Sir Edward Leigh
MP for Gainsborough · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Those of us who love the Jewish people and faith know that the reason why they have overcome all the empires that have tried to destroy them is that they are primarily people of the book and not the sword, but what is happening in the west bank is violent and egregious.”
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for looking again at Lincolnshire. I made the point to her predecessor that the proposal for a Greater Lincolnshire authority was, in the eyes of many people, just a gerrymander. Will she look again at it and stop dividing West Lindsey and North Kesteven in half?”
“If the centre does not take action, nasty extremes will take over. The fact is that we are in acute danger. These people can now launch from anywhere on the north French coast and are escorted to our shores. Frankly, we are being invaded, and the public are completely fed up.”
“May I congratulate the Prime Minister on what he said about Ukraine and on how he conducted himself there? Our enemies should know that this House is completely and utterly united in standing behind the Ukrainian people.”
“What concerns me is the jobs of my constituents who work at Scunthorpe. That is all I am worried about; I have no ideological objection. If it is what is needed now, fair enough. As long as the blast furnaces are totally uneconomic because of high energy costs, however, it can only be a sticking plaster.”
“One of the poorest wards in the entire country is Gainsborough south-west ward. Why is the Secretary of State splitting West Lindsey in half? Why is he taking Scampton away from Gainsborough? It makes no sense. Why is he cutting away the nuclear fusion site from Lincoln?”
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“As the longest serving member of the Conservative Friends of Israel, I am proud to say that I absolutely and fully support what he is doing today, because it is about standing up for freedom, for morality and for justice for all people in this world.”
“Those of us who love the Jewish people and faith know that the reason why they have overcome all the empires that have tried to destroy them is that they are primarily people of the book and not the sword, but what is happening in the west bank is violent and egregious. It is worse than stopping the two-state solution; it is ethnic cleansing. Does the Secretary of State agree that the Israeli Government could quite easily differentiate between general trade and trade to these illegal settlements? Does he agree that there is no reason, when our country fully supports the right of Israel to defend itself, why this should affect our intelligence relationship?”
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for looking again at Lincolnshire. I made the point to her predecessor that the proposal for a Greater Lincolnshire authority was, in the eyes of many people, just a gerrymander. Will she look again at it and stop dividing West Lindsey and North Kesteven in half? I represent the Gainsborough South-West ward—the most deprived ward in the entire country. I am on the Pride in Place board. What was the point of dividing Gainsborough and leaving it out on a limb from the rest of the county? Will the right hon. Lady look at our viewpoint in a positive way?”
“If the centre does not take action, nasty extremes will take over. The fact is that we are in acute danger. These people can now launch from anywhere on the north French coast and are escorted to our shores. Frankly, we are being invaded, and the public are completely fed up. There is only one solution, and that was put to the Minister by the shadow Home Secretary. There is no deterrent. They know they will not be deported. We have to get out of these outdated conventions, detain immediately and deport immediately. Will the Government take action?”
“May I congratulate the Prime Minister on what he said about Ukraine and on how he conducted himself there? Our enemies should know that this House is completely and utterly united in standing behind the Ukrainian people. That was the most powerful part of his statement, precisely because we are working together, so may I encourage him in that direction? We all know that we are under mortal threat, that we must increase the defence budget and that the decisions to pare back the bloated welfare bill are extremely difficult, so why does he not take up the offer of the Leader of the Opposition to deal with this, to meet our international commitments, to reduce dependency, to ensure that we are living within our means, to work together and to do this now? “Action this day.””
“What concerns me is the jobs of my constituents who work at Scunthorpe. That is all I am worried about; I have no ideological objection. If it is what is needed now, fair enough. As long as the blast furnaces are totally uneconomic because of high energy costs, however, it can only be a sticking plaster. I was struck by the question put to the Minister by his own Back Bencher, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Luke Myer)—there is no point my demanding that we scrap green energy and all that sort of stuff—so will he take that away and do more with grants to ensure Scunthorpe’s blast furnaces are competitive on world markets?”
