Sir Iain Duncan Smith
MP for Chingford and Woodford Green · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I raise the cases of Ryan Cornelius and Jimmy Lai—both United Kingdom citizens—to the attention of the Foreign Secretary, who I welcome to his position. Ryan Cornelius has been incarcerated for 19 years—trumped-up charges by a corrupt regime that is supporting a war in Sudan at the moment.”
“Has the Secretary of State been made aware of the case of Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong resident who is being prosecuted by the Administration in Hong Kong using the national security law?”
“A particular memory is that during the Maastricht debates, when, I have to confess, I and one or two others here were deeply rebellious, Ann lectured me from the Dispatch Box—she was in government—about how I should support the Maastricht treaty and the European Union, which rather worried me.”
“It was phenomenal, because she was so certain about the way that she was. Ann embodied something else: the passion that is necessary for us in this Chamber to make our arguments without the fear of any other person doing something to us.”
“We need to reiterate, and the Government and the Home Secretary need to specify, to all the social media companies that they must do something to close down the visceral, violent language that some people use in attacking others personally, as they did over Ann’s murder, which shocked me.”
“Friday was a funny day. I heard the news very early in the morning that Ann had died, and I was utterly surprised about that because she had seemed perfectly fit the last time I saw her, so I gave my condolences and spoke about it on the radio.”
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“I wonder if my right hon. and learned Friend, having read the full summary of yesterday’s judgment by the Supreme Court, was also struck by something that seems to be missing within its methodology. When it stood up, it said, for the right of Parliament to hold any Executive to account, at no point did it reference that one of the ways of avoiding or dismissing a Prorogation would have been to pass a vote of no confidence in the Government or to vote for a general election. Does he agree that that would have been a sure-fire way for the Opposition parties to secure an end to any Prorogation and an immediate change of Government, if they so wished, but that they were frightened?”
“When my right hon. Friend refers to Operation Yellowhammer as a document that was introduced by the previous Administration but is being read and updated by the current Administration, does he also recognise that its purpose was to advise the Government of what more they needed to do to be ready? It was not meant to be an assistant to the Opposition spokesman, who struggles hard to get his lines right. It was there for a purpose, which is being met.”
“May I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on his very good put-down of the shallow Leader of the Opposition? I understand that his Government have changed the root origin of the term “yellowhammer” to describe the botched attempt by the Leader of the Opposition to dispatch his own deputy. I received and saw in my constituency, as others did recently, leaflets from the Labour party calling for a general election now. Can my right hon. Friend give me any reason why we are not having an election at this point? Does he think for a moment that it could be because the Leader of the Opposition fears his own party just as much as he fears us?”
“I apologise for interrupting the Secretary of State in mid-flow, and I know people want to get on. However, as someone who served over in Northern Ireland—and following the question from our right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), which he stepped around—may I repeat this back to him? Even though he is reiterating the issues about criminal prosecutions and other jurisdictions, the point still remains, as my right hon. Friend said—this is what people have been asking for—that we should not just bring somebody in on the basis of a trawl in the hope that something new will turn up. The issue is that having to have compelling evidence to pursue an individual is critical. That does not impact on any criminal activities or any effective future prosecutions, because they would face the same issue.”
“I did not intend to intervene on the hon. Gentleman, but as he raised that point, I will. The point that I, and I think many of my colleagues, are making is that those who have served and have left—some are in their seventies, and so on—face this unedifying process of suddenly being hauled back, not because there is compelling evidence, but in the hope that people may find something that was not available to them at the time. That is surely the key issue— a lack of natural justice—and it has to be stamped on.”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I have a small question on the basis of your judgment. As this whole issue of Queen’s consent hangs on whether, when this House triggered article 50, the statute covered and assumed the right under article 50(3) to extend and accept that extension, or whether that right still remains a Government prerogative under the prerogative powers. In a court case on 19 August, Lord Justice Hickinbottom of the Court of Appeal ruled categorically that it did not assume such a thing in the case brought by the English Democrats and ruled that the Government still retained the prerogative rights under article 50(3). Mr Speaker, I wonder whether you have seen that ruling and whether you would take consideration of that prior to Third Reading, when I gather a final decision will have to be made.”
