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 was actually going to mention the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), who said in his speech that the motion might unite the Conservatives. It probably will, because a rafter of turkeys ain’t gonna vote for Christmas, but the ultimate division is still there. That should worry people throughout the country, because this Government and the Conservative party are incapable of delivering Brexit, as they have shown over the last two and a half years. The right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening) was right: the Government must now reach across the aisles and talk to all parties. They must get Parliament to deliver in this policy area. If they are to succeed in doing that, they will do three things.”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. From the Liberal Democrats position, we are clear that we want to engage in talks with Her Majesty’s Government, but it is important that the Government make clear that no deal is not an option. It is very important that the Prime Minister does not—as, to be fair to her, earlier today she did not—rule out extending article 50; it is important that the House has that chance to think and come together. Finally, I ask the Prime Minister to ensure that this House gets a chance to take control of our own business as we go through the next few days and weeks.”
“The right hon. Gentleman is a real optimist on Brexit. How long does he expect it will take to negotiate the political agreement and finalise all its details?”
“Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the EU signed a trade deal with South Korea, with Japan and with Canada, before many other nations in the world? The EU has actually led progress on these bilateral trade deals.”
“I find it deeply unattractive, because we would have all the costs and rules of the EU, but no voice and no vote. That is why—I am happy to admit this—putting the decision back to the people is a good idea. I hope that they will change their minds. If the people vote on this deal based on what they have seen over the past two and a half years, they will have a lot more information than they had in 2016. Some say, “The people knew what they were voting for,” but I really do not think that that is the case. Over the past two and a half years, there has been the most immense opening of people’s minds to what actually happened. In addition, more than 1 million young people did not get a vote in 2016, and they would like a say in their future. I believe that the case for another vote is made.”
“I am afraid that this deal locks us into transactions between now and whenever we find out what Brexit actually means, which will be when the political declaration is eventually negotiated. Beyond that, however, whenever we get to the end of those negotiations—the Secretary of State is dreaming if he thinks that that will happen at the end of the implementation period—we will still be in a much more transactional relationship with the EU, which will damage this country and its interests. Paddy would think that this deal is not in this great country’s interests. I hope that the deal will go down next Tuesday—I will vote against it—but it is unclear what will replace it. There is a clear majority against no deal. Is there a majority for some other deal? I do not know. Perhaps Norway-plus will attract some people.”
“Europe’s energy security strategy was written in my office in Whitehall, because we were able to use soft power to try to promote security and peace. That is what the EU is about, and that is why Paddy supported it. If Paddy applied those same thoughts to this deal, he would say that it is hopeless. This deal would lock Britain into bad diplomacy—diplomacy based on transactions and deals, not relationships. In the modern world, a country should have deep relationships with its neighbouring states. When I was in the coalition Government, I talked about having joint Cabinet meetings in Berlin and in London with the German Government. That did not go down too well on the Tory Benches, but I was trying to ensure that relationships were built on understanding between Ministers, not on press releases.”
“People inside and outside this House should think carefully about anything that puts that at risk. Paddy certainly did, believing that the EU was a way of gluing people together and moving away from past hostilities. I was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change when Putin invaded Crimea and the Bolsheviks went into eastern Ukraine. There were crisis summits. The European Energy Council got together to work out how to deal with the matter, and one way of undermining Putin was to reduce Russia’s oil, coal and gas exports by ensuring that the EU became more secure by going green and by trading within itself, making it less dependent on Russia. That meant less money into Putin’s pockets and therefore fewer soldiers and rockets. That was how the UK could exercise soft power through the EU.”
“He worried about Trump, Bolsonaro and Brexit, and he thought that Britain being in the EU was one of the best ways of combatting those rises in nationalism and protectionism. In his work in Bosnia, he talked about how the EU’s institutions were bringing peace not just within that country, but within the Balkans. Indeed, if we look at what is happening, the EU is one of the magnets that is ending the hostility between those countries, and it can play a key role. It is an engine for peace, as it has been across Europe. Of course, as man who was born in Northern Ireland, Paddy would look at the threat to the Good Friday agreement with serious concern. Nearly 3,600 of our countrymen and women died in the troubles, but few have died since the Good Friday peace agreement.”