“One of the poorest wards in the entire country is Gainsborough south-west ward. Why is the Secretary of State splitting West Lindsey in half? Why is he taking Scampton away from Gainsborough? It makes no sense. Why is he cutting away the nuclear fusion site from Lincoln? Why is he loading debt on Lincoln city council—for example, for the Hykeham bypass? There is no logic in this, other than it being a stitch-up by Lincoln Labour party. This is the only Labour-controlled council in Lincolnshire. Everybody else has been treated with complete contempt.”
“It is a win-win situation; we defend the nation, get people off benefit dependency and work together to save our country.”
“I agree with everything that the Foreign Secretary said in her initial statement, particularly the point that we live in a more dangerous world than ever—I also agree with the shadow Foreign Secretary, obviously. The point is surely this: there is no point apportioning blame between us. We are where we are now, in the most dangerous position that we have ever been in. Will the Foreign Secretary take away this thought in her talks with the new Prime Minister? Will she say that Members on both Front Benches, including the new Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, should co-operate in meeting our NATO defence commitments in full? That means no black holes or creative accounting. We should pay for them by curbing the spiralling welfare bill, which is out of control.”
“I will leave you with this thought: if there were no more illegal settlements, if no existing settlements were expanded, and if the Palestinian people were allowed to live in peace and freedom like everybody else, would not the skies lift? Would not Israeli people feel that they could live in peace? We cannot have endless war. Empires come to an end. The Israeli Government cannot just destroy the Palestinian people with the misguided notion that that will give them security. It will give them no security; there will be endless war, endless hatred. Let us in the House say that we believe profoundly in a unity of the human spirit. There should be no Muslim, no Jew, no Christian—we are one people, and we demand that the Palestinian people, like all other peoples on Earth, have a right to their own nation.”
“They are entirely in tune with Jewish culture, but unfortunately the Netanyahu Government are bound by right-wing extremists, and by people who care nothing about human rights and who have this weird and ridiculous notion that because 2,000 years ago that land was perhaps held by Jewish people—we are not even certain of that—they have a right to go in and force out people and destroy their lives. I appeal to moderate Jewish people: this must stop. The Israeli Government could stop it tomorrow, couldn’t they? And if the whole world acted with one voice, I think we could put sufficient pressure on them. But just imagine, dear colleagues, if this stopped tomorrow.”
“I have been to the site of the music festival; I have wept at the appalling pogrom against our Jewish brothers. So I am emotional, and I am entirely in favour of the right of Jewish people to defend themselves. But this is so different. I have been to the west bank; I have seen what is going on there. This is profoundly wrong. People who have merely tilled their land for 2,000 years are being bullied and forced out. Even when we went there, we were confronted with armed settlers. This is outrageous. The whole House should cry out against it with one voice, and the Government should take action. That is why the motion is so important. I am appealing to my Jewish friends, and to so many good, honest, reasonable people who detest what is going on at the moment.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) on the tone of her speech, and I agree with her motion. I could give a speech on dry, legalistic grounds, which in themselves are completely obvious, to show why we should have a trade ban with illegal settlements—because of the Geneva convention, or because of the fact that these settlements rely on international trade. The case is overwhelming, but I want to be more emotional. I am a Conservative MP. I am not the sort of person who goes on marches, or who chants about a Palestine from the river to the sea. I am also realistic about the fact that Israel is surrounded by enemies. I am profoundly philosemitic, and profoundly immersed in Jewish culture—I read the Old Testament every day and that sort of thing.”
“I am just wondering if the Minister is looking forward to a new summer job at the end of July. Can he give us any confidence that the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham) has any new ideas to get young people into work? If he does, I am not aware of them yet.”
