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 am perfectly happy to face down populist demands to have it cut, and more than happy to explain to dissenters how it has helped to eradicate smallpox, reduce polio, tackle malaria, and even assist tax collectors, necessary as they are in state-building. If I had a criticism of this Government, and indeed of their predecessors, it would be that they have been insufficiently willing to present aid as being in the UK’s national self-interest. If it is explained in that way, we are more likely to get buy-in from the voting public. At the end of the day, our views are interesting, of course, but we need to represent the views of the public, and it is certainly the case that they are not entirely signed up to granting aid at a time when they are being expected to tighten their belts.”
“The Moroccan autonomy plan for the Western Sahara is undoubtedly imperfect—most plans are—but it does offer a credible and pragmatic way forward. It is supported by France and the US and, in truth, it is the only show in town. Next year marks the 800th anniversary of the first diplomatic contact between England and Morocco. One of our oldest friends deserves our unequivocal support as it tries to stabilise the region and control the ingress of enemies that we hold in common and must do all we can to defeat. We have heard a great deal today about international development. Charity begins at home, but it most certainly does not end there. I am very proud that the Government have maintained their commitment to international aid.”
“I hold out Morocco as having done a great deal in recent years, particularly last year, to take itself further forward on the path towards constitutional democracy. In the middle of the year, there was the referendum on the new constitution, with elections in November. At a time when we have seen chaos sweep through north Africa and the middle east, Morocco has stood as a beacon of stability and relative calm. That is because it has a multi-party tradition. While its democracy is evolving—some of us have had the opportunity to witness that at first hand—it has had a tradition of nascent democracy for some time, and that is what has kept it free of some of the insurgency and mayhem that has enveloped the wider region.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for intervening; I expected him to do so. I have spoken on this subject before in the House, and it would be reasonable to do as he suggests. However, Morocco’s concern would be that there was an implicit assumption that its human rights record is not particularly good. In a region that is troubled with its record in that respect, Morocco is something of a beacon, and I would encourage it in the direction of travel that its new Government, and their predecessors, have taken in improving human rights. I would be very reluctant to see that country held out as failing in some way on its human rights record, although I agree that there is every imperative to ensure that it improves in that respect.”
“Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) touched on. It would be perverse if, having gone to the trouble of making aid transparent in the UK, the large portion of our aid that goes through the EU and the European Commission was obscure. A lot of EU aid is used to prosecute foreign policy in relation to its near abroad, seemingly as an extension of the External Action Service. As chairman of the all-party group on Morocco, which is the largest recipient under the European neighbourhood policy, I can say that in general terms the money seems to be reasonably well spent.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend. The Government’s attempt to cut aid to relatively wealthy countries with nuclear weapons, such as Russia and China, together with the UK aid transparency guarantee, should help to reassure a doubting public. However, it is the duty of all those of us who believe in international development to take the message out to our constituents and persuade them that it is in the recipients’ interest and in our own national self-interest that we should maintain our aid programme in very difficult times. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify what part of the 0.7% of GNI in aid that we intend to spend will be channelled through the European Union. I commend him for his desire to have transparency in aid, which is absolutely right, for reasons that my hon.”
“I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on the European Commission’s Tempus programme and the Erasmus Mundus external co-operation window, which the UK has not exploited in Europe to the fullest extent.”
“The ubiquity of the English language has been touched on. It is a blessing and a curse. The orthodoxy is that we should teach more modern foreign languages. I hope, however, that we will pick up on the blessing that the language brings in extending our linguistic reach. In particular, we must support the work of the British Council, which I have seen at first hand in Morocco—a country that is at the heart of what France has traditionally seen as its backyard. We need to exploit more our further and higher education sectors, so that tomorrow’s movers and shakers come to this country and not to others. They may then be sympathetic to us in the years ahead.”
“The detention without trial of my constituent, Nick Djivanovic, by the Serb authorities under highly questionable laws and procedures from the days of Marshal Tito, which have no equivalent in the EU, illustrates the point perfectly in relation to chapters 23 and 24 of the acquis communautaire. Following the eventual arrest and surrender of Ratko Mladic, I hope that the Government will work with Serbia so that its aspiration is eventually satisfied, but it will need a great deal more work. Immigration remains a matter of great concern to many of our constituents. Will the Minister describe the transitional immigration controls that will apply to Croatia and to future accession states, noting the migratory pressures that are sadly likely as the citizens of economically benighted southern European states seek refuge further north?”
