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We hold 35 passages that may be Liam Byrne’s. We do not publish them until we can confirm who spoke.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
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“I hope that the Committee can unite around a solution that the Government can support, so that the Bill becomes law. This debate is important, and I hope it will run on here and in the other place to ensure we have a balancing test that secures the objectives of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden, without incurring a ministerial roadblock in the shape of the Ministry of Justice.”
House of Commons8 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Once the Bill passes, we will need to understand what more can be done to stop the chilling effect of pre-litigation action. New clause 1 provides us with an important debate. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden is right to say that part of the delicacy of the Bill relates to making sure that judges have full sight of Parliament’s intention. The debates we have in this place will be unusually important in interpreting and applying the Bill in the courts, so he is absolutely right to say that subsection (1) sets out the basic purpose of the Bill: to maximise the latitude for free speech, truth telling, investigations and good journalism, for which this country is rightly famous. If that comes at the cost of the Ministry of Justice opposing the Bill and killing it today, it will be an unfortunate consequence.”
House of Commons8 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Bill builds on an amendment that I had the privilege to move to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. It is outrageous that our courts are being used as arenas of silence to shut down free speech. We have become a place where oligarchs from around the world choose to come, in order to silence truth tellers and journalists who are providing an incredibly important public service. The Bill is an important step forward, but it is only a step. As the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden says, it cannot be the full solution. In particular, it will not address the plague of pre-litigation action. The number of journalists working in and around this place who tell us of legal letters being sent when they get a whiff of a story to close it down shows that this is a really significant problem.”
House of Commons8 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Ms Elliott. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly not only on securing this opportunity, but on working—as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden said—with formidable diplomacy to steer us to the Bill we have today. The Bill is unusual in having commanded a great deal of cross-party consensus, ever since the first debate that the right hon. Member and I had the privilege of sponsoring in the House two or three years ago. It is not common to move this quickly from a Backbench Business debate to legislation. That is to be commended; indeed, it is why the Back Benches in this place should be strengthened further and given far more opportunities to legislate.”
House of Commons8 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Secondly, I would like to hear from the Minister—his words will be important, because they will be read by judges when they interpret the Bill—on whether he will put on the record today, in this Committee, some security around delivering the right hon. Gentleman’s objectives. The Bill aims to maximise the latitude for free speech in this country, an important objective that the Minister needs to share with us. I have further comments to make, but they are probably best dealt with in our debate on clause 2. There are some important issues around the thresholds at which this Bill kicks in and the permissive environment that might be created for bad behaviour that may fall just short of the prohibitions in the Bill, but may none the less be fatal to the humble journalists and news outlets who do such valuable work.”
House of Commons8 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. A debate on the effects of a British version of the first amendment would be very welcome. When the Minister replies, he could helpfully inform the Committee about a couple of things. First, it would be useful if he took the opportunity to tell us more about how pre-litigation chilling action is to be policed. Schillings, Mishcon de Reya and all the others are perfectly capable of moving their investment to the pre-litigation phase. They will do their damnedest to find their way around the provisions of this Bill, because frankly they are being paid too much not to do so. I would like to hear from the Minister about that.”
House of Commons8 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I hope the Minister did not mishear me: I was hoping to ensure that the Ministry of Justice does not become a roadblock in the future. I am very grateful for the work that he has done so far. Will he use this moment to put on the record whether he agrees with subsection (1) of new clause 1, tabled by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden? It provides that the Bill’s purpose should be interpreted as being “to protect and promote the ability of individuals and organisations to participate in public debate, advance accountability, and speak out on matters of public interest, and to prevent the use of the courts to undermine these rights through abusive legal action”. Is that basically the intent of the Bill?”
House of Commons8 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am very grateful for that constructive reply, but I want the Minister to underline and crystallise the point for the Committee: he is saying that the Government support the thrust of the right hon. Gentleman’s new clause.”
House of Commons8 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to the Minister for his characteristic generosity. He has just told the Committee that he does not think that new clause 1 is needed and that the intention of the Bill as a whole is to support the objectives of the new clause. The new clause is very carefully drafted. It states: “The purpose of this Act is to protect and promote the ability of individuals and organisations to participate in public debate, advance accountability, and speak out on matters of public interest”. It therefore falls short of an American first amendment-style provision and, in that sense, has been quite carefully sculpted. I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he does not think it is needed because that is the thrust of the Bill overall, and it is important that that is on the record. I am happy to work with the right hon.”
House of Commons8 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It would be useful for both Front Benchers to crystallise how that issue will be tackled by the amendments in this group.”
