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?”
The complete record
Every one of 6,092 lines we hold for Sir Edward Leigh, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 18 of 122.
“My strong advice to the Government, for whatever it is worth, is: let everything hang out and just co-operate with the inquiry; let it have what it wants and let us get to the truth.”
“A vast study published today by Johns Hopkins University and widely reported in the press has found that the draconian methods used in lockdowns by various countries including our own had negligible effects on mortality and might have saved only 1,700 lives. This inquiry is therefore probably the most important public inquiry that we have had in recent years. It is absolutely essential for our credibility that everything is given to the inquiry, and there can be no perception that anything is being hidden. The Minister talks about personal behaviour as being irrelevant, but the then Prime Minister lost his job not because of the decisions he took on lockdowns but because of his alleged personal behaviour.”
“Some people in the Treasury seem to think that a good way to grow the economy is to fill the country with ever more people, but that is bad for productivity and bad for British workers, who are being undercut by mass migration from all over the world. Why is it that under the points-based system we allow into the country people earning only £26,000 a year, while the median UK salary is £33,000? Is not an obvious solution to insist that everybody who comes in is skilled and earns the median UK salary, as then we can boost productivity and get British people back to work?”
“I congratulate my right hon. Friend on promoting more choice than in the socialist republic of Wales, which is a pretty low bar, but can we go further and promote real choice by adopting two previous Conservative policies? Both would be wildly popular. The first is a patient passport, by which a patient could get a free operation on the NHS, or take the same cost to a private or charitable hospital, which would promote choice and accountability. The second is tax relief for private health insurance, which is a matter for the Chancellor, but the Secretary of State could have a quiet word with him.”
“This measure is wholly to be welcomed, but the fact is that legal migration is out of control and the British people did not vote for Brexit to replace mass migration from Europe with mass migration from the rest of the world. May I therefore press the Minister on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) that we will never deal with legal migration until we solve the labour problem? Home-grown employers in Britain are paying too low wages and trying to attract people from all over the world. Why do we not raise the threshold so that those who want to come here and get a job need to earn average earnings?”
“What is wrong with this country? We used to have proper scandals about sex or money, or about Prime Ministers invading Iraq on dodgy evidence where hundreds of thousands of people died. Apparently this is a scandal, but all this moral outrage about a Minister who asked her private office about something and took their advice is ludicrous. What has happened to the Osmotherly rules? We all know what this is all about: the Opposition are attacking a good Home Secretary, who is trying to attack the real scandal of mass immigration to this country. Give her support!”
“One of the justifications for using former military bases rather than hotels was that they would be a deterrent. We now learn from the Home Office that RAF Scampton will not take people from hotels, but that it might be a detention centre or it might take migrants from Manston. The whole policy is in chaos. Is that why the Home Secretary’s own civil servant, on 6 February, recommended to her that the Home Office should agree to stop work on proposals for RAF Scampton and agree that it should immediately notify the local authority that it was no longer developing proposals for the site? Why has the Home Secretary ignored her own civil servants?”
“The Prime Minister rightly mentioned illegal migration—it would be good to hear what the G7 is proposing to deal with it, particularly in terms of co-operation by our French allies—but the truth is that legal migration dwarfs anything from illegal migration. In the last 20 years, the population of the UK has increased by 8 million, of which 7 million is legal migrants. What will he do to back up the Home Office in making serious efforts to stop legal migration, which is changing the country forever, which is totally unsustainable and which we have promised to deal with again and again?”
“It emerged last week in court that apparently the Home Secretary was advised by her own civil servants that this was a bad idea and not to go ahead with it. How can we progress this further?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you have received notification from the Government that they wish to issue a statement to celebrate today’s 80th anniversary of the Dambusters raid from RAF Scampton on 16 May 1943? Eighty years ago, those brave men were preparing to perform what many military historians consider one of the greatest air feats of the entire war, and half of them lost their lives. If the Government were to give that statement, could they enlighten the House on why they are risking a fantastic £300 million investment in RAF Scampton to celebrate the heritage of the Dambusters and the Red Arrows by putting a migrant camp near the entrance, taking 15% of the entire area of several hundred acres, putting at risk 100 buildings and, above all, putting at risk our national heritage?”
