Dr Andrew Murrison
MP for South West Wiltshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“It is good to hear that the Government plan to replenish the dwindling stocks of Patriot missiles in Ukraine, which I suspect it will need this winter. However, Patriot is low volume and high cost. What the Ukrainians need is high volume and low cost.”
“Currently, the Royal Navy has an offshore patrol vessel permanently stationed in the Falkland Islands, but given the threat that is being faced and our need to demonstrate resolve—the sort of thing that, sadly, we did not demonstrate in the early 1980s, which led to miscalculation—will the Minister consider speaking to her MOD colleagues…”
“Since the Foreign Secretary is not going to get the co-operation, fulsome or otherwise, of the Israeli state in differentiating goods and services made in the settlements from those that are assembled, repackaged, produced and grown in Israel itself, how is he going to distinguish the one from the other?”
“The Government insisted on applying the social time preference rate to the disastrous Chagos deal to make an appalling deal look slightly better.”
“Will the First Secretary of State’s exercise in delivering democracy and local accountability and empowering local people include a look at large organisations that cannot be described as governmental or as quangos but that nevertheless exist firmly within the public domain, are established by statute, serve the public and are big employe…”
“I congratulate the Government on the hiring of Alistair Burt—he is a good hire and will do great things for some of these most complex of cases—but does the Minister agree that many of these cases are extremely difficult and exceptionally traumatic, and that it is far better to prevent them happening in the first place?”
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“and hon. Members to learn that that curator will be called “curator of repurposing historic houses”. But out will go actual curators—those internationally renowned experts and scholars, who are specialists in one of the world’s greatest collections. I suspect that most of the membership, like me and my family, flock to National Trust properties to admire an elegant pile of bricks or a beautiful landscape before going for a nice cup of tea and a slice of cake—job done, and happy days. It is leisure, it is breathing space, it is succour for the soul and a welcome break from the remorseless hectoring about this and that, to which, as citizens, we are subjected day in, day out.”
“It is a “niche audience” that was on the rise before lockdown and that is bigger even now than the population of the Republic of Ireland, but it is one that the trust’s clairvoyants anticipate will have moved on, as the trust seeks to “flex its mansion offer to create more active, fun and useful experiences that our audiences will be looking for in the future.” I have “fun” every time I go to a National Trust property —that is the whole point of going—and it is not clear to me what “useful” means, but we do learn that “Everywhere…we will move away from a narrow focus on family and art history.” This has been pejoratively described as the triumph of the “trendies” over the “tweedies”. What it means in practice is that professional curator posts will fall from 111 to 80. There will be a new curator and it will not surprise right hon.”
“Much of what we have had from the National Trust in recent times is entirely commensurate with the fears expressed by many that what it is doing, in its own terms and the terms of the leaked documents we have seen, is to “dial down” its role as what it calls a “major national cultural institution”. We see the corporate upper lip curling at an “outdated mansion experience” that is of interest only to what it calls a “niche audience”, which is apparently “dwindling”.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point; I feel sure that he is more expert on upland farming than I am. I would always encourage a landlord to be responsible, especially a big one, and in particular a massive one such as the National Trust. I would be distressed if it was tempted to sell off properties for them to be turned into second homes or holiday homes. That seems entirely the wrong thing for the National Trust to do, and I would argue that it is probably contrary to the 1907 legislation that founded it. The idea behind the National Trust is conservation, and it is difficult to see how selling off property in the way that he has just described would service that end.”
“It seeks a “reset”—its word, unambiguously stated. We have a good idea now of what is in its mind and where it is taking us. Given the trust’s statutory underpinning, that is not to be undertaken lightly or without wider public cognisance, so let us commission an independent review like the recent Glover deep-dive into national parks. Thus fortified with a refreshed set of marching orders, the trust that we all love can then chart a course for the next 125 years.”