House of Commons8 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend will address, relates to the concerns that have been well set out by the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition. It gives me the chance to congratulate the coalition on its extraordinary and steadfast work; I am not sure that we would have arrived at quite the same speed without it. The coalition usefully highlights concerns about clause 2(1)(c), the drafting of which appears to suggest that there is a threshold for the “harassment, alarm or distress”—harm, if you like—that can be permitted. That is not something that we would want to support in this place. I realise that it is difficult to get the balance right, but my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse has spoken eloquently about the risks of creating a space in which there is a level of distress and harm that is permitted.”
House of Commons8 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have just two points to make on this excellent group. First, I wholeheartedly support the amendments to clause 2 that my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly proposes. The Opposition amendments to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 were very much a tactical strike on the statute book: here was a Bill that gave us the chance to ensure that we had road-tested similar provisions. Given the narrow scope of that Bill, it was possible to sketch only amendments that tackled economic crime at their core, so I am glad that this Bill gives us the opportunity to go well beyond that and take the holistic approach that my hon. Friend set out in his excellent opening speech. My second point, which perhaps the Minister or my hon.”
House of Commons8 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister has said that the policy has not changed, but the facts on the ground have. Ordering the evacuation of 100,000 people is not a small operation; it is big one. He knows that the clear test for suspending arms sales is a clear risk of a breach of humanitarian law, but he has told the House this afternoon that he has no assurances that that breach is impossible because he has not seen a plan. Can he tell the House what advice he has given the Department for Business and Trade, and when, about its legal obligation to suspend arms sales now? Will he lay that out for us this afternoon, before he gives evidence to the Select Committee on Business and Trade on 21 May?”
House of Commons7 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The question is this: did the Secretary of State warn her colleagues in Cabinet that there would be complete chaos, and that the EU checks that we are introducing would be a disaster? That is what small business is saying to me, and I know it is what small business is saying to her.”
House of Commons1 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The question I want to put to the Secretary of State is about our goods trade. The Office for National Statistics figures show that our goods exports have fallen by about £31 billion over a year. The risk is that that number will be hit even harder by the chaos at the border. The new border operating model involves data that is submitted by traders, but then not shared with ports; sometimes two hours’ notice is needed for a journey that only takes 90 minutes; there is no standardisation of inspection charges; and British Chambers of Commerce says that many businesses will be hit by thousands of pounds-worth of customs bills that they did not know they were on the hook for.”
House of Commons1 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is good to see the Secretary of State in the House again. I know she has a difference of opinion sometimes with the Office for Budget Responsibility, but can she confirm that the OBR’s figures for March 2024 show that the UK has the lowest trade intensity in the G7? There was important progress, as she has reported today, but much of it rests on progress in our services trade, which provokes the question of why we are not pursuing services-only trade agreements in a more expansive way, not least as the Minister for Trade Policy was unable to confirm whether any comprehensive free trade deals would be signed before the election when he came before the Committee yesterday. He said that services-only deals were not allowed under World Trade Organisation rules, which of course is flat-out wrong.”
House of Commons1 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Our trade intensity has fallen to the lowest level in the G7, and ITV’s Joel Hills has stated that the estimated costs of the new model are 10 times the Government’s estimate. I hope that the Department will publish its detailed workings soon, but surely the bottom line is that the cost of living crisis has not gone away, and the Minister is basically introducing a system that will cost UK consumers more to check on imports coming from the EU to standards that are exactly the same as the UK’s, and which of course meet EU standards in the first place. Does he seriously think that voters will forgive him?”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way on this point and, indeed, for the way he is approaching it. The Chairman of the Justice Committee sent him an excellent letter last week in which he underlined that almost all the witnesses before his Committee agreed that it was unfair for the Bill to take a restrictive approach, in the way the Minister has, while taking a rather expansive approach elsewhere. I know the Minister has written back to the Chairman of the Justice Committee, but his letter did not touch on this point. I wonder whether he will take the opportunity to wrap that up for us.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If that is the approach that the Minister is going to take, could he tell the House a bit more about how his Department will support individuals who find themselves in this egregious position? As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said, evidence will now have come to light that was not available to the Court of Appeal or, indeed, to courts that may have refused leave to appeal. Those individuals will be in a terrible state now. What can his Department do, and on what timetable, to support them through the process that he proposes they take?”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Could the Minister say a bit more about how we absolutely guarantee in the notification that we maximise the chance of sub-postmasters claiming the maximum possible amount that they should be entitled to?”