Sir Jeremy Wright
MP for Kenilworth and Southam · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I applaud my right hon. Friend’s passion and clarity on this issue. On the subject of democratic accountability, he knows that if, as the hon.”
“I welcome the intent that the Secretary of State has set out this afternoon, and the urgency with which she will require the relevant companies to act.”
“The Electoral Commission has made no formal assessment of this. It would be a matter for Parliament to introduce such legal protections. It is prescribed in law that poll cards and ballot papers must be provided in English or Welsh, but there are no other prescribed language requirements relating to election materials.”
“We can all cynically speculate about the reasons why this sudden about-turn has taken place this week, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), who spoke from the Front Bench, said earlier, it is our job to scrutinise this legislation and to ensure that whatever we put in place does justice to the determination o…”
“In today’s version of the amendment paper, for the first time, that amendment has disappeared and been replaced not with the detailed compromise that Intelligence and Security Committee members, who have been engaged with this process, have been working towards, along with many others, but with Government amendment 157.”
“As the House would expect, we engaged with that process as diligently as we could, with no partisan politics, in an effort to make good law in the pursuit of greater state transparency while preserving our national security equities. As the hon.”
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“There are three questions here. How did we get into this situation? What do we do about it now? How do we find our way out of it? Much has been said about whether we should have done this or other things earlier. When the crisis is past, there should be a full and detailed examination of decision making in response to the pandemic. When the time comes for that I will fully support it, but that time is not now. We have more immediate questions to answer. This House has to take decisions today on the basis of where we are, not where we wish we were. We have to make those decisions, as so often, on the basis of imperfect information and in the knowledge that all our options will harm someone. I respect the fact that different Members of this House can, for good and decent reasons, come to different conclusions on that.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) not only on what she said today, but all she has said for her constituent. I echo the call for Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s proceedings to be ended forthwith, but if that is not the case, I am sure my right hon. Friend will accept that the fairness and transparency of the next set of proceedings against her will become fundamental. Will he redouble his efforts to ensure that those proceedings are observed by a representative of the UK Government and/or those who represent international organisations? I ask him to accept and to communicate that if these proceedings are fair—if these charges are fairly laid and are to be fairly tried—the Iranians have no reason to prevent the world from seeing them.”
“Friend the Minister that there are significant practical difficulties with that—it seems to me fundamentally important that the oversight is as proximate as possible to the action. If it cannot happen in advance, it must happen as soon as possible afterwards. That is an area in which we must all focus as the Bill moves into Committee. I certainly hope it gets there, because I believe it is a good Bill, but, as others have said, it is capable of improvement.”
“I yield to no one in my faith in prosecutorial discretion—I have exercised it myself a few times and I know that it can have a significant role to play—but I think it would be wrong to put all the burden there and to leave those already taking considerable risk exposed to almost equally considerable legal uncertainty, when there is another way of doing it. It would also be a step back, for those individuals who are taking those risks, from where we are now, where authority and therefore reassurance is given in advance, albeit not on the legal basis that we all seek to achieve. I have rather more sympathy for the points that have been made about judicial oversight. If we cannot get to a place where prior judicial approval is in place—I am perfectly willing to be persuaded by my right hon.”
“It is also vital, of course, to answering many of the perfectly legitimate points that have been raised about the inclusion of some other agencies—several of which have been mentioned—in the list of those that can authorise criminal conduct. It must be the case that it is not proportionate to commit a relatively serious criminal offence to prevent the commission of a relatively minor one. Proportionality is at the heart of what happens in relation not just to agencies such as MI5 but all the other agencies on that list. Finally, I want to say a word or two about safeguards. This has not been raised particularly in of the debate so far, but there are those who say that we should not offer authorisation in advance but instead rely on prosecutorial discretion to deal with those cases where agents commit criminal offences.”
“They are “that the authorisation is necessary on grounds falling within subsection (5)…that the authorised conduct is proportionate …and…that arrangements exist that satisfy such requirements as may be imposed by order made by the Secretary of State.” The first question that has to be asked is what kind of belief is needed. Is it honest belief, reasonable belief? Surely, it must be the latter. It would be helpful if that could be clarified at an early stage. It matters so much because of the weight put on new subsection (4)(b), which states “that the authorised conduct is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by that conduct”. Proportionality is vital to the rationale and effect of the Bill.”
“Frankly, my concern is with criminal conduct beneath the level of murder and torture but which still may be quite serious. Here, we rely on the wording of what will be subsections (4) and (5) of section 29B of RIPA, as set out in the Bill, to counter the risk that too wide a latitude is given to break the law than is warranted and the consequent risk that an agent takes disproportionate criminal action. The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) about the tightening of language is important here. Under the Bill, criminal conduct authorisation may not be granted unless the person granting it believes three things set out on page 2 of the Bill.”
