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 am in favour of the House being consulted, but the House also has to give a little leeway to the Executive when it comes to moments such as last week, when it was quite clear that urgent action needed to be taken. Urgent action is based on deep intelligence and if it is not taken quickly, there could well be further consequences later. Such circumstances are difficult, and it behoves a Government to ensure that the action they take is narrowly targeted and therefore effective in its limited regard. Had the Government been proposing a wider operation, such as the one conducted against Daesh in Iraq or in northern Syria, they would certainly have had to come to the House to explain the nature of that.”
“Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) mentioned the appalling attacks on hospitals, and he was absolutely right to do so, but the question is how closely Russia has been involved in the deliberate targeting and bombing of hospitals and other civilian areas. We are beginning to see all of that in this. The final bit about the vote in 2013—I hope the House really considers this—is that it opened the door to the takeover of most of the opposition to Assad by jihadi groups, who were untrammelled and un-resisted. With America stepping back, the reality was that the rest was left to the influence of Russia. We then ended up dealing with the worst of all worlds, with Daesh attacks both in Syria and subsequently in Iraq. That shut down many of the options that might well have been available to us.”
“The Russians then persuaded President Obama not to pursue the matter by guaranteeing that President Assad would produce no more chemical weapons, and that he would never use such weapons even if he had them. Of course, they have failed completely on that. So perhaps they are complicit in the use of chemical weapons; I begin to wonder whether they are, as they have used them so liberally elsewhere, particularly here on our own home soil in Salisbury. The vote also gave the Russians the green light to pursue their own agenda aggressively in Syria, and to make the war even worse than it might otherwise have been. The right hon.”
“However, I am not going to revisit the past, other than to say that I think that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has given due regard to the lesson from that. We had to take action then, and serious consequences flowed from our not doing so. Back in 2013, Assad was on the back foot. There were some quite reasonable groups—I do not say that lightly—opposing him, including the Free Syrian Army. Yes, some of the more extreme groups were there, including the jihadis, but there was perhaps an opportunity to influence the direction of what might happen in Syria. The rejection of the motion in 2013 was probably the single most devastating blow to Syria, and it has led to serious consequences. It emboldened President Assad to believe that he could go on doing what he wanted.”
“Something else that is quite interesting, and that has not come out so far, is that in December 2017 an attempt was made to get an extension of the OPCW-United Nations joint investigative mechanism’s mandate. That would have enabled the JIM to look at what was going on and would have given it the power to apportion blame. The Russians vetoed the extension of that mandate without a single question, and it was clear that they did so because they did not want that investigation to take place. It is worth reminding ourselves that, back in 2013—when I was a member of the Government—the Government came to the House to ask for a mandate to attack areas of command and control or of chemical stockpiles. I was sad to see, when the House voted against that motion, that there were some party politics involved.”
“I was looking at the House of Commons Library paper on this, which is well worth reading. It lays out in considerable detail the number of times that the Syrians have broken all the accords they made on chemical weapons. It goes on to point out, as the Prime Minister did, that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons does not apportion blame, even when it inspects. It was supposed to be going in fairly shortly, but it is now blocked from going in and we have deep suspicions about the reasons for that. There is a major effort to clear up what is in there and to get rid of people who might be able to show that they have been attacked by these weapons. Russia has vetoed every single resolution in the Security Council.”
“I am going to keep my remarks brief, Mr Speaker, as previous speakers have done justice to a huge range of subjects. I shall try to stick narrowly to the subject of the Government’s role. First, I should like to compliment the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) on securing the debate. I listened with great interest to her speech and will make a couple of comments about some of the things she said, but I will not follow her down that road, if she will forgive me. I want to deal specifically with what took place in the past few days and the reasons for it. It is important to get the background absolutely straight and to consider what led to the Prime Minister having to take this decision. Sometimes it is easy to skate over some of these things.”
