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 congratulate the Minister on his promotion, but must say how sorry I am that his first outing has been to defend this load of nonsense. What does he say to the UK Statistics Authority and to the Government Actuary’s Department, which appear to have a very different view of the costing of this to the one that he has just outlined? Is it not the case that what he has said represents a load of accounting double-speak and is dubious, to put it politely and in parliamentary terms?”
“The Minister is being extremely generous with his time. He was pressed earlier, but I would like to press him again on the social time discounting method. He should be able to give examples of big projects to which his Government have applied this method. Could he now do that and say why, for example, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) did not use that method when she was calculating the cost of the 10-year affordable housing programme?”
“The Government are clearly not going to take any lessons from us, but I wonder whether they would listen to one of their own. Lord West of Spithead was a Security Minister under the previous Labour Administration and then First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, so he knows a thing or two. He has said very clearly that in his expert opinion, this deal is “irresponsible” and that it will damage our strategic interests. Who are we to believe: the Labour party or my old boss, Lord West?”
“My right hon. Friend is making a powerful case. The answer is none, because Mauritius has no navy and practically no coastguard. With which means will Mauritius defend a territory that is hundreds of kilometres away? It cannot possibly do so.”
“Does the Minister agree that, while in this case, proscription may be a finely balanced decision, the law must be upheld whether you like it or not, whoever you are and wherever you are? Does he therefore share my concern that in this case, there appears to be some regional disparity in the interpretation of the law, as evidenced by the different rates at which people were arrested across this country at the weekend?”
“We know that 67 Britons died on 9/11. Does the Minister agree that we owe it to them, their memory and the families to get to the bottom of what look like very fishy reports over the weekend on how this individual was handled? Will he assure the House that the police at the time had operational independence—an issue that he referred to in his response to the previous urgent question? Does he understand that the British public are deeply sceptical about the stance taken by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, particularly as the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi is still very much at the forefront of their mind?”
“The Swedish Archer self-propelled gun is in the process of replacing the AS-90, and it will itself be replaced by the German Remote Controlled Howitzer 155 system. Can the Minister say when the in-service date of the Howitzer will be? How much UK componentry will be in it? How many UK jobs does he anticipate will be generated by it?”
“My right hon. Friend is explaining the situation in his usual powerful way. If, as seems likely, the Government impose capital gains tax on a person’s principal private residence, will he, as mitigation, consider whether there should at least be indexation allowance to provide some relief from the horror that I fear is about to be inflicted on my constituents? He will remember that the Finance Act 2008 abolished that relief on other property. I suspect that the Government will not be sympathetic to such a suggestion given what happened in 2008, but it would at least take the edge off the imposition of taxes on the sale of a person’s principal private residence.”
“The hon. Lady is trotting out a whole load of helpful suggestions, of which the hospitality Minister is no doubt taking careful note for the time when he makes his representations—which he said he would not be making—to the Chancellor. Does the hon. Lady agree that he could also make recommendations to the Deputy Prime Minister, especially in relation to the Unemployment Bill, that would have no particular cost attached? I am thinking of the “banter ban”, which even the Equality and Human Rights Commission has said is absolutely bonkers, and is likely to make hospitality venues even less attractive to those who need to use them.”
“Despite the strategic dialogue referred to by the Foreign Secretary, the Government have decided to veto the UK-Morocco power project, so what are they doing in practical terms to maintain the momentum in our relationship created by the association agreement signed with Morocco in 2019?”
“British warships are made with a mixture of UK and non-UK steel. What impact will this announcement have on that mix, particularly for the Type 26 frigate programme, about which we had some good news earlier this week?”
“Happy birthday, Madam Deputy Speaker. The law of armed conflict is hardwired into the behaviour of our military, and we should demand the same of our friends and allies. Israel is our friend and ally. What assurances has the Foreign Secretary therefore had from his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence that they have gained from their Israeli interlocutors the assurances that we need that the 40 or 50 incidents involving the IDF on the west bank and in Gaza since 2023 will be brought to a proper conclusion, and that any wrongdoing is held to account?”
“I, too, congratulate Admiral Sir Tony Radakin and Air Chief Marshal Sir Rich Knighton and wish them well. A big “Well done” is also due to all involved in the Type 26 deal, including my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge). I ask the Defence Secretary to cast his mind back to March, when I asked the Prime Minister whether it would be folly to put British troops into Ukraine without a US backstop—without a guarantee from the White House—and the Prime Minister agreed that it would indeed be folly. Does that remain the Government’s position?”
