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.”
The complete record
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“When I campaigned to leave, I genuinely and passionately believed that this country would do incredibly well whatever the arrangements. I just wish that many more in this House would stand up for those who voted to leave genuinely—not stupidly and not because they hated people, but because they wanted something to change. They wanted to take back control of their country, and that is what I want to do here.”
“I genuinely think that the Government will be in a better place to go and say, “Look, this stuff that you’ve given us and this stuff that we’ve got is simply not acceptable, and we will not get it through.” Therefore, if we genuinely want to reach an agreement—I believe that the EU does—we must strike a harder deal with them, and they have to accept that and will do so. That is where we are. Back in 1992, I realised that the plans under the Single European Act and Maastricht were taking us to a place that we would never be in, because this country would never accept that it would eventually be fully locked into a supranational organisation that was taking powers away from individual Parliaments. That is why I feel upbeat about the referendum vote. I am tired of being told that it was some sort of disaster or accident.”
“My position is that we go back and get a better deal. That is the reality, because I believe that that is how the EU works. The EU got everything it wanted first time round, but if it knows that we are not going to take this deal, it will have to discuss it. When I visited the European Commission and met Mr Barnier and Sabine Weyand and their team, it became clear, before we signed up to this deal, that they were fully expecting to take things further once pressed hard—that is to say, they expected that this deal would not pass. They have been waiting for this vote to know exactly where they are going.”
“Will she work with our excellent Health Secretary, on the basis of a fantastic announcement on Monday, to invest in those buildings and facilities?”
“Mr Speaker, I am not going to ask about Brexit. You may be pleased about that. [ Interruption. ] And happy new year to all of you as well. I recently had the immense privilege of shadowing Dr Imran Zia at our accident and emergency department at Whipps Cross University Hospital. It was a humbling experience to witness the dedication and fantastic skill of our doctors and nurses. However, they work in buildings that are now well over 100 years old and they know they need better facilities. I have to say to my right hon. Friend that while the NHS set the development of Whipps as the top north-east London priority, in December it announced programmes for investment across London, and yet again north-east London was not included. Will my right hon. Friend please visit Whipps Cross Hospital to see how important and vital it is to the area?”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. As you know, I respect the Chair and I would never push my luck with you. I do not challenge the decision by any means, and it is your right to make it from the Chair, but over the past 24 or 25 years I have on a number of occasions, particularly during the Maastricht debates, asked the Clerks whether we could amend a Business of the House motion. I was always told categorically that precedent says it is not possible and, therefore, there was no point seeking to do so—I say that only as a statement. Because this has a big impact on the Government’s ability to get their business, regardless of Brexit, will the instruction go to the Clerks that, in future, a Back Bencher wishing to amend a “forthwith” motion will now have such an amendment allowed and accepted against any business in the House?”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend to her place. Her announcement is absolutely right. She knows the whole point of universal credit was the test and learn process, unlike, and learning lessons from, the mess of tax credits. Under tax credits, nearly 1 million people lost all their money. That will not happen under universal credit. I hope she will absolutely see the programme through.”
“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to stress the safety and security of the people who try this most dangerous crossing. Given that, he is also right to say that people should claim asylum in the first safe country they come to—France is clearly that country—and for one very good reason: if they do not do so they will live in squalor while they seek to get across the channel, putting their own lives at risk. Has the Home Secretary checked how long the people trying to cross the channel have spent in France without declaring themselves as asylum seekers?”
“Friends in the Home Office and recognise that this great thing that the Conservative party introduced—this was the first Parliament in the world to introduce a modern slavery Bill, and we did that to help to release those people suffering—now needs serious adjustments to ensure that those who suffer persecution can be protected by being allowed longer stays in this country? I urge her to use her good offices to persuade the Home Office to extend that time, or to schedule a debate in the House on a possible extension to the time for which victims of modern slavery may stay in the UK. Otherwise, they risk being retrafficked, and we would never forgive ourselves if that happened.”
“My right hon. Friend should recall that Penelope Pitstop was opposed by a man called Dick Dastardly, who was completely incompetent and lost out every time. May I draw my right hon. Friend’s attention to an issue of significant importance? I am a sponsor of Lord McColl’s Bill on improvements to modern-day slavery legislation. I recognise that it will never see the light of day in this Chamber, but will my right hon. Friend use her good offices to speak to her right hon.”
