Speeches by Byrne.

“The right hon. Gentleman may well be right, but this is the second key point that I want to land: the truth is that Jingye is a mess. It has failed to publish accounts since 2021. Two auditors have resigned; one cited material concerns about the company’s ability to remain a going concern. Inventories cannot be verifie…”

“Mr Speaker, you know that I could answer that question all day, but you would rule me out of order, so I will confine my remarks to the Bill. However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is absolutely right, and that is why we have to work harder across the House to build a consensus about the big calls that we need to…”

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In this debate, we need to remember that 95% of our rail infrastructure is made by British Steel. British Steel also supplies three quarters of every major construction project in this country. Thanks to the Chancellor, we are about to invest £10 billion in the rearmament of this cou…”

“We are here in the House to answer a very basic question: if we cannot trust a company, can we entrust to it a capability that we need, when that capability is so vital to our strength? That is one reason why the Select Committee has set up a new Sub-Committee on Economic Security, Arms and Export Controls. We will be …”

“May I welcome the Minister’s explicit ambition to retain primary steelmaking capability on these islands? I hope the whole House will row in with that. I also welcome the £2.5 billion that the Government have earmarked for investment in the sector. Will she, however, put a rocket up the Trade Remedies Authority? We hav…”

“President Trump’s new tariffs are double trouble for Britain’s steel and aluminium suppliers. They will dent £350 million of sales, but they also risk swamping the UK with over-subsidised Chinese steel diverted from America. What is the Secretary of State’s game plan now to redouble defences for our UK metal makers?”

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will start with my declaration of interests, as a former member of the Confederation of British Industry and a current member of the trade union Unison. I will try to introduce a few points of consensus to the debate. I am old enough to remember when Conservative Members such as the f…”

“The hon. Member will no doubt have heard the remarks made by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster at the weekend. I suspect that the hon. Member, like every Member of this House, will see some pretty radical steps taken in the comprehensive spending review to improve the efficiency of the civil service. Of course, …”

“Only 21 employers have been prosecuted for national minimum wage violations since 2007. The measures that the Minister is bringing forward will improve enforcement. He touched on the Modern Slavery Act 2015, but he did not address the points made in the debate yesterday. Will he use this opportunity to say more about t…”

“The Minister will have seen the appalling evidence that the Business and Trade Committee took from McDonald’s, where the BBC investigation exposed allegations from hundreds of young workers who were suffering harassment, and even allegations from one worker of managers soliciting them for sex in return for scheduling s…”

“Thank you very much indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am going to be very brief—I will just make three quick points—and will do my best to salvage a degree of consensus from the conflict that has characterised this debate at its outset. If there are a couple of things that unite us across this House, it is that we all be…”

“I put on the record my profound thanks to the Backbench Business Committee for making time for this debate, and to the Liaison Committee for some of the arrangements that have made today possible. The Prime Minister has underlined time and again that growth is the No. 1 priority, so I am grateful that the House has agr…”

“This has been an excellent debate. Let me once again say that I am incredibly grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for ensuring that we could spend time together debating the issues at stake. We heard some brilliant speeches from across the House. In a way, my ambitions for the debate were satisfied, because I …”

“My hon. Friend is right, but we have to look to the future. We have to understand how Government will connect together and ensure a transformation in regional transport and connectivity. So many parts of our country are bedevilled by a lack of internet connectivity, so they cannot access the kind of applications that m…”

“Well, there was an awful lot more money than there is now. We certainly did not have a debt interest bill of £100 billion a year, which is what the bill has risen to, and why so many difficult choices are having to be taken. At that time, we were beginning genuinely to consider how to create single, pooled funds that c…”

“My hon. Friend is a brilliant member of the Committee, and she makes a brilliant point. We know that we must come to a strategic culture and defence mindset in this country, so that our industry can innovate as fast as the battlefield changes. We all know that there are defence manufacturers—drone manufacturers in part…”

“My hon. Friend is an extraordinary champion for the city he represents, and for the industry that has made that city great over the centuries. He is absolutely right: when the industrial strategy is published, we must understand whether it is driving growth and better wages, and whether it is transforming people’s abil…”

“My hon. Friend is 100% right. We heard businesses say to us loud and clear that they wanted radical and bold changes in the way that the skills levy was organised. The Government have moved to introduce flexibilities, and business want them to go further, faster. We also heard business say that there is a good environm…”

“I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing this debate and all those who have spoken today. It was Václav Havel who said that the best defence against tyranny is to live in truth. On this third anniversary, we have the opportunity to repeat some truths to t…”

“The right hon. Gentleman and I have organised debates on this topic in the past. Does he share my view that we now need to get a lot faster in seizing this money, not only to pay for the munitions needed to win the war, but crucially, then to win the peace in Ukraine, making good the horrific scale of damage that Russi…”