Liam Byrne

Liam Byrne

Labour — Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North

Speaking in the House of Commons on 27 November 2025

Debate

Business and Trade Committee

Contribution

I am grateful to the hon. Member for the question and for his sterling work on the Committee as our inquiry has been driven forward over the last seven or eight months. I have not. It was striking to compare the evidence we took with history lessons from the 1920s and 1930s. As a country, we have developed infrastructure to tackle these kinds of threats in the past. Indeed, the forces that we assembled in the 1920s and 1930s were so important that they became known as the fourth fighting service. It was certainly crucial in helping us to stand up the Ministry of Economic Warfare in world war two with the speed that we did. We are now in a world of chokepoints, coercion and weaponised interdependence, and today’s cyber-attacks will be nothing compared with those in future. Frankly, the country is simply not ready. We have to get our skates on.

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