“The Secretary of State knows that out-of-county placements are very expensive and highly unsatisfactory both for pupils and for families. Will she therefore confirm that the excellent news that we had last year about a new SEND school being built at Bitham Park in Westbury will go ahead to the advantage of children and, importantly, their families, and can she assure me it is not going to be cancelled in the proposals she has alluded to?”
“The Minister said he wanted nine more reservoirs, but can he say how many of that number are already under construction or in the planning process, when we can expect to see them and who will pay? Also, is it his view that Sir Jon Cunliffe’s predicted uplift of more than 30% in real terms for water bill payers will be covering the cost?”
“The Foreign Secretary, at the beginning of his remarks, mentioned the savagery unfolding in southern Syria, and said that he had spoken to his Syrian interlocuter, Minister al-Shaibani, about it. Has he spoken to Tel Aviv about it, since the only country that has visibly come to the assistance of the Druze, for all the criticism that has been rightly aimed at it, is Israel? If he has, can he say what his assessment is of the wisdom or otherwise of the action that Israel has taken?”
“We have just been through the centenary of the great war. Does the Minister agree that the difference between 80 years and 100 is that we still have veterans among us? Sadly, when we come to the centenary of the events we are commemorating this year, that will not be the case. Will she therefore make absolutely sure that it is the veterans who are centre stage during this commemoration?”
“Mr Gregory Campbell will move the motion and the Minister will respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and from the Minister.”
“Does the Home Secretary agree with President Macron’s analysis last week that the reason people want to come here is that the UK is perceived as being attractive to illegal migrants—what President Macron referred to as “pull factors”, with one of his MPs referring to Britain as “El Dorado”? If the Home Secretary does agree with the French President, what is she doing to reduce those pull factors?”
“The tier 1 exercise that CDL mentioned in response to Baroness Hallett’s recommendation 6 in module 1 of her report on covid 19 is much to be welcomed. However, he will be aware that part of the problem with Exercise Cygnus in 2016 was that the results were not made public at the time, and a lot of it remained classified. In the light of what has been said today, will he ensure that the Government’s approach to this exercise is different, and that the results are made public quickly, so that they can be interrogated?”
“The Secretary of State is a Wiltshire MP, so she will be very familiar with the town of Westbury, which has waited for decades for its bypass. Will she assure me that she is actively looking at proposals to bypass Westbury to the west of the town, including Yarnbrook, and does she agree that the north-south strategic study provides an opportunity to get the bypass that Westbury so desperately needs?”
“The Defence Secretary has said, correctly, that Operation Midnight Hammer has alleviated a grave threat, but the Attorney General appears to be less clear and wonders if it was illegal, while the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary appear to sit on the fence. I am sorry to put the Minister on the spot, but does he agree with the Attorney General or the Defence Secretary?”
“Wiltshire is part of the f40 group, which means that we get less money than practically anywhere else, despite the extra cost imposed by rurality. We were delighted last April when it was announced that, as part of the safety valve programme, we would get a new SEND school at Bitham Park in Westbury for 130 children, reducing the number of out-of-county placements that we have every year. Will the Minister say whether that programme will continue under her plans, and will she guarantee that we can still look forward to that new school opening next year?”
“After yesterday’s complete chaos, my constituents are bracing themselves for big tax increases in the autumn. How does the Minister think they feel when they see the Mauritian Government crowing about virtually abolishing income tax in Mauritius thanks to the largesse that he is about to pour on them?”
“What proportion of the commissioner’s time, and that of his or her staff, does the Minister envisage being devoted to individual matters of casework, of the sort he has just described, and what proportion will be around thematic investigations, such as the state of service housing?”
“Having a child is a personal choice, and it is a blessing that I have enjoyed five times. Becoming old, sick or disabled are not personal choices, yet we have had cuts to the winter fuel allowance and we are about to discuss a controversial Bill that would remove a large element of the support that we currently give to sick and disabled people. What does that say about the Government’s priorities?”
“With basing becoming longer-term and more predictable, and with most young people wanting to buy rather than rent their home, what assessment has the Secretary of State made of the success of Forces Help to Buy? What plans does he have to extend it?”