“He talked about how, working with other countries, this country could regain sovereignty and regain control over global capitalism, and the multinationals that sought to undermine the interests of individual countries, people and corporations. His view was that we were stronger and had more control. That was his approach to the European Union. However, things went much deeper than that. Paddy was a soldier and a diplomat, and he brought that experience and those beliefs to the European question. It was his commitment to peace and to patriotism—he loved his country—that made him such a strong pro-European. We see that in his books and his speeches when he talks about the dangers of rising nationalism and protectionism around the world.”
“My friend, Lord Ashdown—Paddy—is being buried today in Somerset, so I hope that the House will allow me to speak about this deal as I think Paddy would have done. The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) might not have known about the burial service, but my friend Paddy would have been able to apply his critical faculties to the deal and judge it on the basis of what was good for this country. That is what he would have done. I worked for him for nearly 30 years, beginning as his economics adviser, and when he talked about Europe, he talked about the way in which countries needed to co-operate and work together. Internationalism was in his liberalism.”
“Will the Secretary of State say how he thinks the House could best be involved in reaching a decision for the country if the Prime Minister’s deal is voted down next Tuesday?”
“Could the Secretary of State tell the House what David Ricardo had to say about non-tariff barriers, which are the main issue in trade agreements today?”
“Q6. I thank the Prime Minister for her words about Lord Ashdown, our friend Paddy. Paddy was loved on these Benches, and I believe he was respected across the House and across the country. We will miss him deeply. An unusual thing happened last night: Conservative MPs and Opposition MPs united, and leavers and remainers united. They united to back my proposal for a review of retrospection in a law called the loan charge, which offends against the rule of law and has caused misery to tens of thousands of people. In her role as First Lord of the Treasury, will the Prime Minister agree to meet me and a cross-party delegation of MPs to discuss the new review of the loan charge?”
“Given how vital offshore wind is to Britain’s future electricity supply, and how it is increasingly providing good value for money, how can the Minister justify allocating just £60 million to next spring’s CfD auction?”
“Let me remind the House why the Treasury should, after the review, ditch the retrospective nature of this measure, delay April’s implementation and amend the charge so it focuses only on payments made after 2016. It is because the loan charge, as introduced, offends against the rule of law. It is the sort of taxation that led the barons to rebel against King John and gave birth to Magna Carta. It is simply not acceptable for a Government to introduce a law that makes illegal something someone did years ago, when that action was considered legal. That is a clear principle.”
“Instead—somewhat inelegantly, due to the rules of Finance Bill debate—new clause 26 aims to focus the minds of Treasury Ministers on the gross unfairness of the way the 2017 Act went about closing an unacceptable tax loophole. I believe that the review envisaged in the new clause would reveal the unfairness of the retrospective nature of the current loan charge legislation in two ways. First, it would show how that retrospective nature is even more severe than non-retrospective but backward-looking proceedings for the recovery of lost tax elsewhere in our tax legislation. Secondly, it would show that the test of reasonableness included in proposed new section 36A, if applied to the loan charge, would in fact prevent any retrospective tax collection from the loan charge.”
“I thank the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) for her passionate speech. I also thank the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), who chairs the Treasury Committee, and right hon. and hon. Members from across the House, who have campaigned as a Parliament against this measure and supported new clause 26. It is my wish to divide the House on the new clause if the Minister does not accept it. Let me make it crystal clear from the start that I support the Treasury’s aim of closing tax loopholes and stopping tax avoidance. The introduction of loan charges in the Finance Act 2017 to stop future abuse was correct, and the review my new clause proposes would not seek to prevent the Treasury from stopping that abuse from the 2016 Budget announcement.”
“The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and I thank her for her support. Let us remember that these people—our constituents—were given professional tax advice and behaved in a way they thought was right and lawful at the time.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right on all the points he makes. When my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) tabled the early-day motion that got cross-party support when this campaign was getting going, those were exactly the points he made. We all condemn tax avoidance and support the Treasury, but this retrospective approach to taxation is simply unacceptable.”
“Indeed. HMRC knew about these tax schemes for years and took no action. They were widely used—as we have heard, right hon. and hon. Members from around the House have constituents affected—and widely advertised and yet were ignored by the tax authorities. People could only take some public sector positions if they agreed to be paid via these schemes, and it emerged ahead of the Westminster Hall debate that even some HMRC contractors were paid through such a scheme.”