“I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, because I suspect that he has reached his peroration, but may I ask him a simple question? Has he checked with his Front Benchers that they would support his amendment if he were to press it?”
“A valuable point was raised earlier that also explains how this Bill is problematic, which is that clause 3 assumes that the EU would in some way make a conditional offer. However, the EU is in control of whether it makes any kind of offer—conditional or not—so the Bill hinges on the EU’s ability or desire to do that, which of course probably will not happen, and it is not meant to, anyway.”
“That lies at the heart of it. There is a deceit in all this. As I said earlier, I genuinely believe that the hon. Gentleman was genuine in his view, as were many of those aligned alongside him in that regard, but I do not believe that to have been true of the Labour party Front-Bench team—in fact, throughout all this they have played fast and loose. When I come to the proposition with which the Bill is concerned, I come back to why I think it is a bad Bill. For all the talk about not wanting to have no deal and wanting to have a deal, although some of those who propose this measure voted for the previous Prime Minister’s deal, if every one of them really wanted any deal rather than no deal, they would have voted for that deal. Strangely, they found themselves voting against it at the time.”
“Gentleman’s legitimate observations—we get on very well and play football together, so I am slightly in favour of him anyway—but although he said the talks were good, the problem was that at no stage did his Front-Bench colleagues conduct them in a genuine sense. The truth was that they probably never intended to agree anything with my right hon. and hon. Friends who were in government at the time. I had a whispered exchange with the Father of the House, and he made the point that one reason for that was probably that they were under attack by the second-referendum crowd, who were absolutely opposed to any idea that the Opposition could strike any kind of agreement with the Government that would do away with the idea of a second referendum and therefore the opportunity to vote down the original referendum result.”
“As I say, this is a genuine attempt being made by those who really do think that this House stands in serious danger of being perceived by the public more and more as having taken the position that nothing will satisfy it and that the only thing that it wants at the end of it all is to defy the decision taken at the time of the referendum. That is very much the opinion growing out there, and I was intrigued when the hon. Gentleman made the point that we in this place are now being perceived as a Parliament opposed to the people, not a Parliament to represent them. The people voted to leave, whether we liked it or not, and now this Parliament seems set on a course to obfuscate and delay that, with a view to overturning it eventually. There is no question in my mind about the hon.”
“I am going to be brief, as I know many others want to get in, Dame Eleanor. I wish to compare a couple of these amendments and say a few words as to why this Bill is a very bad one. First, let me say to the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who is, sadly, no longer in his seat, that his is a genuine attempt to find a way forward. I have just been reading it, having just looked at it, and it is intriguing. He is specific in one of his amendments, saying that the purpose of the letter to extend would be to “include provisions reflecting the outcome of inter-party talks as announced by the Prime Minister on 21 May 2019”.”
“The truth is that the idea has grown, particularly among those on the Labour party Front Bench but also in some of the other parties, that if we delay this long enough, at some point there will be a way and the cry for a second referendum will get stronger and stronger, and then they will go to that. As we hear from the Labour party Front Benchers, their view now is that they support a second referendum, having originally said that they did not, and they now also support voting remain in that referendum, which before they said they did not, because they said at the 2017 election that they would implement the original referendum decision.”
“I was not going to come to my hon. Friend’s amendment, because there was a fair amount of debate, but I would link him and the hon. Member for Aberavon, in the sense that both are trying genuinely to find a way through. My hon. Friend and I are old friends, and he has made a genuine effort to propose that idea. My hon. Friend and the hon. Gentleman are similar in one regard, except that the hon. Gentleman’s proposal goes back to the final discussions that were taking place. My problem is that in truth I just do not think enough Opposition Members really want to ensure that we leave.”
“I have to say that this Bill is a route to delay and that delay in turn is a route to a second referendum and that second referendum, the Opposition hope, is a way to overturn the view and belief of the British people, which would be quite undemocratic.”
