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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“That is what Mrs Thatcher did; I worked for her when she was Leader of the Opposition in the 1970s. We need a whole new intellectual drive. In opposition, Keith Joseph and the Institute of Economic Affairs created a new vibrant Conservative philosophy for how we could solve the deep-seated problems in this country. The Budget could have been such an opportunity, but I am afraid it reflects the old tax and spend instincts of the Labour party. I agree with the Labour party that housing is a great failure of our state. Of course we need a massive house building drive, or more appropriately a flat building campaign. The easy way out is to take good agricultural land and greenbelt land, particularly around London. Instead, we need to incentivise building in cities and on brownfield sites. I fear I have wearied the House, so I will stop now.”
“Well, if the hon. Lady thinks that, I wish her luck, but I fear that we are just going to gradually paper over the cracks—and I will criticise my own side in this regard. For 14 years, Ministers went along with the liberal consensus, talking about “our NHS”, papering over the cracks with more and more money, employing more and more nurses and doctors, and getting worse and worse outcomes. Meanwhile, productivity nosedived and mass immigration reached unimaginable heights to keep public services going. We have to be honest, as we are now in opposition. I welcome the fact that one of our leadership candidates is saying that we have to start from first principles. That is what I am trying to do: start from first principles on how to recreate the British state.”
“With so much good agricultural land now covered by solar panels, how will the Government incentivise builders to build on brownfield rather than good agricultural land, thus ensuring regeneration rather than imperilling food security?”
“Order. To get everybody in, we will start with an informal time limit, so please do not speak for more than five minutes. Keep an eye on the clock, please.”
“It has been a pleasure to chair this debate. I am only sorry that no one mentioned the best racecourse in the country—Market Rasen. Question put and agreed to . Resolved , That this House has considered Government support for the horseracing industry.”
“I have served for several years on the programme boards for restoration and renewal. The existential threat to this building is fire. I have raised on several occasions, as I know others have, the importance of installing a water mist system, installing more fire doors and making sure that they all shut. This is such an important issue. I do not demand an immediate answer, but will the Leader of the House try to persuade the authorities that rather than having endless debates on whether to decant, we need to protect this building with a water mist system? The modern systems are designed so that they will not even damage paintings, but they could save the building.”
“Q8. Will the Government please continue to work closely with me and West Lindsey district council to ensure that RAF Scampton is sold off in a timely fashion at a fair price, so that we secure the future of the runway, the spaceport and the heritage centre, rather than maximise value and cover it with housing?”
“If it is possible legally to deport illegal migrants from Diego Garcia to St Helena, is there any legal reason why we cannot deport illegal migrants landing on these shores to St Helena or any other overseas territory? Is it, as a former Home Secretary told me recently, because after five years they would acquire rights to British citizenship?”
“My hon. Friend mentioned the 302 mentions of uncertainty. It is hard to know how that can foster growth. Let us be honest: businesses are already more highly taxed and regulated than ever before. We all know the reason—the pandemic— and we have to take responsibility for that. Will he assure me that, as a party, we will use this period of opposition to once again proclaim our values as a low-tax, deregulated economy? Otherwise, how will we foster growth in an increasingly competitive world? If we tax businesses more, we simply lay the foundation of a future Labour Government.”
“There are countless millions of free childminders available. The love between a grandparent and a grandchild is the purest love: love without responsibility. I declare a personal interest. Will the Minister assure me that he will incentivise grandparents to look after their grandchildren, and that nothing in the tax or benefits system will discriminate against mothers who want to look after their children full time? Will he build on the Conservatives’ scheme of transferrable allowances?”
“With two thirds of people having to wait more than four hours at Lincoln County hospital’s A&E department and with horror stories from my constituents of people waiting up to 24 hours, does the Minister understand that if we are to save the NHS and give people the timely appointments they need, we must unleash the full power of the private sector?”