“The difficulties for people living in Grimsby and Cleethorpes in accessing London via Doncaster on TransPennine surely underlines, does it not, the importance of the campaign led by me and my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) to get a new service run by London North Eastern Railway direct to London from Grimsby and Cleethorpes through Market Rasen in my constituency and Lincoln? That is a much better route. We are delighted with the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) —the Secretary of State’s excellent rail Minister—who has been listening to us, but we want his boss to give him full support and get that service, not least because rural people demand a better service.”
“Ever since being the Post Office Minister years ago, I have been very worried about the whole governance of the Post Office. I think, following this urgent question, that we need absolutely radical reform. Here we have a badly run nationalised industry, with people paying themselves huge salaries and bonuses, but all the work is done by the 11,000 sub-postmasters. They have been treated absolutely appallingly, and not just in the Horizon scandal but in their working conditions, pay and everything else. I have been arguing recently, in consultation with sub-postmasters and their leaders, that we should consider mutualisation. We should pass control of this body to the people on the frontline who do all the work. I hope the Minister will not dismiss that idea.”
“I thank all Members who have taken part in the debate. Many years ago, I led a debate in Westminster Hall on the plight of the Karen people. I think that we have had a very good debate. These debates do make a difference. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered human rights in Myanmar.”
“Order. This is only a half-hour debate. It is not normal to have many interventions in this sort of debate. The Back Bencher produces his or her argument and the Minister replies.”
“T2. Has the Department had words with the Ministry of Defence about the siting of 2,000 illegal migrants on an RAF base? I ask that question because not 200 yards from where those illegal migrants are to be housed are a nursery school and a primary school, set in a community of 1,000 people in the former married quarters. Should not Ofsted and the Department be taking an interest in this matter, in the context of child protection?”
“My hon. Friend is to be commended for bringing forward this debate, and I support everything he says. This building, the bastion of democracy, is full of Christian iconography, particularly at the other end near the House of Lords—perhaps they are closer to God than we are. I want to ask my hon. Friend one question. There will inevitably be pressure for us to disestablish the Church of England. I am not an Anglican, but the fact that we have an established Church is an important symbol of our commitment to Christianity. Will my hon. Friend say a word about the importance of keeping the established Church established?”
“I echo my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) is making a very moving and beautifully written speech, which we never normally hear in this place. I think that a lot of politicians who may have religious belief are frightened of talking about it because they think that they will put themselves on a pedestal and that, when inevitably they fail—or, if the worst comes to the worst, there is some scandal—they will be doubly denounced. However, I am not sure that that is a good reason for not talking up about one’s faith. In talking about his faith, my hon. Friend admits that he constantly fails—that he is a sinner and all those sorts of things—so, even if he does fail in the future, that is absolutely no reason for not talking about his faith publicly.”
“My hon. Friend was talking about the way that Church leaders speak up. I remember asking for a meeting of MPs with the Bishop of Lincoln, and at the top of a long list of subjects he wanted to talk to us about was the widening of the A15. I just wonder whether our Churches—whether we are talking about Catholics or bishops—should concentrate more on talking about spirituality. Although Christians might be in a minority in this country, people of faith are still in a very big majority—that includes Muslims, Hindus and many others. Does my hon. Friend agree that we want to hear more from our bishops about the deep value and well of spirituality, in addition to all the good causes they talk about, which are perfectly valuable in themselves?”
“How will he protect the safety of 1,000 people living right next door to 1,500 migrants and a primary school? He cannot guarantee anything. Will he work with West Lindsey and Lincolnshire now to try to find an alternative site? We are prepared to do it, but we do not want to lose £300 million of regeneration. Lincolnshire will fight and Lincolnshire will be proved right.”
“Although the Minister did not mention RAF Scampton by name, we assume that that is the base in Lincolnshire to which he is referring. I can inform him that the moment that this is confirmed, the local authority of West Lindsey will issue an immediate judicial review and injunction against this thoroughly bad decision, which is based not on good governance, but on the politics of trying to do something. How can he guarantee that we will not lose £300 million-worth of regeneration, already agreed and signed, between West Lindsey and Scampton Holdings? How will he preserve the listed buildings and the heritage centre? How will he preserve the heritage of the Dambusters and of the Red Arrows? How can he guarantee that there is no contamination from the fuel bay of the Red Arrows?”
“I wrote to the Minister on 14 March, so he will have received the letter by now. I do not expect him to reply immediately to my question, but will he at least have an open mind about trying to take us forward and preserve the wonderful world of our sub-postmasters, particularly in rural England?”
