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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“I will skip the rest of my amendments because they are simply to do with ensuring that there is added scrutiny of these measures and the guidance that flows from them, as well as with the appointment function to be exercised by this House, as cited in clause 4, and in particular—if I may make this suggestion—by my Committee.”
“Things need to be done, and fairly urgently, to improve productivity in Northern Ireland, while recognising the unusual nature of farming in Northern Ireland and recognising that farming in Northern Ireland is not the same as farming in the rest of the United Kingdom. In the main, we are not talking about East Anglian barley barons in Northern Ireland, but about small family farms. That is why the guidance, which I hope will preoccupy the Secretary of State in the weeks and months ahead, should produce a firm statement about what the civil service of Northern Ireland needs to do in relation to producing such a farming strategy. If we have no restoration of the Executive by the end of the year, we should certainly give some attention to that directly.”
“One thing we have been particularly struck by as a Select Committee is of course farming and growing in Northern Ireland: horticulture is far more important there than in the rest of the United Kingdom. One of the recommendations we are very keen on is that there should be a proper farming strategy in Northern Ireland very soon. At the moment, it is having to compete with the Republic, where, if I am honest, the Government in Dublin have been really quite proactive and have placed farmers and growers north of the border at something of a competitive disadvantage, with or without Brexit.”
“The purpose of amendments tends to be to elicit such answers from Ministers, and it will be very interesting to hear from the Secretary of State how she would like to play this, because I am hoping that we will have some encouragement in that respect. Hon. Members have certainly given her every encouragement. I have been struck by how much encouragement to be proactive in the interests of the people of Northern Ireland there has been during this debate. I think that the Committee understands full well that a great deal needs to be done, and it needs to be done fairly quickly on a number of important public policy issues, of which Hart is just one. The guidance makes a great deal of the public finances and the economy in Northern Ireland. Goodness me, we could debate all day the economy in Northern Ireland and where that needs to go.”
“The news of Wednesday’s business is most welcome, but will the Leader of the House say why it is necessary to conclude all stages of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill in one day? The matter to which it relates now dates from January 2017, and it is vital to get things right.”
“Dame Laura makes it clear that heads must roll, and she identifies some candidates, but can we ensure that this does not become a witch hunt? The House managed the expenses scandal appallingly and needs to take early action in this instance, but can we ensure that appropriate action is taken, including, where necessary, the re-education of Members in how to behave, how to manage staff and how to manage their own anger?”
“Last month, Michel Barnier very helpfully said that the border that he envisages down the middle of the Irish sea would be heavily reliant on innovative technical solutions. If that is true, why is he so dismissive of the same solutions, approved and endorsed by the European Parliament, in respect of the land border on the island of Ireland?”
“The Leader of the House will be aware that Northern Ireland has been without proper government since January 2017. News of a Northern Ireland Bill that will give the Secretary of State significant new powers is very welcome, but can she say when it will be published, and what timetable she envisages to ensure that it is given proper scrutiny in this place?”
“My hon. Friend will know, because his constituency neighbours mine, that Arla, one of the biggest producers of dairy products, is in my constituency. In welcoming this Bill, as both he and I clearly do, does he nevertheless share the concerns of Arla as a first purchaser that clause 25 in particular might cause difficulties for it, while also trying to eschew the bad behaviour of rogue producers?”
“The Minister will be aware that the bay of Seine is not the only potential flashpoint in the waters of European Union member states. What assessment has he made of the potential for other issues of this sort arising elsewhere? In particular, what is he doing about the Voisinage agreement between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, which, as I am sure he appreciates, has real potential to cause some difficulty in the not-too-distant future?”
“I very much support everything my hon. Friend is saying. Does he agree that, in retrospect, it was perhaps a bit premature to abolish, as part of the strategic defence and security review in 2010, the joint chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear regiment, which was created in 1999? He will have noticed members of our armed forces on the streets of Salisbury recently, and if there were incidents of that sort in the future, possibly involving biological or nuclear devices as an alternative to the chemical one that was deployed on this occasion, we might need the kind of expertise that we thought we were growing from the Royal Tank Regiment and the Royal Air Force regiment in 1999.”