“The trouble with this sort of partial reform is that it opens other issues. Why does the Church of England have a monopoly on places in the House of Lords? I am all in favour of the established Church, and of letting it have perhaps 12 bishops, but why can we not share the other places between this country’s other Christian denominations and non-Christian faiths? Do they not deserve a voice?”
“T6. In the run-up to the second world war, during an era of increasing international tensions, the Government opened up many new RAF airfields, in what was called the expansion programme. One of those airfields was RAF Scampton. Now that we are no longer to have illegal migrants there, this matter is sitting in the Home Office’s in-tray: will the MOD work with the Home Office to ensure that we keep the runway open for future use? It is one of the best, longest runways in Europe. Who knows—RAF Scampton might be not just part of the history of the RAF, with the Dambusters and the Red Arrows, but part of the future of the RAF and save us once again.”
“The previous Minister promised me and my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) that he had instructed LNER and Network Rail to ensure that we get our through train from Grimsby to London. Will the Minister confirm that she will continue those firm instructions and, above all, ensure that this train stops? If it does not stop in Market Rasen, I am going to lie down on the line and stop it that way.”
“I do not want to get into the debate for and against solar farms, but even those in favour of them should surely agree that we should not have a concentration of them—10,000 acres of them—around one town, namely Gainsborough. Should the Secretary of State not consider such matters in the round, and take all the applications together?”
“There are many different opinions on policy in the middle east, but does the Prime Minister agree that what must surely unite everyone in this House is our profound detestation of antisemitism in all its shapes and forces, as well as our profound love for the Jewish people on their day of suffering, especially as many of those who were murdered at the music festival and in the kibbutz were actively working for peace? Will he reflect that there are still many people—many Jewish and Arab people—who want a moderate solution, and that we should give them our support?”
“I do not know how many people in the Chamber have visited these islands, but I went there with the Defence Committee 38 years ago. It was crucial in our whole effort in the cold war against the Soviet Union. We never appeased once in that cold war, and we won it. The question I want to ask—it is a serious question—is this: given that Mauritius has a close relationship with China, and given that we cannot trust a single word the Chinese say with our experience on Hong Kong, and given that they are militarising islands all over the Pacific, are we absolutely sure that sometime in the future the Chinese will not exert pressure on the Mauritian Government to have a base on these islands?”
“I greatly respect the Secretary of State, and, as an older person who relies on the NHS, I support his radical zeal. I repeat what he said in his statement: cancer is more likely to be a death sentence for NHS patients than for patients in other countries. We have had this conversation previously, but can he at least look at the health systems in other countries, particularly those in the Netherlands, Australia, France and Germany? Those countries, which have wonderful health systems protecting the vulnerable, use a mixture of social insurance and public and private funds to maximise inputs into their health services.”
“We should unite around a sensible package that rewards pensioners for their hard work, but does not just indulge in a political gesture.”
“So for God’s sake, let us have a serious debate, let us try to unite on this issue and let us not keep taking away benefits from people just above the pension credit limit. Of course, there are many pensioners who are entitled to pension credit who, for all sorts of reasons, will never claim it. They are suffering, so they will be even worse off. There is another point to be made. The Government will argue that the total package will be worth more after the increase in the triple lock next year, but actually a pensioner who drew their pension before 2016, by the time they have had this cut, will probably be even worse off. The first cut in the state pension for years! This is not acceptable. This is not the right way to go about things.”
“This is about a punishment beating. The New Labour Government decided they had to make their case that the public finances were in a dire state and that there was this— [ Interruption. ] Hang on—there was this £22 billion black hole. We spend £1,200 billion every year. The £22 billion so-called black hole is a mere accounting device. The Labour Government are trying to make the political point that the Conservative party ran the country into the ground, so we have to punish the pensioners. It is absolute and complete rubbish. What those we represent cannot understand—the people who worked hard all of their life, who have done their bit for the country and whose total package is perhaps £13,000 or £14,000 a year—is that this so-called saving of public money is actually going to go to the train drivers, who earn £70,000 a year.”