“Croatia has made considerable inroads in progressing the chapters of the acquis communautaire assessed in 2005 as being in need of further work, notably in relation to chapters 23 and 24, which deal with the judiciary, fundamental rights, justice, freedom and security. The process has been painful for Croatia, particularly in relation to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, but it has ultimately been successful. We wish it well in 2013. More problematic is Serbia, which I fear must remain a candidate for some time. Belgrade’s attitude to, inter alia, human rights and its criminal justice system are in no way congruous with EU member states.”
“I entirely agree, but it seems to me that some European aid is an extension of the External Action Service rather than necessarily aid in the sense that we give it to Bangladesh, for example. The right hon. Gentleman might see that as a nice distinction, but it is important nevertheless. I am pleased to see in the Queen’s Speech the Croatia accession Bill, which represents the UK’s ratification of the accession treaty signed in December. Those of us of a Eurosceptic disposition see the EU as a trading compact, and that means a looser, not an ever-closer, union that is wider still and wider.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his generous remarks. It is not said loudly enough that the story of Morocco is one of tolerance. In particular, the record of the former sultan in supporting the Jewish community, particularly around Casablanca, against the Vichy French is a powerful example. Morocco ought to be very proud of that.”
“Many people will have written to the right hon. Gentleman, as they have written to me, about this issue. Does he agree that when it is explained to people that there is a clear difference between a civil marriage and a religious marriage in terms of what is proposed, most of them are reassured? It is our duty to point that out.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his invitation to intervene. He referred to excitement in his remarks. How much did he detect across the country in the run-up to the recent elections? I looked but could not find any.”
“I agree absolutely with the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks about producers and farmers. Of course, my constituents, many of whom farm, would expect me to say that. However, my constituents also require good value for money from supermarkets. Does he agree that it is important that supermarkets can apply pressure to large multinational chains that produce goods and from which consumers need good value? There is a clear difference between the two.”
“I welcome the statement and the intent that it contained, but does my right hon. Friend recognise the remarks that General John Allen made in evidence to the Senate armed services committee last month? He said that he was having what he described as a “strategic conversation” with his political masters about the US draw-down towards the end of the year, in advance of a report on the subject that he intended to deliver later this year. To what extent is the announcement that my right hon. Friend has made today provisional on that report?”
“Would my right hon. Friend invite the Grand Chamber to consider the human rights of my constituents to live out their lives free of the sort of activities that might be carried out by Abu Qatada and the 15 other individuals awaiting deportation on similar grounds?”
“On celebrating links between communities and the armed forces, will the Minister note the extremely strong support shown by the town of Warminster on 16 March as 3rd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment, which is deploying in extremely difficult circumstances to Afghanistan, marched through the town?”
“Does my hon. Friend accept that there is a clear distinction between viewing democracy in action here in the Chamber from the Gallery, and in Committee Rooms, and touring Big Ben? The tour is fascinating—one can see the mechanism of the clock and the little room in which MPs were incarcerated—but in no way is it central to our democracy, unlike viewing, and being able to be part of in some small way, what goes on in this Chamber and in Committee Rooms. There is clearly a distinction between the two.”
“On that rather churchy theme, does my hon. Friend not accept that people who want to pray in our great cathedrals do so, of course, free of charge, but that people who visit them as sightseers are invited to pay a fee? In a similar way, people who wish to participate in democracy here can view the proceedings, but if they want to be sightseers in the tower, they should perhaps be invited to contribute.”
“Having established the absence of a power of veto in this case, what could Mr Monti possibly have said had he been consulted in advance, as apparently he wished to have been, that would materially have impacted on the decision matrix and, ultimately, the course of events?”
“At morale-sapping moments such as these, our troops need to know that the standard operating procedures, and the checks on those whom they fight alongside, are as good as they possibly can be. Will the Minister assure the House that the lessons learned will be shared fully with the UK, and that we will be able to reflect upon the report on this terrible tragedy as soon as possible?”
“In 2006, I raised the unintended consequences of the Extradition Act 2003. Six years on, many individuals still find themselves at the wrong end of that legislation and denied bail, meaning that they are kept from their families and livelihoods for long periods. May we now have a debate to see how we can improve our relations with other countries so that people, some of whom will ultimately be found not guilty, are not disadvantaged?”
“I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I believe that the legal position is that the Minister is allowed to take into account prevailing economic circumstances when making his judgments. Does the hon. Gentleman agree, however, that it is important that literature such as that relating to the armed forces pension schemes of 1975 and 2005 should be scrutinised to ensure that nothing within it could give anyone misleading information on which they might base their future pension plans?”
