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 23 of 122.
“6. What discussions his officials have held with their counterparts at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on agricultural land being repurposed for solar energy.”
“A planning application has been submitted for a giant solar farm around Gainsborough, with an area equivalent to 5,000 football pitches. It is designed to be a so-called national infrastructure project in order to bypass all local planning. Local people will have no control; this development will enrich a few local landowners, and some entrepreneurs in London. Is it not time for an urgent discussion throughout Whitehall about how we can stop these companies bypassing local planning and secure proper community gain and the protection of agriculture, and, for instance, ensure that there are buffer zones around villages?”
“Experts will argue for years about whether we made the right choices. Some of us, for what it is worth, would have liked a lighter touch. However, one thing is certain, and we know this from independent testimony that has emerged from a former adviser to the Prime Minister: but for the Prime Minister’s freedom-loving, libertarian instincts, these lockdowns would have been much longer and much worse, with incalculable consequences for the young and for people’s mental health. Can we rely on him to rule out any more lockdowns in the coming decade as he remains Prime Minister?”
“People of a certain age, of whom, unfortunately, I am one, are terrified because they think that if something goes wrong, they might have to wait in pain for two years. We cannot wait until March 2024 to join the back of a slightly shorter queue. Then we see our friends who have private health insurance—I am not one of them; we cannot afford it—being seen within days. May I suggest a policy that would be wildly popular with many of our own supporters, which every Conservative Government until 1997 followed, which is to give tax relief to private health insurance? Why not look at every innovative solution that unleashes new money? Before the Secretary of State says that that is a matter for the Chancellor, will he at least put it at the back of his mind, so that when he next talks to the Chancellor they will at least discuss it?”
“This crisis has been caused by the ongoing negotiations over the Northern Ireland protocol. Given that traditionally the Opposition have worked with a degree of consensus with the Government on Northern Ireland matters, will the Opposition support the Government if they act unilaterally on the protocol in order to ensure the unity of the United Kingdom, which surely the Labour party agrees with as much as us?”
“The hon. Gentleman is aiming his artillery at the wrong enemy. The truth is that this protocol and trade across Northern Ireland are no threat whatsoever to the integrity of the single market. This Government have done their level best to try to get trade flowing completely freely; it is the EU that is making it so impossible.”
“Can we have an early resolution of the House so that we can resolve the matter, take back control and start the work now?”
“With respect to the restoration and renewal of Parliament, I welcome yesterday’s announcement by the Commission, chaired by the Leader of the House, that it will take back control from the sponsor body and that all the figures that come out of the delivery authority and the sponsor body, on which I sit, should be published. Can he confirm that the figures for the delay, length and cost of decant are truly horrendous; that no work would be scheduled to start before 2027, although the building works need to be got on with now; and that we are talking of a decant in excess of 15 years and costs in excess of £14 billion? Will he therefore confirm that some of us have been proved right when we said that we should have got on with it years ago?”
“Gainsborough South West ward is the 24th most deprived ward in the country. I thank the Secretary of State for awarding us £10 million in levelling up, but does he agree, looking at the overall picture, that the prosperity of northern industrial towns was built not with Government money, but by entrepreneurs in the 19th and early 20th century, when regulation and taxation were a fraction of what they are now? What plans does he have, with his colleagues, to try to reduce the burden of regulation and taxation on towns in the north of England?”
“We ultimately hope that through the publication of this report and debate, the need for action will be made clear to policy makers and service commissioners working in Government and the NHS. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.”
“It provides national policy makers, commissioners and local service providers with an expert consensus on how mental health support for people with a skin condition should be structured in a range of clinical settings. This can be delivered cost-effectively. The report also outlines the urgent clinical need for healthcare professionals to be equipped with the necessary skills and resources to provide the holistic care that patients need. This must include patient assessments and care that treats the mind and skin together; otherwise, we will not break the vicious cycle whereby problems create psychological problems that in turn exacerbate the skin condition.”
“That includes training for trainees, primary care clinicians and secondary care specialists. Research funding for psychodermatology should be prioritised. It should focus on the development, evaluation and implementation of a range of psychological and educational interventions for patients with skin conditions. The inclusion of patient support organisations in service development is critical to amplify the patient voice and to ensure that patients have clear access to some of the excellent services available in the community. NHS mental health funding provided to local commissioners must urgently be used to invest in and improve mental health services. In conclusion, I commend our report on mental health and skin disease, which demonstrates the alarming lack of psychological support available to people living with a skin condition.”