“I think those words and facts speak for themselves. It is very important that those who associate themselves with a great institution such as the National Trust are very careful about what they say and the way they project themselves. They must not make themselves hostages to fortune, as I fear has happened in this case. However, there is always hope. Faced with a wall of unhappiness, trust bosses have been back-pedalling, at least rhetorically, and that is very much to their credit. We are told that the leaked “Towards a Ten-Year Vision” was an initial draft, despite no such caveat being present in the original. The director general was at pains to reassure me about that when she spoke to me yesterday, and I note that her op-ed in The Daily Telegraph today uses similar terms. We have to take the trust’s leadership at its word.”
“Is not the right hon. and learned Gentleman confounding his own logic? He has spent the past several days berating the Government for not introducing a circuit breaker, but at no time did I hear him explain how we would leave the circuit breaker, which it seems to me was simply the half-term holiday rebadged.”
“I am concerned about non-contact sports such as tennis and golf. I understand the logic behind proscribing those activities, but we have to treat the British public as adults and individuals with autonomy and agency. I respectfully disagree with the decisions that have been made on those fronts, and I hope very much, particularly if this sadly has to be continued beyond the beginning of December, that they are looked at again.”
“I am concerned about the clarity of data and the logistics chains for the vaccine that the Metro hopes will be with us within a month. As the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care knows, I am concerned because I have granular evidence from my constituency that the organisations that can provide the wherewithal to guarantee the cold chain necessary for the distribution of the vaccine have not yet been tapped into. I cite the company Polar Thermal in my constituency, which is a leader in this technology and has yet to be contacted. I am concerned about the lack of a plan B. Plan B has been made all the more possible by the advent of lateral flow testing technology, which will facilitate focused protection if necessary, and we need to give much closer thought to that. I am concerned about places of collective worship.”
“I will also be supporting the Government this evening because it seems to me that, broadly speaking, they are doing the same thing that other jurisdictions are doing, and there is safety in numbers. I will be supporting the Government too because of the wide margin of uncertainty that attends all this and a sense of some humility in trying to examine all this complicated material and make sense of it. Finally, I will be supporting the Government because I know that the Prime Minister, who shares many of the libertarian instincts that I hold, has pushed back as much as he can on some of the advice that has been given to him. I find that convincing, and if I was in any doubt, having analysed the data over the weekend, that has pushed me over the line in the decision I have made.”
“Irrespective of the Prime Minister’s kind remarks about my future career prospects, I will be supporting the Government this evening. I cannot think of a single issue since 2003 that has occupied me quite as much as this, and I have agonised over my choice. I am going to support the Government because it hinges on one thing for me, which is that schools are remaining open, which I have discussed with the Secretary of State. In the light of evidence produced by Ackland et al in Edinburgh, it seems to me that it would be foolhardy to close down schools on the basis of deaths to do with covid, due to the consequences of such an extraordinary move. It is the right decision to keep schools open and prioritise them, and it is for that reason that I will be supporting the Government this evening.”
“May I start by apologising for reading a newspaper during the Prime Minister’s contribution? Mr Speaker was quite right. However, I was not, in my defence, reading my horoscope, even if the Prime Minister kindly did. I wonder whether, in mitigation, I could bring to the House’s attention the headline that I was reading in the Metro newspaper this morning, which says, “Vaccine on front line in a month”. Just imagine my excitement at reading that. I hope that the Metro is correct, but I gently point out to those on the Front Bench that, in the event that it is not correct and we do not get a game changer soon, we will seriously have to think about a plan B. In the few minutes available to me, I shall explain why I think that is the case.”
“I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) for the tireless and impressive work she has done on behalf of her constituent. What assessment has my right hon. Friend made of the likely impact of June’s presidential election in Tehran on Nazanin’s case? Obviously, Quds commander Qasem Soleimani will not be in the frame, but he was the front runner. Does my right hon. Friend feel he can make progress where previously that was not the case? To what extent does he feel that his interlocutors, Ministers Zarif and Araghchi, can have influence since the IRGC, which is actually pulling the strings, is very much separate from those to whom he speaks regularly?”
“Test and trace activity is rightly focused on areas of the country where there is relatively high transmission of the virus. To what extent will the Minister prioritise tier 3 areas over tier 1 areas in the protocols that the Department is drawing up for vaccination?”