“May I urge her, in any local reorganisation, not to do away with small police forces such as Lincolnshire, to concentrate on old-fashioned policing—not woke, not courses, not staff—and to try to avoid throwing too many chairs up in the air with boundary reorganisation?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for the £100 million grant she has given to Lincolnshire police and the transformative extra £12 million a year. We have been campaigning for that for years and have averted 400 job losses. When the Government do something right, it is right that we should say thank you. However, she may want to say a word about our problem. We are losing our excellent police and crime commissioner, Marc Jones—she could perhaps say a nice word about him—and those powers will be transferred to the mayor, but we have the Lincolnshire police and Humberside Police, and Humberside Police, of course, straddles two mayoralties, so she has a problem.”
“I agree with everything that the Prime Minister has said, and I join him in his apology. Of course, while historical misdeeds—and these are misdeeds—have got to be condemned, individuals have to be judged by the standards and morality of their own time, not ours. We have to bear that in mind. But I will say this: those of us who claim to be of religious persuasion should remember that our religion should be one not of judgment but of love, and that love should extend to everybody—young mothers, babies, and every frail person—from the very beginning of life to the very end.”
“T7. The Secretary of State knows how fond I am of him personally, and I want him to keep his job, so will he please his new boss—the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham)—virtually the entire legal establishment and the English people, whose only wish is to keep their 1,000-year-old right to trial by a jury of their peers when their liberty is at stake?”
“Many wonder whether aircraft carriers are going to go the way of the old battleships, uniquely vulnerable to drones that cost a tiny fraction of their cost. To protect aircraft carriers, we need destroyers and frigates. Moreover, in two world wars we relied completely on destroyers and frigates to protect our food supply, so will the Secretary of State say more about the replacement of our ageing frigate and destroyer fleet, particularly with regard to the Type 45 and Type 83 destroyers?”
“There will be some who cannot be sent back because their country is not safe, but surely the solution is to create a returns hub in a Council of Europe country—distant, small—so there is no question of their human rights being abused. That is a real deterrent: to treat them quickly and then send them home.”
“I thank the Minister for confirming that RAF Scampton is not cost-effective. Frankly, he has been a lot more helpful than his predecessor Conservative Ministers, who have now left the Conservative party, so I thank him. The problem with these sites, as I know from asking hundreds of questions, is that they are unbelievably difficult to transform into asylum centres, so can I ask the Minister: is this really a deterrent? If someone comes from a hellhole of a country, does it matter where they are going to be sent? However, can I be positive and ask a question in this way: is not the best way to solve this problem to process these asylum claimants very quickly, preferably within a month?”
“When the nation is at risk and the Leader of the Opposition asks a question, it is frankly cowardly for the Secretary of State not to turn up. His duty is to be here in our House of Commons.”
“I am sure the King would have understood, but we will leave it at that. The Minister constantly blames the previous Conservative Government, but the fact is that times have changed. Let us look at history. We were in the same situation in the 1930s—in 1935, we were only spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, but when we increased it to 9%, the whole nation came together. The Leader of the Opposition has offered the Minister a deal: we will combine with the Government to slash the huge welfare budget. We will help them to deliver what the previous Secretary of State wanted. Why did the previous Secretary of State resign?”
“On dynamic management, I thought the Bill was about putting community at the heart of things. My hon. Friend knows that, for years, I have been campaigning for a through train from Grimsby through Market Rasen into London. When Mark Harper was our Transport Secretary, we were on the verge of getting one—we actually had a trial run. Will my hon. Friend give me an assurance on behalf of the Conservative party that when he gets into power at the next election—and he will—he will reopen this whole issue and give Grimsby the direct service to London that it deserves?”
“Is there any way the Foreign Secretary can convince the Trump Administration in her conversations with Secretary of State Rubio that, although we are not naive about Hezbollah and Hamas—we know they are horrible organisations—we could at least start to detach the Palestinian people from these organisations if the Trump Administration were absolutely firm that the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the west bank must stop now? We have to stop the total destruction of Gaza and the appalling suffering. We have read this very day about people in Gaza getting cancer and dying in agony. What influence do we actually have on the Trump Administration?”