“I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend: the resilience of the people of Salisbury is remarkable. One group that he has not mentioned—I am sure that it is inadvertent—are the healthcare workers who were involved, particularly those at Salisbury District Hospital. The rapidity with which an extremely unusual set of symptoms was diagnosed accurately at the hospital was truly remarkable and an exemplar. Had that not been the case, the outcomes might not have been as favourable as they were. My right hon. Friend will recall that the media were talking of the imminent demise of the Skripals, and the fact that that has not occurred is largely due to the expertise deployed at Salisbury District Hospital.”
“On 27 June, Mr George Hamilton, the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, told the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee: “We do not know who is leading the multiagency response to the land border”. What has been done to give clarity in the weeks since he made that statement? In particular, what proportion of the uplift to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the UK Border Force, as announced by the Government, will be assigned to Northern Ireland?”
“I thank the Prime Minister for the Government support that has been given to Wiltshire in its recovery phase. It continues to be much needed. The apparent ease with which two GRU operatives were able to enter this country will fill people with alarm and suggests continued vulnerability. Accepting the difficulty of detecting agents such as Novichok at our ports and airports, what can be done to reduce the chances not just of individuals but of substances entering the country and permitting a repetition of what we have seen?”
“What was my right hon. Friend’s reaction to the bold new security partnership with the European Union to which she referred and to the possible cessation of the UK’s leadership of EU initiatives such as elements of the European Defence Agency, the battlegroups and Operation Atalanta?”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement. What reassurance is he able to offer those who say that the inclusion of agri-food in the common rulebook is a sop to farmers in southern Europe and a snub to potential partners in places such as north Africa and Latin America?”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his amendments, but does he agree that we need to tread very carefully, as there are important principles of law here? Our armed forces do not want to be aside from or above the law; they uphold the law. Does he also agree that under the military covenant our armed forces must suffer no disadvantage—that is the test—but that in that important regard they are at a significant disadvantage under the law as it stands?”
“We will need a growing and sustainable workforce if we are to land more of our own fish, yet approximately half those who undertake the difficult and poorly paid work done by crew on board fishing vessels are from outside the British Isles. What will be done to ensure that we have the workforce that we will need to rely on if we are to land more of our own fish?”
“The technical note published on 7 June spoke of free trade agreements that could be entered into that would not affect any temporary customs arrangements. What discussion has the Secretary of State had with the parties on specifically what form those free trade agreements might take and who they might involve?”
“I was a junior doctor at the Royal Hospital Haslar in Gosport, which is just around the corner from the Gosport War Memorial Hospital, so I know that hospital fairly well, and I also know that the people of Gosport will be disappointed and distressed by this, since they very much value their community hospital. Does the Secretary of State agree with me that there is an issue about the governance of smaller institutions, as we have seen in the past? I in no way wish to disparage the excellent work done by community hospitals, of which I have been a champion for many years, but will he look specifically at the pages in the report that touch on this? There is an issue about governing and ensuring safety in small institutions—whether in general practice or in hospitals?”
“On the issue of the Brussels summit, while it is true that NATO is inestimably more important in collective defence than the European Union, Europe’s nascent defence capability has nevertheless shown itself to have some utility. When we leave the European Union, what will our response be to things that have worked, such as Operation Atalanta and the EU battle groups, of which the UK has been an important part?”
“Nobody doubts the hon. Lady’s commitment to our armed forces and to NATO, but her leader has one signal virtue, consistency—it is a virtue in a politician. He has not changed his mind on anything since the 1970s. What then are we to make of an individual who only six years ago said that NATO was a “danger to world peace” and that it was “a major problem”?”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend, whose commitment to our NHS is very clear. Does he agree with me, however, that the Commonwealth Fund indicator that really matters concerns clinical outcomes, some of which he referred to in his statement, and on that the news is not good? Will he do everything he can to make sure that the increased funding he has announced today is absolutely dedicated to improving outcomes for stroke, cancer and heart attack, on all of which we still lag well behind countries with which we can reasonably be compared?”