“All I can say is that I did not want my colleagues to be taken out and to lose the party Whip—I have been a bit of a rebel in the past myself—but everybody knows what they do when the Government say there is a vote of confidence. The Government set a vote of confidence on this issue because it is at the very heart and soul of where the Government currently are, which is that they want to negotiate a deal. They want to get a deal, but they do not think we will ever get a deal if we are not able to say, “Ultimately, we will leave, whatever the case, so it is over to you to show some flexibility in the arrangements.” I simply say that I will continue to vote against the agreement notwithstanding the fact that some of my colleagues will not.”
“I encompassed the hon. Lady in my remarks about those lined up alongside the hon. Member for Aberavon with genuine intent, who want to do something about it. All these issues are interesting, but the problem we face is that the position of those on the Labour party Front Bench has now completely shifted. It is clear to me that they do not want an agreement of almost any sort. Any obstacle will be placed in the way and a deal will never be achieved. They think that enough delay will produce a second referendum, and of course, they want to vote remain. This Bill is a vehicle to produce a route to a second referendum. That is what this is all about.”
“This is not really about the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) and the others, who genuinely, I think, do want to do something. The truth is, it is about the Labour party’s Front-Bench team, which is on a wrecking process. This is all about how to wreck the process of Brexit, have a second referendum—hopefully when everyone is so tired out that they will vote against it—and then overturn the referendum. If they have a genuine view, they should vote with us tonight to wreck this Bill.”
“I have been listening to the right hon. Gentleman with great care, but the one thing he does not say in all this is that the reason he has voted for the Bill tonight is that he and his party are adamantly opposed to ever delivering Brexit. Will he now admit that that is his purpose and the purpose of the Bill?”
“I rise only briefly because I know we want to get through this. The reality is that this is about a general election. We have heard speeches from a number of Opposition Members that are all about nothing to do with the general election, but are about recycling the debate that we had earlier. The truth is that there is but a simple question in front of the Opposition parties. Only two days ago, they were crying out for an election. The shadow Chancellor said, “Bring it on. We’re ready for it.” The Leader of the Opposition, when he was not having his afternoon nap and was awake enough to be able to meet the media, said that he wanted to have an election. The Scottish nationalists were adamant that they were going to vote for an election.”
“No, no, wait a minute. The hon. Gentleman has made a fool of himself already. He should stay put; I am doing him a favour. [ Interruption. ] I am really doing him a favour—he may not understand it. If they do not vote for an election tonight—if they refuse to vote to have that election—they will be running away from their democratic responsibility. I say to Members such as the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), one time my right hon. Friend—”
“No, honestly, the hon. Gentleman really does not want to do himself any disfavours. The right hon. Lady talks about a people’s vote. The problem with a people’s vote, if she wants to put it to a referendum, as the new leader of the Liberal party does, is that she would never accept the result—”
“Wait a minute. Let me finish, because this is important. Here is the fault line: without a different Parliament, a new referendum will change absolutely nothing if the people vote to leave again, because we would come back to this Parliament and they would stop, delay and try to defeat that motion. The decision tonight is therefore the only decision that can be made in all reality. If we want to decide whether the British people were right, or wrong, to vote leave, we should put it to them in a general election and let them make that decision. [Interruption.] I see the hon. Gentleman opposite shaking his head. Only days ago, he and his colleague on the Front Bench—”
“I am going to conclude, Mr Speaker. If the right hon. Lady wants a people’s vote, I say to her that the people’s vote is in front of us tonight in this debate. It is called a general election. I have never known an Opposition not want to take over. This is a bizarre affair. They are running away from trying to defeat a Government. Let us have that election, let us make that decision, and if the right hon. Gentleman who leads the Labour party right now genuinely believes in democracy, let him put up or shut up.”
“Will he press his colleagues at the Home Office to urgently bring forward the Bill’s provisions as soon as possible, to improve the quality of the lives of those who suffer most? [Interruption.]”
