Ed Davey
MP for Kingston and Surbiton · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“I associate myself with the Prime Minister’s opening remarks, not least about the 25th anniversary of the horrific terror attacks of 9/11. I welcome the Government finally banning imports from illegal Israeli settlements, something Keir Starmer should have done a long time ago.”
“I thank the Prime Minister for that answer. Britain should be the safest country in the world to have a baby. We will keep raising this issue until it is the safest.”
“No mother should have to give birth in such circumstances. Does the Prime Minister agree that Musgrove Park cannot wait until 2033 for work to start on a new maternity unit? Will he offer a meeting to local MPs, so we can move it forward? And will he make fixing the maternity scandal across our country a top priority of his Government?”
“I hope at that summit the Prime Minister will negotiate a good deal for our country, our economy and our defence, and that means rejoining the single market. North Devon’s maternity unit has been closed for three weeks due to staff shortages, so women now have to travel for up to two hours to give birth.”
“The Prime Minister said yesterday that Brexit ushered in “a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration.” —[ Official Report , 1 September 2026; Vol. 790, c. 27.] He is right. Our economy is stuck in this mess thanks to the Conservatives—and the leader of Reform UK—and their terrible Brexit deal.”
“There are so many more problems in our political system: too much power in the hands of social media barons who interfere in our politics and crypto billionaires who use donations to buy influence; and too little power in the hands of our people.”
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“I have spoken to many headteachers and Achieving for Children in Kingston and it is clear that the health component is coming out of the education component to deal with things such as physio, testing for diabetes, and members of staff in the classroom dealing with the child’s health needs, not their educational needs. The bills that the NHS is not meeting run into hundreds of millions of pounds across our country. My fourth recommendation relates to looking at special needs education and health again in a cross-party way. I speak not only from the experience of looking after my constituents and their children, but as the father of a special needs child who has attended two special schools, and who we now educate at home.”
“I will start with my four recommendations to ensure that I get them out in time. This is my first request to the Minister: when the Department looks at the high needs block formula, can it look at the historical element, because there is no justification for the allocations? They have simply come from history. Some of them are clearly unfair and my local authority has certainly been hit. Secondly, can the Minister speak to her education colleagues to ensure that capital funding is provided for a new special school in Kingston when the announcement is made shortly? Thirdly, as I said in my intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable), can we look at the way the NHS contributes to the cost of EHCPs?”
“Is the Minister able to tell me, either today or in writing, how the historical spend factor in the formula was set? I understand what history is, but it needs a justification.”
“As the Minister will be aware, in the Postal Services Act 2011 the House has already given its in-principle agreement to mutualise the post office network. Will she indulge a former Post Office Minister and agree to meet me to discuss how the powers in sections 4 and 5 of the Act could be used to take forward this exciting policy innovation?”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker, especially for allowing me to exercise my knees more than usual today. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the offer and acceptance of payments to and by an MP for the benefit of their constituents by a Minister of the Crown in an attempt to influence votes in this House could represent breaches of sections 1 and 2 of the Bribery Act 2010?”
“Is not one of the lessons of the Windrush that when people have lived in our country for 20, 30 or 40 years, the idea that they should be deported if they do not have precisely the correct documentation is inhumane, and is not supported by the wider public? In the light of the Windrush scandal, will the Home Secretary review the unrealistic and draconian documentation requirements imposed on such people by the Home Office?”
“Will the Home Secretary confirm that the question before the House on the police report is about national support for police forces and has nothing to do with council tax rises, which may or may not happen? Furthermore, will he admit to the House that if one looks at where the rise in knife crime has been greatest, one will see that it is in those areas that are more dependent on national support?”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the Home Secretary to tell me, in answer to my question, that the £24 that the Government are allowing local police authorities to raise is in the report, when I have checked the report and cannot find any mention of the £24 to which he drew the House’s attention? That report is the subject of tonight’s vote.”
