Speeches by Bryant.

“My officials and I have spoken a great deal to the kind of businesses that my hon. Friend is talking about—not all of them, but a large number of them—and have tried to explain that we are trying to tackle only those categories of steel that can be and are being produced in the UK. Those are the ones that we are trying…”

“I honestly just do not think that the hon. Gentleman understands how this works—any single element of it, to be honest. Let me first address his point about the timing. I would have much preferred to give greater notice to everybody, and I worked towards being able to do so. Unfortunately, one of the key parts of the i…”

“Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful for the correction. I am terribly sorry; I was only referring to the latter letter. We have had a lot of letters on this, and I appreciate that lots of Members have written to Ministers about it. We tried to respond as quickly as we could, once we had …”

“The right hon. Member says from a sedentary position that nothing will change. I am just trying to moderate his expectations of change, but obviously, if there is a very significant, exceptional moment then we may need to act. The kind of thing I am talking about is speciality steel, for instance. When we started this …”

“I have never known a policy area that so depends on the granular detail of individual companies and individual codes and categories of different steel. I talked to people from one business who were very concerned at the beginning of our conversation, because they thought that all their steel imports would be in scope a…”

“That is a fair point. We have tried to do two things. In key areas, we want to ensure that people can maintain historical trade flows, so we need to monitor how those trade flows are progressing. We can do that with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on a regular basis. If there is a sudden spike, we may need to address…”

“There is a very fetching photograph of my hon. Friend and me at the electric arc furnace at 7 Steel in Cardiff. It is a very impressive operation—it is a very impressive photograph—and he makes a good point. We want to get to 50% of UK steel needs being met by British-made steel; it is a very simple campaign. The secto…”

“It’s a very low threshold!”

“Yes, there was a long version but, to be honest, I would basically have been reading out the written ministerial statement that we laid at 10.30 am. Much as I love the sound of my own voice, I am not sure that the House does—I think I have united the House on that—so I thought I would go for the shorter version. The pa…”

“With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish to make a statement on the Government’s return to the Humble Address on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. I will speak briefly, because I am conscious of the time. I have today laid before the House documents that the Government have identified that the House requested in it…”

“I am grateful to the hon. Lady that she does not want to be a trade envoy. I often feel as if I am a trade envoy for Scotland, because we are often securing good deals, as we just have with the Gulf Co-operation Council, and in India. We have just done remarkably well—”

“The right hon. Gentleman says he has not applied for a post as a trade envoy. I do not want to show the House the text messages he sent me, but anyway, he makes a fair point. I want to make sure that the trade envoy programme is really effective and delivers around the world. I was with Lord Alderdice the other day, wh…”

“If I am honest, I am bit miffed by the attitude of Liberal Democrat Front Benchers, because I have regularly updated them ever since the Humble Address was passed. I have been as open as possible with them, and they have privately indicated to me, regularly, that they were perfectly happy with the progress we were maki…”

“I hear the right hon. Member’s chuntering, in his regular application process to be made a trade envoy. I am still considering his proposal.”

“But not finished.”

“Of course I am happy to meet. Maybe we should organise a meeting for several companies and several hon. Members. I am very happy to do that as soon as possible. I do not want to extend the transition period, for the simple reason that the EU, the United States and other countries are introducing very similar measures, …”

“I see the right hon. Lady representing Plaid Cymru shaking her head; we have just done really well for Welsh lamb farmers in the GCC deal in the Gulf. Will I come back to the House when we stop looking? I do not think there will be any more material. Obviously, I will come back if there is more material. I will probabl…”

“We are listening to both sides of industry, because there are the downstream users and there is the production. The truth of the matter is that UK steel production under the previous Government fell from—I think this is correct—27 million tonnes a year to 4 million tonnes a year. If we are to meet our armaments needs i…”

“To be absolutely clear, I think this is probably the last tranche of material that we have. If I had more to publish, I would have published it today; I have not got anything more to publish. I reserve the right to publish more if there is more stuff, but to some degree we are entering into speculation. As I say, if th…”

“I am very happy to meet the company, and the right hon. Gentleman if he want to come and see me, to talk through all those issues. It is really important, if we are to have a steel production sector in this country, to ensure that it has an opportunity to compete with unfair competition around the rest of the world. Th…”