“What will be subsections (6) and (7) of new section 29B require a person who may authorise criminal conduct to take into account, first, whether the same objective could be achieved without committing a crime and, secondly, other relevant matters, including the Human Rights Act. That is a somewhat diffident way to express it, but it has a significant effect. Section 6 of the Human Rights Act makes it clear that public authorities, which are what we are concerned with here, may not act in a way incompatible with a convention right, including the right to life and the right not to be tortured. For as long as the UK remains a signatory to the convention and the Human Rights Act remains in force, it must be a relevant matter in the scenarios that have been raised, so the Bill’s meaning in that respect is clear.”
“There is more to say about the distinction to be made between civil liability and criminal liability—doubtless we will return to that issue as the Bill progresses—but the majority of the concerns expressed so far have been about scope and safeguards, so I shall briefly say something about both those things. On scope, it seems to me that it is absolutely right that the provisions of the Bill should be tightly circumscribed so that the criminal law is broken to the minimum degree necessary to prevent greater crime. It has been said more than once that the Bill leaves open the possibility that crimes such as murder and torture could be committed with apparent authority. I am not sure that that is so. Clause 1(5) sets out what will become section 29B of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.”
“It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and to speak in this debate, in which there have been two significant points of consensus. The first is that it is right to provide for authority to be given to commit criminal offences in appropriate circumstances. The most obvious example of that is the infiltration of criminal organisations the membership of which is in itself an offence. The second point of consensus is that if the first is so, it is better for it to be on a clear statutory basis. For that reason, I welcome the Bill. That is not to say, though, that there are not legitimate concerns about the Bill, and many of them have been expressed already.”
“I recognise, of course, the value of simplicity on issues such as the curfew for the hospitality industry, but will my right hon. Friend accept that we should allow economic activity where it does not cut across public health objectives? Will he therefore apply an imaginative approach to doing that—for example, looking at how we might be able to allow hotel guests to stay in hotel bars where they are resident in the hotel later than 10 o’clock, recognising that some hotels depend substantially on that income?”
“Can I ask my hon. Friend to go just a little further than he has just gone? He has explained already that the Government may end up in a position where entirely outrageous behaviour on the part of the EU might lead to a conclusion that no Government could possibly accept. Can I ask him to confirm that in those circumstances the Government would explore to the fullest all the options available to them within the withdrawal agreement before resorting to any breach of international law outside the withdrawal agreement—accepting, of course, that there would come a time when if the Government did not act unilaterally it would then be too late to do so?”
“Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) said a moment or so ago, it is perfectly right that the House of Commons should have the opportunity to give its specific view on the specific circumstances that may obtain at that point.”
“If there were to be a fundamental threat to the social or economic fabric of this country and breaking the international law was the lesser evil, I can accept that that might be the right thing for this country to do it, but if we were to contemplate such a course of action three things would need to be true. The first thing would be that there was specific authority to break international law, not general latitude. It seems to me that we have made progress on that. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) and others on negotiating with the Government in the way that they have. I am delighted to see amendment 66 brought forward in the Government’s name as a consequence; and as my right hon.”
“It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara). My reservations about clauses 42, 43 and 45 of the Bill were expressed, I hope clearly, on Second Reading, so I do not need to repeat them. Those of us who have reservations and understandable concerns about the effect on the rule of law of what the Government are proposing need, I think, to answer one question, which is whether there are any conceivable circumstances in which international law could properly be broken by this country. I cannot come to the conclusion that there are no conceivable circumstances in which that might be the right course of action.”
“I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on this White Paper, which reflects what he has long argued: an intelligent criminal justice policy requires provision to promote both punishment and rehabilitation. I particularly welcome what he said about sentencing code consolidation, which will not just reduce the number of mistakes made in sentencing but help victims to understand the system better. May I urge him to turn his mind urgently to the practicalities of the interesting proposal to keep offenders in custody for longer if they are radicalised in prison, particularly with a view to giving the Parole Board the tools it needs to make judgments on intelligence material that it will not be familiar with handling?”
“I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, and I want to ask him, if I may, about the ministerial code. When I was the Attorney General in the previous Government, I was happy to confirm that the ministerial code obliged Ministers to comply with international as well as domestic law. This Bill will give Ministers overt authority to break international law. Has the position on the ministerial code changed?”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that one thing that should give us some optimism about the use of the mechanisms that he is describing is the specific references to the defence of the Good Friday agreement and of Northern Ireland’s status as part of the United Kingdom in the protocol and the withdrawal agreement themselves?”
