Speeches by Byrne.

“I will be very quick, because I know that colleagues are keen to get in. I am going to speak against the amendment and in support of the Bill for the simple reason that a speech such as the one we have just heard from the shadow Minister may have just about cut the mustard five or six years ago, but it certainly does n…”

“The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point that I am about to come on to. My point, I suppose, is that there is a case for this Bill. I think it is actually quite important, and the powers that it confers are also important, but if we are to get value for money from it, there have to be five other components, which I …”

“Thank you for facilitating the urgent question, Mr Speaker. I welcome the announcements on fuel duty, but I did not hear the Chief Secretary say anything about remedies for the new costs on drivers of electric vehicles. Those new costs, imposed at the last Budget, are suppressing demand for electric vehicles to such an…”

“The Committee is meeting steel makers later today and will supply the Government with its advice from that, but I want to raise the automotive sector. We are not going to double automotive production in the way the Secretary of State wants unless we fundamentally reform the zero emission vehicle mandate. Auto makers ar…”

“I am grateful for that intervention, because the hon. Lady made my second point for me. It is just not good enough to will the ends and not the means. The reality is that, after all the heroic work of the former Conservative Chancellor, built on ably by the current Chancellor of the Exchequer to advance the Mansion Hou…”

“I rise to say a couple of things in support of the Minister, who not only has done a heroic job in laying out the intellectual architecture for the legislation before he got to the House, but is so expertly steering it through the House. I wish him all the very best this afternoon in finishing the job. I want to make t…”

“My last point, as I mentioned in my intervention, is that I was heartened to hear the Minister’s commitment at the Dispatch Box that we will proceed with reform of that clarification of fiduciary duties. Too many pension fund trustees today lack the legal certainty that they can make strategic, long-term investments th…”

“I congratulate my hon. Friend on stewarding the Bill with such expertise, and I very much hope that the cultural change that he is hoping for sticks and that we do not just get an unwinding of the repatriation of UK investment. A necessary corollary of what he is proposing is a fiduciary duty and a fiduciary code that …”

“I can advance only my own analysis of what will be needed. Indeed, it is part of a wider Business and Trade Committee inquiry, which will produce a report in a couple of weeks, on how we transform the investment environment. The reality is that there is a shared ambition on both sides of the House to ensure that we fix…”

“I want to turn quickly to the economic security that underpins our national security. Right now, do you think that the Government are being clear enough with business, which needs to invest long term, about the sovereign capabilities we need in this country in these new times?”

“Do you think that we can bring that decision to a conclusion soon, one way or the other?”

“One thing we could do now is introduce a really hard ban on goods from illegal settlements, but at the moment Ministers seem to be supplying my Committee with letters without real, concrete action. Is that something you can look at again?”

“President Trump is talking about days and weeks for this conflict to end; the markets are pricing now for a disruption that lasts for some months. I know you have to be very careful about not triggering panic buying of anything, but do you think that households and businesses in our country should be planning for a dis…”

“How do we co-ordinate those discussions with Europe to help safeguard against coercion from China, restrictions on rare earths, for example, and dumping by over-subsidised Chinese firms in a way that will destroy our wind industry and the European wind industry? How do we tighten the economic security arrangements with…”

“One of the ways that we can strengthen the security of our defence industrial base is by joining the European Partnership on defence procurement—SAFE—and co-ordinating our defence policy more generally. You have a summit coming up with President von der Leyen. Is joining SAFE going to be on the agenda? What is your con…”

“Is it not now time to bring that discussion to a close, and take a decision that is in the interests of our manufacturers and small businesses? Small businesses will see an increase in their standing charges of 40% kicking in in April, and Make UK is saying that we need to bring forward the electricity discount scheme …”

“Just to give you an example of the confusion that bedevils us at the moment, as recently as last year we were saying that we absolutely needed primary steelmaking capabilities as a sovereign capability. We all came back here on a Saturday to put through the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill, and we spent £400 mill…”

“The biggest threat to business right now is from spiking gilt prices that are driving up interest rates. They are rising in part due to the expectation of a costly energy subsidy for businesses and households. Is it not now time to grasp the nettle and shift the policy costs of transition off electricity bills and on t…”

“Then will you revisit the decision made by Ministers a couple of weeks ago to not publish a list of sovereign capabilities? We are expecting businesses to be psychic at the moment and guess what we will build, what we will buy and, crucially, what we will safeguard against investment from China.”

“Thank you very much for that statement, Prime Minister. I know you are chairing Cobra on the war in Iran later this afternoon. Things are moving very quickly and the fog of war remains thick, but what is your central planning scenario for how this conflict ends, and what is your view about the timeframes?”