“As far as I can see, the core bit that has caused the greatest problem has been the immediate access to social security benefits for people coming from the European Union. That has caused a big problem. Many businesses have, I am afraid, abused the process, getting them to come in and live in often quite squalid conditions, driving wages down for those who have much higher costs. Is my right hon. Friend prepared to deal with that issue to make sure that that is not a way of bringing in cheap labour? When he gets lectured by businesses and by others who say the health service cannot cope, will he remind them that for the past two decades— [ Interruption. ] This is a very important point.”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Obviously, I have not had a chance to read the White Paper, but much of what he said today is moving in the right direction. I hope he agrees with me that one of the problems with discussing migration over the past two decades has been that any time it is mentioned, people immediately accuse those who ask about reducing it of being racist. We have to bring an end to that level of debate, which has led to much of the frustration to which the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) referred earlier, about the way the debate has been conducted. As one of those who voted leave, it was clear to me throughout that people did not want an end to migration; what they wanted was controlled migration. That is what I hope my right hon. Friend delivers today.”
“Does my right hon. Friend accept that businesses have failed to invest in training and skilling the domestic population, with the result that only 15% of those who start life at entry level work will ever move beyond entry level work?”
“I would like to focus my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on the issue of the backstop, as it is critical to whatever she conducts with the European Union. Does she not agree that now that she has, in essence, suspended the remaining part of this debate, it is incumbent on her and the Government to go forward boldly to the EU and remind them that they have already said that no matter what arrangements would be in place there would be no hard border on the border of Ireland, and so have the Irish? Given that, will she now commit to going back to them to say that they need to reopen the withdrawal agreement, and to insert into it a commitment to open borders and take out those restrictions that would take away the power and control from this Parliament to decide its future?”
“I do not think many people were really in much doubt that this was going to be the judgment of the Court; it was always pretty clear, and I was a little surprised that we spent any time on it. Notwithstanding that, it is intriguing that the Court has managed, arguably for the first time, to have an advocate-general’s opinion, followed four or five days later by the full Court’s decision—I can remember, when in government, spending three or four years waiting for the Court to come to a judgment. Does my right hon. Friend think this may have something to do with the fact that there could have been a vote tomorrow? There is a delicious irony, is there not, in the fact that we can revoke article 50 but we cannot revoke our backstop? Does he not find that funny?”
“The Home Secretary and I both served in the Cabinet of the previous Prime Minister, and he will recall that the previous Prime Minister tried, without success, to get from the European Union a limitation on access to welfare payments for those who have just arrived here. Now we are leaving, and we say we want to take back control. The political declaration is very vague; it talks about social security co-operation. Is it our ambition to ensure that businesses cannot bring people over, pay them very cheap wages and expect them to claim benefits and live in squalid conditions? Will we now rule out access to many of those benefits, which cost a lot of money, for people who come over from the EU?”
“Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify his answer to the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie)? He says that the Labour party stood on a manifesto that accepted the result of the referendum; he was clear on that. Yet since then, the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has suggested that the Labour party’s position would now be to support a second referendum. Will the Leader of the Opposition now clarify, for the sake of the House: is the Labour party’s position to support a second referendum, or is it that it accepts the result of the first referendum and will not support a second referendum?”
“Friends on the Front Bench one by one have used good faith as their defence for being locked into this problem of the backstop and as their explanation of how we will get out. As a matter of law, is good faith required for best endeavours?”
“I start by welcoming without reservation my right hon. and learned Friend to his position. He knows that I have believed for many years that he should have filled this post. I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend’s statement. Page 6 of his document refers to what is defined as “good faith”. He mentioned the International Court of Justice, so I hope he will not mind if I quote from one of its judgments referenced in footnote 8. He talked about how long the backstop should last and what defined “good faith”. The judgment states that “the failure of the Parties to reach agreement, 16 years after the conclusion of”— earlier negotiations— “does not itself establish that either Party has breached its obligation to negotiate in good faith.” As my right hon. and learned Friend knows, his right hon.”
“Will they say that this now means that we must have the highest level of sanctions and interventions because this country, which has intervened in Syria and in almost every other area of the conflict in the middle east and now in Ukraine, has to be brought to book—and that we have to do it now?”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) on securing the urgent question, and—not that you need it from me—I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on seeing that this is a very urgent matter that needs to be dealt with. We are now dealing with a country, in Russia, that is a pariah state. It occupies large sections of Ukraine illegally, and the very fact that it illegally occupies Crimea means that it has no rights under international law as regards this channel or any interventions to shipping that it has been making, notwithstanding the violent intervention made recently. May I urge my right hon. Friend the Minister and Her Majesty’s Government to make a very big deal of this internationally at the UN, and as loudly as they possibly can?”
“Friend is this: if the Government, going down the road to a negotiation, are heading toward that point when the backstop is invoked, does that not mean that Mr Macron is right and we will come under intolerable pressure to agree to almost anything to avoid our entry into what my right hon. Friend rightly says is something we never want to be in?”