“We need to pursue the money, and we need to put it to our European colleagues that they have to think carefully about the use of energy from Russia. It is the energy Russia sells to Europe and others that sustains this tiny economy to build its weapons and to produce its chemical warfare. If we can cut the money to Russia, we begin to cut its ability to interfere in nations such as Syria, Ukraine, Crimea, Georgia and others. The world will be a better place if Russia is restricted on that basis, and I urge my right hon. Friends to do so. I fully accept the reasons why my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister took her decision, and she was right to do so. She was right in that sense to take the decision without coming to Parliament, and she is right to come to consult Parliament today. I hope we back her fully.”
“I am going to answer it myself, if the hon. Lady does not mind. I always find that they are the best answers. I simply say to the hon. Member for Wirral South—this is exactly the point—that we come back to realpolitik. The Russians are sitting right at the heart of the problem and, while they are still able to control it, the Prime Minister is left with having to make this kind of decision: to say that we will not tolerate the use of such weapons, even if the Russians are behind it. That is the important point. We have to pursue an aggressive position towards Russia. As the right hon. Member for Leeds Central said, Russia is not just producing disinformation but is lying outright about what has been going on.”
“May I commend my right hon. Friend for her strong stance on the Russian attacks over the past couple of weeks? That strong stance has shown to the rest of the world that we take action and point the finger when there is evidence, but that we do not have a never-ending dialogue, as was recommended by the Leader of the Opposition, with those who would harm us the most. Did she take further steps in those Council meetings last week to recommend to the Germans that they look again at this pipeline directly to Russia?”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend; I know of his huge personal commitment to the NHS and how he has battled for it over the years—I have seen that personally. I unashamedly, absolutely agree that this is a very good deal, and I congratulate nurses and others on this pay rise, which they deserve and for which they have worked very hard. Is it not also right to recognise and remember that back in 2008-09, Labour’s great depression plunged the economy into the biggest and most difficult economic trench that it has faced? As a result of our stewardship and our support of the NHS through that period, unlike many other countries that cut their health spending, we secured 200,000 jobs in the NHS, and now we can start rewarding staff for their hard work.”
“They are unable to drive the point home; they are unable to muster the vast number of votes that it might take a matter to the point where MPs listen very carefully. What we have seen today is of enormous credit to the humanity of my colleagues on both sides of the House. These people are not likely to change the vote in my colleagues’ constituencies, but they care enough about the idea that these people’s lives matter that we might be able to do something for them.”
“My point is that these accounts are two ends of the spectrum. In a sense, they are not representative; although they are representative of sufferers, they are not representative of a vast number of people out in the country, because this is such a peculiar genetic condition that, as has been said time and again, not a huge number of people have it. That is where this place and Governments of whatever persuasion—this is not party political—sometimes have to recognise that the common good is not always about majorities and large numbers. It is more often the case that this place is set up to deal with those who are so small in number that they are unable to make the case for themselves.”
“Member for Sutton and Cheam earlier, but a decision might not be made within a year or two, in which case the prognosis for her and for her family is incredibly poor. She begs that we and the Minister—I will come back to this point shortly—make a clear decision with the drugs company as soon as possible. At the other end of the spectrum is somebody called Amelia, who is only five years old. Her mother, Lucie, came to see me in my surgery to talk about her condition and about how the family copes with it. This poor girl, like so many others who have been mentioned, has to take 40 tablets a day, and has huge amounts of physiotherapy, including three nebulizer treatments, every single day. She is not yet on a feeding tube, but her mother has been told that if the current situation goes on for much longer then she will be.”
“I have known the family and the daughter for a little while. The contrast is interesting between two children of my constituents. On the one hand, Megan Bridge is a cystic fibrosis sufferer—her mother, Gill, as I said, is outside just now— and she has made the point to me that at the moment she is old enough to study law. Like any of our children of that age, she should have great prospects, hopes and aspirations, but hers are limited because the prognosis is that she probably does not have more than another two years if things carry on as they are. If a decision is not taken about this drug soon and agreement is not reached, it is at Megan’s end of the spectrum that that becomes very difficult, because not only will further damage set in, as was said by the hon.”