“But what about the people—these are the people I feel so strongly about—who have worked hard all their life, have served their country, receive a very small occupational pension, do not receive pension credit and are looking after every penny, and suddenly, because they do not and cannot receive pension credit because they have a very small occupational pension, their winter fuel allowance is taken away? That will make a real difference to them, so we really have to consider them, and have a serious debate about how we are going to protect those people. May I make one suggestion to the Government? The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier) alluded to the fact that there should have been a serious debate about tapering, or something similar. I will tell the House what this is all about.”
“However, that is not the debate we are having. We are debating the action of a Government who have not just gone against a manifesto commitment—there was no manifesto commitment to do this—but actually gave a specific promise that they would not do it. This is surely a question of public trust. They gave an absolute guarantee and I think that is why people are so upset. I know that some people will say, and here I declare an interest: why should somebody like me receive the winter fuel allowance? All right, let us have a serious debate about that.”
“If I can reach out to the Labour party for a moment, there is a case for having a serious debate about the total package that we give to pensioners. We could have done that in a sensible way—I have raised it myself, having questioned some aspects of the triple lock a couple of years ago. It is a very difficult debate, but I understand that the total package paid to pensioners as a proportion of gross national product must not keep increasing every year, because that is the way ultimately to bankrupt the country. We need to have a social contract between older people like myself and younger people, particularly when it comes to house building. I understand all that. That is the debate we should have been having today, and we could have combined as a House to have that debate and protect the public finances.”
“It seems to me that if you are attacked by a demented bear, you either run away or hit him so hard that he runs away, but the west’s policy on Ukraine appears to be to wound and not win. In that context, will the Government make an unequivocal public statement that Ukraine should be allowed to use Storm Shadow and, more importantly, the US-made army tactical missile system? Then we might actually win this war.”
“Order. The convention is that during maiden speeches, everybody keeps very quiet. Whatever you think of what is being said, for a maiden speech, keep quiet.”
“Order. I apologise to any Back Benchers who have not been able to get in, but I am afraid we now have to move to the wind-ups, and I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.”
“Order. We have a lot of speakers to get through, including some maiden speakers, so I urge Front Benchers to make shorter speeches and take fewer interventions. Otherwise, we are not going to get through these maiden speakers.”
“Order. Because we are trying to get in as many Members as possible, I shall have to impose a seven-minute time limit on all Back-Bench speakers. I urge maiden speakers, who will not have a formal time limit imposed on them, to stick to that sort of limit. Obviously, the time limit will not apply to the Liberal Democrat spokesman, but I know that she will try to be brief.”
“Order. We are slightly running out of time now, so I am going to ensure that our two remaining maiden speakers get in. There will obviously be no time limit on them, but I urge them to think of other colleagues. I will try to get in as many people as possible, but I am afraid we are slightly running out of time because there have been some quite long speeches. I call Martin McCluskey to make his maiden speech.”
“I intend to call the wind-ups shortly after 4.30 pm, so there should be some very short speeches now to try to get everybody in. Remember, the short speeches are the best—the Gettysburg address was only four minutes. Richard Burgon, I know, will set an example.”
“Order. We still have 25 Members who wish to speak, so after the next speaker, Sir Julian Lewis, I am afraid I must impose a time limit of seven minutes. This strict time limit will not apply to maiden speeches, but I am sure that those who make them will also want to keep an eye on the clock and remember the courtesies of the House. If we do not impose this time limit now, and if people do not keep to it, not everybody will get to speak in this debate.”
“To be fair, some are more equal than others, but you, Mr Speaker-Elect, will defend our right to speak our mind and to hold the Government to account. I pay tribute to my predecessor, Sir Peter Bottomley, who gave such wonderful service to this House. He sent me a lovely little note today. He said, “Have fun, do some good, and make people happy.” You, Mr Speaker-Elect, cannot make all of us happy all the time, but every single day, you try to make most of us happy for most of the time.”