“I recognise my right hon. Friend’s genuine endeavours in all these matters, but may I return her to the point about the backstop? Does she recognise the genuine concern held in all parts of the House about what would happen if the UK were to be forced into the backstop? I listened very carefully to her statement, and she said that the UK does not want it and the EU does not want it; we heard the other day that Ireland said that, no matter what agreement was reached, it would never have any hard border. It makes one wonder why it is in the withdrawal agreement at all. My question for my right hon.”
“Friend therefore that I hope that she will now consider that none of this is at all workable unless we get the withdrawal agreement amended so that any arrangements we make strip out that backstop and leave us with that positive open border that we talked about.”
“I of course appreciate enormously my right hon. Friend’s huge endeavours to deal with what has now emerged as a particularly toxic issue: the Northern Irish backstop, now bound into the withdrawal agreement. However, for all that effort and work, the reality is that this is not the withdrawal agreement, and the withdrawal agreement will make it very clear that should we, even under these terms, struggle with a negotiation for a free trade arrangement and not complete that process, we will fall into the Northern Ireland backstop as it exists at the moment. That means that we will be bound by those restrictions that force Northern Ireland into a separate arrangement and us into the customs union. I simply say to my right hon.”
“I fully accept what the Minister says about the reputation of my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), but does he agree that these things should not have necessitated her departure when she was doing such a good job? I do not expect the Minister to express an opinion, just that it would have been better otherwise.”
“I want to summarise some of the issues relating to the amendments standing in my name and those of many others, including, most importantly, my hon. Friends the Members for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan)—they are hon. Friends in this case, although I am not sure they will want to be pursuing that one further. This genuinely was a very cross-party process. Interestingly, the list of names of Members who support the amendments tells us everything we need to know about the strength of feeling that existed in the House. We accept the Government’s change, to which I shall come back in a moment, but it is worth reminding ourselves that this process has had a long gestation. I remember having conversations with my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) probably two years ago, at least—”
“At the time of the Budget, their date was rejected.”
“All of a sudden, the Government then said that they had agreed to make the change in October 2019, which they said was an advance of six months, and we said was a delay of six months. We established that the gambling industry would make well over a billion pounds during that six months. The real problem was why there was a delay, as it was clear that, as the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) said on behalf of the Opposition, the gambling report said nine to 12 months, and nine to 12 months from the date of the original decision took us to approximately April or May the next year. All that was part of the consideration. We had debates about why the date had gone back and, although I will not make a big thing about this, I did say to my right hon. and hon. Friends in government that they needed to put it back to 1 April.”
“It was really quite moving to hear the stories at first hand and to see families’ dedication to never allowing others to get into such a situation. I was really proud of my Government for making the decision and accepting that there was a need for change. We thought the process was done. I argued for making the change this October, because there was no point in hanging around. I thought that we did not need to worry about the gambling industry, because it would make whatever changes were necessary and it gets a lot of money anyway, so I was not that bothered about it. I remember the discussion about why we were not acting in October, and we reluctantly agreed that perhaps 1 April would give the industry time. The next thing we heard was that the date had gone back to 1 April 2020 —the following year—which was never agreed.”
“I was really pleased when the Government finally agreed to reduce the stake to £2. My goodness, what a peculiar argument we had. We heard the Gambling Commission and the gambling industry asking many times why we would not go to £30 rather than £2. The slow extraction of teeth in this process was fascinating to behold. The worst bit for me and, I am sure, for my colleagues, was hearing the endless testimony about the families’ lives that had been blighted by this terrible addiction. Even though I was opposed to FOBTs, I had not been aware of the real human harm being caused, because one does not see it, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford knows, that was the real driver behind why we wanted to act.”
“Years ago, when gambling was liberalised under a previous Government, I said, given my involvement in some of the studies, that I thought that was a mistake. When it comes to widening and liberalising gambling, the situation is not like in any other industry. It really is not just about jobs and businesses, because change involves people making decisions that are not about positive life outcomes. Thus, the situation needs to be treated separately. I remember the discussions about super-casinos, when I said that I was appalled by the idea that establishing a super-casino would somehow regenerate a town. I said, “It won’t regenerate the town. It will make it descend, and everything will then hinge around the behaviour of people in and around the massive casino.” That is by the by; liberalisation became the process.”