“There is now compelling evidence to suggest that vitamin D may be useful in reducing mortality and morbidity from this disease. It is safe, it is cheap, and it is already recommended by the Secretary of State’s Department for certain groups. Given our need to tackle this disease, and given that vitamin D requires three months to build up sufficiently to protect against respiratory infections, what advice will he give urgently on the use of this particular intervention?”
“That is why I shall be supporting the Government this evening.”
“I suspect that he found very few that were geared towards dealing with infectious diseases, particularly this infectious disease. He has done some good things to try to remedy that in a very short space of time. May I suggest to him, to sort out the shadow Secretary of State’s obsession with Serco, that he looks again at the Public Health Laboratory Service, which was in its second incarnation as the Health Protection Agency when it was abolished in 2012. He might find in such a thing the means to deal with infectious diseases of this sort in the future. We need to be careful about group-think, confirmation bias, a thin evidential basis and uncertainty masquerading as certainty. There is a huge margin of uncertainty with all this, and we all need to develop a level of humility in our attitudes towards dealing with this crisis.”
“I support these restrictions with a heavy heart. On balance, I will be supporting the Government this evening, but I want to make just a few quick points. I would be very careful about subscribing to the Vallance/Whitty orthodoxy that informed these regulations, while not at all examining very carefully respectable bodies of medical opinion to the contrary. I would cite particularly the Heneghan/Sikora/Gupta line. It is important that the Secretary of State and his ministerial team address those things head-on and treat them with the respect that they deserve. The Secretary of State has my utmost sympathy. When coming into office, he opened a box marked “public health” and found tools for doing all sorts of things, such as sorting out lifestyle problems—obesity, smoking, diet and all of that.”
“We have to accept, I think, the expertise of those advising Ministers and that we have experts for a reason, but there is an alternative view. Unless we get a vaccine—goodness me, I hope we do—I think we may find that the cure is worse than the disease in terms of lives lost directly to covid, incidental lives lost to other common diseases—stroke, heart attack and particularly cancer—loss of liberty, loss of livelihood and the compete trashing of our economy. That is what is at stake. I do not envy the Secretary of State in his work.”
“It certainly protected the NHS, but probably over time, unless we get a vaccine, it will cause more deaths directly from covid, quite apart from the incidentals for other diseases, the loss of liberty and livelihood. The Secretary of State needs to understand that and that there is an alternative view. If we do not get a vaccine, I fear, paradoxically, that we will see more deaths, not fewer, as a result of some of the interventions that we have put in place. Of course, Ackland was unsighted on this latest set, but the logic would suggest that those measures too may, over time, if we get a third and fourth wave, cause more trouble than they solve. It is a respectable piece of work and the Secretary of State needs to take account of it. In all this, we simply do not know and we are learning all the time.”
“The hon. Lady can do what she likes. The Secretary of State is dealing with the situation that he found at the time. Developing the National Institute for Health Protection in short order from the disaster that was Public Health England was, I think, a very good effort, but there is much more to be done, as I know he appreciates. May I sound a cautionary note for the Secretary of State? We have gone to great measures to close down schools, and I appreciate the need for that. That was informed, of course, by the Imperial College model, which was a flu model, in essence, and was inadequate for this particular virus. He will know—I hope he does—of the work published in September by the University of Edinburgh group under Ackland, which suggests that that certainly did suppress admissions to ITU.”
“Seasonal flu deaths for the past two years have been relatively light, which means that, in the normal course of things, we would expect a hard winter, noting that in 2014-15 there were 26,000 deaths and in 2017-18 there were 28,000. I appreciate that the Government are doing everything they can to increase the number of vaccinations, but given that we can vaccinate against that disease, unlike covid, will the Prime Minister redouble his efforts to ensure that those who are vulnerable this winter get the flu vaccine that they need?”