“I am grateful to you, Mr Evans, for your chairmanship today. As you suggested, I will be brief. So much has been said already about this drug that I want to make only two points about it at the end of my speech. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) and hon. Members from both sides of the House on having been responsible for the assistance and support that has been provided—both the roundtable that took place earlier, which I was not able to attend, and the e-petition—and on representing the sufferers and their families so well. I congratulate them, and I am pleased and grateful that they have managed to secure this debate. I am really here because one of my constituents is standing outside hoping that there may be some resolution as a result of this for her daughter, who suffers from cystic fibrosis.”
“I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to go to the Cabinet Office and say, “We have done the work on a proper cost-benefit analysis of this drug, and once it is tied in with future developments of other drugs and balanced with health treatments in hospital, constant work with physiotherapy and all the rest of it, I am certain that this group will not only to be able to have this drug, but we will ask ourselves why that didn’t happen before when it so mattered and it benefits them. It also benefits us because instead of their being in hospital, others may be able to use that hospital treatment.” That is a good cost-benefit analysis and I urge my hon. Friend to look at it.”
“What is that delay about? The possibility of transplant, and even further down the road the genetic changes that may well be able to be introduced. So, buying time matters dramatically for this group, in the hope that things will improve for them. When I was in Government, I know that we spent a lot of time on social impact bonds. One area we worked hard on—the Government have incredibly good data on it because we made a number of case studies—is the cost-benefit analysis, to allow us to say that local authorities and so on could set up social bonds to change the number of people going into prison, or to affect the number of people who fail at school. So it was possible to forecast how a cost-benefit analysis would work; it exists. Right now, I am not certain that NHS England and for that matter NICE are employing that system.”
“I completely agree with the hon. Lady, and that is really the point that not just me but pretty much everyone who has spoken has been making. I do not know what detailed conversations and discussions are going on about this drug. I sat in government, so I know how complex these things are sometimes. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that “frustrating” was the word I often used when bodies are set up and fall back on their rules because they are not so exposed to public scrutiny. The latest evidence—I understand that it comes from the company—shows that there is stronger data and that this drug is even more vital than it was before. It now slows lung decline by 42% and it might turn out that it is even more effective than that, which would give somebody like Megan, who I mentioned earlier, the possibility of longer.”
“May I commend my right hon. Friend for her strong leadership and for rising to this challenge? Some in positions of leadership have also risen to the challenge, and I am only sorry that others in such positions have fallen well short. In the conversations my right hon. Friend is due to have with her allies, which she is quite right to have, will she raise with the German Government the issue of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline on which they are engaged with the Russians? It will cut revenues for Ukraine and eastern Europe and give Russia an unparalleled ability to bully those countries in the future. If Russia is, as we now believe, a rogue state, will she try to persuade our allies in Europe and elsewhere not to treat with it or help to make it better off?”
“May I say what a huge pleasure it is to hear the Chancellor so upbeat, and indeed Tiggerish? He has a right to be so, given that unemployment is at its lowest level for 40 years, and manufacturing is seeing its best performance for 50 years. Given his answer to our right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) on looking at every avenue for money, and given that we will be about four months away from our official departure date, at the next Budget will my right hon. Friend consider setting out in the Red Book what he plans to do with the money that we will no longer have to pay in contributions to the European Union?”
“One of the biggest and most fundamental errors that the hon. Lady and her party are making is in their understanding of what transitional protection is about. I helped to design this, so let me inform her —[Interruption.] Perhaps Labour Members would like to listen as they might learn something. Transitional protection was designed to protect those moving from tax credits into universal credit so that they did not—if this would have happened to be the case—lose any money in the transition. It was not about increasing to the degree that she is talking about the numbers in receipt of free school meals. Under universal credit, more will receive free school meals than would have been the case under Labour’s plans.”
“My right hon. Friend is doing a fantastic job. She has pointed out the absurdity of the Opposition’s position, whereby they will now vote against the changes that will benefit those who most need them. Alongside that, they are now voting for a policy that would deliver free schools meals to families earning £40,000 a year. Does not she think that the Opposition are for the few, not for the many?”