“I agree with the Foreign Secretary’s statement, and I agreed with the Government’s decision, which I supported from day one, to stay out of this totally counterproductive war. I hope that we have all learnt our lesson and that we are never going to listen to liberal imperialists or neocons, with their endless wars over regime change in the middle east, all of which have been a disaster—Syria, Libya, Iraq and now Iran. What influence do we have on the Trump Administration? They are the only people who Netanyahu cares about. I can see the wonderful Justice Secretary, a chum of the Vice President, sitting next to the Foreign Secretary.”
“Order. A large number of colleagues wish to take part. I want this to be an orderly debate, in which everybody has their say, so I shall institute an immediate six-minute limit on speeches. If everybody sticks to that, everybody should get in. Just in case colleagues are tempted to give way to others and therefore prolong their speech, I should say that nobody will be given extra time if they give way to another colleague. That is to ensure that everybody gets in. In terms of parliamentary courtesy, this is a debate; it is not an opportunity to come in, make a short intervention and then leave. Therefore, if you make an intervention, you are expected to stay for some significant time and to return for the winding-up speeches. I hope that is agreeable to colleagues.”
“Rather than trading party political points, can we all agree that these huge companies are rotting our children’s minds with addictive algorithms? While we know that banning things seldom works because people circumvent it and it leads to criminality, will the Minister and the Prime Minister go to these companies and say that they are in the last chance saloon—either they take decisive action, which we know they can do, or we will ban children from going on social media?”
“Yes, the Minister is right: Greg Clark nationalised it. As far as my constituents who work at Scunthorpe are concerned—and, I am sure, those of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers)—all we want is a viable Scunthorpe. We do not take an ideological line on nationalisation in this case. Given the problems we are now reading about in respect of electric arc technology in Port Talbot, can the Minister commit that the Government are fully committed to the blast furnaces in Scunthorpe?”
“I agree with a lot of what the hon. Gentleman says. We can surely agree on this point: what is really killing Scunthorpe are the insane green energy policies and the fact that we have the highest energy costs in Europe. If we had a sane energy policy, we could start to make a profit at Scunthorpe.”
“There is barely time to dip their toes at the beautiful beaches of Cleethorpes—one of the finest resorts in England, which people want to go to. If people want to go in the other direction, to Sheffield or Meadowhall, they can get there from Gainsborough Central station, but there is no train back, unless they want to take a donkey. Why is there so little concern for small towns? Why are we wasting so many resources on these prestige projects dreamed up by the likes of Ceaușescu? It is a waste of money. Let us put the money and resources where it matters, in rural communities and small towns. That is why this debate, for which I congratulate the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen, is so important.”
“The point I am making is that, instead of having a can-do attitude in this country, we are ruled by faceless bureaucrats in train companies, nationalised industries, agencies and Ministries. The Minister is sitting there; why does he not intervene? My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) and I have been to see him and the Rail Minister, who promised help—but still no train. At the other end of my constituency, we have Gainsborough Central station, which connects up to Cleethorpes. People might think that it would be lovely to take the train on a beautiful summer’s day instead of driving all that way. It takes two hours to get there, and there is one train a day, so when the person gets to Cleethorpes after a two-hour journey, they have only an hour and a half there before they have to come back.”