“I congratulate the Secretary of State on her statement. History tells us that normalising, condoning and tolerating the kind of things that we saw at Glastonbury over the weekend never ends well—it ends extremely badly. As a neighbouring MP, I have written twice to Worthy Farm with my concerns about Kneecap, following reports about one of its members advocating the killing of MPs. There was no reply—and none is expected. Instead, the festival scheduled Bob Vylan, who, as we heard, also advocates killing people—this time Jews. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is no good for Glastonbury’s very wealthy organisers to be banging on about their festival being a safe space for everyone while it continues to facilitate operations like that?”
“Have any alternative platforms been considered for the potential delivery of a tactical nuclear weapon? In particular, have the Government looked at the Astute class attack submarine as an alternative or additional platform, or at its successor, the SSN-AUKUS?”
“To what extent does my hon. Friend believe that the situation is even worse than he has outlined? Inflationary pressures bear far more heavily on defence than on, with the possible exception of healthcare, practically any other part of public spending, yet I see no evidence in the defence review or anywhere else over the past 12 months of that being properly accounted for by Ministers or those who advise them.”
“Would my hon. Friend comment on the Government’s enthusiasm or otherwise for the Haythornthwaite review of careers in the armed forces? It was put in train by and carried out under the last Government, but we hear tell that there has perhaps been some backsliding since. That is a pity, as Rick Haythornthwaite’s review was magisterial and had already shown signs, through zig-zag careers and the spectrum of service, of being appealing to servicemen and servicewomen, and holding them in—both in the regulars and the reserves. It would be a pity if that process did not continue on the basis of not-made-here-itis.”
“The creation of the Abraham accords was one of the achievements of the first Trump Administration, and the President of the US has said that he aims for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to join those accords. What are the UK Government doing to encourage that process, and what preconditions does he believe Riyadh has for joining the accords?”
“Does the Minister agree that they would be much better employed looking after our critical national infrastructure and military bases up and down the land, including those in my constituency, and will he consider ensuring that warranted officers are able to do a job of work for the MOD that cannot be done by regional forces? I am very confident that they would welcome the challenge.”
“My constituents in military establishments around Salisbury plain will not see this as an act of vandalism. They will see it as criminal damage. They will see it as sabotage. They will see it as terrorism. The Minister, who I respect, does himself no good by trying to downplay its seriousness. There are 2,900 Ministry of Defence policemen in the country. In recent years, they have been employed largely in investigating relatively low-level fraud within the Ministry of Defence and in military establishments across the country, with a relatively low conviction rate.”
“The Minister is rightly pointing out where progress has been made nationally and internationally, but when he was cantering through those points of light nationally, he missed out one group: the men and women serving in our armed forces. I am particularly mindful of that because Saturday is Armed Forces Day and, sadly, one of the chief advocates for LGBT people in the armed forces, Lord Etherton, died in May. Will the Minister pay tribute to Terence Etherton and comment on his 2023 report into the shameful way in which gay people were treated in the armed forces between 1967 and 2000?”
“As a south-west region MP, does the Secretary of State agree that the west country has for decades been the poor country cousin of our rail network, and that money spent on HS2 is money not spent elsewhere? Will she do all in her power to ensure that the relatively small changes that are necessary on the network in the south-west to make life a lot easier go ahead, and will she look particularly at the absolutely woeful west of England line?”
“My hon. Friend was right to table his amendment, which I certainly support. Does he agree that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency would insist that a barbiturate or any other substance used in medicine should be approved for a specific cause? We cannot translate that to a completely different cause or reason for using it. Would he also agree that the way to deal with the issue is for it to be properly regulated through the MHRA?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Mr Speaker said earlier today that a Minister would come to the House on Monday to discuss the middle east. Given the events overnight, which have continued to deteriorate during the course of the day, have you had any indication that a Minister will come to the House in the few minutes left before we rise to discuss the middle east, in particular Israel and Iran, given UK equities in the area and more generally?”
“Happy birthday, Mr Speaker. Change in the language by the UK Government on the Moroccan autonomy plan paves the way for a bright new future between the two kingdoms. Does the Minister therefore feel that the time is right to finally make a decision on the UK-Morocco power project that could potentially add 8% of the UK’s grid requirements and clean energy for the future?”