“This is a terrible scandal, and Post Office Ltd is not fit for purpose. Thirty years ago, when I was a Post Office Minister, I tried to privatise this body, and it is still in a mess. Only last week, I had a meeting with sub-postmasters led by David Ward, one of my excellent local sub-postmasters, and they are calling for something good to come out of this scandal—namely, that we pass control directly to sub-postmasters, for instance through mutualisation. We have the chief executive of Post Office Ltd paying himself a salary five times more than the Prime Minister, with a bonus of £400,000 a year on top of that. We have banking remuneration to Post Office Ltd coming to £205 million, of which only 27% went to sub-postmasters. We have 11,000 sub-postmasters in a state of managed decline, earning virtually the minimum wage.”
“T7. Tomorrow is the 80th anniversary of the formation of the Dambusters 617 squadron at RAF Scampton. Will the Home Secretary have a conversation with her Minister for Immigration about the meeting I had this morning with him, West Lindsey District Council and Scampton Holdings, in which the Minister was told in terms that if the Home Secretary goes ahead with her plan for 1,500 migrants to be placed there, it will scupper the long-term retention of the runway and the £300 million-worth of investment by Scampton Holdings?”
“A Conservative Government believe in choice, and that is what I want to impress on the Government.”
“The marriage tax allowance was introduced by Nigel Lawson. It was allowed to wither on the vine, and was then reintroduced by George Osborne in 2015, but it is not well-advertised or taken up. It is fairly derisory, and amounts to only about £1,700. If a couple earns £70,000, they are £7,000 worse off as far as the taxman is concerned if the mother stays at home looking after a child and the husband goes to work. The marriage tax allowance is not just for married couples but for couples in a civil partnership. The Government should be neutral about the fact that, often, it is in the interests of the child and the mother, where the mother wants to do so, for her to be allowed by the tax regime to stay at home and not to be forced by the tax regime or by her personal circumstances to go out and work.”
“We have to be prepared and have the political courage to learn from countries such as Australia, France and New Zealand, which have a mix of public and private provision that ensures that they have what are frankly much better health services because they are unleashing people’s enthusiasm to invest in their health. The previous Conservative Government gave tax relief for private health insurance, and we should not dismiss that. I want to make one more point. Of course we all welcome the extra provision for childcare, but it is a massive extension of the state. It is desirable in itself—I am entirely in favour of mothers who want to work being allowed and encouraged to do so even when their babies are as young as nine months—but we must also support mothers who want to stay at home.”
“One of the ways in which we will eventually make the public sector work better is through more of a sense of self-reliance. I do not want to make further points about the triple lock, because I will get into trouble if I criticise it in any shape or form—it is very politically difficult—but the Government must have a strategy to deal with it. The ideas developed by Peter Lilley when he was Secretary of State are exciting and interesting. We cannot just go on having a national health service that consumes an ever larger proportion of national income but is riddled with waste and incompetence and delivers worse and worse outcomes.”
“I really encourage Ministers on the Front Bench to redouble their efforts to ensure that there is efficiency and economy in our public services; I speak as a former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. There is still grotesque waste throughout the public sector. I am now on the sponsor board of the restoration and renewal programme: hundreds of millions of pounds have been wasted on doing nothing to renovate the building where we are now—years wasted! It is a small point, but I read in the newspapers that we are already spending about £100 million on the covid inquiry, hiring hundreds of lawyers. Right through the public sector, we rely on the Chief Secretary of the Treasury to ensure that we get good value for money.”
“This has nothing to do with the fact that they are migrants or not migrants; it is about the fact that we cannot develop the site, which is relatively developed now, if it is held by the Home Office for two years. Levelling up is at the heart of this Budget. We must have co-ordinated government—co-ordination between the Home Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. I want to make a more general point. Thatcherites such as myself are always banging on about the need for tax cuts. There is no point in our doing that if we are not controlling public spending. Of course I regret that corporation tax is going up, but I recognise that the public finances are in a state of crisis.”
“We are grateful to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities for giving that to Gainsborough South West ward—the 27th most deprived ward in the entire country. However, there is no point one hand of the Government giving us £10 million in levelling up if the other hand is potentially taking £300 million of investment away from my constituency. As I mentioned in Home Office questions today, we have developed a wonderful deal for RAF Scampton—home of the Dambusters and the Red Arrows—creating heritage, a spaceport, a hotel and industry. The whole thing is at risk because the Home Office is now marching in and threatening to put 1,500 migrants there.”
