the increase in debt that the Conservatives saddled us with came before the covid lockdowns began.”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is an extraordinary and inventive country; we have been since the industrial revolution started in Birmingham back in 1761, but that will be nothing compared to what is about to unfold in this country. We are at the front of the grid in the race for the 21st century, but we need to mobilise capital on a completely new scale. That is why certainty, certainty, certainty for business was so important. I welcome the fact that the headroom has been put up to £22 billion today. I welcome the fact that the Chancellor is ending the biannual circus of fiscal speculation by having one forecast a year. I have to say to the House that I seriously think that Mr Hughes needs to consider his position. The fact that we had a leak of the OBR forecast before this House got to debate the Budget is appalling, and this uncertainty has bedevilled us.”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will never forget the children at Adderley school who were literally helping restock our food banks by taking Penguin bars out of their lunch boxes to put them in food collection crates so their classmates did not go hungry at lunch time. That is the reality of the child poverty legacy the Conservatives left us with, and that is the legacy that the Chancellor got to grips with today. The Business and Trade Committee looks forward to scrutinising the proposals that have been laid out today. We have been travelling the country over the last couple of weeks talking to businesses about what they wanted out of this Budget, and three things were clear. These are isles of wonder. We now stand on the threshold of an extraordinary new era of innovation.”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Our productivity growth has been half that of the United States, and the OBR is clear today that the downgrade on growth that it has baked into its numbers is entirely due to the productivity collapse because the Conservatives wasted the money during their 14 years in office. I should just say, by the bye, that because the Conservatives are the Conservatives, they managed to put £1 trillion on the debt and to collapse the productivity numbers, and still to put inequality through the roof. That is why we have all had food bank queues in our constituencies that we will never forget. I will never forget for as long as I live the phenomenon of collecting food in inner-city Birmingham because our food banks had run out of food.”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I can tell the hon. Member. I do not know what his facility with maths is like, or if he realises that a trillion has 12 noughts, but we left the national debt £1 trillion lower than it is today—£2.7 trillion. That is how much this country is now borrowing. The great tragedy is that if the previous Government had borrowed money at low interest costs and invested it in something that enhanced productivity, we would be in a better position today and the Chancellor would not have had to deliver the Budget she had to deliver today. Don’t take my word for it; the International Monetary Fund was clear in its report on 25 July that our productivity growth under the Conservatives collapsed by a third compared with the good old new Labour years. Our productivity divergence with the United States is so serious.”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is one of the best places in the world to be an inventor or build a start-up business. We now need to ensure that we are one of the best places in the world to scale up a business. That will be the nature of the questions that the Committee will put to Ministers over the weeks to come. One thing above all shone through in the Chancellor’s statement: ambition for, and confidence in, the future of this country. That is why one of the most important numbers we will read in the OBR forecast is that business investment is not flat or falling but is set to soar by £6 billion over the forecast period. That ambition for this country stands in stark contrast to the amnesia of the Conservative party. That is because we on the Labour Benches know how futures are really built.”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“From looking at the policy decisions in the scorecard, it looks like there is a £4.2 billion subsidy to help bring business rates down. That should mean that we have the lowest business rates this country has seen, which is a good thing, but I urge the Chancellor to go further by cutting the cost of red tape in a bold and radical way. As the Committee travelled around the country, business after business told us that they want not just less red tape but better regulation. Crucially, they want Departments and regulators to co-ordinate with each other, so that we do not have one Department over here making one decision and another over there making a different one. Ensuring that the Whitehall machine moves at the speed of business in this new age of AI will be more and more important as a competitive advantage.”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The third thing we have to do is to improve the return on investments made in this country. That means a couple of things. It means bringing down energy costs radically. We did not have a business energy cost scheme scored in the Budget today, but that is because I know the Government are out to consultation on it. Every single member of the Committee would implore the Government to do whatever it takes to ensure that business energy costs in this country are internationally competitive. It is wrong that firms like Nissan say to us that their energy costs up in Sunderland are the most expensive of any Nissan plant in the world. We must bring business energy costs down. Alongside that, the message that we hear from small businesses in particular is that we must bring down business rates.”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will in a moment. That is why I absolutely welcome the package that the Chancellor has set out today to mobilise investment capital in a radical new way: the expanding of enterprise management incentives, the boosting of the venture capital trusts, and UK listing relief. That is almost £3 billion of extra incentives for entrepreneurs in this country. That is a game changer not just for start-ups, but for scale-ups, so we can end the craziness of brilliant inventors in this country starting new businesses, growing them nicely and then them having snapped up and shifted out to the United States. We have to ensure that we are growing and fostering more big, global dominating companies here in this country, so I welcome the way the Chancellor leant in behind those firms today.”
House of Commons26 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons19 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons17 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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]”
House of Commons12 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons12 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons12 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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]”
House of Commons16 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons16 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons11 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons9 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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]”
House of Commons3 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons3 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons2 September 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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]”
House of Commons21 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons21 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons21 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons17 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons17 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons9 July 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