“Having taken that wonderful intervention, I bring it to the House’s attention that the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) has signed my new clause. It is bringing the House together at a time when elsewhere it is divided. I end on what this loan charge and its retrospective nature have meant for our constituents. It has caused misery. It has affected people’s lives, their health, their families. It has caused gross misery. Some people believe they will have to go bankrupt if they are forced to pay, or that they might lose their homes, and that is why the House is united against this retrospective action. I really hope that the Minister will get to his feet, accept the new clause, go ahead with the review and bring it back before the end of the tax year, so that the House can see it and vote on it.”
“Rather than denigrating refugees fleeing the despicable Iranian regime for not claiming asylum elsewhere, will the Home Secretary tell the House how many asylum seekers we have been able to return to other EU countries under the EU Dublin regulation in the last three years? Is he concerned that in the Brexit deal before the House there is no guarantee that the UK will retain that power?”
“Will the Home Secretary accept that the Home Office and Border Force already struggle to cope and that over the next three years they will have to deal with 3 million extra cases of EU citizens? How does he expect them to cope with this new temporary worker visa scheme, which will involve tens of thousands of employers, many of them contacting the Home Office for the first time, with a 12-month churn of staff? Far from bringing back control, will this not bring chaos?”
“Can the Minister confirm that the Brexit talks on co-operation on justice and security have not yet been concluded, and that the limited text on justice and security in the political declaration is not legally binding? Can she give the House her best estimate of how long, were the House to vote for the withdrawal agreement, it would take to conclude the specific Brexit talks on justice and security? One year? Two years?”
“Where in this statement is there money for a public health model to cut youth violence? Where in this statement is there money for a police partnership with the NHS, so that they can work together to support each other and reduce the police work related to people with mental health problems?”
“The Minister acknowledges that this is a huge problem and that the murder rate is at its highest since 2008, with the 130th homicide of the year in London happening earlier this week. Will she therefore explain why we are taking so long to get on to the public health model? It was deployed in Glasgow in 2005 and efforts and initiatives by groups such as Redthread have been going since 2005, so why is it taking so long to get this model going?”
“There is consensus on the urgency involved, and there is consensus that the old approach of arresting everyone and putting them in prison is not going to work. We have to have a holistic public health approach, and I think that everyone has signed up to that. I refer people to the work of the World Health Organisation on the need for violence prevention and the need to treat this upsurge in violent crime as an epidemic linked to aspects of disease. A public health approach is absolutely right. I also think we can agree on the good work that is being done in communities.”
“I want briefly to talk about the consensus that I hear in the debate, as well as about some of the areas in which there is a divergence of views. I also want to make one or two constructive remarks. Everyone agrees that this is a serious and pressing issue. We cannot just look at the figures, although they are pretty appalling, with homicides and knife deaths at levels not seen for more than a decade. The right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) talked about how meeting the mothers involved really brings it home to you. I have had two fatal stabbings in my constituency in the past two years, and meeting the mothers of the two young men involved was most distressing. I could not leave those meetings without committing myself to take action, and I am sure that everyone in the House has had a similar experience.”
“I hope that the Minister will not take my final point as my bringing in a little controversy, but police resources are vital, and we are particularly missing the police community support officers. When we had a sergeant, two PCs and three PCSOs in every ward in my constituency, the police knew what they were doing. We had days when wards had no crime reported at all, which has hardly happened since. People felt more confident and safer, and the community felt happier. Trying to measure that may be difficult, but that sort of thing is what I would call a public health model. This is about taking things in a different way and getting to the root of the problem. This is about giving our young people the support and the role models that they need.”
“She is full of grief when you talk to her, but she tells her story and goes into schools to talk to young people. Interestingly, Sophie has noted in her work in the community that it is the really simple stuff that matters—just like the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle was talking about when describing his time as a youth worker all those years ago—such as organising some football. Sophie tells a story about how a young boy knocked on her door after her son Derick had died and said, “Who’s going to help us play football now?” Derick had arranged football games among the young people in the local community, but he was killed with a knife. If we can find those sorts of initiatives, we can get on top of this problem, but we have to give it the seriousness that it deserves. Such solutions are not rocket science, but they are vital.”