“The hon. Gentleman now has to answer one very simple question. He and his whole Front -Bench team have been putting it about that 1 million children will lose their right to free school meals. Will he now stand at the Dispatch Box and apologise to the House for misleading the public?”
“May I commend my right hon. Friend for rising to this occasion as she should? Many in this House would wish that the Leader of the Opposition had abandoned party politics and done just the same. My right hon. Friend is quite right: if the response from the Russian ambassador is simply not credible, she is right to expect the House to back her in taking the most severe action as is required and commensurate. She is also right to remind the House, and the country, that this country—Russia—is now as close to being a rogue state as any. It occupies Crimea; it has helped to occupy eastern Ukraine; and it has created a hell on earth in Syria, and is even now overseeing worse action. This is a country locking up its members of the opposition. Frankly—we have learned this lesson before—if we appease a country like this, we can expect even worse.”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend on what I thought was an excellent speech—clear and determined, giving the European Union a very clear sense of direction. I thought that perhaps the most important point in the speech—the point voted on in the referendum—was about taking back control, so does she agree that bringing back to a British Parliament all decisions about our arrangements is exactly about delivering on that? When she gets into negotiations about trade arrangements with her European counterparts, will she remind them that cake exists to be eaten and cherries exist to be picked?”
“Within the context of equity of spending, I wonder whether, after this snow event is over, my right hon. Friend will ask some serious questions about, or even have a review of, why we still seem to be in no way prepared for such events. For example, I discovered yesterday that Heathrow is busy offloading flights because it cannot cope, whereas— [ Interruption. ]”
“Yes, regional flights. What I am saying is that, given all of that, airports such as Gatwick and others are able to cope. Does my right hon. Friend not think that it is ridiculous that some airports are simply unable to cope while others across the UK can?”
“There is, therefore, an experimental nature even to the economics, not just to the straight analysis, and that is why it does not have a massive bearing on the Government’s negotiating strategy at this point—because they themselves are questioning whether it is feasible to make a serious analysis or forecast that may be even slightly correct.”
“There is another reason why this set of analyses is peculiar and quite different. I listened carefully to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), but he is wrong on this count. This is not like advice to a Chancellor. This analysis, as I understand it, comes out of the back of the reality that all the previous forecasts, heavily reliant as they were on a gravity model of economics, have proved so wildly wrong that a variety of ways are being looked at to try to rectify that.”
“My hon. Friend is right that promoting and supporting marriage is not about saying that every other choice is bad, but it is worth recognising that marriage and cohabitation are fundamentally different relationships. Too often they are elided together as though there is just a marginal difference. There is not: there are fundamental reasons why people choose to cohabit, which are hugely due to their level of commitment. A good example of that is that when a child is born to a married couple, the likelihood of that couple breaking up falls dramatically, but when a child is born to a cohabiting couple, the likelihood of that couple breaking up accelerates dramatically. That shows there is a fundamental difference between the two, so it is important to look at them separately.”
“The cost of getting married is higher here than in any other country, because taxation is set against doing it. I have been told by a number of my colleagues, “No one gets married for money.” Only someone from a reasonably well-off middle-class background will endlessly take that view. People in a low-income family where every pound really matters will calculate how best to manage their affairs. If one situation makes them better off, there is enormous pressure to decide on that as their direction of travel. I should love us to look carefully at why the UK persists in making it financially more difficult for people to come together to marry, and to stay together. Those are really big issues, and the figures are there.”
“The question we really need to ask is what we do that stops people who have that aspiration getting to where they aspire to be. I have a couple of points to make about that, beginning with the OECD’s view of what it costs for two people to live together, in comparison to the cost of living for one person. It makes a base calculation and comes up with a figure. It is not the same as two people together—the calculation includes how savings can be made within a couple. We understand and accept that. The UK, peculiarly—this emanates from the Treasury and every other Department—somehow takes the view that we need to go further. Financial policy here makes it more difficult than it is in almost any other country for a couple—particularly if they are married—to stay together.”