“I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith) in praising the Government for bringing a nuclear fusion site to West Burton. As I have already said, it is not 5 miles from Gainsborough—indeed, Gainsborough is the closest town. I very much hope that the Minister will support my campaign to rename the site the “Gainsborough West Burton” site. Gainsborough was at the heart of the industrial revolution in the 19th century, bringing in new products. This site is a chance for us to go with the flow through a brand new technology. We want to create apprenticeships and to involve the whole region. I really want to make that clear. Gainsborough is an industrial town with traditionally high levels of employment. I am delighted that the Government have given us £10 million in levelling-up funds.”
“T5. The Government have announced that they are to create a wonderful new nuclear fusion centre at West Burton. This is the technology of the future, and West Burton is not five miles from the town of Gainsborough, so will the Government rename the research centre West Burton Gainsborough to celebrate our wonderful town?”
“A responsible Opposition must have a plan. We all agree that we have to stop these boats, but the Opposition’s plan appears to be to process asylum applications even more quickly, so that more people will come; to process them in France, where an unlimited number will want to come; or to have this ridiculous idea of a cross-border police force. Everybody knows that on average, people get caught once on the beaches by the French police, they are not detained and they come back the very next night—they all get there. The right hon. Lady knows perfectly well that the only way that we are going to stop these boats is the Government plan: to detain them and deport them to Rwanda.”
“Unless we pass this Bill, unless we have the courage to try to create an asylum system that brings into this country the real asylum seekers such as Maira Shahbaz, the people who have been raped or forced into marriages, we will have a never-ending stream of young men paying criminal gangs to get into our country.”
“However, in an interview with BBC Radio Lincolnshire, Peter Hewitt of Scampton Holdings said that his development would be “totally scuppered”, that the move would be “rather inconsistent with running an airfield and airside operations”, and that, if the housing plans went ahead, 40 acres out of the 130 acres earmarked for redevelopment would be taken up. That is just one example of what is happening in our country. The system is broken. We have to do something about it, and international experience proves, whether in Greece or Australia, that the only two policies that work are offshoring or pushback. Nothing else works.”
“But the Home Office is so desperate, because every single hotel is filled up, that it has now marched into my constituency and said that it wants to put 1,500 asylum seekers there. Of course we oppose that. Nobody else in this Chamber cares a damn about what happens in Gainsborough, but I am the local champion; I care about my people and I care about £300 million-worth of investment. I am asking for an assurance from the Home Office that, if the asylum seekers do come in, they will not put at risk that wonderful development.”
“There is no limit to how many people want to come. We could process asylum applications even more quickly, and that would produce even more applications. We could have more gendarmes based on the beach in France and, as I said earlier, people will try the first night, and the second night they will make it. We have to do something, otherwise they are coming to every hotel. Every single hotel in the country is rapidly being filled up. For two years, I and my local council of West Lindsey have been producing a fantastic plan to try to get redevelopment of former RAF Scampton. We will get £300 million-worth of investment. It is the home of the Dambusters and the Red Arrows; we will have a heritage centre.”
“I have been trying for two years to get a young girl, Maira Shahbaz, into this country. Aged 14, she was raped and abducted and she is now hiding in a room after being forced into marriage. I am told that I cannot get her in because the whole system is under such pressure, so I am all in favour of safe and legal routes. However, the fact is that such is the misery in the world that there is no limit to the number of fit, able young men who want to come over here from Iraq, Eritrea and Syria. I do not blame them; I would do the same. We speak English, President Macron has a point that we have no identity cards—maybe we should have identity cards—and they can get jobs here. We could open a safe and legal processing centre in Lille and it would be overwhelmed: 1,000 would apply today and 10,000 tomorrow.”
“Does the Secretary of State agree that the coronation is not only a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our culture and history—in Lincolnshire, for instance, we hope that the King’s Champion from Scrivelsby will go on having a role, as he has done for 1,000 years—but an opportunity to bring in new people who have never been before. Will she encourage groups representing the young, in particular, to be represented?”
“As the father of three young women, like any parent I worry about their safety. Society seems to have become harder, and old-fashioned values of respect towards women seem to be vanishing in many parts of our society, even in the police. What practical efforts can the Government make to make young women feel safe in the streets, particularly in areas of our great cities?”