“The blatant and unilateral breach of a treaty commitment could be justified only in the most extreme and persuasive circumstances. The Government say that such circumstances are those in which no ongoing trade arrangement is made with the EU and in which the Joint Committee established under the withdrawal agreement to resolve problems of interpretation is unable to do so, leaving the UK in an impossible position.”
“The majority of the Bill is sensible and necessary for an effective United Kingdom single market when we are no longer subject to EU rules. My issue, as for others, is that of clauses 42, 43 and 45, which take what was agreed less than a year ago about the primacy of the withdrawal agreement over domestic law and reverse it. They are not a clarification but a contradiction of that agreement, and the Government are very clear about this: doing that would be breaking international law. I agree that it is possible to break international law without automatically breaking domestic law. It is also true that Parliament is sovereign, and it can choose to break international law if it wants to, but the fact that an international law breach is not a domestic law breach and is not unconstitutional does not make it a good idea.”
“Friend refers: that, unexpectedly, the European Union is now adopting an interpretation of the Northern Ireland protocol so outrageous and so far from a rational reading of that protocol that we could not have seen it coming and we could not possibly accept it, leaving no option but to abrogate ourselves the relevant parts of the protocol. But the withdrawal agreement sets out a mechanism for resolving disputes about interpretation, involving binding independent arbitration and penalties including the suspension of obligations under the agreement. If the EU’s new approach is so far from what the agreement intended, why would the Government not succeed in using that mechanism?”
“If my right hon. Friend will allow me, I will address exactly that point and what the Government could be doing instead of what they are proposing to do. Let me say first that the possibility of reaching no trade agreement and of deadlock in the Joint Committee was foreseeable yet when the withdrawal agreement was signed, and again when it was legislated for, the Government did not say that the risk of the outcomes they rely upon now undermined the deal on offer; they said then and they say now that this was a good deal. So what has changed? That leads to the argument to which my right hon.”
“Friend the Prime Minister or his Ministers wish to undermine that reputation, but I do believe that if Parliament were to give Ministers the powers they are asking for, and if they were to be exercised, we would all come to regret it. That is why I cannot vote for the clauses as they stand, or for a Bill that contains them.”
“We speak often, and rightly so, of the rules-based international order as the foundation of freedom and justice in the world and of our security. The rules referred to are, of course, rules of international law. If we break them ourselves, we weaken our authority to make the arguments that the world’s most vulnerable need us to make. Nor is it in our long-term diplomatic or commercial interests to erode the reputation we have earned for the strength of our word and our respect for the rule of law—a reputation that, ironically, we will rely on more than ever when the Brexit process is complete. I do not believe that my right hon.”
“My right hon. Friend might be right to be sceptical about the Court of Justice of the European Union, but the issue likely to arise here is not a question of European Union law; it is a question whether there is compliance with the withdrawal agreement signed by both sides. That does not necessarily raise a question of European law; nor, in my view, is it likely to. It raises a question of treaty law and whether or not this is being abided by in good faith. I accept that the Government have a problem, but I cannot accept that the proposed solution is either necessary or right. International law matters. The rules that bind nations underpin what the United Kingdom says on the world stage on a variety of subjects, from the Skripal poisonings to the treatment of the Uyghur people to the detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.”
“My right hon. Friend will be well aware that, welcome though it is, the start of the new term this week will be challenging for all schools. It will be particularly so for Burton Green Church of England Academy in my constituency, where HS2 has just closed the road that many parents use to access the school. It has done that for several months, with little notice or consultation, and contrary to assurances given during the passage of the High Speed Rail (London – West Midlands) Act 2017. This is not, as my right hon. Friend well knows, the first or only example of high-handedness or poor communication on the part of HS2. So will he please help me to require of HS2 that it does better for the people of Burton Green and elsewhere on the route?”
“It is clear that the latest US sanctions have changed the landscape, so it is reasonable for the Government to change their approach on Huawei. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be naive to believe that the only threat to the UK telecommunications network will come from Huawei equipment, or even solely from China, and that the appropriate response is therefore to ensure that the whole network is secure, wherever the threat may come from?”
“My right hon. Friend has already made the point that our schools make a significant contribution to the general wellbeing of our children, as well as to their academic education. I ask him to recognise the sad likelihood, however, that as children return to school in September, more of them than usual will report to teachers and others in school the disturbing or abusive experiences, physical or virtual, that they have had during the lockdown period. Can he confirm that our schools will have the support they need to deal effectively with those reports?”