“As the first Back Bencher to speak in this Parliament, let me say that I seem to remember that almost the very first thing you said in your distinguished career as our Speaker, Mr Speaker-Elect—you said it almost before you arrived in the Chair—was that your primary job was to defend us Back Benchers, and I know that you will do that with enormous spirit and diligence. This place is primarily about great events and the Opposition holding the Government to account, but it is also about the right and duty of all us Back Benchers to have our views and our say, even if some of our views are a bit idiosyncratic. We all welcome the fact that we are such a diverse Parliament in every single way, but above all, we are a Parliament of a diversity of views. We are all equal.”
“When my right hon. Friend is promoted to an even bigger job in the Cabinet after the election, will she leave a note on her desk for her successor? Unlike a previous note, it will not say that there is no more money, or anything like that; it will concern restoration and renewal. I am her representative on the programme board. Frankly, for too long we have wasted time on endless sterile debates on whether we should decant. Under her leadership, the programme board and the House of Commons Commission are now promoting the idea of enhanced maintenance around us. Will she confirm that we can get on with that work, and do not need a new Act of Parliament? The real threat to this building is fire. We have a responsibility to future generations. We have to get on with this work now.”
“We could have had a fantastic, beautiful, moving memorial—roughly the same size as the Buxton memorial, or the memorial to the abolition of slavery or to the campaign for women’s votes—eight years ago, if only the Government had not persisted with the crazy idea of an underground learning centre in a totally unsuitable location.”
“From visiting really serious Holocaust museums, as I have done in Washington and Berlin, I know that they are vast spaces. This is a story that takes a huge amount of time and space to explain. The trouble is that the proposed learning centre is really a tiny space, and it simply will not do justice to the horror of what we are talking about.”
“Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster, sums up what I have long been campaigning for. I declare an interest, as a worker here for 41 years. I live about a mile away, as we all do—we all live locally and work here, so we all take an interest.”
“I know that everybody is glued to their mobile phones about the announcement of the general election, but this debate is important, because we are commemorating the greatest crime in history. I thought my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton North (Sir Michael Ellis) spoke movingly about antisemitism, and I start my speech by saying that I agree with every single thing he said. He said it so well. It was a brilliant speech. This Bill is tremendously important, but I want to speak in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) and her amendment 2. Time is short so I cannot expand on the crimes of the Holocaust, but I want to talk about the detail of what we are debating. Amendment 2, tabled by my hon.”
“Where we are sitting is an armed fortress—we cannot go anywhere without seeing policemen with sub-machine guns. This park has always been completely open. There is absolutely no security. Every gate is completely open; there are no security guards and no wardens. On behalf of the local community, I ask the Government to assure the public that this park will remain completely open as it always has done, and that they will be able to wander in and out of this green space.”
“Nothing justifies what Putin has done, but what worries me about all this is what will happen if the most likely outcome materialises: namely, a stalemate. Many people in Europe, such as President Macron and others, will say that we have to start negotiations, so what will our attitude be then?”
“This is a very realistic speech. The trouble with this war, as with Russia’s previous wars, is that early incompetence has now been replaced by a ruthless authoritarian determination to win at any cost by mobilising the entire economy and being utterly impervious to the loss of human life. I put to the hon. Gentleman the same question that I have put to the House: although we may breathe fire and brimstone about how we are determined to win, what is actually happening is stalemate, and we have to work out how the west will navigate itself around a possible peace negotiation with Russia. I am not saying that I want that—it is thoroughly unpalatable and not a very popular thing to say—but we have to be realistic.”
“Given the mismatch in resources between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, and given all the difficulties that the Ukrainian state has been trying to cope with in the management of its economy for many years, with corruption and many other issues, it is extremely unlikely, sadly, that Ukraine can win this war. As I said earlier, this war is following the pattern of earlier wars that Russia has engaged with: early incompetence replaced by an utter determination to win that is completely impervious to the loss of human life.”