“My colleagues and I will vote against the police grant motion because it is absolutely unacceptable in the face of rising crime in our communities.”
“We need a real package to be offered to existing police officers, and to the extra ones we will need if we are going to get on top of violent crime, knife crime and all the other things that are hitting our constituents. The Government talk about the cost of spending more money on the police, but let us talk about the cost of crime. I am not even going to talk about the emotional cost, including the impact on people’s families, which we all know about. I am talking about the actual cost to the taxpayer. The cost of dealing with a knife fatality is £1.2 million. If we had more police officers and youth services working towards crime prevention, surely that would not only provide better value for the taxpayer, but prevent crime far better than the Government are currently doing.”
“The Government want us to believe that, through these council tax rises that may or may not happen, police and crime commissioners will be able to recruit more police officers. Let us hope that that can happen, but I have talked to people in the Met police and to our local senior police commanders, and they say that they are having a real problem spending any money to recruit police officers. This is not just because of the lag effect of having to recruit new officers, but because the job is no longer attractive, as police pay has been held down and people are aware that violent crime is on the rise. In all seriousness, the method that the Government are using might not deliver the police officers our communities need. We need a rise in police pay above what is currently proposed.”
“The situation is worse than that, however, as Labour Members have said. Many areas in the country have a low council tax base, so in order to make good the gap in national funds, people in poorer areas must be asked to pay even more. That cannot be right. If we relate council tax bases to the areas in which crime—particularly violent crime—is going up, we see some interesting findings. For example, the top five areas experiencing an increase in knife crime are all in the top seven areas where the police authorities rely on national Government funding—in other words, those areas where council tax rises will not do the job. If the Government are serious about knife crime, as they claim to be, they must realise that their over-reliance on council tax just will not do the job. The situation is actually even worse than that.”
“The rise in the various allocations is just a freeze in real terms—it does not even manage to get above inflation. This is therefore a cut in national support for police funding throughout the country; there is nowhere hide from that. The Home Secretary said, “We’re allowing council tax payers to pay the bill,” but that is not in the report. He was wrong when he answered me on that point. We are being asked to vote on the national support for our police forces in the report, but it is utterly inadequate and represents a real-terms cut. When the Government talk about council tax, let us bear several points in mind. First, council tax is the most unfair tax in Britain today. The Government ask the most vulnerable and the poorest to pay a higher share than would normally be the case under national taxation, so their approach is unfair.”
“Antisocial behaviour in my constituency is higher than for some time, and there has been an increase in burglaries, particularly aggravated burglaries. People in places such as Chessington and New Malden are experiencing the reality of the police cuts, and they blame the Government. The Minister may say that that is the fault of the Mayor of London or someone else, but my constituents know where the fault lies. The £1 billion of real-terms cuts and the loss of 5,000 police officers since 2015 mean that they know where to pin the blame. My constituency has lost more than 10% of our police force since 2015. We are being asked to support an “increase in spending”, but there is no increase in spending in the police grant report. The Government are not even funding the pension rise properly.”
“I start by paying tribute to the police throughout our country. When we hear about violent crime, let us remember that the police are on the frontline of dealing with it. When we hear about the reduction in the number of police officers, let us remember that the remaining police officers have to work even more overtime to make do. We should think about those police officers—the men and women who put their lives on the line for us day in, day out. The Policing Minister needs to realise that people in our communities recognise the damage done by police cuts. My constituency has experienced one of the sharpest rises in violent crime in London and we have the slowest 999 response times in London.”
“One of the Home Secretary’s closest colleagues said of antisocial behaviour orders that “they were too time consuming and expensive, and they too often criminalised young people unnecessarily, acting as a conveyor belt to serious crime and prison” Given that it is the Prime Minister who said that, what is different about the proposed new ASBO, and will it genuinely help to tackle this appalling rise in knife crime?”