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to the Minister for clarifying these points as we go along. He will know that many sub-postmasters have not applied for the full extent of their potential claim because they are unsure about the case law involved, and I understand that the Department is using some guidance in making judgments—for example, the Dyson judgment, which is not publicly available, for perfectly good reasons. There is a bit of creativity going into how we solve this problem. The Post Office wrote to me last night to say that, on the Horizon scheme, it is recording the heads of loss and the averages of claims that are being agreed, which could be one of the ways in which sub-postmasters are given a sense of what the tariff is.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In a way, this is the core of the debate about where the four corners of the Bill should stretch to. The hon. and learned Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) makes a very good point: at some point, there should be a sunset on such unprecedented legislation. At the moment, there are no limits to its expansiveness in terms of time, but the Minister has set a limit on its expansiveness in terms of the individuals involved, because he is ruling out those who have gone through the Court of Appeal. The Bill would benefit from further discussion, perhaps in the other place, about precisely where the four corners should be pinned down.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The objection and the goal of my amendments still stand. I will not press my amendments to a vote, because we are trying to maximise the spirit of collegiate working. I accept that my amendments, particularly on the issue of speed, may not yet be at the state of perfection that they would satisfy everyone in the Committee, especially those Members with more experience of working on these cases than I have. However, the problem is there: people are not being paid fast enough; they are not being supplied with the right amount of information up front at the beginning of their claim; and the scope of the Bill has been drawn too narrowly. I look forward to working with the other place to try to get amendments in place that can improve the Bill and commend the consent of Members from all parties.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The best evidence for that is the Chair of the Justice Committee’s excellent letter, in which he says: “The Bill is in effect treating cases where the CCRC had credible evidence that Horizon data might have been essential to the prosecution case less favourably than those that the CCRC considered had no credible evidence and therefore no basis upon which to refer to the Court of Appeal.” That is an extremely important point. I can see what the Minister is trying to do. He is conjuring here with very radical legal remedies, and that is not something we want to be expansive, but the risk we are running is that we leave an injustice that takes years and years to work through. He has addressed some of the points the Chair of the Justice Committee made in his letter, but he has not addressed that one in writing.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If there are issues in people needing extra help before the claim form is put in, please let us make sure that that help is available right at the beginning of the stage and not simply made available once the claim is in and a contest is under way about what should be paid. My final point is about scope, which we have already got into. There is a case for the Government to think again about the cases that have already gone to the Court of Appeal and were refused or were not given leave to appeal.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I know that a lot of thought is going on in the Department about the way to do this, and I welcome the letter from the Post Office publishing average offers around the heads of loss that have been set out. Obviously, there will be bandings that are more appropriate, and perhaps that is a way to publish these things. Obviously, there is a judgment the Department is relying on—the Dyson judgment—and the neutral evaluation, which is not publicly available, for good reason. However, my plea to the Minister is this: let us try to make much clearer to claimants the full measure of redress that they should have available.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Many people, such as Christopher Head, are going out of their way to provide pro bono assistance to people in putting claims together, but often it will take hours and hours of work to get a claim form in and many people simply will not be up for that, as they do not have the patience and they want to put this behind them. They certainly will not have the legal assistance available to them. That is why I hope the Department will consider publishing some kind of tariff to help people ensure that they are claiming for the full amount. The Minister may well say that there is a risk that people will then under-claim, but I checked that with some of the lawyers this morning. Their response was expressed in rather unparliamentary language, I am afraid, Dame Rosie, but the upshot was that such an objection was utter nonsense.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“However, new issues were emerging; I am told that the time taken to table a second offer when the first is rejected is, frankly, not fast enough. There have been delays of up to three months or more in offering dates through remediation hearings, so the process is still running too slow. If I have failed to persuade the Committee today, I appeal to the other place to help us to find some legal mechanisms to ensure that there is stiffer timetable to which the Department must adhere. My second point is about the stress that many people will face when putting claims in. Many people will not put claims in because legal assistance is not available before the claim is submitted.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In some of the anonymised evidence the Minister provided to the Committee, we can see that 13% of claimants in the GLO scheme are waiting more than 40 days, with 2% waiting more than 100 days. If my amendments, as I have drafted them, are not right and still run risks, I appeal to the other place to work harder on this to ensure that there is some legally binding stricture on the Department that means that when, God forbid, the Minister is no longer in his position, and we do not have his emollience and tenacity to rely on, his successor, whoever that may be, is bound by some kind of timeframe that ensures we are not still having this debate in years to come. To check the point, I contacted a number of Select Committee witnesses this morning and found that there was some evidence that the speed of claims was improving.