“I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. My constituents have also been adversely affected by the situation at Turquoise in Bodrum. Does she agree that although the Turkish authorities are correct in saying that this is a legal matter, it is doing huge reputational damage to Turkey, and that it is in Ankara’s interests to make sure that this is gripped, as it seems to be somewhat systematic?”
“In designing prisoner transfer agreements, will the Minister ensure that the legitimate expectations of the victims of crime in this country are satisfied? Too often we find them fearful that their natural desire for retributive justice is going unfulfilled.”
“Given the Mary Portas review and the flagging state of many high streets in our small market towns, what more can be done to help change to residential the usage of redundant retail properties that, realistically, are unlikely ever to be used for retail purposes again?”
“I very much welcome my right hon. and learned Friend’s statement. He is right to direct the services of the criminal injuries compensation scheme towards those victims who have suffered the most. People who develop mental health problems as a result of a crime often find that their conditions are difficult to quantify or are not readily apparent. What can be done to ensure that such people are not disadvantaged?”
“Has my right hon. Friend considered the impact of the transfer of powers from the Department’s Transport Security and Contingencies Directorate to the CAA on TRANSEC’s residual functions, particularly in relation to maritime safety and elements of rail safety?”
“I accept everything that my right hon. Friend says about the pressure on time today, but does he observe that very little of that pressure is likely to come from Opposition Members, among whom there is a desultory turnout for such an important debate?”
“The shadow Chancellor is on record saying that he accepts all the Government’s spending cuts. However, the shadow Defence Secretary says that he thinks only £5 billion-worth of cuts in defence are necessary. Who is correct?”
“It is important to get this matter right in the context of the Falklands, given the activity in Buenos Aires. I accept entirely my hon. Friend’s point about the number of platforms. However, does he accept that the capability of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force is immense compared with that of Argentina? In many respects, our potential ability to project force is much greater than it was in 1982 for that reason.”
“The Gray report was leaked to the electorate before the general election, so voters such as those in my constituency, which has a large defence interest, had the benefit of seeing it, as did I. The previous Government might well have tried to delay the publication of the report because the word “grotesque” reflected some of the real horrors in Defence Equipment and Support that were unearthed in the dying days of Labour’s 13-year stewardship. Bernard Gray told us that the MOD was running a “substantially overheated equipment programme” and that the sclerotic Department was hampering our ability to conduct difficult current operations. He went on to say: “The problems, and the sums of money involved, have almost lost their power to shock, so endemic is the issue.””
“I declare my interest as a member of the reserve forces. I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on introducing this important debate and my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) and his Committee on their timely report, published this week. I read it with great interest and if I have any criticism of it I would have to start with the fact that it perhaps does not sufficiently recognise two rigorous and well-regarded studies, the Levene report and Bernard Gray’s report, which set the scene for many of the points that it raises. In May 2010, of course, the coalition Government inherited the extremely difficult task of bringing some order to a chaotic defence budget.”
“The figure of £5 billion is interesting because the shadow Defence Secretary also said today that it would be invidious in advance of a general election to try to work out what the requirement would be in personnel and equipment. It is therefore difficult to work out how he came up with the £5 billion figure, even assuming it is correct. The isolation of the Opposition is increasingly apparent as even the United States reins in its defence spending to deal not with an incoherent defence budget but with a crippling federal budget deficit.”
“The hon. Gentleman will also remember that Bernard Gray was a special adviser to his party. In that context it is quite important to note that the report was produced by a supporter not of the Conservative party but of his party. The gap between the programme and the budget in May 2010 was a truly grotesque £38 billion. Also grotesque is the disarray over how to deal with the crisis among those who masterminded it. We heard examples of that today from the shadow Defence Secretary. He says he supports only £5 billion of Government cuts, but the shadow Chancellor says that the Labour party would keep all the remedial spending reductions that the Government are making.”
“Under SAFE, alarmingly, British servicemen would owe allegiance to the supranational European Union. One of its cheerleaders, the German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, told the Munich security conference in February 2010: “The long-term goal is the establishment of a European army under full parliamentary control.” Of course, that has nothing to do with improving our collective security; instead, it draws from a hubristic, maladroit pan-European political project that has brought us to the brink of economic catastrophe. The immediate concern about SAFE is that it would quite deliberately remove the capability of the two European nation states still able to act independently to project force worldwide on their own, or with partners of their choosing, in pursuit of the national interest.”