“We all know about Redthread, but a Christian youth charity in my constituency called Oxygen has set up an amazing programme—before the Minister reminds me, the Home Office helped to fund it—called “What’s the Point?” whereby the group goes into schools, bringing along people whose loved ones have been the victim of knife murders. There is also a new initiative in my constituency called “Drop a Knife, Save a Life” that was set up by an amazing woman called Sophie Kafeero, whose son, Derick Mulondo was murdered in my constituency 18 months ago. Sophie came to this country from Uganda about three decades ago, and she was a leading community activist on HIV/AIDS in the African population. She is an amazing lady, but she lost her only child in the later years of her life.”
“There is no requirement in law, but this is a Home Office responsibility, so I will write to the Minister about that and I am having a second meeting with the ONS. If we measure something, surprisingly enough the officials say, “Oh. That’s a problem.” We can then share the problem out and say, “We’re not giving enough help in schools. We’re not giving enough counselling.” The system can suddenly kick into gear, but it does not do that at the moment because we do not realise that there is this massive problem. Let us start thinking at that level about how we can get attention on to such issues. Another example—perhaps not so weird and wacky—is the local initiatives that are set up when someone loses a dear one. We have seen lots of charitable initiatives to tackle knife crime.”
“I am not necessarily talking about children who may be traumatised because one of their loved-ones has been murdered; I am talking about children whose parent may have died naturally. We are hopeless as a society at dealing with that. I have been working with the “Life Matters” taskforce, which is not considering the issue from the angle that we are looking at it today, but I want to bring it in because it offers an example of how rubbish we have been at dealing with some of the adverse childhood experience issues. We do not measure the number of children who have lost their mother or father, because we do not record that information. I have met the Office for National Statistics to talk about that, and the reason is that when a death is registered it is recorded if there is a partner, but not if there are any surviving children.”
“We are not making this the priority that it must be. This has been a constructive debate, and I want to turn to some of the solutions. I am going to make one or two slightly weird suggestions, but people will see their relevance. Some solutions must be targeted and must focus on the individuals and communities at greatest risk, which can be a sensible approach for getting early responses. However, we should also consider the prevention side of things and deal with the long-term causes, as other hon. Members have said. One such long-term problem is bereavement, which relates to the adverse childhood experiences issues to which other Members have referred. It will of course be only one of the issues, but we do not properly treat traumatised bereaved children at all in this country.”
“It is estimated that every homicide costs more than £1 million for the investigation, the autopsy, the coroner’s court and so on. That is before we even talk about how much it costs to lock up the perpetrator, if he or she is caught, and before we have calculated the lost economic opportunity—never mind the emotional value to the family. We are talking about a huge waste of money and resources, as well as about the tragedy and the tears. When we look at resources, let us do our sums right. Let us recognise how much money we are wasting by not tackling this properly. I know that this is a debate that the Treasury sometimes has difficulty in hearing, but we have to get it to do its sums properly. It looks at this problem in too narrow a way, and for that reason we are getting the wrong solution.”
“There is consensus that this is the way forward. So where is the disagreement? First, there is disagreement on the speed of the response. I just do not think that we are doing this quickly enough. This is a crisis. Yes, we know that some of the responses involving the public health model are going to be long-term approaches, but there are short-term measures that could happen sooner. Why are we not doing those things ever more quickly? There is a failure to see this crisis for what it is, and to understand how it is experienced by the families in our constituencies. The other disagreement involves resources. We can always go on about resources and how well they are used—the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) made that point—but let us remember the cost of these appalling tragedies.”
“I agree with the hon. Lady, who has taken a great leadership role in this debate. However, the title of the debate is “Public health model to reduce youth violence”, which is why I am focusing on that. A great deal of cross-party work has been done on this, including the work of the Youth Violence Commission, which the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) chairs. Her ears must be ringing in this debate. Colleagues from all parties are involved in the commission, including the hon. Members for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) and for Braintree (James Cleverly) and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb). My constituent and friend, Siobhan Benita, a former senior civil servant, has also been contributing her skills and knowledge to this cross-party work.”
“My right hon. Friend is right to say that the all-party parliamentary group that I set up is looking at this matter in detail. We have a draft report called “Passengers must come first” which focuses, among many other things, on the fact that South Western Railway does not have the money to do what is right for passengers. It is looking after the investors first, and it is not putting money in to deliver on what it promised in the franchise. Unless the Government act, either by taking the franchise away from SWR or by imposing a new contract, passengers are going to keep suffering under shocking performance.”