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who has more experience in this House than pretty much anybody else, and indeed the Minister, raised serious and wise concerns about the risks of putting a legally binding deadline on the entire timetable. I have listened to those concerns with care, which is why the way that my amendment on this has been drafted takes aim at one part of the process: the timeframe between a legitimate claim being submitted and a first offer being made. The Minister’s target is four weeks and we are getting close to that now, but the reality is that a significant number of people are still not being paid within that timeframe.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“However, I remain concerned by what the Minister said today about the lack of any service level agreements for paying more out for the overturning convictions scheme. I would have expected a timetable for paying out that redress alongside this Bill today. We should be concerned about that because the track record of making payments is not good. For example, if we look at the claims in the Horizon shortfall scheme submitted by the original deadline in November 2020—three and a half years ago—we see that 362 people have still not been paid, which is a sixth of applicants. If we look at the late claims, all 667 of them, we see that three quarters of them have not been paid. That is why the Select Committee looked hard at how we could introduce some strictures to ensure that people were paid much faster. Since then, my right hon.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I hope the Select Committee will be able to bring options for the House to consider as soon as possible. I wish to touch on three points quickly: the speed of redress, the stress of redress, and the scope of this scheme. The point about speed is lit up by a single fact: the total budget for compensation is about £1.2 billion, but as of last Wednesday £196 million has been paid out. The implication of that is that 80% of the compensation budget has not been paid out, after all this time, and all the heartbreak, trauma and scandal. This Bill will correct that imbalance substantially; about £780 million of the budget is earmarked for overturning convictions and this Bill allows us to move that money much faster.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Thank you, Dame Rosie. It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship. I will be very brief, because some of my points have been covered through interventions. There has been good progress since the Bill was published, which is testament to the Minister’s leadership and his officials’ support. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said, the more that we have heard in the inquiry and through the media since the Bill’s publication, the more horrified and more determined we have become to hold individuals, including the former chief executive of the Post Office, to account. It is pretty clear to many of us that the evidence she gave to the Select Committee on 3 February 2015 and 24 June 2020 has been flatly contradicted by the Channel 4 revelations that were published on 27 March.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Chair of the Justice Committee is making a brilliant speech. The Minister characterised the decision and the conundrum here as a legal conundrum, but in a way it is in fact a political conundrum, because we are taking a political decision about the where the scope of the scheme should start and stop. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman have any insight into how long it might take those who are currently left out of the scheme to secure justice if we do not amend the Bill to improve the scope?”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful for that reassurance. Does the Minister think that he will have the service-level agreements for the overturned convictions scheme on the table before the Bill is sent for Royal Assent?”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to the Minister for taking a final intervention. It is maybe a non-adversarial process, but it is none the less an intimidating one that involves a complicated 16-page form that takes several hours to fill in. That is the equivalent of several thousand pounds-worth of legal assistance. At the moment, such assistance is being provided pro bono by those with some experience, but I hope that the Minister will look at the matter again.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is a matter of extreme interest to the House, and it is part of Ministers’ legal responsibility that they are politically accountable. Will the right hon. Lady advise me on what steps she can take next week to ensure that a Minister answers for the judgments the Government have made?”
House of Commons25 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Will the Leader of the House advise me on how we can bring Ministers to the House to account for their decisions on arms export licences? As she knows, the Select Committee on Business and Trade assumed responsibility for the oversight of arms export licences in January. At the beginning of April, an important legal judgment was issued by the International Court of Justice. We therefore held our first hearing on licensing arms exports to Israel yesterday. We gave Ministers 20 days’ notice to attend, together with detailed questions in correspondence. I am grateful to the Deputy Foreign Secretary for his apology to me yesterday for the Foreign Office not fielding a Minister. I have had no such correspondence or contact from the Department for Business and Trade. This is not acceptable. Ministers are politically accountable to Parliament.”
House of Commons25 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I seek your counsel? My Business and Trade Committee now has oversight of arms control, and is stepping up to its duty by holding tomorrow its first hearing on arms exports to Israel. Some 20 days ago, we requested that Ministers from the Department for Business and Trade and the Foreign Office come and give evidence. They did not reply; they had to be chased last week, and on Friday told us they were not prepared to attend. This is a topic of importance to the House, and it is also important that Ministers, in fulfilling their legal responsibility, are politically accountable. What advice can you give me, at this late stage, to try to ensure that we have Ministers in front of the Select Committee tomorrow morning?”