“I hope the Minister recognises that all Members on both sides of the House want to find ways of sharing data so that we can go after these wicked people who abuse children. Will he therefore tell us what efforts have been made, in discussions with our American friends, to find a treaty that deals with those crimes and others but stops short of those crimes that could result in the death penalty? What efforts have been made to carve out those crimes so that they could be dealt with in a second treaty?”
“I repeat that the case the Minister is making is supported on both sides of the House. I very much doubt that there will be a Division on Third Reading—certainly we on these Benches will be supporting the Bill at that time—so he does not need to make this case, because we all support him. The issue of this debate on new clause 1 and other alternatives is whether we can achieve the goals on which we all agree while also finding a way to implement existing Government policy on death penalty assurances. The Minister is recognised for working across the House—that is why he is held in such high regard—but it is our right to scrutinise legislation in this place, and in this debate we want to tease out whether we can find a way, through the treaties or through the Bill, to get those death penalty assurances that I am sure he also wants.”
“The Minister is being generous in giving way. I repeat that, as he knows, both sides of the House want exactly what he has just described. However, this House’s job is to scrutinise and ensure that legislation is being done in the right way so that other parts of Government policy are also upheld. He said in response to the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), a former Attorney General, that we should not worry about this because ECHR obligations, which he read out in some detail, would prevent Ministers from not complying with this policy. Will the Minister elaborate on that for the benefit the House? When the Home Secretary recently did not seek death penalty assurances, was that decision in line with our convention obligations?”
“This debate is live in the US, and it is important for not only the people we are talking about but US citizens that we send this signal. In addition to the states that have got rid of the death penalty, 11 states have not executed anyone for 10 years—it is de facto not used—so that makes 30 states. The federal Government have not executed anyone since 2003. The facts do not bear out the idea that we are pushing at a closed door and that there is massive opposition in the US political system.”
“The Minister talks about the inequality of arms, and I get that—America is rather bigger than we are—but this is not about the Americans doing us a favour. We have data to offer them, too. It may only be 1%, but they want it. They want to catch their criminals—they want to catch the bad guys, too. We have a great record of working with them, and we should continue that. It is not as one-sided as he portrayed. Let us remember what we are trying to achieve. A huge number of people in Congress and across America are campaigning to get rid of the death penalty. Nineteen US states no longer have the death penalty, and six of those have changed their laws since 2007 because of successful campaigning. That is one reason why we should stand up for this principle.”
“The Minister has been trying to reach out, but he will know that new clause 1 is only about seeking assurance, not receiving assurances, which is the issue at the heart of this disagreement. I intervened on the Minister earlier to ask whether there had been discussions about a carve-out for the types of offence that we are worried out. I would have thought that that would be incredibly easy, because the number of death penalty executions and cases that will result in it is tiny. I therefore would have thought that the US—a very practical people—would accept a treaty with that carve-out. The amendments tabled by my party and the Labour party would enable such a carve-out to be pushed forward. That is not unreasonable.”
“This is a very good Bill overall. It is much needed, and it is not controversial, which is why we will not vote against its Third Reading. However, our debates have shown that there is a chance to improve the Bill. Back Benchers have been able to improve the Bill, as we have seen with the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). I strongly support his amendments, which are well judged, and I know that the BBC supports them, too. I also support Labour’s amendment 18. It is not unreasonable to expect Government to try to ensure that there are protections for journalism and free expression in these treaties, and the world would expect Britain to uphold that. We hope to get agreement across the House on those amendments. It is a shame that there is disagreement on the death penalty assurances.”
“It would be a good step for this House to stand up for this principle, which we all share and which is and has for a long time been Government policy, and say to our close friends in the US that we believe we can come to some agreement. The Minister made it clear in his response that the treaty is still in development. The hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) talked about how a lot of people in the US, particularly in the State Department, are expecting us to do this, so it is not unreasonable that we do, and I hope that the Minister, who is highly respected across this House and whose Bill we utterly support, can understand why we are trying to make this extra push. We are doing this to help him in his negotiations.”