“Even under the Soviet Union, Crimea was part of the Russian Federation, and it was only willed to Ukraine by diktat in the 1950s. Not a single Member of Parliament objected to that and the Crimean people were not consulted. I am not in any way defending the Russian position—what they have done is appalling—but from that historical reality, and it is a reality for the Russian state, they are absolutely determined to pursue their objectives, as wrong as they may be. As we have heard, Putin is a tyrant. He has put the entire Russian economy on a war footing. He is apportioning a part of the economy to defence that we have not been spending since the second world war. Although we may want to win the war, we have to be realistic.”
“Nothing I will say in this short speech in any way approves of what President Putin has done—he is an appalling man; a tyrant who has caused massive damage to infrastructure and countless deaths—but we have to be realistic in these debates. We cannot just will what we want. There is a mismatch between our determination, our interest and our will, and those of the Russian state. Let us go back in history. When people in the west discuss Ukraine, they often assume this is a simple case of a large state invading a small country that has always been independent. That is not the view of the Russian state or most people who live in Russia. Ukraine means “borderland”, and for centuries, since Catherine the Great, Ukraine was effectively part of Russia.”
“I am not saying that we should give in or that we should have peace negotiations, but I ask those on the Front Benches to be realistic in this debate.”
“Given the huge mismatch in resources between Russia and Ukraine, and given the fact that America is not prepared to furnish Ukraine with sufficient armaments to ensure that we win, how will we? I am with you all. I am prepared to put our own economy on a war footing. I am even prepared to send our own troops to Ukraine. I am prepared to spend less on all the things I value, such as health, justice and all the rest. But we have to be realistic, and at the moment we are not being realistic. As a result, Europe is trembling in a sort of arthritic way, neither pursuing the war with full vigour, which is how we won the second world war, nor prepared to conduct peace negotiations. The result is a stalemate, which is deeply damaging to our reputation, our economy and everything else. I just pose the question.”
“The most likely outcome is that there will be horror and stalemate, and eventually somebody in Europe—President Macron or that sort of statesman—will then say that we have to conduct peace negotiations. What do we do then? Will we be part of a movement to have peace negotiations? Will we reward Putin for his aggression? Will we accept that there is a stalemate, and therefore Russia is enabled to grab part of Ukraine? What is our attitude? Nobody yet in this debate so far has seriously addressed those questions. All they have said is that we will win this war. Members should look deep down into their hearts. Is there anybody sitting in this Chamber—I mean not what they say publicly, but what they think privately—who actually thinks now that Ukraine will win this war? [Hon. Members: “Yes.”] They say that, but how?”
“All that I am trying to do is inject a note of reality into this debate. We cannot keep having these debates, saying, “We are determined to win this war. We must win this war”, when we are not willing the resources. I therefore ask the House these questions. Are we determined to put our own economy on a war footing? Are we determined to spend less on health, education, justice, and all the other good things in which we believe, in order to win this war? Are we prepared perhaps to put our own troops into Ukraine? Are we prepared for our own young men to die, or are we just prepared for thousands of young Ukrainian men to die and not have a single casualty ourselves? Those are the realistic questions.”
“If we are going to win this war, we have to be prepared to give the resources necessary to do so. The truth is that such is the overwhelming predominance of the American industrial military estate that it could have won the war by now. America could have armed Ukraine to such an extent that it could have won. America could have allowed the Ukrainians to use its weapons to bombard Russian forces within Russia. America does not want Ukraine to humiliate Russia and win this war. America does not want Ukraine to lose the war. America could have won this war by now, as it won the second world war, but apparently it is not prepared to will the resources. We may not agree with that or like it, but that is the reality. We all know the strength of the American economy, and we all know that for months weapons deliveries were delayed.”