“What has changed is the appreciation of the issue of good faith, which ran like a vein through a block of granite throughout all the discussions last year. This works only if the parties act in good faith, and it has become clear over the past several weeks that the European Union side is prepared to regard the Northern Ireland protocol as a lever to get what it wants. It raises the spectre of agrifood being unable to move freely between the nations of the United Kingdom, which is clearly contrary to the Act of Union and drives a coach and horses through the Good Friday agreement. It was not on the table last year, and it calls into question the “acting in good faith” enjoinder, which I have referred to, and which is clearly contained within the withdrawal agreement and its accompanying political declaration.”
“Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) on this: she said that two wrongs do not make a right, and generally speaking she is absolutely correct, but by listing the occasions on which international law has been breached, written over, mutable or contested, we are setting the context for what we are doing on this occasion. That is something that I think has been lost in this debate. Time and time again, international law has been shown to be not absolute but, on occasion, capable of being overwritten, modified and made mutable by this country, other countries and the European Union. Generally, we stand by what we sign up to and are as good as our word, so what has changed since last year? I, like many right hon. and hon. Members, have given this some considerable thought.”
“Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) in which they listed some of the treaties that have been mutable. Clearly, UNCLOS was mutable on the part of our largest continental neighbour last week, but it was not for us and, for me, that is the message that goes to the international community, not some fine debate about this particular measure that we are discussing this evening. That message will have gone out loud and clear and, on that, I am extremely proud indeed. What is clear from the list that others have trotted out is that international law is a contested space, and sometimes it is mutable and can be overwritten. I disagree with my right hon.”
“I am proud of that, not only because it demonstrates our British values—something that many may be uncomfortable with—but because, in doing that, we were complying with one of the most fundamental of international treaties, the United Nations convention on the law of the sea of 1982. There is no grey in this treaty, no ambiguity, and it strikes at the very heart of what we are in this country. Indeed, it strikes at the very heart of our humanity, because we save life and we ask questions later. Others have described violations of international law by the European Union and others, and I am certainly not going to rattle them off again. We heard eloquent contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and my right hon.”
“Members have gone through in trying to work their way through this Bill and reconcile it with their views on international law. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) spoke about values and asserted that our reputation was at stake. Last week, we saw how the UK stands up for international law. We saw a graphic demonstration of our values when perhaps others fall short. In the middle of the channel—not a pleasant place generally speaking, and it certainly was not last week—there was an inflatable dinghy containing 16 Afghan refugees and asylum seekers. They were people in peril on the sea, and they were being shepherded by the French navy not to safety, but to British territorial waters where, of course, eventually they were picked up by Border Force and conducted to a place of safety.”
“Well, Sir Graham, it is difficult to follow that. I remember your enjoinder, Sir, that we should stick to five minutes. So far, nobody has met that challenge. I thought that the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes) was going to do so several minutes ago, but he did not. I rise to support this Bill. I especially support clause 11 and part 5, and amendment 66, the “break glass” amendment. It reflects in all important respects amendment 4, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), the Chair of the Justice Committee. We have all been grateful to him for the consideration that he and others have given to this matter. I appreciate the agony that many hon. and right hon.”
“Friend the Member for Stone said, international law is 40% law and 60% politics, as it is here—this is politics in the raw. I am sorry that, throughout this whole torrid process, hon. and right hon. Members have shackled the UK Government in our negotiations in Brussels. The British public know that. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central shakes his head, but he should know that more than anybody else, because the British public spoke loud and clear on this issue in December. They understand what we often forget in this place, and they get this business in the way that many of us do not. His party needs to learn that lesson. That is why it suffered so badly in December.”
“It was plain as a pikestaff that this might be used in the event that the UK decided to support Bombardier in GB, because, as things stand, the EU would claim that it is unfair and unlawful because of Bombardier’s presence in Belfast. That is a clear and present danger. It is also important to get real about what we are up against. I have every respect for the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who quite rightly expounded at length on the fact that the negotiation has to be bounded in good will and said that this will cause difficulty for us in Brussels, but I am clear that this negotiation is no love-in. It is a bare-knuckle affair. Pique is never far away, nor is the desire to make an example of an errant UK pour encourager les autres. As my hon.”