“I start by welcoming my hon. Friend—I do not think he is yet “right hon.”—to his post. I think he will bring modulated and very moderate tones to these debates. One thing is for certain: having a seat in business questions will now be an absolute must. I welcome my hon. Friend in that regard. Nothing can be done in this Session, but I want to raise a particular issue. With Lord McColl, I am a co-sponsor of a Bill to change the process relating to modern-day slavery. I ask and urge my hon. Friend to press his colleagues at the Home Office, who have to date been utterly mealy-mouthed about the changes necessary to give victims of modern-day slavery the opportunity to come forward without fearing arrest and incarceration.”
“Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to do all this now in public—week by week, to tell the world, the European Union and our colleagues that we are nearly ready, and then finally that we are ready to leave, if necessary, without a deal?”
“I unreservedly welcome my right hon. Friend to his place. Today the EU will have listened and realised that the days of supplication are over and that we are intent on a policy to leave the European Union. I urge him in the course of his attempts at the Dispatch Box not to be too unkind to his opposite number. The right hon. Gentleman has not just become a remainer: over the last three and a half years, he has been trying to remain again and again and again, despite his own party’s determination. In the process of my right hon. Friend’s preparation to leave without a deal, if that were necessary, could he now not allow us to do this in private? Could he instruct his right hon.”
“I welcome what my right hon. Friend has said. There is no question but that it is the Iranians, not the British, who have caused this problem. Any linking of this would therefore be quite wrong, and I commend him for what he said on that. I want to ask a very simple question, and it may be one that my right hon. Friend is unable to answer at this point. We have known for some time that there is a heightened problem in the Gulf and that our strongest ally is there with some force. Why did we not request or agree with the United States that in the interim, while we get the right resources in place, it acts in concert with us to protect some of our shipping, as it has said it could have done?”
“I welcome my hon. Friend to the Dispatch Box. I completely agree that there is no need for a consultation about the age limit. Frankly, we should just get on with it—there is enough evidence out there. Secondly, while I welcome the Minister’s comments, I am slightly concerned. Will she tell the House whether there was real, powerful and compelling evidence why society lotteries should be restricted to a gain of only £100,000 on the prize money? If there is clear evidence that they damage the national lottery, will she publish that? If there is not, will she tell us why we have been in such trepidation about moving the prize money total?”
“Friend please answer me: how can I say to my old colleagues that this Government have not abandoned them?”
“Forty three years ago I, like many others, was ordered to serve in Northern Ireland to keep the peace while terrorists were attacking and killing civilians in Northern Ireland. Many of my colleagues and others did not come back, including one, Robert Nairac, a friend, who was tortured and murdered, and his body has never been found nor his murderers ever brought to justice. In answer to an earlier question from my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) my right hon. Friend talked about an amnesty. I must tell her that none of those who served has called for an amnesty; what they have called for is fairness and justice. Many old veterans are now finding, having been cleared decades ago, that the Police Service of Northern Ireland is proceeding against them with no new evidence. Will my right hon.”
“The Environment Secretary was on the radio this morning, and when asked whether it was certain that the Bill would be brought to Parliament for Second Reading, he did not answer in the affirmative. He said that the Government would “reflect” and listen. Having presented this statement at the Dispatch Box, is the Prime Minister absolutely certain that she will bring the Bill to the House for Second Reading? If so, could she name the date now and then say she will stick to it?”
“Does my hon. Friend recall, as I do, it being drilled into our heads that a 7.62 round would travel through two levels of brick and kill something on the other side? That often gave our soldiers cause for hesitation, even when thinking about returning fire.”
“I would be content with observing this one principle: no servicemen or women who served in Northern Ireland should be arrested and pursued, particularly after cases against them have been dismissed, simply because the police have nothing better to do with their time than find out whether they did something. It is time that the Government acted on that. I urge the Minister and his colleagues to recognise that those of us who served in Northern Ireland did not ask to. We did not, in a fit of passionate patriotism and bravery, suddenly volunteer to go there on our own. We were told to go there because we were soldiers. That was the command. We were told that it was an operation; it was not some other affair, as we now seem to hear. We went on that operation—Op Banner was an operation—and did our duty.”