“I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way a second time. The point on Network Rail is crucial. Like my right hon. Friend, I have a lot of time for Andrew Haines given our mutual experience of him. However, Network Rail will not be able to get to grips with the challenges of an extraordinarily high level of emergency speed restrictions and temporary speed restrictions across the network. A decade or so ago, there were zero speed restrictions; now there are 70 or 80, which is because of the lack of essential investment. Unless the Department for Transport supports Network Rail with more cash to solve those restrictions, we will get nowhere near the level of timetable resilience that will prevent cancellations and delays, meaning that people’s trains actually run on time.”
“I just want to make sure that the Minister and the House understand that although it was a shocking performance on that Monday when the works were not completed on time, the cancellations and delays have been going on for more than 18 months. This has been a long, sustained period of shockingly poor management and shockingly dreadful services, which our constituents are suffering daily. I have 10 train stations in my constituency. Most of my constituents rely on these services, and they have to be put right. We need to hear from the Minister about the actions his Department will take to do that.”
“I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is being very generous. If he looks at the historical record of investment in the South Western Railway region—the Wessex region—he will see that it is shockingly low compared with the rest of the country. Although there is going to be a small increase, compared with the huge amounts being spent elsewhere the capital investment in the Wessex region is not good enough. Given the problems and the huge numbers of people in the area, will the Minister go away and consider the investment that is going to the region? It is simply not adequate.”
“The Prime Minister is selling her Brexit deal by telling the country that it ends free movement of labour. Does the Home Secretary realise that it is completely unacceptable to have the meaningful vote without the White Paper having been published?”
“I agree very much with what the hon. Gentleman has said on the death penalty reassurance point. He will note that the Minister said in his speech that the amendment was somehow defective. Does he agree that if that is so the Minister needs to make his case in detail and put forward another amendment so he can ensure that these death penalty assurances can be given?”
“Indeed, the Liberal Democrats would like to go further. Although the amendment was welcome, the fact that it relates to section 52 of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 means that there may well be other treaties involving the sharing of collected electronic data to which it may not apply. Given the significance of that, it is important that we go as far as we possibly can. The UK must oppose the death penalty in all circumstances, and we need an assurance from the Government that the law is extremely tight.”
“Although this Bill will help to speed up the work that needs to be done via the courts to enable the investigatory bodies to get these criminals and hopefully stop such activities, I gently point out that the European Union already has many successful tools and instruments, and it is a shame that it looks like we are reducing our ability to use them. However, in totally supporting the thrust of the Bill, I associate the Liberal Democrats with the gentle criticisms of the Labour and SNP Front-Bench spokesmen, who made important points about death penalty assurances and journalistic freedom that must be considered and put right in Committee and on Report. On the death penalty assurances, joint efforts between Labour and Liberal Democrat Lords secured that amendment, and it will take some proof to convince us that it is defective.”
“I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford). I think the Internet Watch Foundation does a fantastic job, and it is already saving lives, so everyone involved in the organisation deserves our thanks and gratitude. It is in that spirit that I rise to support this Bill and to say that the Minister was absolutely right to make his argument in the way that he did. The legislation goes beyond defeating the people involved in child sexual exploitation, and others committing horrendous nasty, violent crimes will also be caught by these important measures. Beyond that, the Bill will act against terrorism and so on, so the Government are absolutely right to pursue it. All that is part of the way that we in this House need to support international co-operation against crime.”
“That shocked people on both sides of this House, and the Minister is absolutely aware of that concern, so it is incumbent on those on the Treasury Bench to explain to and reassure this House that that cannot reoccur and that we will find ways through such issues.”
“The Minister is being slightly sneaky. It is quite possible to take the two issues separately and deal with them separately. It is quite easy to see how one would ensure that the welcome measures in this Bill apply to the cases to which we all want them to apply while ensuring that the death penalty assurance, which ought to unite the House, is also dealt with properly. I am sure that the Minister understands that Opposition Members in the other place and in this place are using this point to try to ensure that the Government move on this point. He will be aware of the cases of Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh from earlier this year, in which the Home Secretary—I acknowledge that this was revealed in a leaked letter—assisted the US to prosecute them without seeking death penalty assurances.”
“If he is saying that the amendment made in the other House is defective because it has the problem he is raising with me, let Home Office Ministers come to the House in Committee or on Report to show that and to produce an alternative that deals with the matter, about which I am sure he shares my concern.”