“It was a long time ago, and even then we discussed the specific problems with fixed odds betting terminals, along with wider issues. There was this long process of gestation, and then the hon. Members for Swansea East and for Inverclyde got involved and the all-party group was formed. I congratulate them on managing to get things on to a much more even keel in respect of this being a cross-party process, in which I played a part. We arrived at the point when we had finally persuaded the Government, with massive internal support from my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford, that it was necessary for us to make this change, given that these machines, although not alone in this, were peculiarly addictive. It was accepted that they led to a higher level of addiction and had dramatically changed the nature of betting shops.”
“There are two elements to point out about that previous intervention. First, Germany has done significantly well, but a huge amount of that has been because its currency level at the moment is far lower than it would have been had it not been in the euro. Secondly, that has caused extraordinary damage to countries that were massive exporters, such as Italy and others, which are now literally finding themselves impoverished by the fact that so much of the Germans’ production is now dumped into their countries, at their expense. So we have to be careful when we recognise what Germany has achieved. There is much it has achieved. We need to recognise that we have to invest more and make sure we are more productive. There are plenty of ways to do that. We need to be careful when we extol the virtues of what has been going on in Europe.”
“My hon. Friend mentioned soft drinks. Given that the Scottish nationalists are on the Benches opposite, will she also recognise that Scotch whisky is exported to places such as India that charge huge tariffs on it? One great benefit for that soft drink would be that it could be exported much more, and many of us who enjoy that soft drink occasionally in the evening would see that we had done a huge amount of good for businesses, even in Scotland.”
“I have always wished my right hon. Friend well, and my question is in this light. I have deep misgivings, on reading much of this document overnight, about the way that we will be treated with the backstop. When we read this, we realise that we are locking ourselves in to an arrangement from which we seem unable, therefore, to have the sovereign right to withdraw. That seems to me to be the biggest single issue here, which strips away the thing that we said when we wanted a vote to leave, which was that we took back control. I say to my right hon. Friend that my concern is that we have the sovereign right when we want to leave the UN; we have the sovereign right when we want to leave NATO; we have even the sovereign right when we want to leave the EU; but we do not have the sovereign right to leave this arrangement.”
“I say to my right hon. Friend that I am not going to be asking about Brexit—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] For now. I was enormously proud of my Government for agreeing to lower the stake on fixed odds betting terminals to £2 because they have caused endless harm and terrible damage to families. It was the right decision. Since then there has been a hiatus about the date on which this will start. Is it a reality that now we have put down an amendment the Government will accede and we will get this process started on 1 April next year?”
“Either we admire and want to continue with a service of regulated vehicles and drivers that produces an excellent service, particularly in central London, or we do not. We cannot have this unfair competition and this unlevel playing field, with higher congestion as a result. I urge the Minister to take into consideration the consensus, among both London MPs and those who come from other constituencies and use the excellent service here. Now is the time not just to take the report into consideration and do something about the issue, but to genuinely ask the question: do we really value what we have? If we do not, we will lose it, and if we lose it, we will end up in an absolute free-for-all.”
“It is on all the posters, and I notice that the Ministers for Trade go out selling the idea of coming here to get black cabs. We regulate it incredibly highly. It has to have disabled access; I am enormously proud of that fact. Unlike places such as New York, where it tends to be more of a free-for-all, we genuinely have a seriously good service, with straightforward people who want to do a good job. We regulate black cabs, yet because of the app, they are in competition with an organisation that has to do none of those things, and which has broken the point about hailing from the road. The app makes that almost ancient history. The reality is that Uber drivers are, in essence, getting passengers from the road. We need to rethink this. We cannot have it both ways; we have to decide.”
“They all have to pay through tax and through the way their company tax and regulations are applied, but Uber gets away with making next to no contribution to the state of the roads that it uses in plying its business. Uber keeps saying that it is not the one plying that trade; rather it is the drivers, who are independent, even though the drivers would not be able to ply their trade if Uber was not there. It would be a very different game. I want to mention some constituents who have seen me about this issue: Ron Nicholson, Martin Franks, Mark Diggin, Steven Tyson and Trevor Board. They are all straightforward people who are trying to earn a living. London’s black cab system is arguably the most admired in the world.”
“However, when an organisation is as large as this and so dominant, there is a genuine reason why we need to look again at the business model. The figures that are most startling are that Uber paid £411,000 in corporation tax in 2016, on a turnover of £23.3 million, and that masks a number of payments. It has set itself up in Holland. I understand about competition, but my concern is about who ultimately will pay for the roads and the condition that they are in if Uber will not. Black cabs are contributing through their tax and national insurance, as well as other private hire vehicles, many of which have been used regularly and are absolutely above board.”