“I give my Government fair warning that I will simply not put up with shunting Northern Ireland veterans to one side while seeking some sort of general political cover, as though we had done something for them. We will not have done anything unless we deal with all our servicemen and women, who have had the bravery and courage to serve their country. There can be no second-class treatment. There is debate about whether it should be stated that prosecutions must be based on new evidence, or whether there should be a statute of limitations.”
“These men, who are in their 70s, should never face that, but they do. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham mentioned one man who was arrested by a stream of police cars and taken away immediately, as though he had committed some foul offence and might run. The overcooking—the nonsense—that the police get up to on these matters sometimes is quite ridiculous. I do not want these men to be treated differently, but I say quite categorically that if there is to be a statute of limitations, it must cover veterans of Northern Ireland. I understand that those who served in other operations may well be covered, but because Northern Ireland veterans served in the United Kingdom, UK law will override anything that the Government might do. That absolutely cannot be allowed.”
“I recall the sheer fear I felt as a young platoon commander on the first commemorative Sunday of Bloody Sunday in the Bogside. I remember having to keep a patrol safe as over 100,000 very angry people talked about tearing them limb from limb if they found them, and knowing that at any stage, any one of my patrol could have been taken away, never to be seen again. Those were the kinds of decisions that one had to make. That still resonates, even today. Ultimately, I simply urge the Government to do the right thing—to recognise that it is quite ridiculous that soldiers who have been cleared in previous investigations should ever be pursued again, unless there is absolute, categorical and clear evidence, beyond what is needed to meet the burden of proof, that they have done something that nobody knew about before.”
“Because they have committed atrocities and cannot come back. That is about Government and perhaps about the Belfast agreement—but in a funny sort of way, not really; otherwise, that would have been done publicly. It would have been shouted from the rooftops if it were an equivalent process, but it never was. As my hon. Friends have said, the endless nightmare for soldiers who served in Northern Ireland was that they were three times more likely to die than the terrorists who they were after. The likelihood of death was greater on the streets there than in other operations before or since. Why was that? Because our soldiers walked through the streets in plain sight, and were targets every single moment that they were there.”
“He disappeared, and no one has ever owned up to knowing where his body is buried. No one has owned up to doing it, although we have a fair suspicion of who it was. His poor parents have gone to their grave with no conclusion to the sad tragedy of Robert Nairac. He is typical of many people, both soldiers and non-combatants, who disappeared in Northern Ireland. Where is the justice in the fact that families such as his will never see those responsible prosecuted for their filthy, foul actions? There is no natural justice in pursuing British soldiers, rather than the people who tortured and killed Robert Nairac, because it is easier. Worse than that are the letters of comfort that were given out. I find it astonishing to discover that letters of comfort are given quietly to those on the run. Why are they on the run?”
“That is particularly the case with British soldiers, who I still believe to this day are the best trained, and most reasonable and decent, troops on the ground. They always operate with a real sense of restraint. They do not even have to be taught about that; there is an instinctive sense of restraint that comes from their training. We now find that 90% of the cost of these prosecutions is going on 10% of the incidents. Where is the natural justice in that? I want to raise an issue. I had friends who never came back, and I want to talk about Robert Nairac. I saw him a few nights before he went to Northern Ireland, and he never returned. What happened to him—a brave young man trying to do his job—was horrific. He was not just killed but tortured and dismembered.”
“I did not serve with particular distinction, but when I was in Northern Ireland, I had to find a cache of a large number of armour-piercing Garand—an American rifle—rounds. I thought to myself that they were on their way to somebody who would do a snipe on one of our patrol vehicles. They would have gone clean through it, and would have killed anything on the inside. Terrorists were setting up another attack, like those the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) described, on people who were there to keep the peace. There is no equivalence between those who go out to kill people, and those who go out to defend people but may end up having to kill people as a result. That stands above all else. That is what we do as soldiers. That is what we know we are about.”