“My hon. Friend should not be at all sorry that he does not come from Wiltshire. Those of us who do are very grateful to him for taking the interest that he has. Does he appreciate that the sensitivity of the matter is demonstrated by the fact that we are going to the extraordinary expense of constructing a tunnel past the stones, which will undermine, so to speak, archaeology that may be explored in the future? That cost should not be underestimated, as logic would dictate that we did a cut and cover, at the very most, or simply had a dual carriageway. Instead, we have gone for a tunnel, which will leave the great bulk of the archaeology that may as yet be undiscovered uninterrupted and undisturbed.”
“My hon. Friend is being very generous. Would he acknowledge that there is a clear and present danger, not only to people who live and breathe in villages such as Chitterne, with the rat-running that currently goes on, and Chicklade, which sits along the route of the A303 and is blighted by that road at the moment—their lives are being adversely impacted by the A303—but to the built environment, which is also being adversely impacted? We need to do something about that. The proposals for Stonehenge would go some way towards improving those settings, the lives of those who live there and the built environment in the sorts of villages I have described.”
“That is part of the reason Stonehenge is where it is. I think we sometimes have to give a little respect to the much-maligned A303; the part it has played in our history is sometimes understated and underestimated. It is important and is part of the overall Stonehenge story.”
“I admire very much the extraordinary account by my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar of the history of the site. It seems to me that tunnelling under most of the archaeological remains is the most sensitive way of dealing with that, notwithstanding the poisonous gases to which he referred and of which I have to confess I was not aware. I understand his concerns about either end of this tunnel—particularly the Amesbury end—and I hope very much that we are able to approach the work in as sensitive a way as we possibly can, but it would be foolish for any of us to suppose that some of it will not be disruptive. That, I am afraid, is the price that we pay. My hon. Friend referred to Stonehenge as a Mesolithic destination. Stonehenge was sited there for a reason: it was because it was accessible by tracks and by river.”
“In the event that it was shelved, my constituents, who live alongside the A303 and who have their lives blighted on a daily basis by this extraordinary road, and those in all the villages roundabout that are used as rat runs when there is congestion on the A303, which is pretty much all the time, would have their lives blighted for years and years to come. I have my own concerns, which the Minister will know about, about the choreography of some of the work, particularly in relation to the village of Chicklade. I will continue lobbying on behalf of my constituents to make sure that we get the second phase sorted out very quickly indeed. However, none of that should delay this crucial piece of work through Stonehenge. At this particular juncture, I think we need to just crack on with it.”
“However, it is important to say that we cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs. It would be very foolish for any of us to suggest that archaeology is not going to be disrupted by the proposal for the A303. My hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) is absolutely right to say that a balance must be struck. In my opinion, the right balance has been struck. The tragedy would be if the project was delayed any more because we were concerned that we should not disrupt any piece of archaeology in this extremely cramped—in archaeological terms—site in Wiltshire. I regret to say that that would be impossible.”
“I shall be very brief. Like my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray), I did not intend to speak in this debate. I will start by declaring an interest. My home and a small piece of land that I own runs down to the A303, although much further west than Stonehenge. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) on his speech. He did a great job in trying to steer that middle course between serving the interests of people who live and breathe today and our interest in archaeology, which we hold to be extremely important in Wiltshire. It is very much the repository for archaeology, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), who is unfortunately prevented from speaking because of his ministerial position, agrees with me that we must preserve all we possibly can.”
“I promise him that we will be tracking progress on a regular basis and my Committee will publish regular updates on progress made against the recommendations that we make in this report, our third of the Session.”
“In our report, we touch on the sensitive issue of the Good Friday agreement, which contains within it the prospect of a review at some point, and we make recommendations about that, accepting all the sensitivities that surround it. Everything these days has a Brexit angle, and this one certainly does. We found that the voice of Northern Ireland was not being heard properly in Brussels, when we took evidence from Mr Michel Barnier, and that civil servants struggle to have their voices heard equally with Ministers from Scotland and Wales. That needs to be remedied. We took evidence widely for the report, and I am grateful to all those who gave willingly of their time to make it the—I hope—thoughtful and constructive piece that it is. I look forward to the Minister’s response today and the Government’s response in due course.”