“All NHS dermatology units must have regional access to psychodermatology services, with clear pathways for patients to be referred to for appropriate psychological intervention or support. There must be a stepped care pathway that starts with good quality screening and enables patients to speedily access the most economic and effective psychological services that they require and deserve. This is already in place for many other long-term health conditions, such as diabetes, but not for skin conditions. This cannot remain the case; it is simply not good enough. To achieve that, we need to increase staffing in dermatology services and improve the dermatology and psychological training of all NHS staff who have regular contact with patients with skin conditions.”
“Our most recent report shows that, despite a general recognition of the need for better care in this area—and leaving aside the more recent impact of the pandemic—most of the recommendations of the previous reports have, I am afraid, not been acted on by Government. That seems to ne to be an indictment of those responsible for the planning and commissioning of these essential services. What should we do? We can start by building parity of esteem between dermatology services and other long-term conditions, both in access to specialist dermatologist care—which would of itself reduce the psychological impact—and in access to psychological services. In order to achieve that, our report makes a number of recommendations.”
“For instance, skin-specific delusional conditions and medically unexplained itch disorders can be devastating, and without clear access to psychological services, such patients can be put at considerable risk of having their underlying condition go untreated. Again, recent British Association of Dermatology guidelines in this area of practice make it clear that services need to be developed to meet the needs of this specific group of patients. However, investment has not been forthcoming. As I draw to the end of this speech, let me share another disappointing fact with the House. The all-party parliamentary group has looked into the mental health of skin patients and service provision on two prior occasions, in 2003 and 2013.”
“It is not just our report that stresses the need to embed in dermatology services psychological screening and access to psychological intervention. That is also a feature of most of the recent treatment guidelines that have emerged from reviews of the academic literature and consultation with experts. For example, the recent guidelines of the British Association of Dermatologists on the treatment of the depigmenting skin condition vitiligo make it clear that access to psychological support should be available. Furthermore, while some conditions might be primarily psychological in nature, they pretty much always present in dermatology services.”
“Alarmingly, less than 5% of dermatology clinics across the UK are providing any level of specialist mental health support for children and young people. And believe it or not, but in Wales there are no dedicated psychological clinics, and there are certainly none in Lincolnshire. Only a very small minority of trusts have such clinics. This is a ludicrous situation. Research shows that psychodermatology clinics are more cost-effective to run, compared with managing skin patients with psychological distress in more generalist healthcare settings. Therefore, I urge the Minister to consider how funding is allocated and spent in this area. Covid has made things worse for dermatology patients, with poorer access to face-to-face consultations further preventing assessment and identification of mental health issues.”
“Clearly, if we do not support such children, the distress that they experience in relation to their condition may have a long-term impact on their future wellbeing. There are some good services out there. The report highlighted a few trailblazers, such as the specialist IAPT —improving access to psychological therapies—service in Sheffield and the well-established psycho-dermatology services in some London hospitals. Psychological interventions are also being tested, and approaches involving cognitive behavioural therapy, merged with mindfulness and self-compassion, are showing great promise. Nevertheless, our report demonstrates that there is very much a postcode lottery, with many hospital dermatology services not having access to psychological services or clear pathways to refer people at risk to the support they need.”
“I had to postpone my wedding as I can’t cope with the idea of a flare up on my wedding day.” Recent research and evidence suggests that parenting a child with a chronic skin condition can trigger parental stress, and the all-party group’s survey also included responses from some children. Every one of the children surveyed indicated that their skin condition had negatively affected their mental wellbeing, with the vast majority reporting that it had impacted on their performance at school. One of the children is quoted in the report as saying: “I was so depressed. I felt like I was rotting away inside an alien growth on my face. I didn’t wanna exist like that. I wanted to chop my own head off.” All this emotional turmoil was experienced by a child living with cystic acne.”
“Some patients surveyed said that their skin disease had been so distressing that they had felt they had to give up their job. Let me read a brief excerpt from a quote in the report: “When I turned 19 it [the eczema] became so bad that I couldn’t participate in normal life anymore due to the pain…I had to give up my job as I am always too unwell.” Of course, our skin is implicated in everything we do and it is often not understood that skin conditions affect not just the individual living with them but their wider family. As for the impact on intimate relationships, let me read out another quote from the report: “My skin is often too painful to have intimate relations with or to even to hug or kiss my partner.”