“Their aspiration was for a social arrangement that would deliver them a happy outcome for the rest of their lives. In any other area of life we would worry about such aspirations never being met by the reality. What, then, given that young people start with that aspiration, are we doing to make it less likely that they will achieve it? If that happened with respect to any other process, in school or in society, and we said “That is not a problem,” then of course we would be causing damage, but in this case we walk away from the issue. My arguments about policies on marriage are not to do with favouring marriage. I do not think it needs to be favoured in any way. People’s basic instinct and sense of direction will take them towards the thing that benefits them and their families most. I am certain that that is the nature of the situation.”
“That is not to say that when, sadly, a marriage breaks up we should not do our level best to help people, and try to find them a better way and support them. That is critical. However, it means there is a need to recognise a couple of features. I am chairman of the Centre for Social Justice, which has been making this argument for some time, and we did a poll. What we found was the thing that always most intrigues me: when young people between about 18 and 28 were asked without reference to marriage what one thing they aspired to more than anything else, more than 70% aspired to be married, with stable families and a happy life. They did not aspire to be brilliantly successful at business; that was not their No. 1 aspiration. They did not aspire to have a fast car or a smart house.”
“We do not immediately say, “We must not talk about business or try to set policy to help businesses survive.” We do those things, because it is logical. Of course, in society as in economic life there will always be things that do not work out, but that does not mean people should set their life around what does not work out. If we all did that, frankly we would look a lot like North Korea. The point is we do not do it, so let us now make policy around what works and what is clear. Marriage, frankly—this is not an arrogant statement—is probably the most fundamental institution that society has ever managed to construct to make society better, give children a better chance and improve the incomes and wellbeing of those within the process, as has been said.”
“I urge the Minister to press for a definition of the family test, by which all the effects of policy decisions could be looked at to see whether they would damage the family or make things more difficult. That would make logical sense. I want to be brief, as I just want to make a start on a couple of issues, beginning by asking what the debate is not about. The trouble is that we all tiptoe around and get amazingly worried about the word. We think: “If I mention marriage, does that automatically mean worrying about whether marriages break up or other people do not choose to get married, and so on?” I know of nothing else in the purview of government where such a fear reigns in quite that way. We do not talk about business policy on the basis that some businesses will fail.”
“I welcome the Minister to his place. I have worked with him over a long time, and having run the Department I have a fair idea of the challenges that lie ahead of him. I am going to add to them. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on obtaining the debate, particularly this week, of all weeks. Under the previous Prime Minister I was nominated to construct the family test against which everything was going to be measured. When I finally left—of my own volition, by the way—at no stage had I managed to get agreement from any of the key players about what it would consist of. While there was a principle, which was that the Prime Minister wanted a test that all decisions would be set against, the reality was that the Treasury in particular was not keen on any of it.”
“There is an idea that people cannot get married now unless they have a fantastic celebrity wedding. The average cost of a wedding is now more than £20,000, whereas what people actually need is a marriage licence. There should be pre-wedding education to tell people: “You do not need to make such a big fuss about it. What you want to do is get married.” One big reason for so many marriages breaking up—probably more than anything else—is debt. If people start married life in debt because of making such a big issue of it, that puts enormous pressure on couples.”
“Not really. I do not accept that at all. Universal credit operates by looking at the household, which makes it more likely that couples are supported to stay together. The hon. Lady knows that the vast majority of married people—and, by the way, even cohabiting people—have joint accounts. The figure is way over 80%, and I think it is close to 90%. For those in an exceptional position, it is clear that the money will follow the person with the duty of care. Those rules are written into universal credit, so I simply do not agree with the hon. Lady. I think that universal credit will help enormously to get rid of what I and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) referred to as the couple penalty. The cost of weddings is another issue that we need to consider.”
“If we mention that there are things people can and cannot do in marriage, however, everyone immediately says, “This is not something we need to lecture people about. We should not talk about it.” The answer is that the most important thing we will ever do is to form that relationship and ultimately, if we are lucky, to bring up children, and we want to make it as stable as possible. If any Government sit there and worry about what people will say when they say they support marriage, because some will break up and there will be problems, we will never get anywhere. We now need to make the case for stability and strength, and help those who are unable to make that process.”
“Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) mentioned the stability on divorce; one of the reasons for that is that we started investing in marriage guidance and counselling. Imagine what we could do if we spent even more money on getting people immediately into counselling. That would have a huge effect, and I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to view that straight away. The last point is marriage prep. I stand with all those who say that the key thing is to educate people to understand what it really means to start out on arguably the most important agreement they will ever make. People get terribly fussed about being members of things like golf clubs, where there are all sorts of peculiar and stupid rules around what they can and cannot wear, and everyone is very strict about it.”
“The one thing we know, and some of them will say this, is that with the proper counselling and support probably close to half the families that are heading for break-up can change, re-stabilise and stay together. That is a critical point. We are now investing £30 million in that, yet the price of the after-effects of break-up is numbered at closer to £50 billion. Even though I have argued for more money to go in, and I thank the Government for putting more money in, it seems like a pretty mealy-mouthed concept that we invest so little money, when that money really reaps a dividend in stabilising families and helping them stay together. If it were anything else in life, we would consider it a major benefit that that amount of money returned such a phenomenal cost saving. That cost of £50 billion would fall quite dramatically. My hon.”
“I think that with the whole Hello! culture around the idea that people have to have a perfect fairy-tale wedding, no one is preparing them for the fact that once they are married, they will make compromises and face huge difficulties and stresses, and it is about how they cope with those. That would be far better than telling them some fantastic fairy tale: “Nothing will ever be a problem, and you’ll live happily ever after.” No relationship I have ever seen has ever been like that. The question is how to manage it, and preparing people properly for that is an enormously important feature of what we do. The other area I will talk about is counselling. Earlier on, when I was in Government, we drove through more money to help support marriage guidance and counselling.”
“Will he please ensure that we do not repeat the nonsense of people saying, “You can modernise,” when actually they mean, “You cut”?”
“May I welcome my right hon. Friend to his place? I have sat in this place for 25 years—as you know only too well, Mr Speaker—and, sadly, I know that every Government bring forward another statement about modernising the armed forces, but invariably end up spending less money on the armed forces, while leaving them under the same pressures. May I urge my right hon. Friend, in the conduct of his office, to please learn from previous mistakes? For example, when we went into the Bosnia area we had a “just-in-time” equipment policy based on supermarkets. That was very modern, but it ended up with tanks up on the side of the road with no equipment because we could not get it to them “just in time”. War is an expensive and wasteful business.”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend to his post. In 2009, my constituent Mr Samuel was acquitted of common assault following an unsuccessful prosecution centred on a fabricated witness statement by the police. Since then, his efforts to seek redress through the courts have been frustrated by a cover-up that I believe reaches right to the top of the Crown Prosecution Service. Will my right hon. Friend please accept a meeting with me at his earliest convenience to discuss the real issues concerning this case?”
“I welcome my right hon. Friend to her post, and I welcome her knowledge in making this decision. In supporting her, I remind the House that it was our predecessor Labour Government who put off changes in disability living allowance deliberately before the election and that afterwards we were faced with the decision to make those necessary changes. More money is now spent on disability benefits year on year, and more people, including those with mental health conditions, will receive them. DLA never delivered that to those people before.”
“I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this Adjournment debate, which I fully support. My constituent Dr Shawarna Lasker is in exactly the same position as his constituents and I have written to the ambassador. I agree that the Moroccan Government have to stop hiding and pretending that they are working behind the scenes. Clearly, nothing is happening and individuals who invested for good reasons, and good reasons alone, are being let down.”
“Pursuant to that question, may I add one further caveat, given that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is beginning to look at all the other referendums that have taken place? Will it take into consideration those organisations that are not charities or political parties, but which do public good? They are beginning to be concerned that HMRC will pursue individuals who have made donations to them. Will my right hon. Friend take looking at that under his wing as well?”