House of Commons23 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I put on the record my thanks to and commendations for the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), for the way in which he has approached the groundwork for the Bill. Among those excluded from the scope of the Bill are those who went to the Court of Appeal and lost their case, or were not given leave to appeal to the Court. What we now know would have been quite useful in many of those cases. Should we enlarge the scope of the Bill to include those who lost their case at the Court of Appeal or were not given leave to appeal in the first place, as many of them may well be truly innocent?”
House of Commons20 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Could I put that question in a slightly different way? The Minister for postal affairs has set out an ambitious timetable for the passage of this law, the overturning of convictions and the dispensation of compensation, with it all possibly being done and dusted—with hope, and a following wind—by the end of July. Could the Secretary of State commit to a similar timetable when it comes to the cases that have been raised in Northern Ireland?”
House of Commons20 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Secretary of State is being characteristically generous in giving way again. The evidence the Select Committee heard was that many people seeking compensation for the injustice they have suffered found it very complicated and very confusing to understand the range of case law required to put in particular kinds of claim—for example, for loss of reputation. When she triggers the notification provisions, would she reflect on something she could add, which is a tariff to help people put in claims for the right kind of compensation? What none of us would want to do, having overturned the convictions, is to let people get short-changed on the compensation. Providing a standardised tariff could cut through so much of the complexity and help people get what they are due.”
House of Commons20 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The shadow Secretary of State is making a brilliant speech. Does he agree that we might want to reflect on measures to de-risk the speed of paying compensation? It is important that we overturn convictions, but it is also right that we accelerate compensation. Just because the Department is running the scheme is not necessarily a guarantee that payments will flow quickly. This morning, the Business and Trade Committee crunched the data on the GLO scheme, and unfortunately it would appear that 14% of offers have taken more than 14 days, 4% have taken more than 80 days, and 2% have taken more than 100 days. We obviously need to get the measures right, and there are lots of issues at play, but de-risking the speed of compensation sounds like something we should reflect on.”
House of Commons20 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Given the right hon. Gentleman’s argument, will he reflect on whether we should include in the scope of the Bill those who went to the Court of Appeal initially but lost, or those who were not given leave to appeal, on the basis that we simply did not know then what we know now? Should we provide for that handful of cases—perhaps under 40—in the Bill rather than exclude them?”
House of Commons20 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister has laid great weight this afternoon on the legal and coded process that governs the export of arms, but a new international humanitarian law compliance assessment process cell has been created in his Department. Will he publish every assessment that that cell has made of Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law, and will he tell the House whether the threshold has now been reached to review or cancel any extant open general export licence for arms sales?”
House of Commons19 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and for this new clause. Was he as surprised as I was that when we asked the Secretary of State whether she would block China’s accession to CPTPP she was unable to give us an unequivocal answer?”
House of Commons19 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They could not find all four that the Minister referred to. We have to accept that there is no shortage of controversy in the Bill, not least because the Secretary of State herself resiled from the figures that describe the benefits of the treaty to the country.”
House of Commons19 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Members will have seen the report in the Financial Times last week, which said that the working day in this Chamber “has been shorter on average this parliamentary session than in any other in the past quarter century”. Are we seriously saying that we have not been able to find time for a debate, which it is the Government’s policy to support, on one of the only free trade agreements that His Majesty’s Government have been able to bring forward since we left the European Union? On Twitter, the Minister—I am a keen follower of the Minister on Twitter, he will be pleased to hear—said last week that there have been four parliamentary debates on the treaty, but I wonder if he is sure about that. When I asked the Clerks on the Select Committee to check that, they were left scratching their heads a little bit.”
House of Commons19 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Leader of the House confirmed that in writing to me last week in a letter in which she said: “it has not been possible to find time for a debate in Government time.” The House of Lords is having a debate on the treaty today on the recommendation of the International Agreements Committee, so why can’t we? Are we second-class representatives in this House? Are we unqualified to have a debate on all 30 chapters of the treaty? Are we not qualified to speak, on behalf of the people we came into public life to represent, about how the treaty will affect their future? I think we are. I think we should have a debate on the full treaty. And I cannot believe that we are out of time.”
House of Commons19 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“However, I want to underline the point about the lack of scrutiny. Of course, it was the Government themselves, in the Grimstone rule, who said that no new free trade agreements would be ratified by His Majesty’s Government without a full debate on whether we should agree to them. When I asked the Secretary of State on 23 January whether she would agree to a debate under the terms of the CRaG process, she said she would be “happy to support” such a debate. Her officials then wrote to the Clerks on the Select Committee to say that such a debate had been requested, only to be told by the Leader of the House that no time was available.”
House of Commons19 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