“It is one of the largest towns in England not to have a through train to London. We are spending £100 billion on HS2, but we are not prepared to spend less than £1 million on getting a train from Grimsby to London. That is an absurd way of running the country. Every time we try to talk about this issue, we are fobbed off with excuses. We are told that the platform at Market Rasen is too short. Well, we have all been on trains when we are told to go to the front three or four carriages, and we can get off perfectly safely. We are told that the platform is not high enough. Well, there is matting that can be put down. We are told that there is no bridge. There has not been a bridge at Market Rasen for 100 years.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) on stressing the importance of small towns and transport links. We have debated a lot the scandal of High Speed 2—£100 billion down the drain. I want to talk about a small town that for 15 years has been asking for a direct train to London, the cost of which would be less than £1 million: 0.001% of the cost of HS2. We have been promised a through train from Cleethorpes and Grimsby, down through Market Rasen and Lincoln, to London, and we have been fobbed off with excuses again and again. Market Rasen may be a small town, but it connects up to Grimsby, which has been represented for virtually the whole of the last half-century by Labour MPs. I do not complain about that. It is a levelling-up town.”
“To use disappearing WhatsApp messages is contrary to what the covid inquiry suggested, and it is quite contrary to transparency. I say to the Paymaster General that these scandals are made much worse by any hint of a cover-up. Everybody knows that a mistake was made, and people are very forgiving of the Prime Minister if he has made a mistake. What they are not forgiving of is some sort of cover-up, where numerous text messages and WhatsApp messages have suddenly vanished.”
“On Monday, I asked a question to the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister about the fact that it is extraordinary that there appeared to be no WhatsApp or text messages from the Prime Minister—that was the information available to us at the time. We now know that there are no text messages from the Prime Minister to Mandelson after a few days after the general election, and the WhatsApp messages have totally disappeared. The answer I got on Monday from the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister was slightly disingenuous, I have to say. He said that Prime Ministers do not operate in this way. Rather like Mr Gladstone, they sit at the Cabinet table and men in frock coats bring them papers. It is complete rubbish. We know that the Prime Minister must have been using WhatsApp all the time.”
“I agree with everything the Home Secretary says. I agree that we should not weaponise this issue, but neither should we tiptoe around it. The truth is that many white people in this country feel that the police are so terrified of being called racist that they either underreact, as in the case of the appalling grooming scandal, or they overreact, as in this case, so there is a role for the Home Secretary now. She needs to summon in top police officers and say, “Things have got to change. We are all equal. Don’t be terrified of what people think about you—just carry out the law as you’re supposed to do as police officers.””
“As far as the House of Commons generally is concerned, this statement is fairly meaningless, because it is impossible to ask questions about hundreds of pages, having had a few minutes to read them. So many general debates are damp squibs, so will the Minister undertake to answer every single question that has been put to him by the time he opens the debate on Wednesday?”
“I see that he is nodding; that is very helpful. In my experience, these scandals are always made much worse by any covering up, so I am sure that the Minister will want to be completely open. I listened to the Opposition spokesman, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), and it is strange that the Prime Minister seems to have so little involvement in this whole affair. I am reminded of the wartime film, “The Man Who Never Was”. Does that sum up this premiership—the man who never was?”
“I do not see the ideological virtue of simply exporting our carbon emissions, which we are doing.”
“From my cottage, I can climb a hill on the Wolds and look across the North sea, and I can see that we are world leaders in offshore wind. That is fair enough, and it is popular, but I am talking about using 16,000 acres of prime agricultural land for solar, with all the profits going to entrepreneurs in London and large landowners.”
“He said: “The UK is recognised globally for its lead in fusion regulation, having set a proportionate approach comparable to industrial processes through the 2023 Energy Act.” So there we are: we have consensual, working-together, cutting-edge technology. We have heard a bit about solar farms. I visited over 30 villages in my constituency during an open churches festival this weekend, including the village of Fillingham. At Fillingham aerodrome, I saw solar panels being built. Nobody seemed to care that there is a brownfield site to hand, measuring 100 or 200 acres, but there is solar planned for 16,000 acres of prime agricultural land around Gainsborough. I heard what was said earlier by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). What we need is a moderate approach.”