“I hear what the Minister says, and I know that he knows there is not a lot between us on this, because we are all trying to get to the same objectives. However, the points he makes could be argued against the US position, and because we are close allies, we could close that gap. It would not be terribly great for Senators to oppose this Bill—they have Senate ratification —as they would be held to account by their citizens for getting in the way of sharing information to catch paedophiles. As British politicians here, from all sides and including the Minister, we should stand up for British principles. Yes, we want to catch these appalling criminals, but we must make sure that we advance justice and human rights. I do not think we should see these things as separate and deal with them separately—we can bring them together.”
“The Home Secretary is giving a good account of why immigration is good for this country. Does he think that people who voted leave voted against free movement of labour as a policy, or against immigration?”
“The vast majority come to contribute, pay taxes and work in different sectors in our constituencies, making this country great, as they have done over the decades and centuries. To say that they should be treated in the way in which this Bill would treat them is frankly outrageous.”
“It has been interesting to listen to the debate, and particularly to speeches from Conservative Members who have said, “We’ve got to get rid of free movement of labour,” but then in the next breath said, “But we really like the EU workers in the agricultural sector,”, or “We really need them in the horticultural sector in my constituency,” or, “We really need them in hospitality, tourism, construction and care homes.” We have started to see the complete inconsistency of the Government’s and the Conservative party’s argument on this critical issue. There is only one way in which Brexit will reduce immigration, and that will be if it creates the mother of all recessions, which I think it can. People come to this country to work.”
“It is bad for our society and bad for our economy, and MPs from both sides of the House should reject it tonight.”
“A recent poll said that 74% of British people are in favour of free movement within the EU. That is not a mandate for the Bill—quite the contrary. Time is against me, so I will just end by saying that not only is getting rid of free movement of labour a huge historic mistake, but the Bill is a historic mistake. There are so many things wrong with the immigration system—there are no limits on detentions and there is a ban on asylum seekers working, and there is the complete incompetence and incoherence in the Home Office, as I see in my two surgeries every week when I meet people who are the victims of that incompetence—and there is so much to be done, but the Bill does nothing to solve those problems. The immigration system is not fit for purpose, and the Bill will make it worse and unfair.”
“There are 110,000 vacancies up and down the country. How are those going to be filled? Do the Government think that people will be attracted by this nonsense? I am afraid that, again, it is a real let-down of the British people. The British people will feel betrayed when they realise what has been done in their name. Let us take the construction industry. The Prime Minister is lyrical about the number of houses we need to build, and she is right, but 10% of construction workers in the UK at the moment are from the EU—84,000 of them—so how are we are going to build the 300,000 homes a year that we currently need if they are not made welcome? I think this is just shocking—a huge mistake. Interestingly, I think the Government are completely behind the opinion of the British people: opinion has been changing.”
“Just to show that the Government are totally inconsistent and totally incoherent, on page 84 of “The NHS Long Term Plan” there is the wonderful phrase: “The workforce implementation plan will set out new national arrangements to support NHS organisations in recruiting overseas.” You could not make this nonsense up, and the Government should be ashamed of themselves. I think about my own constituency. When I talked to the management at Kingston Hospital, their No. 1 concern was this issue. It was not waiting times in A&E or resources, but their staff, the people who are leaving and the people who will not come here because of the nonsense in this Bill. Let us move on to social care. EU workers already account for 5% of the total adult social care workforce in this country, which is about 1.6 million people.”
“If we want to protect our communities, our businesses and our economy, and to ensure that our sectors that are crying out for workers get them, we have to reject the Bill. Let me take the House through three sectors. The first is the NHS. We know of the lies told about spending on the NHS, but what about the fabric of the NHS—the people working in it? There are 10,000 doctors who are EU citizens working in our NHS, and 20,000 nurses and 14,000 clinical support staff. In the past two years, we have had a net loss of 5,000 in the number of nurses from the EU. When we are looking at nursing vacancies of 41,000 in the NHS, how is the Bill going to help the NHS? Do you know what, Madam Deputy Speaker?”
