Sir Edward Leigh

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

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6,129 held · 6,120 searchable for Sir Edward Leigh. The searchable lines are below in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 2 of 10.

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1. “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?”

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2. “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?”

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3. “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?”

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4. “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.”

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5. “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.”

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6. “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?”

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7. “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?”

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8. “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.”

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9. “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.”

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10. “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.”

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11. “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.”

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12. “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.”

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13. “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.”

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14. “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.”

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15. “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.””

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16. “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?”

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17. “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?”

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18. “I do not see the ideological virtue of simply exporting our carbon emissions, which we are doing.”

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19. “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.”

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20. “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.”

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21. “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.”

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22. “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.”

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23. “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.”

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24. “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.”

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25. “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.”

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26. “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.”

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27. “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.”

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28. “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.”

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29. “The Secretary of State claims that he is leading a moral crusade, but he is simply exporting emissions. It is like saying, “Lord, I will not sin, but I am quite happy for people to sin on my behalf.””

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30. “Does the Chancellor agree that, post Brexit, Government Departments have much more freedom to buy British? Under the Procurement Act 2023, they can ignore EU directives. Will the Chancellor walk with us into the broad, sunlit uplands of post-Brexit Britain and use the freedoms that we obtained for this country?”

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31. “Let us have an impartial Committee, let us listen to the testimony, and let the Committee and the House of Commons make up their own mind on the truth.”

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32. “The most important thing in this place—we may say wrong things, we may say silly things, we may be party political—is that we must tell the truth. That is all that matters. Nothing else matters in this Parliament. I am prepared to accept that the Prime Minister, for whatever reason, made this appointment. I am prepared to accept that in his heart of hearts, when he has been standing at that Dispatch Box, he has been telling the truth. Why can we not just have the Privileges Committee—not the Foreign Affairs Committee, which is deciding great issues of foreign affairs—look at that narrow issue? Why can we not just not have a vote at all, as we did on the previous occasion with Boris Johnson? Just do not have a vote, let us all express our point of view and let it go through.”

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33. “The hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood) put it so well: if there is nothing to hide, why worry? These scandals are such a war of words that we almost lose track of what was originally true. It is not the original scandal—if there is indeed a scandal—that is at fault; it is the cover-up or the perceived cover-up. What is the best way to restore public trust in Parliament, in the system and in what the Prime Minister said or did not say? The public are not that interested in all the details. They are probably, like me, quite confused about whether the process was followed, who said what, whether the chief of staff bullied the head of the Foreign Office and so on. Those are all just party political words and the Westminster bubble. What is important is the reputation of this place.”

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34. “But there are many questions that quite reasonable people are asking. One of the most reasonable questions was put by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition: if due process was followed, why was a dedicated civil servant, Sir Olly Robbins, sacked for apparently not following due process? I think many reasonable people feel that what is really monstrously unfair about this matter is that dedicated civil servants were simply trying to carry out the wishes of their political masters and that Sir Olly Robbins has paid a very great price. Our civil service is incredibly loyal to Ministers. They work loyally for Ministers and they try to carry out their wishes. I think many reasonable people feel that the treatment of Sir Olly Robbins has been quite wrong and that he should be reinstated. But that, in a way, is for another day.”

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35. “Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), who has just spoken. They were not trying to damage their own Government; all they were trying to say, I think, was that when there is an issue such as this, when all sorts of allegations are being thrown across the Floor of the House about whether people lied or not, a Privileges Committee process is one of catharsis. We saw that with Boris Johnson. There was deep upset in the country. Whether that was fair or not, and whether Mr Johnson acted wrongly or not, we know that there was deep upset about partygate. But it was right for the House to decide to have the Privileges Committee inquiry. We knew that, in a way, that drew a line under the whole thing. I believe the Prime Minister. I am sure that he is an honourable person. It is not for me to say that he deliberately misled the House.”

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36. “I want to speak only briefly. I am not particularly party political. I do not like making personal attacks and I am not calling for the Prime Minister to resign. I am not questioning the appointment of Peter Mandelson—this debate is not about whether that was a good decision. I am sure that at the time there was some logic in appointing him. Obviously, the incoming President was a very political, difficult character, and it was felt that Mandelson had the political skills to deal with him. I understand all that, so I am not making a big issue about whether or not it was right to appoint him. I was not going to speak in the debate until I heard the very powerful speech made by the hon. Member for South Shields (Emma Lewell). It came from somebody who is obviously a loyal member of the Labour party, as is the hon.”

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37. “Fly-tipping is very important, but can I refer my hon. Friend to a matter of life and death? As a result of Lords amendment 361 and the amendments to it, somebody who illegally procures a late-term abortion will receive a free pardon. I refer my hon. Friend to Mr Justice Cooke, who said in the Sarah Catt case that Catt had robbed the baby of the life it was about to have and that the seriousness of the crime lay between manslaughter and murder. At sentencing, the judge told Catt that she clearly thought the man with whom she was having an affair was the father and she had shown no remorse. Is it not a terrible indictment of our society that a human life can be taken when it is about to be born, at 39 weeks, and that there should be a free pardon in such a serious case?”

