Speeches by Bryant.

“I will let you in on a secret as long as you do not tell anybody else. If it were entirely up to me, I would join the European Union, but it is not entirely up to me, I hastily add, and that is not the formal government position. The serious point is that it has a big bazooka, or it calls it a big bazooka, but the trut…”

“Was it you who introduced me to the company?”

“Can I just do the second bit first because it fits with it?”

“If the hon. Member wants to write to me about how HMRC or the support is lacking, I would be happy to respond. Again, as I said, if he had been in the House last Thursday, he could have taken up the opportunity—[Interruption.] I made a statement in the House last Thursday on precisely all these issues, and he would hav…”

“I want to achieve frictionless trade, both within the UK internal market—I am determined to protect it as much as I possibly can—and with the whole of the European Union, because it is our single biggest trading partner. It was an act of monumental self-harm when we left the European Union that we did not achieve the f…”

“If the hon. Gentleman is not prepared to take me at my word, I am sorry but I will never be able to satisfy him. The truth is that I have been very open: I came to the House to make a statement last Thursday; we laid a written ministerial statement as well, which is obviously available to all Members; and I made a comm…”

“I hope you would agree, Mr Speaker, that I have always done my level best to come to the House first with any new announcements. As I told the House last Thursday in written and oral statements, the Government’s new steel trade measure comes into force tomorrow, immediately succeeding the expiry of the steel safeguard,…”

“He’s a cheeky one! No, I am not going to sign up to the Lib Dem campaign. However, there is a serious point here: it would be much better if the UK and the EU were to have a mutual exemption in relation to quotas and tariffs in this area. I have made the point already, but I will make it again: we are not the problem f…”

“Of course I agree with my hon. Friend. I am, broadly speaking, in favour of free trade, but it has to be free and fair trade, and one of the issues in relation to overcapacity in steel is that there is not a level playing field across the world because of subsidies and anti-competitive practices that make it impossible…”

“I am sorry, but the right hon. Member simply is not listening to some of the things I have said. He referred to the business in Rotherham, which is Speciality Steel. Precisely one of the things that we changed—because we listened to people’s concerns—were the quotas that would have been met by Speciality Steel, because…”

“I have regularly and repeatedly met industry downstream and producers—I did so again yesterday—as has my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald), the Minister for Industry, who is sitting by my side. We have striven at every point to ensure th…”

“I am sorry, but I think that the absurdity all lies with the hon. and learned Member. He seems to be trying to create a difference between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which we are striving in every way to prevent. We have made it absolutely clear that the existing—[Interruption.] If he chunters from his seat he…”

“As I explained last Thursday, we have introduced transitional arrangements to make sure that for the first quarter, imports are possible where people already have contracts to bring stuff in. As I say, 73% of UK imports of steel will not be in scope of the measure at all and can come into the UK easily. We are simply t…”

“I will start with the question about the Minister for Industry and his visit to Northern Ireland. He is visiting shipbuilding and aerospace companies. The visit does not specifically relate to steel at all. On steel generally, the Conservatives’ record is absolutely shocking, and we will not be going down the route tha…”

“I am obviously very forgettable. It is a very well-made point. It is utterly bizarre that the British armed forces are not attired using fabrics produced in the United Kingdom. As I say, I do not want to go too far down this route just because our supply chains across the whole of Europe are very complex. A point I mad…”

“Just to explain some of the reluctance from business, sometimes it may be that a sole business is the business that is being harmed, and so that provides a problem for them. We are trying to find means with which we can help them get over that hurdle. The process is that, once the TRA has come to its conclusion, then i…”

“We have the presidency of the G20 next year. Somebody else will be making a decision about what should be top of our agenda, but that will undoubtedly be one of the areas that we want to consider, not least because the WTO has failed to address all these overcapacity issues, subsidy issues and the transparency rate. It…”

“We have done 30 anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures against China.”

“Part of the answer is the measures we have introduced, but also the Trade Remedies Authority. It has had 30 findings against China, as it were, and indeed there is another one that is going through the processes at the moment. Sometimes there is a reluctance from businesses to engage in that process, and we need to thi…”

“Yes. As a nation, we are not as industrially focused as some others are in Europe. Nine per cent. of our GDP is industry.”