“Daniel Hannan MEP, one of the leading Tory Brexiteers, said the day after the referendum result: “Frankly, if people watching think that they have voted and there is now going to be zero immigration from the EU, they are going to be disappointed.” He also said: “The idea of staying within a common market but outside the political integration, I think that is feasible”. For his punchline, this arch-Conservative-Brexiteer said: “It means free movement of labour.” When we are told that the referendum gave a mandate for this Bill, it is simply not true, and the House should not stand for it, because many Brexiteers, including one of the chief ones, said during the referendum that it did not.”
“I accept that immigration was an issue, but I asked the Home Secretary at the beginning of the debate whether he thought people were voting on immigration or on free movement of labour. Many people did vote on immigration—not necessarily the majority, and not even the majority of leavers—and it was an issue, but the idea that the referendum came down to free movement of labour is nonsense. It is worth remembering what some of the Conservative Brexiteers were saying at the time.”
“The hon. Lady is right. The notion of a temporary 12-month work visa for these people is abhorrent. How can we expect someone to go into the care sector and make relationships with the residents in a care home when they have to go after 12 months? How can we expect such people to integrate into the local community? How can we ensure that their training and productivity increases, which apparently we need to do? It is a nonsense approach to these so-called low-skilled workers, and I think that will be shown to be the case during the consultation on the White Paper. It is argued that the 2016 referendum gave the okay and the mandate for ending the free movement of labour—it absolutely did not. That was not on the ballot paper.”
“This report is littered with shocking findings. One of the most shocking is when the inspector writes: “in 40 per cent of cases there had been no work focused on reducing the risk of sexual offending at all”. How has that been allowed to happen? When will we have the trained staff to put it right? This is a matter of urgency.”
“I seek clarification. In previous debates, I understood the designated area approach to mean that just being there would create an offence, but in his response to the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), the Minister seems to be suggesting that the prosecuting authorities would have to find evidence not just that the individual was there but that they were doing something other than what they said they were doing.”
“I thank the Minister for the fact that the Government are not opposing amendment 13 made by the Opposition parties in the other place; that is very welcome. He was talking about the review he will undertake as a result of that amendment. Can he tell us a little more about the remit and timescale of the review? Perhaps he was about to do that anyway, but it would be helpful to have that on the record.”
“Indeed, Lord Anderson, who is well known and has huge experience in this policy area, said he believed that at least six of the organisations on the proscribed list really should not be there. I hope I can tempt the Minister to say, if he feels able to, whether a process of review of proscribed organisations already goes on somewhere and, if not, whether he would favour one, either specified in the Bill or dealt with outside it. I hope he will look into that, because it would be helpful and welcome. In closing my brief remarks, let me just say that it is good that the Government have either agreed to accept the amendments made in the other place or to come forward with concessions.”
“One of my concerns, which was why I supported the case for a review, was that some of the people who criticised Prevent gave valid criticisms, which I hope will be taken on board during the review, and others made the point that whether or not Prevent was doing the right work and whether or not it was successful, it had lost the trust of some communities. I hope the review will support the work that the Government rightly want to do by rebuilding trust. The review can play a positive role in the meeting of the objectives that I think we all share in this House. One issue that did not find favour in the other place relates to something the Minister said about proscribed organisations. My colleagues in the other place wanted to see whether there could be a relatively regular review of the list of proscribed organisations.”
“They particularly strengthened it in respect of concerns that I and others had about civil liberties and freedoms, to make sure that innocent people were not inadvertently caught by some of the new offences that will be created. Lords amendment 1 in particular makes it absolutely clear—to be fair to him, I think the Minister had this in mind—that journalists and people doing academic research will have extra special protections. We have talked about Lords amendment 3, but Lords amendment 13 on the review of the Prevent strategy—I intervened to ask the Minister about it—is really welcome and will support the Prevent strategy in its objectives. Both today and when we have discussed the matter before, the Minister has rightly said that there are a lot of good things about Prevent, and I agree with him.”