“I am very pleased to hear that expression of confidence in this good Bill, which is being made better by the amendment tabled by the Government. I agree with my hon. Friend’s point. I have already gone over my five minutes, Dame Eleanor, but it is important to note the extreme hardball attitude that the EU has recently adopted and what that says about what might be in store for us in the future. The points that the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) made about state aid are extremely germane to this. I remember well, as Northern Ireland Minister and Chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, the issues relating to Bombardier.”
“In the technical note on the implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol earlier this year, the European Union suggested that its rules, quotas and tariffs might be imposed on fish landed from Northern Ireland vessels into Northern Ireland that was destined for Great Britain. That runs contrary to the Command Paper earlier this year, certainly, but does my right hon. Friend agree that it also drives a coach and horses through the Northern Ireland protocol itself?”
“What recent discussions he has had with the Irish Government on the operation of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after the end of the transition period.”
“I am very grateful to the Secretary of State. He will know that small and medium-sized enterprises with business across the border are in a state of uncertainty at the moment, given what is potentially going to hit them in four months’ time. Given that, the trader support service announced last month is particularly welcome. What discussions has he had with trade organisations in Northern Ireland about the trader support service? When does he anticipate the service actually providing services to SMEs?”
“For as long as China’s gross abuses go largely uncensored by the UN Human Rights Council, will my right hon. Friend ensure that the UK will continue to oppose resolutions made under item 7 at the UN Human Rights Council? That item seems grossly disproportionate, given that it singles out Israel for special attention, against its undeniably poor record, while China continues systemic, appalling institutional abuse against the Uyghur people and nobody at the UN Human Rights Council has anything to say about it.”
“I welcome the spirit of the Bill. To congratulate the Minister, I will send him a copy of my book, “Tommy This an’ Tommy That: The military covenant”. He has done well to bring the Bill thus far, but it is tipped to be heavily amended as it progresses through this place, not least because of Judge Jeff Blackett’s remarks. I press the Minister to look again at part 2, because it seems to me that the “no disadvantage” enjoinder within the military covenant is in danger of being overlooked. I know he would not want to see that.”
“The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) is right to ask her urgent question. None of us wants to add to the awful situation in Yemen. Paris is working hard with Berlin to finesse the German ban on German componentry in French arms exports. France has a more questionable approach to the consolidated criteria than this country does, and its arms exports are skyrocketing. What are we to do about this? I fear that the action urged by the right hon. Lady will have the effect of exporting jobs from her constituency and mine to France—a country with a far more questionable approach to the consolidated criteria—and will have no effect whatsoever on the welfare of people in Yemen.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Father of the House on bringing forward this urgent question in such a timely manner. Does the Minister agree that cutting our modest and highly monitored technical assistance to Bahrain, particularly the special investigations unit and the ombudsman, would likely make matters worse? Will he use the influence that he has with Bahrain and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to ensure that the judiciary is distanced from the Executive and that sentencing discretion is reduced in those two countries, since it too often produces perverse and unpredictable outcomes?”
“That is an extraordinary achievement in diplomatic terms—a triumph—and I am enormously proud of it. Covid will hit the bottom billion hardest. We need to ensure we look again at our aid budget to ensure that we use a large part of it to strengthen healthcare systems across the world, so that when we have an effective treatment for this awful condition and its probable successors and a vaccine that works, we are able to roll that out for those people. As covid has shown, we are all in it together. We are in a global village, and the new Department will be well fitted to take up the challenges of the future.”
“That is therefore safer, but nevertheless we need to ensure that the merger inculcates DFID good practice into our aid spending across Government. The test of the success of this evolution will be whether we are able to spend our money better, particularly for Departments other than DFID whose records are not brilliant. Finally, I make mention of the Gavi replenishment, which the Prime Minister hosted on 4 June. It was a great success. I slightly regret the fact that we did not manage to have in person the Liverpool iteration and the iteration in London that I was planning when I was at DFID. It is an irony, is it not, that it took an infectious disease to throw that off track, but it was a huge success, with $8.8 billion committed for the world’s most vulnerable, potentially vaccinating 300 million children.”