“The Lammy review was an important piece of work and it was also wide-ranging. As my hon. Friend knows, chapter 2 of the review deals with the Crown Prosecution Service. The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) sensibly made some proposals for improvement within the CPS, but he also said this: “Other CJS institutions should learn lessons from the CPS, including openness to external scrutiny, systems of internal oversight, and an unusually diverse workforce within the wider CJS.” My hon. Friend knows that the criminal justice system is an ecosystem and it is important that all parts work with the others, so will he do what he can to make sure that those lessons are learned within the system?”
“I support the establishment of the independent expert panel and its determination of these cases, but it is right, as the Leader of the House said, that as a matter of constitutional principle the act of suspending or expelling a Member of this House can be done only by the House itself. There must therefore be a vote on the use of the most severe sanctions. I am not, however, persuaded that there should be even the prospect of a debate about the sanctions, and I therefore declare my second interest as a former practitioner in the criminal courts, where I took part in a large number of sentencing hearings, which is in effect what we are discussing here. The panel would return a verdict, and we as the House of Commons would consider whether to impose the penalty that the panel had recommended.”
“It is a great pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), who deserves huge credit for moving this agenda on in the way it should have been, and the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), to whose amendment I will return. First, I declare an interest as a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Although the Committee takes no collective view on the specific questions put in the motions before us, it undoubtedly welcomes the determination of complaints against Members of this House, particularly serious ones, by a body that is wholly independent of it. I have spoken to my Committee colleague, the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), who cannot participate in this debate, and I know that she shares the views I am about to express.”
“For good and sensible reasons, the Government are seeking in motion 6 to exclude from the debates we are considering not just the name of the complainant, but also “Details of any investigation or specific matters considered” by the panel. That is doubtless correct, but it would make it extremely difficult to assess the seriousness of the offence, and we would—again, quite properly—have no information at all on the effect of the offence on the victim. I do not then see how we could do justice to what would effectively be a sentencing process in such a debate, and I do not therefore see what good having such a debate would do. It would certainly give rise to the risks that others in this debate have already set out, without deriving significant benefit. For that reason, I will be supporting the amendment of the hon. Member for Rhondda.”
“I absolutely understand the point that my hon. Friend is making, which he has made before in this debate. I only say to him that he may find less comfort in his argument than he thinks, because as a distinguished lawyer he will know that the courts are extremely reluctant to involve themselves in the processes and penalties imposed by this place. It may be that the courts will not be as much help to him as he thinks. I was going to go on to say that sentencing hearings can be effective and fair only if we have two sets of information: first, the mitigation available to the defendant, but secondly, information about the seriousness of the offence. More recently, the criminal courts have access to a third set of information, which is the effect of the offence upon the victim.”
“I welcome efforts by companies such as Facebook to make the internet a safer and less misleading place. I know my right hon. Friend will agree that we cannot leave online platforms to regulate themselves, so may I urge him to allow no further delay in bringing forward the Government’s response to the online harms White Paper consultation and legislation that will enable this country to play the global leadership role on this that it can and should play?”
“As my right hon. Friend adapts support for businesses, will he keep very much in mind those important sectors of the economy such as tourism and the creative industries that will need longer to recover and more notice of guidance changes? Will he recognise—that as I am sure the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), will have told him—in places such as Warwickshire those sectors are mutually reinforcing and very important not just to the local economy, but to the income of local authorities?”
“I very much welcome what my right hon. and learned Friend has said about the involvement of voluntary sector organisations in the delivery of rehabilitation. As he has recognised, private sector organisations have played a role in the criminal justice system and its central challenge of reducing reoffending over many years, under Conservative Governments and Labour Governments. Does he agree that it is important now not to denigrate the efforts of anyone who has worked hard to reduce reoffending, whatever the correct shape of probation services in future, just because they have a private sector employer?”
“I am grateful for what my right hon. Friend has said. Given that we have all been spending more time online recently, especially the most vulnerable among us, he will accept that the case for sensible, balanced regulation of online harms, centred on a duty of care for online platforms, is as strong as ever. I am grateful, too, for what he says about the timetable, but can I urge him to bring forward legislation as soon as possible so that the House can consider it? Also, what action do the Government intend to take in relation to the draft age appropriate design code and when?”
“Of course, it should be used only for this period of restriction, but while that period continues it remains the only way that those excluded from this place can vote. I do not believe, I am afraid, that the Government’s solution is satisfactory. Pairing and slipping are exclusions from voting for which a Member has volunteered in most cases. The Members we are talking about today are not all volunteering to be excluded and to exclude their constituents from the process of legislative decision making. They are being excluded through no fault or wish of their own.”