“We would like Ministers, in the absence of an Executive, to take action on the Hart report and to introduce legislation, if necessary through this Parliament, to ensure that the victims that Hart identifies are given the redress that they have waited far too long for. We would also like Ministers to explore the role of local government. Councils—they were reduced to 11 in 2015, of course—told us that they are capable of doing more. In the absence of an Executive, that potential has to be explored. We would like Ministers to take note of the pilot that is under way by the Building Change Trust into civic assemblies. We have to ensure the long-term stability of the institutions and make them more robust.”
“It is important that we do what we can, imperfect though it may be, to ensure that democratic voices are heard in Northern Ireland and impact on ministerial decision making. I will briefly highlight two areas that are in urgent need of ministerial attention. We cannot constitute the Northern Ireland Policing Board because we do not have MLAs capable of populating that board. That is causing real problems. It means, for example, that senior appointments to the Police Service of Northern Ireland cannot be made. We recommend that Ministers take in hand the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 and implement the changes necessary to ensure that the board is able to conduct its statutory functions.”
“If the High Court should say that it is not appropriate for civil servants to make such decisions, there is bound to be a catalogue of similar decisions stacking up that will be delayed because we cannot get a ministerial decision without a Minister in place to make such determinations. The list grows day by day, but help is indeed available to Ministers. In such things as the Hart report, the Bengoa report and the draft programme for government, agreed by the last Executive, we have guidance for making those crucial decisions available to Ministers. If they stick to that script, they will not go too far wrong. However, we need to do more than that. The Committee also recommends taking legal and procedural advice on how to set up committees of Members of the Legislative Assembly to improve scrutiny during the current impasse.”
“It is a long list and it is growing every single day. It is very wide-ranging, touching on practically every facet of life in Northern Ireland, from plans for Kilkeel harbour to the York Street interchange and from the likely delay in implementing a reduction in tourism VAT in Northern Ireland to a failure to build new homes. All of them touch on day-to-day life. Unless we get decisions made by Ministers on these issues, people will start to notice a real difference in the way that they live their lives compared with life in the rest of the United Kingdom. We feel that that is unacceptable. The High Court ruling of 14 May on the Mallusk incinerator decision was that it was not acceptable for civil servants to make a determination on this planning issue in County Antrim. I think this is the beginning of a process.”
“The Committee’s principal recommendation is that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland should restart the active facilitation of talks between parties. There is currently a sense of drift in Northern Ireland. There is a frustration on the part of people resident in Northern Ireland that important decisions are just not being made. The solution is very clear: the restoration of the institutions at Stormont using the power-sharing arrangements laid out in the Good Friday agreement. However, we have to face the prospect that that is not going to happen in the immediate future. In those circumstances, it is just not acceptable for us to continue kicking the can down the road and not making crucial ministerial decisions. In annex 1 of the report, the Committee lists a number of decisions that need to be made right now.”
“We have to accept that what we have at the moment is just not working for most people. It is important to understand at the beginning that while we consulted widely—we are very grateful to everybody who contributed to our consultation—we were not able to take evidence from one of the large parties in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin. That is clearly an omission. It was not the Committee’s fault; it was an omission on the part of Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin was asked repeatedly to contribute—it would have added to our report had it done so—but it chose not to. We tried to consult as widely as possible across the community in Northern Ireland, and I think the report has a balanced reflection of opinion in Northern Ireland, as well as a remarkable degree of consensus.”
“In the absence of that, I am sorry to say that it is the Committee’s view that people in Northern Ireland will notice a difference in their day-to-day lives. It is a demonstration of the importance of Ministers in our way of life and our democracy that such a deficit should have been caused by the collapse of the Executive, and it is very clear to everybody that the lack of ministerial decision making is impacting on people’s everyday lives. We launched our inquiry on 24 November 2017. It was aimed not at being a post-mortem—that is for others to do in the fullness of time and there is no shortage of people wishing to do that—but at looking at where we are now and how we can deal with this impasse in the short term to try to deliver to Northern Ireland the governance it needs and to make the institutions more robust in the future.”
“Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to present to the House our third report of this Session, entitled “Devolution and democracy in Northern Ireland—dealing with the deficit”. As you will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, the Northern Ireland Executive collapsed in January 2017, since when there has been no effective ministerial decision-making process at Stormont. I pay tribute to the Northern Ireland civil service, which has done a fantastic job of trying to hold things together during the impasse. As I will go on to describe in my short statement, it is not good enough to expect the Northern Ireland civil service to continue the work of trying to keep the ship on an even keel. The time has now come for further measures that will enable good governance in Northern Ireland.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He is, of course, absolutely right. We practically say that on every single line of our report, because it is vital that we understand the tenets of the Good Friday agreement. It has a unique status. It was a remarkable achievement and is, of course, held dear in the hearts of those who have benefited from it over the past 20 years. Anything that is done needs to be done with consent, and that runs like a vein through the report that we published this week.”
“I entirely agree with my hon. Friend—of course I do—although we have to understand that David Sterling and his civil servants, who have done a remarkable job, should not be put in the invidious position of having to make decisions or feeling that they have to do so because there is no Minister, and then finding that the High Court judges that what they have done is ultra vires. That is unfair, which is one of the reasons why we have recommended that the Secretary of State comes forward before the summer with a framework, at least, within which she will start to make those crucial decisions.”
“Although I would not want to comment specifically on this one, I am confident that there will be several similar judgments ahead, and we need a strategy from the Government for dealing with them; it is clear that civil servants cannot make judgments of that sort because in our system those decisions are reserved to Ministers.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments. The report is strengthened by the fact that it was unanimously passed by our Committee, despite the fact that it was wide-ranging and contained some extremely difficult material. That is a tribute to the Committee, and I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman. I believe that the Keegan judgment is probably the start of a process and that there will be similar ones in the months ahead. I think that it should serve as a catalyst to Ministers to think about the framework to which I have referred and focus their attention on how they can start to make those crucial decisions to deal with annex 1 in the report, and the list is growing by the day. The hon. Gentleman has a particular interest in the judgment that has been made, but there will be more, I am sure, across Northern Ireland.”
“That, in our opinion, is a matter that simply cannot be delayed any further.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for the interest that he has taken in this matter, and he is, of course, correct on both fronts. We believe that there is no reason for further delay on the recommendations that we have made. I hope very much that the Minister, when he comes to respond to this in the fullness of time, will accept all the recommendations that we have made, but particularly those that are absolutely crucial now. Northern Ireland’s voice is certainly not being heard in Brussels alongside those of Scotland and Wales, although this is a UK Government responsibility and not a devolved matter. Policing in Northern Ireland is a crucial and desperately sensitive issue. It is unacceptable that we cannot, for example, appoint senior police officers because of the lack of a Police Board.”
“Given that the border is front and centre of the success or otherwise of the Brexit process, it is ironic that Northern Ireland’s voice is not being heard in Brussels at this time.”
“Matters that are important to them on a daily basis, such as healthcare, education and infrastructure, are not being dealt with because obstinate politicians are standing on their dignity in respect of certain matters. Although the politicians may hold those matters dear, the rest of the population clearly feel that they are not of a nature that justifies putting on hold the good governance of Northern Ireland. As for Brexit, the hon. Gentleman knows—because he was involved—that we made a number of recommendations in relation to the representation of Northern Ireland, and I hope that Ministers will take them to heart. We need to ensure that Northern Ireland’s voice is properly heard.”
“I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who made an extremely important contribution to the report. Clearly, without the co-operation of Sinn Féin, the recommendations in the report about the committee structure at Stormont, for example, simply will not work. That is inherent in the power-sharing structure, which forms such a big part of the Good Friday agreement. I urge Sinn Féin, the Democratic Unionist party and all the other parties in Northern Ireland to set aside the issues on which they cannot agree and get on with the issues on which they can agree. I think that people in Northern Ireland are increasingly frustrated by the silly nonsense and the politicking.”
“Q13. In the 1940s, access by British epidemiologists to patient data established the causal relationship between smoking and lung cancer. How will the big data and artificial intelligence, which the Prime Minister spoke about on Monday, help us transform healthcare outcomes today, and what barriers to data sharing exist in the way of that?”