“The announcement today is good news as far as it goes, but the baseload that it will provide will not be on tap for many years to come. How does the Secretary of State propose to fill that gap? Will he now look again at the UK-Morocco power project, which needs a decision soon and could be delivering electrons by the turn of the decade? Does the announcement today affect the likely contract for difference and strike prices eventually reached with the proposed operator?”
“It is a sad day when the UK Government and the Governments of New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Norway feel it necessary to sanction Government Ministers in the state of Israel, one of our closest allies, but it is the right thing to do. Can I, however, counsel the Minister, if I may be so presumptuous, against performative politics, and ask him how many mouths will be fed, how much violence against Palestinians in the west bank will be avoided or averted, and how much closer are we to achieving the two-state solution that we all want to see as a result of the action he has announced today?”
“China is already revelling in the Government’s spectacular own goal in handing over Chagos. China looks as if it is about to benefit again. Even if the Minister cannot say what amounts are involved, will he say what works would need to be done in advance of the embassy being set up at the Royal Mail site, and who would pay for that? Would it be the Chinese, or would it be the UK Government, and which part?”
“Many of my elderly constituents had an unnecessarily cold and miserable winter, and the uncertainty to which the Minister constantly refers was of his Government’s own making. Will he take this opportunity to apologise to my constituents?”
“The Chief Secretary’s announcement on regional growth largely omitted the south-west region beyond Bristol. Will he therefore ensure that next Wednesday there is at least a nod to the region in which both he and I have our constituencies? Will he ensure that the signal that this Government sent to the south-west practically on day one by canning improvements to the A303 is corrected? Will he ensure that there is at least a nod to the much-needed Westbury bypass? Can we please have a little investment in the poor country cousin of the rail network in this country, which is the west of England line?”
“Has the hon. and learned Member had time to look at amendment 13, under which, if there was any backsliding by the Government, the matter would be brought back to this House for determination? I suspect that he, like me, would not accuse Ministers of being capable of abusing Henry VIII powers at the moment, but those in some future Government might. That is why we need amendment 13, particularly to ensure that retained EU legislation, a third of which the previous Government binned, canned, and got rid of, does not start creeping back over months and years, taking us back to where we began prior to 2016, and effectively taking the public for fools.”
“I note with interest the Government’s amendment in lieu. Does the Minister agree that, in all of this, which is unobjectionable in the main, there is a concern not around the person making the complaint but around the person about whom the complaint is made? As we live in an increasingly litigious society—the number of service complaints are going up and the number of cases considered by the ombudsman has been going up—it is likely that the Armed Forces Commissioner’s work and the number of people complained about will go up. Is the Minister satisfied that there is sufficient support for those about whom complaints are made, since the distress that it causes when those complaints are unfounded, or unfounded in part, is significant?”
“The schools in my constituency tell me that any efficiencies they could possibly make have already been made. Therefore, the result of what the Minister is announcing—the national insurance increase that is underfunded and this welcome but unfunded increase in teacher pay—can only be that teacher numbers are cut. As the father of a primary school teacher who works really hard and is absolutely committed, that impacts on me personally, and it will impact on every child and every parent in my constituency. Is that not the reality, and should the Government not be up front and admit that this will mean that teachers will lose their jobs?”
“One of the burning issues in my constituency is that of waste incinerators. When can we have a debate on the Government’s proposals for either placing a moratorium on them, as happens in Scotland and Wales, or introducing a tax on incineration—a bit like the landfill tax—to encourage the reduction, reuse and recycling of waste, rather than consigning it to the great landfill in the sky?”
“I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his statement and on the work of his Committee. Clearly, renewable energy is an important part of our relationship with the European Union. What opportunity did his Committee have to examine that and the trade of energy between the UK and the European Union, particularly in the light of the possibility in the near future of an interconnector between Morocco and the UK by way of the UK-Morocco Power Project, or Xlinks? He may know that if the UK does not greenlight that in the near future, other European countries certainly will.”
“I am delighted that the Government are revising the dental contract that their Labour predecessor introduced 20 years ago, but, unless they are prepared to underwrite it, I am afraid that we will still be more or less in the same position. It is not as if we are not training dentists—we are training more and more dentists and there are more and more dental schools, and rightly so—but if those professionals are going to practice in the NHS, they need to be incentivised to do so.”