“I would like to draw the attention of the House to some other worrying findings that our research for the report highlighted: 93% of patients surveyed said that their skin condition had a negative impact on their self-esteem; 83% said their skin condition negatively impacted on their sleep; 73% said their skin condition negatively impacted on their intimate relationships; and 5% said that they had contemplated suicide. Sadly, I have been informed by healthcare professionals working in our NHS dermatology services that patients living with skin conditions are at increased risk of self-harm, as we well know, and that a number of them, sadly, go on to take their own lives. There is also a great economic impact, with the double whammy of skin disease and the psychological burden associated with it.”
“The survey part of the report found that 98% of skin disease patients felt that their condition affected their emotional and psychological wellbeing; yet astonishingly, all the patient representative and professional organisations providing evidence stated that the NHS mental health provision for skin was “poor” or “very poor”. In addition, over half the patients surveyed did not even realise that they could ask for help with managing the mental health impact of their skin disease. That clearly demonstrates just how under-resourced services are in this part of the NHS.”
“I therefore want to spend this debate outlining the need for commissioners and health leaders to rethink how the NHS provides psychological care for people living with a skin condition. The APPG’s report on the mental health associated with skin conditions is available on the group’s web pages. The report was based in part on a survey conducted by dermatologists and psychologists of 500 skin patients, with evidence also collected from 100 clinicians and 16 dermatology-related charities. The report was led by experts from the British Association of Dermatologists.”
“It demonstrated that the psychological impact can be severe, in terms of the effect on people’s work, education and healthcare use. We should all worry about this, as 60% of us live with some form of skin condition. Since the publication of the report, the developing impact of the covid pandemic has inevitably made a bad situation worse. One of my colleagues—who might speak in the debate—said that he was told by his GP only recently that he might have to wait a year for an appointment about a skin condition. With many patients with inflammatory skin diseases now experiencing a 12-month wait for a first appointment with a dermatologist, the stress and anxiety experienced by many individuals has risen significantly.”
“I take it very lightly, because I know I am already old and ugly, but for young people this kind of personal abuse about their appearance is deeply upsetting and drives many people into deep psychological harm, because mental health and physical health are intrinsically linked. Knowledge of this link has driven recent advances in NHS service delivery and underpins much of the thinking in the long-term plan. Although that has led to the development of trailblazing and new services for many people with long-term conditions, for some reason people living with skin conditions continue to have dire access to psychological services. Indeed, in 2020 the all-party parliamentary group on skin, which I chair, published a report on the mental health issues faced by people living with skin conditions.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered skin conditions and mental health. I want to start my speech by making a point that I will make at the very end: mind and skin are linked, and we have to take action on both if we are to break the vicious cycle of psychological harm. I suppose, really, I should declare an interest right at the beginning of this debate. It is not a financial interest but a personal interest: I have rosacea, which makes one’s face red and can ultimately deform it, and I take antibiotics every day. There are many more serious conditions—I do not make a great thing of it—but only today, in relation to something else I said on a completely different subject in the House of Commons, I have already received one email accusing me of being a red gammon head and a ruddy-faced buffoon.”
“The Minister will be aware that I have raised repeatedly the case of Maira Shahbaz, a 14-year-old Christian girl forcibly abducted, raped and forced into a marriage. Will the Minister assure me, given that we give hundreds of millions of pounds in aid to Pakistan, that we are insisting that aid is contingent on reform of the blasphemy laws and making sure that there are no forced conversions in that country?”
“When Europe stands on the brink of war and there is a cost of living crisis, can we please have a sense of proportion over the Prime Minister’s being given a piece of cake in his own office by his own staff?”
“Only this morning, I received an email on behalf of deaf pupils who have been so disadvantaged by forced mask wearing in schools. But for this Prime Minister, we would have had far more severe lockdowns and restrictions. Will he please remain true to his instincts and sweep away all the remaining controls, such as isolation, that are crippling the NHS? To paraphrase Leo Amery, “For God’s sake, keep going.””
“It is much easier as Chairman not to hear a lot of what goes on here. I am sure that nobody is foolish. [ Interruption. ] I respect the hon. Gentleman; all I know is that he is not a fool. I call Fleur Anderson.”
“In the absence of Ministers having the political will to use pushback, what is the point in appointing a royal naval admiral to help Border Force to be a more efficient taxi service so that the migrants will know, “Now we’ve got the Royal Navy to pick us up—we’ll be taken safely to the UK, we'll be put in a hotel and we'll never, ever be sent home”? This is just an embarrassment. Will the Minister now co-ordinate with his colleagues to do what we have been suggesting for months and get rid of the pull factors—namely, ensure that we reform any piece of legislation necessary, including the Human Rights Act, and that people who do the illegal crossing are arrested, put in a prison and deported?”