“However, I share widespread concern that we are moving towards a two-tier alliance, with some players benefiting from the cover but not paying the premium. At next week’s meeting of Defence Ministers in Brussels, will the Defence Secretary continue to press our allies to meet their proper financial responsibilities? Present at the meeting will be those who press for an increasing EU defence identity as part of the security and defence policy. Naturally, that has nothing to do with defence, which only the UK and France come close to funding properly. The latest turn of the screw comes from a European Parliament resolution of 19 February 2009, which proposes something called synchronised armed forces Europe. SAFE is a beguiling but deeply ironic acronym.”
“More generally, I note that although there here have been and will continue to be compulsory redundancies, the package is so reasonable that there has been disappointment among many of those not selected, as there was during previous rounds. From experience, I bear testament to that. It is of course reasonable to flex personnel from one trade to another—a contention, I think, of paragraphs 67 to 70 of this week’s Defence Committee report—but the majority of pinch-point trades are so specific by rank or extent of retraining necessary that it would actually be quite difficult to do so. Flexible though our young people are, we simply cannot ask an infantryman to become an Intelligence Corps linguist, a pharmacist at the rank of captain or a Cat. A nuclear watchkeeper. In our collective defence, NATO remains paramount.”
“Those in charge betray the covenant if they allow the kind of shoddy, top-level management evidenced by both Gray and Levene. However, we still have nearly 500 one-star officers and above—a whole battalion of senior officers on packages well in excess of £100,000. Defence Medical Services is a good case in point. To oversee the care of a patient population less than half the size of Wiltshire we require one three-star, five two-star and 15 one-star officers who serve not as doctors, dentists or nurses but as administrators. Our top medic in Afghanistan is not among them—he is just a colonel. I commend the Government for the remedial measures announced before Christmas to reduce the number of starred appointments, both uniformed and civilian.”
“Well, the rate will decline—of course it will. We gained some insight into how the disconnect between programmes and the ability to pay for them arose last summer when Lord Levene delivered his verdict on the MOD. His revelations dovetailed disquietingly well with Gray’s. He found a “bloated top-level defence board” supervising a “department with overly bureaucratic management structures, dominated by committees leading to indecisiveness and a lack of responsibility.” Last year, the armed forces covenant was written into law for the first time, as the Prime Minister said it would be. The covenant is not just about the compact between troops and the public. It also concerns the deal between troops and the high command.”
“Our cornerstone has always been NATO and it will continue to be.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. It may not be by chance that the Germans are chief among those who wish to shelter under a European defence force, because Germany, of all our allies and friends, is the country one can most easily identify as a major economy that does not pay its way in terms of our collective security, which it so obviously enjoys. When the Minister is in Brussels, I very much hope that he will do everything he can to put pressure on the Germans in particular to make a fuller contribution to our collective defence; but it has to be through NATO, not through the European Union. The lesson of the past few years and the difficulty with the European Union in respect of our economic position—the greatest existential threat the UK faces at the moment—is that we cannot rely on Europe for our security.”
“I thank the Minister. Recent activity in the south Atlantic has shown us that the threat from a Government playing to a national gallery has to be addressed.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that not only are our reserve forces head to head cheaper than members of the regular armed forces, which is important in the current environment, but that other countries have far more reserves as a proportion of their total defence capacity?”
“My hon. Friend eloquently lays out the reasons why many town centres are falling on hard times. Has he noted Mary Portas’s remarks about the motor car? In market towns, and in rural areas, a car is no luxury, and it is essential for the vibrancy of those towns that there is adequate parking. What does he feel about that and, in particular, Portas’s remarks about a league table for car parks?”
“May we have a debate on the likely effectiveness of the ban on sow stalls in the European Union from 1 January 2013, given that there is every indication that several countries will not be compliant? The UK rightly implemented the ban from 1999, but it has halved the sow herd. Clearly, more needs to be done in Europe to promote animal welfare and in Britain to ensure that our industry is protected.”
“The hon. Gentleman is being very generous. How does he believe the motion might be improved or amended to dispel the concerns expressed by family brewers of the sort referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) that they would be affected by a statutory code when that is not the case?”
“Our constituents tend to be interested in the skills and experience of Members of Parliament and candidates, and they are interested in their occupational background—perhaps even more than in their membership of particular social groups or minority groups. In that regard, why does the hon. Lady think that the number of MPs from manual worker groups and from professional groups has declined since 1979, and what can we do about it?”
“My right hon. Friend will know that it tends to be early service leavers rather than those who have served their full commissions who feature disproportionately in criminal justice and homelessness figures and mental health statistics, yet the resettlement facilities—such as they are—are focused very much on those who have served the armed forces for a long time. What can we do to redress the balance?”