“In that regard we should be most concerned with the most fundamental principles, and surely the most fundamental principle of all is that our votes in this place count equally, in our roles as representatives of our constituents. It cannot be right to exclude from decision making any Member against their will, unless it is done for reasons of principle or because it is unavoidable. Excluding those who would be here, were it not for the Government’s instruction, cannot be right on principle. This is not the House taking disciplinary action against those who have broken rules—quite the reverse—and neither it seems to me is it unavoidable. Imperfect though of course it is, we do have a system of remote voting that we have tested and used over the past few weeks.”
“In relation to those of us who can do so, I understand their preference that we conduct our scrutiny from here, but this debate and the amendments to the Government’s motion are really about those colleagues who cannot be here, and specifically those who cannot be here because the Government have, for good and sensible reasons, told them that they should not be. For those colleagues, there is a strong case for preserving some means of virtual participation in our proceedings. I am grateful to have heard what the Leader of the House has already said about that, but I look forward to hearing more. Surely the most fundamental part of our job is casting our votes.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore). I entirely agree with the Government that remote scrutiny is inferior to Members of Parliament being here to do it directly. That is no criticism of those who have worked very hard to make a virtual Parliament work at all, but it is the reality of the ways in which Bills and Ministers are most effectively scrutinised. It is also to the Government’s credit that they are seeking to restore the most effective scrutiny of themselves.”
“Yes, I understand my right hon. Friend’s point, and I was going to go on to say that, although I understand the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), we are not, of course, as has just been said in the debate, dealing only with those who are ill. Some people are not ill but are being required—again I stress—by Government instruction to keep themselves away from this place. For those reasons, and with considerable regret, I cannot support the Government’s approach on voting, and I will support the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley).”
“As my right hon. Friend has said, due to the hard work of the entire health and social care system we can now look beyond this crisis. As we do that, may I ask him to say more today, and in the coming days, about how we intend to balance the need to address a substantial backlog of more routine and elective work, which, as he says, has been understandably pushed aside by covid-19, with the need to make sure that NHS staff, who have been through an extremely stressful period, have the time to recover?”
“I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. May I take him back a little in his speech? I agree entirely that it is not a good argument for the inclusion of Huawei that not to do so would cost us a little more or take us a little longer, but does he accept that if we pursue our 5G network with other suppliers, it is highly likely that those suppliers will also use Chinese equipment? Therefore, whatever we do with Huawei, it is important to strengthen our entire telecoms supply chain network against all types of threat.”
“Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Ruth Edwards) has mentioned some of the telecoms security requirements we should have. However, it is worth saying that diversity, in terms of the number of suppliers in the system, is in itself a security advantage that we should not dispense with unless we need to.”
“It therefore seems to me that if our security requirements can be met, it is not logical to entirely exclude Huawei equipment. This debate has quite sensibly focused on the question of security, but when we are considering the security of the network, it does not seem sensible to focus entirely on Huawei: we have to think about the security of the entire network. These are complex and interdependent networks that must be secure from threats, wherever those threats come from. That is why the telecoms supply chain review that began while I was in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is the right way to approach this issue, and the general principles that it has set out are sound. I am not going to run through all of those principles, although my hon.”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing this debate. I will use my four minutes to discuss where I agree with the consensus that has emerged in this debate, and where I respectfully disagree. I agree that 5G is hugely important, for the reasons that have already been given. Two things follow from that: first, security is absolutely paramount in the 5G network, but secondly, subject to our security requirements we should have the best equipment possible. This debate cannot ignore the fact that a great many people in the telecoms industry believe that Huawei equipment is not simply cheaper than its competitors, but better.”
“If we are worried about China, as it is perfectly right for us to be, it is worth keeping in mind the fact that many of the competitor suppliers referred to in this debate use Chinese components in their equipment, or assemble their equipment in China. It is therefore important to recognise China’s potential to intervene.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend that it is sensible to make sure we do not undermine diversity through our own actions. However, as a matter of principle, taking suppliers out of the system does not assist diversity. The points he has made are substantially about security, and I agree that this debate must focus on that question. Whether we use market caps or bring along other suppliers in the market, diversity is a legitimate security objective, just as it is a legitimate economic objective. However, I am afraid that we do not have the luxury of inventing a domestic contributor to this market in a short space of time, so we have to deal with the market as it is. There is a good reason why we focus on the security of the system as a whole and not on one supplier.”
“They are world class, and it is important that we do not disregard what they say.”