“Others have pointed out that there was something of an exodus when Australia merged its Foreign Office equivalent and international development. I am concerned about the difference in terms and conditions between the civil servants in both Departments, whom I know quite well and whom I respect and admire enormously. Will the Minister say whether there will be a levelling up or levelling down of those terms and conditions of service in the new Department? DFID spends its money extremely well, and that is recognised. Other Government Departments, sadly, do not do that. It is true that the Foreign Office tends to spend at the riskier end of the spectrum. It is true that DFID tends to spend its money through large NGOs.”
“I am also impressed by the OECD’s 2009 report “Managing Aid”, which laid out the bare facts that Britain is unique in how we have approached international development. Either we are right, or everybody else is right. We cannot all be right, and I have been impressed by the work of, for example, Norway, when I have been doing international development. Although it is a small country, it punches well above its weight in terms of the effect it manages to bring to bear, and that goes for other countries—often small countries—such as Ireland, Switzerland and the Netherlands. My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), the Chair of the Select Committee, made reference to Australia.”
“May I start by very much welcoming this merger and the announcement of 16 June? I also welcome the Prime Minister’s recommitment to 0.7%. We are the only G7 country so to commit, and that has been the case since 2013. We need to be very proud of that. It was in the manifesto on which I stood and it is contained within statute, and I am very pleased that it will continue, but it has to be said that aid is not necessarily the best sell on the doorstep, as we found in December last year. The merger will make sense to many of our constituents, who are generous people but who also want a sense that there is something in it for them—that aid will indeed be in pursuit of the national interest—and the merger surely makes sense in that context.”
“I very much welcome the appointment of David Frost, who is well qualified for the roles that my right hon. Friend has outlined. At the weekend in a Government press release, David Frost is said to have said that he is particularly exercised by the importance of the integrated review and the formation of the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. What role does my right hon. Friend envisage for David Frost in the formation of that very welcome new Department? When will the new permanent secretary be appointed to the Department? Does my right hon. Friend agree that he or she has to be an excellent change manager? What relationship will David Frost have to the new perm sec?”
“I can get a routine blood test result on the same day with no problem, but a swab test typically takes days, not hours, severely limiting its usefulness as a public health tool, as the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) described. Does my right hon. Friend believe that directors of public health should have access to comprehensive datasets in good time if they are to identify the clusters that he envisages in his statement?”
“I very much welcome this merger, which is good for global Britain, good for aid beneficiaries and good for our ability to explain and advocate international development among a generally sceptical population. Can the Foreign Secretary say, however, what the Independent Commission for Aid Impact’s role will be in the merged Department? Also, since DFID’s terms and conditions of service for its staff tend to be rather better than those for Foreign and Commonwealth Office staff and diplomats, will there be a levelling up or a levelling down?”
“I congratulate the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) on securing this urgent question. He knows that I agree with him on most things, but I respectfully disagree with him on this. Does the Minister agree that the laws we had to pass here in July and the regulations and framework that his Department has produced better align Northern Ireland with the rest of the United Kingdom in this respect and indeed with the Republic of Ireland and that, like same-sex marriage, we know from the data available that they accord pretty much with the overwhelming view of the people of Northern Ireland?”
“I commend the Government for the progress that they have made on this matter. I draw the Minister’s attention to the forthcoming report by Mr William Shawcross. Can he say how much tax has been received by Her Majesty’s Government on transactions involving Gaddafi-related frozen assets? Does he agree that it is morally questionable for the Treasury to be benefiting from those assets while Northern Ireland’s victims of Gaddafi-sponsored terrorism are being short-changed?”
“The Minister must have made an economic assessment of the effects of quarantine. Does she accept that there is no point in quarantining people coming from countries with a relatively low disease burden to the UK? If she does, which European countries specifically has she in mind for quarantine, since pretty much all of them have a lower disease burden than the United Kingdom?”
“The Foreign Secretary is right to suggest that the national security legislation has a sense of inevitability about it. Will he therefore go further and make it clear to Hongkongers that they will always be welcome here and that the Government regard them as a potential boon, not a burden, and in so doing make it very clear that, post Brexit, we are global Britain and not little England?”