“It is a real privilege to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). Had he pressed his amendment, I would have voted for it. I agree with everything he said in his general remarks and with what he said about the real challenge being to balance security and the need to tackle people who threaten our way of life with the protection of the values that make our way of life. He made that point specifically by building on the progress that we saw made in the other place with Lords amendment 3, which is very welcome, and I hope the Minister will cover that point in his response to the debate. This House should thank Members in the other place because, as we heard the Minister say, they strengthened the legislation in several areas.”
“I say gently to the Minister that if we are serious about border security, law is important, but we must have enough Border Force guards. I am worried that we do not have enough people to ensure that our borders are as safe and secure as the House wants. That resource point should not be missed as we legislate.”
“I am grateful to the Government for conceding that point. I was concerned about the Bill’s definition of hostile activity to include anything that threatened the United Kingdom’s economic wellbeing. Although I clearly do not want anyone to threaten the United Kingdom’s wellbeing, it seemed a broad and unspecific definition. Some people would say that Brexiteers threatened the United Kingdom’s wellbeing, but I do not want to take that too far because that would be controversial. However, I was pleased that the Government have now qualified the provision with, “in a way relevant to the interests of national security”. That may well have been the original intention, but the Bill did not say that. That is why we raised the matter and I am pleased that the Government have seen fit to move on that.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands). He tempts me to talk about Brexit—[Hon. Members: “Go on!”] In relation to security and counter-terrorism, of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. I share his concerns that that has not been dealt with adequately. The political declaration is far too weak on the subject and that concerns me. If we got that right, it would go much further than the Bill can. On border security, which the amendments cover, I was slightly amused that some of the points I made on Report, about which the Minister was not happy, had been dealt with in the other place. I pay tribute to my noble Friend Lord Paddick, who, in discussions with the Minister in the other place, clarified a point in the legislation in a very helpful way.”
“Further to the question asked by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the police have said that direct access to EU databases such as SIS II are mission critical for their work in tackling criminals and terrorists. What guarantee can the Home Secretary give the House today that, after the transition period, Britain and the police will still have access to these mission-critical databases?”
“I agree with the Secretary of State that Britain has had huge success in renewables, especially with cheaper offshore wind, thanks to the Liberal Democrat policy that he has kept in place. However, I also want to express astonishment at the generosity of the offer to Hitachi. With the equity stake and the debt finance, it appears to be even greater than that offered to Hinkley Point C, yet Hitachi—like Toshiba at Moorside—is still unwilling to build new nuclear in Britain. What does the Secretary of State blame most for this setback to his nuclear strategy? Is it the fact that renewables are becoming much cheaper than nuclear, is it Japan’s fears about Brexit, or is it something else?”
“I will vote for the motion, not just because of the Government’s failure on Brexit but because of their failure on so many issues, including rising crime, the railways, the social care disaster and the schools budget. I think that the speech of the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) encapsulated that better than any other. Brexit, however, is on everyone’s mind. We have to ask why the Government are unable to deliver on Brexit, and we have to conclude that it is fundamentally because the Conservative party is split. It is absolutely divided. We saw that in the Lobbies last night, but we have also seen it in the record number of resignations from this Prime Minister’s Government: 32 in just three years. That is another dreadful record, which shows that this Government are incapable of governing.”
“Article 50 must be extended, no deal must be taken off the table, and the Government must make it clear that when a deal is agreed, it will be put to the British people with the option of remaining in the EU. That, I think, could produce consensus, could deliver, and could bring the House together. At present, we hear the Conservatives blaming everyone but themselves. They blame the remainers; they blame the Opposition; and they blame the Governor of the Bank of England. Sometimes I think they are going to blame sunshine, moonlight, good times and the boogie. However, there is only one group to blame, and it is the Conservative party.”