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38. “The Prime Minister may recall that on day one of this war, I supported his defensive attitude to it and said that we could not change the regime from the air. We agreed and he has been proved right, but—with apologies to Leon Trotsky —we may not be interested in war, but war is interested in us. We all agree that we have to rapidly re-arm, but the trouble is that with an ever-increasing proportion of our economy being taken up by the state pension and benefits, perhaps we cannot afford to do so. Will the Prime Minister work with the Leader of the Opposition to take the necessary—perhaps unpopular—decisions to return defence spending to what we spent in 1989 at the end of the cold war?”

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39. “Nationalisation was supposed to put local communities in touch. Grimsby is the largest town in the east of England without a direct train to London. We have been campaigning for one for years, and now the Secretary of State has written to me to say that we are not going to get the train because of accessibility problems in Market Rasen station. It is ludicrous to spend £15 million on extending a platform that does not need to be extended and building a bridge that does not need to be built. What does the Secretary of State want me to do? Does she want me to get on my knees and beg for this train? Let me do so now— [ Laughter. ] My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) and I have been campaigning for this for our local community for years.”

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40. “Lincolnshire is such a huge county geographically that there is no enthusiasm for abolishing districts. Be that as it may, the Government are determined to override local residents. There is a rumour coming out of the Labour-controlled City of Lincoln council that the Government will go with a Greater Lincoln. That would be a disaster for West Lindsey, and would leave Gainsborough out on a limb and carve us out of the county. Before the Minister makes any final decision, will she please meet me, so that I can put to her the concerns of West Lindsey district council? We could live with the central Lincolnshire idea—the whole of Lincolnshire—but not Greater Lincoln.”

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41. “On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I refer you to paragraph 22.9 of “Erskine May”, which stresses the primary importance of ministerial responsibility? We have to admit that Prime Ministers have always tried to dodge questions at Prime Minister’s Question Time, and you are not responsible for the answers that they give, but what we have seen in recent weeks is not just dodging questions; in reply to every question the Prime Minister is asked, he refers to the Leader of the Opposition’s policies. This is not Leader of the Opposition’s questions; it is Prime Minister’s questions.”

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42. “In an attempt to get some consensus here, I commend one part of the Chancellor’s statement, where she said: “We must guarantee that our domestic oil and gas industry can…play a role in our energy system for decades to come”. Is there not a sensible, middle-of-the-way approach here? We should by all means proceed with green energy—such as offshore wind, in which we lead the world, in the North sea off the Lincolnshire coast—but we should also keep an open mind about new extraction from the North sea. I was listening carefully to what she said to the shadow Chancellor. Will the Chancellor confirm today that the Energy Secretary will keep an open mind when he considers these licences, so that we can guarantee our resilience in the future?”

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43. “Can we not just insist that we stop these huge projects, which are not fit for modern warfare, and go back to actually being able to fight a war?”

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44. “I have listened carefully to this debate, which has been an interesting knockabout. On the question of what we are achieving, I refer the Minister back to the comments of the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), who was the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee when the Conservatives were in office, on the numerous wastage scandals in defence procurement. I was Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee during the Blair years; I go back so far that I remember Lord Levene being appointed by Michael Heseltine to get this right. We are never going to get anywhere until we stop the scandal of defence procurement. We have the sixth biggest defence budget in the world, but we do not get bang for our buck. I do not have any instant solutions, but is this not something we can all unite around?”

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45. “The Home Secretary knows perfectly well how much it worries and infuriates people that people can enter this country illegally and commit crimes, and that there is no proper vetting procedure before they are unloosed on society. To reassure our own citizens, will she ensure that everybody who enters this country illegally is detained and fully vetted, and, as most of their asylum claims are bogus anyway, perhaps deal with their asylum claims while they are in detention and then deport them to protect our own people?”

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46. “On an occasion like this, it is right that we should not apportion blame, but try to unite as the House of Commons and say that it is fine to be a critical friend of Israel, but it is not fine to go around fully masked up and call for the destruction of Israel and therefore the Jewish people. I think we should be even more positive and say that we love the Jewish people and think they are the most successful immigrant community we have ever had in this country. They are fantastic, they have our complete, utter and full support, and we will protect them at every opportunity.”

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47. “10. Whether the Attorney General has advised the Lord Chancellor on the potential impact of the Courts and Tribunals Bill on the rule of law.”

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48. “It is obviously outrageous that rape victims have to wait three years—we all accept that, and we have heard moving testimony on that. The problem is that the Institute for Government has found that abolishing jury trials may only get these rape trials on a week earlier. The Labour manifesto promised specialist rape courts. Why does the Solicitor General not take action by setting up specialist rape courts and paying lawyers properly to undertake the work, so we can deal with this backlog now?”

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49. “I suspect that the problems of Scunthorpe, where many of my constituents work, are less to do with the anti-protectionist policies of Mrs Thatcher—given that she left office 36 years ago—and more to do with the fact that Scunthorpe is paying the highest energy costs of any steelworks in Europe. That is very important. Will the Secretary of State answer the question of my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers), and of all our constituents who work at Scunthorpe? Blast furnaces only have six or seven years of life, but we need them to make virgin steel, particularly in the defence industries. Is this the end of our ability to make virgin steel? Given that it takes two or three years to create an arc furnace, will the Secretary of State commit to one at Scunthorpe?”

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50. “Bishops who stood aside in the interests of unity have been marginalised and placed under surveillance for refusing to take part in state structures. State-controlled religious apparatus remains coercive. The Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association exercises extensive control over Catholic life in the People’s Republic.”

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