“But let me start with a more consensual point, and welcome the Government’s commitment to the nuclear fusion site at West Burton, which is only two miles from the town that I represent. I see that the Minister for Energy is present, and I have talked to him about this. This is fantastic, cutting-edge technology. Only this morning, I received a letter from the West Burton chief executive, who said “At the heart of STEP FUSION is a world-leading technical effort.” Those people who say that Britain is broken should look at the thousands of jobs we are creating, and the millions of pounds-worth of investment. The chief executive thanked us.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), who speaks with great authority and talks a lot of good sense. I have to say to Labour Members that a change of Prime Minister will solve nothing. We tried that four times, and it did us no good at all. This King’s Speech should have been an opportunity for fundamental reform, but do the Government have the courage to do that? We Conservative Members suspect that they do not. For too many years, we have concentrated on wealth redistribution, rather than wealth creation, and we are getting poorer and poorer, and less and less able to do the things in the public sector that we want to do.”
“Let us get the workers back into operation, get our blast furnaces moving, and not be over-worried about ideologies. We want to create virgin steel.”
“Of course, getting £100,000 a year for owning 100 acres is a wonderful incentive, but is it possible to grow those crops? We are the breadbasket of England. Is it possible to grow wheat and barley where there are solar panels? But I do not want to go on about it; we know the arguments now. As for nationalising British Steel, we do not take an ideological view. Hundreds of my constituents work in British Steel. Greg Clark ran it for nine months, and paid all the wages. I personally am neither for nor opposed to it. However, just nationalising British Steel will not make a difference when we have the highest energy costs in Europe. That is the real problem, and it is the problem that the Government need to address. Let us not get bogged down in the arguments about whether to nationalise. Let us find a private sector buyer.”
“My hon. Friend is very well respected in his area for the fantastic amount of work that he has done in Scunthorpe. He is constantly holding the Government to account, and indeed working with the Government. We have to do this together to protect our steelmaking capacity, for the sake of our industrial wealth. I agree—we all agree—that the energy independence Bill provides a framework for transitioning the UK energy market away from fossil fuels and towards alternative forms of energy. We have no problem with that; it is sensible in the context of nuclear energy. However, the ideological pursuit of renewables is doing harm, and is at odds with achieving energy security when we have our own fossil-fuel resources in the North sea. It is not a zero-sum game.”
“By then, there will be 20% to 25% fewer taxpaying workers—our children and our grandchildren—per pensioner in Britain. Of course we have to care for old people, particularly old people in poverty, and divert resources to them, but we must remember the younger people as well. This is entirely unsustainable. Yes, we want to keep a triple lock, but not the triple lock. We want it to be the average of the three indices, so that the amount does not go up exponentially every year. The Government should do the right thing by the nation, and bring in a measure to that effect. They should make our finances affordable, and those on my party’s Front Bench should not oppose them. We should govern in the national interest. We should make our finances sustainable, and then we really can help the people who are most in need.”
“Debt is already 100% of GDP, and within 50 years, because of the triple lock and other benefit increases, it will be 170%. Of course the old vote, but the old have children and grandchildren, and we have a responsibility to younger people in our country. The Government know that the present system is unsustainable. While the average increase in the triple lock measures over the past 13 years—and we brought that in; it was supposed to be a temporary measure, but no party has the courage to change it—has been about 40%, pensions have gone up by over 60%. That is nearly £20 billion of annual additional costs so far, and that will get bigger every year and more unaffordable. The gap is likely to grow to £120 billion, if not more, by 2050, exacerbating the economic crisis. Whoever becomes Prime Minister will have to cope with that.”
“No, I must make some progress. I do apologise. I should have thought that we could have a compromise on this. We could have a policy that is sensible, gradually moving away from fossil fuels and gradually becoming a more green-energy economy, but we should not simply export our emissions and set arbitrary dates. As this is a debate on the King’s Speech, I hope you will you forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I mention another subject in the short time available to me. When you get to my age, you can say unpopular things; I have not got much longer anyway. [Hon. Members: “Aah!”] I have two minutes! The problem with our country is that we are governing by focus group. What do focus groups want? They want less tax and, of course, better public services.”