“I am sad to say that the Government, and previous Labour and Conservative Governments—I am not necessarily speaking of mine, but all Governments—are determined to find the reasons why we cannot do things, but never the reasons why we can. Our servicemen and women get put in operations, genuinely risk their lives, and do not complain about it. They do that on the general assumption that a paternal Government would oversee their wellbeing if they were wounded, if their families were hurt or if they ended up in a difficult situation in which they might be prosecuted. Too often, in the slightly politically correct conversations that take place outside Parliament when Ministers are interviewed, they start equivocating about who was doing what. We get equivocation about the terrorists versus the soldiers.”
“I still remember my father, who served with great distinction in the second world war, telling me that many of his friends who had been incarcerated in prisoner of war camps for a number of years came home to find their families in near destitution, because the then War Office had decided that, as they were living comfortably in a prisoner of war camp, their pay could reasonably be cut in half; they would have no need for the other bit. It forgot that, or did not even bother to find out whether, they had dependants living at home, who, by the end of the war, were in deep poverty and starving. I am afraid that that is the kind of relationship that we have percolating through after every single operation. We treat our veterans of Northern Ireland in much the same way.”
“As my hon. Friend said, some of them were 18 years old and had very low levels of education. They were in an urban environment that they had never been in, and they were armed and acting in support of the police, as a quasi-police force. We expected them, in a moment, to make the kind of judgments that highly paid, brilliant legal brains would stall at. Those young men had to make those decisions for themselves, as my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, and they bore the burden by themselves—too often, without support. I take the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View made. I have a real problem with our relationship with the armed forces in this country. We expect them to do the right thing and go to war.”
“I do not know that I learned very much at Sandhurst; it all had to be re-learned after I left. I remember large periods of incredible, intense boredom, followed by massive periods of panic and fear—literally almost alongside each other. I lived in the masonic car park with my company, in an old caravan that had a hole on the side by my bed. I was damp the whole time I was there, because the rain lashed through the whole of the winter. I remember the fear in my young guardsmen’s eyes when they were caught up in an incident. It came not from the idea of what might happen to them, but mostly from what they might have to do, and what they might get wrong. The yellow card, which was drilled into us before we left, scared the living daylights out of me before I even set foot in Northern Ireland, and I know it was the same for my young soldiers.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, and to have served under Mrs Moon’s. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) that there is not an awful lot more to be said, but I will say it anyway because the e-petition demands that we reiterate and re-reiterate the reality of what has been going on. I congratulate those who started e-petition 243947 on their work, and my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) on his very good and powerful speech. I have not spoken about this subject pretty much since I left Northern Ireland, but I listened with great interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), and it brought back an awful lot of memories of Northern Ireland. I was a young platoon commander like the ones he described, not that long out of Sandhurst.”
“Successive British Governments have too often failed their servicemen and women because they were mealy-mouthed about how to support them. That has to stop; we must now protect them. I have one last phrase for the Minister. When natural justice collides with the law, we must change the law to protect those who protected us.”
“I agree. The other day, I made the point that I have an Operational Service Medal for Rhodesia, as it was then, and a General Service Medal with a clasp for Northern Ireland. I assume that the operations were recognised as equivalents—I do not remember a distinction. I was never told that I was on a subset of an operation in Northern Ireland, but that I could go on a real one in Rhodesia. I can tell hon. Members, without a shadow of a doubt, that Northern Ireland was the more frightening of the two. The Minister must say loudly to all those who have the privilege of running Departments, and even to the Prime Minister, that this simply cannot stand—it is a deep injustice. Those who served need us to stand up for them, because they have nobody else. Their families need us to stand up for them, because they have nowhere else to go.”
“I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, and I apologise that I came in when the Minister was already on his feet. I served in Northern Ireland and in what was then Rhodesia. I received a general service medal for one campaign, and a separate campaign medal for the other—as has been said, they were both operations. We were sent to Northern Ireland, and I lost friends, particularly Robert Nairac—I am sorry I was not here when he was mentioned. I do not know how I can honestly, and with a clean heart, say that my Government represent the best interests of ex-servicemen and women who have served their country. I simply state to the Minister this simple principle: when natural justice collides with the law, we change the law.”