“Although it has been all over the press this morning, West Lindsey District Council has still not been officially informed that the Home Office is planning to place migrants at former Royal Air Force Scampton. We announced just yesterday, after two years of work, a £300 million scheme to have the best ever handover of a Ministry of Defence base—the Home of the Dambusters: business, tourism and heritage. Will the Home Secretary assure me that if she overrides our objections and places migrants there, she will work closely with me and the council to ensure that that is strictly temporary and in no way upsets the best deal that has ever come to north Lincolnshire?”
“It is worth looking at what amendment (a) states. It states: “No offence is committed under subsection (1) by a person engaged in consensual communication or in silent prayer”. For the avoidance of doubt, amendment (a) goes on to say that nothing in it should allow people to be harassed or their decision to be changed, such as kneeling down and praying right in front of somebody’s face, or blocking the pavement, or indulging in any kind of harassing.”
“I believe—this is how I will conclude; I think that this is the shortest speech—that this is an entirely worthwhile, harmless, moderate amendment, and I hope that Members will support it.”
“In the past few days she was told by council officers in Bournemouth that she would be fined simply for holding up a sign saying, “Here to talk if you want” inside a buffer zone. She was not holding up a sign with any graphic images, and she was not trying to intimidate anybody; she was simply saying, “Please, if you want to talk, I am here if you want any advice. This is a very difficult day for you.” For that she was stopped by the police. In other words, that lady was told that she could not offer other women who might, in some circumstances, be coerced into attending an abortion clinic, or who felt that they lacked the resources to complete a pregnancy, the opportunity to talk if they wanted to do so. We must not criminalise such peaceful activity. Where are we going? Where will this stop?”
“Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) are determined to stop anybody indulging in any kind of protest, if it could be deemed to be some sort of protest, even if it is entirely silent. The whole point of the Public Order Bill, as I understand it—this is why I support it—is that it does not outlaw peaceful protest. What the Government are addressing is people making that protest who are deliberately trying to obstruct the rights of other citizens by blocking roads or whatever. That is the point of the Bill. It has now been hijacked by people who want to stop completely silent peaceful protest. The case of Livia Tossici-Bolt has not yet been mentioned.”
“I am not harassing anybody, but everybody in this Chamber in a sense is being forced to listen to me, and I have spent 39 years no doubt irritating people and even boring them. They cannot shut their ears, but this lady was not actually saying anything, and the policeman had to go up to her and ask what she was doing. If we are going to have a law—a criminal law—it has to be capable of being effective. The reason George Orwell’s novel “1984” resonates so much with all of us is that the state was trying to regulate not just people’s actions but what goes on in their minds. That is why, ever since that novel was written, people have felt that probably the most advanced form of totalitarianism is one where the state is trying to regulate not simply people’s behaviour, but their minds. What the debate is about is that those who oppose my hon.”
“I am not going to give way to my hon. Friend, who has intervened many times already. I have been asked to speak very briefly. It is worth looking at what this amendment is, and it is worth considering the question put by the police officer to the lady. The police officer asked her, “Are you praying?” In other words, there was nothing she was obviously doing that was harassment or in any way objectionable. The police officer had to actually go into her mind—she was just standing there; I do not think it is even clear that she was kneeling—and that is surely what is dangerous about the measure. In speaking to this Chamber, I am going far beyond what that lady was doing. Of course I am not indulging in any objectionable behaviour by expressing my thoughts.”
“The constituency of Gainsborough is 600 square miles, and it takes half an hour to get anywhere even when travelling at the speed limit. What is the Government plan to help rural areas when electric vehicles become mandatory for sale in 2030?”
“The point I have been trying to make in recent months is that we should try to learn from the experience of Europe, where they have very effective social insurance systems and much more effective outcomes, so when the hon. Gentleman says he has a plan, I think we would all like to know what the plan is. Is it radical reform, or is it just more and more taxpayers’ money thrown into the NHS?”
“I am not sure that our opinion on mainland Britain is vital in all this. It is a pretty obvious point, but it all depends on our colleagues in the DUP, because unless this exercise gets Stormont up and running, it is pretty futile—indeed, it might be downright dangerous. When the Prime Minister provides space for the DUP in the next few weeks, will he undertake that he will not just listen to their concerns, but if there is something that can get this over the line—a further clarification or a change—he will take that back to the Commission? I can assure him that many of his colleagues on the Government Benches are watching the DUP very carefully, and we will go where they go.”