“We see complaints about productivity in London being affected dramatically by the inability of vehicles to get around and make deliveries, because the scale of traffic inside the city is astonishingly large. It is a matter that the Government need to look at carefully, because of the way that the gratification of some people becomes a serious problem for others. I am conscious of time, but I want to touch on another point as quickly as I can. I am concerned—anybody should be—that Uber’s business model, which I mentioned earlier, is alright for a short period of time when things are getting going. We want companies to get those opportunities and not be trammelled by too much tax—I am an absolute believer in that.”
“Notwithstanding that, the previous Mayor managed to significantly cut down various traffic lanes for reasons to do with cycling. I am sure we all want more cyclists on the road, but the reality is that as a result, in London there are more cars on slightly fewer traffic lanes. The number of private hire vehicles has increased by more than 50%. Transport for London data shows that between 2011 and 2017 there was a 39% increase in private hire licences, taking the total to over 87,000 vehicles, which is up by 40,000 in the space of only a few years, so the hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct; in fact, I would have liked him to have stayed on the subject for longer, because it is such an important point. The side effect of the increase is significant, and we London MPs see it every single day.”
“Black cabs have a fixed price set for them: they charge the same figure, regardless of whether one cannot find a taxi and it is pouring with rain. That is an area that causes great concern. Many people, in my constituency and others, who ply their trade in black cabs comment that this has led to all sorts of problems. Often, black cab drivers get complaints from passengers that they have recently been paying much more when taking an Uber, and they wonder why that is. I recognise that the report covered much of that. The hon. Member for Cambridge mentioned an area that I think we need to focus on much more. This is not just a free-for-all. After all, the scale of the increase in traffic on the roads in London is quite staggering.”
“They are scraping by in many cases and often are not very well supported by the organisation that says it does not employ them, which I always find rather bizarre, because it does. The idea that somehow they are going to be incredibly successful as a direct result of this has mostly proved quite incorrect. There is a lot of talk about how Uber got prices down, but the truth is that its model is about arriving in an area, undercutting everything else there and eventually driving people out of business, and building up a model that allows it to raise its prices. I am interested to hear that it even uses an algorithm that allows it to jack up its prices when there is demand, whereas the black cabs that it competes with are not allowed to do that.”
“I want to focus on some of the issues that have arisen, and I hope that the Minister will take them on board. Uber is massively adding to London’s congestion; the figures show that. The hon. Gentleman made a point about the increased numbers of vehicles on the road. I think a significant amount of that is down to the arrival of Uber. It is time to look at its business model. I hope we all agree that Uber does not pay its fair share towards the upkeep of the roads that it runs on, through the normal tax base. To echo his comments, whether or not people like the flexibility of its business model—I think flexibility is important, and that the gig economy opens up huge amounts of competition—there comes a moment when we must recognise that Uber drivers are treated pretty unfairly.”
“Thank you, Sir David. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on securing this debate, and I echo his congratulations to Mohammad Abdel-Haq on what is essentially a comprehensive and good report. We do not have to agree with everything in it, but I hope the Government will realise that there is much agreement across all parties on the need to drive a lot of it forward to make the changes necessary to improve taxis across the UK. I will focus my remarks fairly narrowly on London, and particularly on the effect on black cabs of the enormous increase in the number of hire vehicles, which is mostly down to Uber. The people who have quite rightly lobbied me to ask me to be present at this debate have found that their incomes have fallen quite considerably.”
“I accept fully that the previous way in which stop and search was used was often too random, but there is no question but that it should play a part in the reduction of violence and the use of drugs in some areas. There has been a large increase in gang warfare and the use of guns and pistols in areas such as mine, where many of the people who are moving weapons and drugs around know that they can, for the most part, do so with impunity because they are unlikely to be stopped and searched. We therefore need to get the police to apply the process much better, so that we make it clear to those people moving guns and weapons around that there is a high likelihood of their being stopped and searched.”
“The right hon. Gentleman is making a very measured speech. During the remarkable service that we attended, I was thinking that my wife’s great uncle signed up at 17 years old in 1914 and was dead just before his 18th birthday in 1915 in the Battle of Loos. Many of my own family also served. We talk about remembrance a lot, but 28 years later this country was back at war again and my father was fighting for his life, to save democracy and to save freedom. Although we may not forget them, we also have to remember that we never want to repeat that process ever again.”
“I am listening with great interest to my right hon. Friend and I recognise what he is saying about that issue. There is another feature, which is often not well reported; I think Keegan brought it out in his book on the first world war. The fact that communications had not advanced at the speed with which munitions had, meant that often news of what was actually happening on the front took nearly half a day to arrive back at divisional headquarters, so nothing could be changed. It is a really important issue. We tend to condemn the commanders, but we forget sometimes that they had no idea, quite often, what was happening for hours, let alone minutes.”