“Reform is clearly needed. It is absurd in the modern world that people can be criminalised for not paying a licence fee just for an entertainment channel. However, the devil is in the detail. I represent a rural constituency where many smaller villages and hamlets cannot get superfast broadband. If we are to base public policy on the fact that everyone can stream programmes, can we ensure that they actually can stream programmes before any final decisions are made or reforms are implemented?”
“Given its success, I believe we should now place our faith in the vaccination strategy and not in further controls. When I voted against plan B before Christmas, I said that more and more regulation creates more and more hypocrisy. Despite what is going on in Russia and the cost of living, we spent most of Prime Minister’s questions debating the fact that the Prime Minister wandered out of his house, where he lives and works, and had a drink with colleagues. The truth is that the Government should learn a lesson from this. We must sweep away every last vestige of telling people how to live their lives. We have had enough of it. The British people have had enough of it. These controls are actually making things worse—for example, forcing staff to isolate and putting our NHS at risk—so please, let us free the people.”
“Unlike in Soviet times, Russia is no longer a viable candidate for world domination. Indeed, recently declassified documents from the United States make it clear that in February 1990, Secretary of State James Baker gave President Gorbachev a categoric assurance that NATO would not, and had no plans to, move east. Given that the reality of the situation, despite everything that has been said today, is that we are not prepared for a single British soldier to die in a war to defend Ukraine, will the Secretary of State confirm that there are no plans to admit Ukraine to NATO? Indeed, to do that would be a needless and dangerous provocation.”
“We hear very little in this Chamber about the fact that Crimea was of course part of Russia for 200 years. It was signed away by the pen of Khrushchev, without the Crimean people being consulted at all, in the 1950s. There is no doubt at all that Crimea is overwhelmingly Russian and wants to be overwhelmingly Russian, and we have to respect its self-determination, and the same applies to many areas of eastern Ukraine.”
“No doubt he is running a corrupt regime, although I did go with a Council of Europe delegation to look at a previous election that President Putin won, and there was no doubt that there were a lot of people voting for him because people felt that he had restored the pride and the greatness of Russia after the terrible, infinitely corrupt and useless years of Yeltsin, when we took Russia for granted. I make no apology for President Putin and I do not defend him in any way, but I think the mistake of this debate is to assume, if there was any other conceivable leader of Russia, that their strategy would be very different. Many Russians felt deeply humiliated at the loss of territory that formerly belonged to the Soviet Union, and we constantly hear about the invasion of Crimea and the Donbass region.”
“We have spent a lot of time on Russia, and we have heard from a lot of people who claim to understand the Russian mentality, but I am not sure it has been mentioned that in the Orthodox calendar, tomorrow is Christmas day. I shall be joining my Russian Orthodox wife at the service this evening and tomorrow morning, and I wish you a very happy Christmas, Madam Deputy Speaker. I make no apologies for President Putin. Although I am a former chairman of our all-party group on Russia, I certainly gave it up in the light of what happened at Salisbury and before.”
“I know that entirely, but when people go on about the fact that Crimea was originally Tatar—no doubt America was originally populated by Red Indians, but we do not say that America does not belong to Americans—the fact is that we have to deal with the situation on the ground. All I am saying is that there is an overwhelming feeling among Russian people of a deep sense of humiliation during the Yeltsin years, and as in all countries, they yearn for strong government and leadership.”
“In recently divulged documents, US Secretary of State James Baker said to President Gorbachev on 9 February 1990: “We understand that not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” The truth is that Ukraine is not going to join NATO. It would be a provocative act, and in constantly talking about it in this Chamber and in the west as if it is likely to happen, we are simply providing an excuse for President Putin to play the game of being the underdog and of Russia being threatened, so why do we do it? When we know NATO is never actually going to absorb Ukraine, why do we go on talking about it?”
“But we are where we are, and one of the mistakes of these sorts of debates is to equate Putin, for all his faults and his corruption, with Hitler. I would suggest that we are where we are in Crimea, and there is no doubt about the fact that the majority of the population want to be Russian. They may not have been transferred in the right way, but that is the fact. But Putin is not Hitler. It is true that, whoever becomes the leader of Russia, they will try to hold and to build on the influence in territories that were part of the Soviet Union. That is Russian grand strategy. People may not agree with it and they may not understand it, but it is a fact of life. On the NATO point, I am confused about why people constantly argue that the way to solve this problem is for Ukraine to become part of NATO.”
“This rotten Russian Government might try to subvert aspects of our life, but why do we not have self-confidence? Why do we not look to our own proper strategic interests? We have no historic or strategic interest as a country in Crimea or eastern Ukraine. We do not understand it. We do not understand the history. We do not understand the complexities of the region. We do not understand the Ukrainian state itself, which is divided.”
“Ukraine is never going to join NATO, and if it did join NATO it would be potentially disastrous. In talking about Ukraine joining NATO, we are simply playing Putin’s game. Now, the other talk we have had is about Russia being a mortal threat to our country, but this is not the Soviet Union. Russian armies are not placed in the middle of east Germany. Where is this mortal threat? We hear about all this hacking. No doubt Russia hacks. No doubt it has rather ineffective campaigns on Twitter. Are we so lacking in our faith in our own parliamentary democracy that we think we are going to be overthrown or are under threat from President Putin? This is not a strategic interest of the United Kingdom. Of course all Russian Governments will seek to extend their influence. Any Russian Government will be mortally opposed to NATO expanding eastwards.”
“Yes, but it is not going to happen, for this reason: President Biden is not the sort of President who is ever going to do it. He is a weak President and he is not going to suddenly elect Ukraine into NATO. We all know that, and that is the reality. We should let Ukraine into NATO only if we are prepared to fight for it, if we are prepared to spill American and British blood for the frozen steppes of eastern Ukraine, and nobody wants to do that. By the way, if we did do it, we would lose our nerve very quickly. Look at Iraq. Look at Afghanistan. After a few years, if there were just 300 dead British soldiers there would be tremendous pressure in this House of Commons to withdraw. Russia would simply stay—it does not mind if it has to wait 20 or 30 years. So it is never going to happen.”
“We have to stop talking about expanding eastwards. We have to stop playing Putin’s game. I know this is realpolitik. I know it is not redolent of great liberal imperialist speeches about how we must make the world safe for democracy, and that the Iraqi people, the Afghan people or the Ukrainian people have a right to live under a democratic regime. What nonsense I am talking—these are the facts of life. This is realism. Are we really prepared to muck up eastern Ukraine in the same way we have mucked up Iraq and Afghanistan?”
“No, I have given way three times already. Ukraine is divided. The second-largest party in Ukraine is a pro-Russian party. It ranks very high on the corruption index. When it controlled eastern Ukraine, it did everything it could to deny autonomy to Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine. Members can agree with me or not, but they have to understand that that is the point of view of many Russian people, and they are entitled to their view as much as we are. Learn from history: look at Afghanistan. Look at Iraq. We in the west are not prepared to fight for these people. Why are we destabilising the region by pretending we are when we know perfectly well—everybody in this Chamber knows perfectly well—that we are not prepared to risk a drop of British blood? We have to live with this Russian Government.”
“Apparently the Government are thinking of relaxing visa controls for India in order to get a free trade deal. While a free trade deal is valuable in itself, we should not be held to ransom. Does the Prime Minister agree that our new working-class voters who voted for Brexit did not vote to replace immigration from Europe with more immigration from the rest of the world, any more than that when they were told that we would take back control, we would lose control of the channel? Will he convince us that he is determined to connect to our supporters and control immigration?”
“Earlier this week the Lincolnshire hospitals declared a critical incident, and people in Lincolnshire no doubt thought that they were being overrun with covid. However, NHS officials told the Lincolnshire MPs yesterday that of all the intensive care beds in Lincolnshire, only two were taken by people because of or with covid, and although there were large numbers of staff absences, a quarter could be accounted for by staff being absent because they were isolating. The suspicion is that the NHS is being brought to its knees not by covid, but by the rules that require people to isolate for so long. What is the road map for shortening the period of isolation?”
“My next question to him is important: will he guarantee that if the Government decide to impose any further restriction on civil liberties, even over the Christmas period, Parliament will be recalled?”
“If the Leader of the House had been in our Lobby on Tuesday, he would not have had to open the window; we were much more socially distanced. In my experience, crowded Lobbies full of Labour and Conservative MPs are seldom a very good thing—I am talking about not covid, but political damage. May I give the Leader of the House this early Christmas present? I am trying to be helpful. If we have another vote on a measure that is inimical to civil liberties, and that the Conservative party in its heart profoundly opposes, can it be a free vote? Then only one in 10 Tory MPs will vote for it, and nine out of 10 Labour MPs will vote for it, and the Government might get the same result.”
“We have established that. I apologise—I did not call you earlier because I thought you were a PPS; you are sitting in the PPS’s place. I know it is a bit of an insult to call anybody a PPS, so I think we all owe you an apology.”