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 26 of 122.
“As has been noted by my colleagues, there are very few Labour Back Benchers taking part in this debate, a point made in particular by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone). Our Labour colleagues are not bad people; they are not lazy; but they are not as interested as we are in freedom. This whole debate is a mortal threat—a mortal threat—to the Conservative party. This is proven by history. When we had wartime regulation and a controlled economy between 1939 and 1945, it led to a Labour landslide. People get used to controls and at the end of July—the motion will go through today, obviously—there must be an entire re-set of the Conservative Government. We must be talking about freedom, civil liberties, trusting business not subsidising business, and low taxes. That is what the Conservative party is about.”
“Order. We have 13 Back-Bench speakers. If there is to be any chance of everybody getting in, we will have to have a tight time limit. I will set it at three and a half minutes at the moment, but that may have to come down to three minutes. I would be grateful if speeches were kept below three minutes.”
“Thank you for a very good debate on the levelling-up fund—I wish that Gainsborough could get some of the levelling-up fund too, but that is not for me to say. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the levelling up agenda.”
“Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) said: in future, we must make it clear that if there are any Government announcements, they are made here first, to the elected representatives of the people.”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Have you heard from the Prime Minister this afternoon, because I am astonished that he is not coming to the House to make this statement? I entirely join my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) in what he has said. It would have been perfectly possible for the Prime Minister to come to this Chamber at 3.30 and inform Parliament of what is going on. I quite understand that it is much easier for the Prime Minister to have a few patsy questions from Laura Kuenssberg and her colleagues than to sit here for a whole hour and be grilled by MPs, but are we a presidential system or are we the House of Commons? Who runs this country? Is it the media or is it the House of Commons? I repeat what my hon.”
“I suspect that the Chinese Government do not care a damn what we say in this Chamber, but they do care about what British business is doing and if it withdraws business as a result of human rights violations. There are plenty of other friendly countries such as India that can do anything China can do, so what has the Minister done to summon in businesses, name and shame them and say that they should move their imports and exports from China? These people are no better than Bristol slave traders of the 18th century, building their businesses on the backs of misery.”
“I am speaking from Lincolnshire, the bread basket of England. It is a prosperous county, but in the area of world free trade before the second world war, we could walk on derelict farms from Lincoln to Grimsby. Can the Minister assure me that this free trade deal with Australia, which I welcome, will ensure a bright future for our farmers, and that there will be no relaxation of our high-quality standards and no imports of mass-produced wheat that could undercut our farmers?”
“The French and the Germans are steadily increasing their efforts through the Goethe-Institut and the French Institute, where I spent many happy hours trying to bone up on my inadequate French. Meanwhile, for decades we have been closing British Council libraries, which are often the only places where people can get free access to English literature. Will the Minister go back to his officials and insist that English literature is our greatest cultural export, and that there must be no diminution in our efforts to expand and promote it worldwide?”
“I am just reaching out to them, with a compromise, to ask them to announce shortly, to end this debate, now and forever, that there will be a transparent, open debate within the next 12 months, so that we can determine this issue forever. Put Parliament first.”
“Let me offer this compromise to the Government: just be honest, be transparent, be open with Parliament and accept parliamentary democracy. They could set a date—if they wanted, it could be by the Budget or some time early next year—when they will come honestly to Parliament with a policy. I am prepared to be open-minded about this 0.7% and to accept that although it is a manifesto commitment, there may be occasions where it might cause feast to famine to feast, but let the Government make their argument honestly. After all, this is the law; we are supposed to spend 0.7% of our budget by law. If we no longer believe that, we have to come to Parliament to repeal that Act or come to Parliament in the Budget debate and present an alternative. I am not even asking the Government to commit now in the Budget next year to restoring the 0.7%.”
“The one way to build in a lot of waste is cutting too quickly, which is almost as wasteful as increasing spending too quickly—I was often critical of the Labour Government when they increased spending too quickly. A lot of waste has now been caused by these civil servants going around cutting all these budgets. I will leave aside the terrible humanitarian effects, because the point has already been made very effectively by colleagues, but if we accept the Government’s own logic, in six months’ or a year’s time, the same civil servants will be running around restoring all these programmes. There will be a huge amount of waste, and in the meantime, incidentally, a lot of people will have died, a lot of wells will have run dry and a lot of girls’ education will have been ended. People will have died and there will be a huge amount of waste.”
“As our economy declined, we could very easily have cut the aid budget by £2 billion with no argument, but the Government decided to cut it further. What they should have done at that stage was be completely honest with the House and the people and say, if that was their view, “We don’t actually believe in this commitment to 0.7%”—but no, they said, “We still believe in it—this cut is entirely temporary.” But what does “temporary” mean: six months, a year, two years? It is worse than that. The Government are, in a sense, hoist by their own petard. They have said that this is only temporary, so they have ordered the civil servants in the Department to go on cutting all these programmes.”
“There have been some very moving speeches today. I could spend the time allotted to me repeating the humanitarian points, which by the way I believe in, that we have a duty to the world’s poorest, but my criticism of the Government’s action is based not so much on that as on the question whether this is the right way of proceeding if we are seriously concerned about running the public accounts in an efficient way. Leaving to one side the fact that there is a manifesto commitment, which is important, I accept that the situation has changed with the pandemic and our economy has declined. Of course, the Government could have cut £2 billion from the overseas aid budget without any adverse criticism, because it was linked to the 0.7%.”
“Does the Minister recognise the public anger at our being made fools of in this? Border Force is little more than a taxi service for illegal migrants—it is ridiculous. Will the Minister assure me that he will use his powers under the Immigration Act 1971 to arrest all illegal immigrants, put them in detention, prosecute them, imprison them and deport them, so that we can stop this horrible trade dead in its tracks?”
“Does the Home Secretary recall that I wrote to her on 20 April on behalf of Aid to the Church in Need about the case of Maira Shahbaz? I still await a reply. Maira is a 15-year-old Christian girl from Pakistan, who was raped, abducted and kidnapped, and is now in hiding. We need to help her. Will the Home Secretary meet Aid to the Church in Need and me?”
“When are we going to have the guts to stop the BBC criminalising people for non-payment of the licence fee, which is no better than the poll tax?”
“The possibility of demolishing Richmond House is not mentioned at all in the Joint Committee report.”
“The Northern Estate programme later found that measurements of the Commons Chamber, including the exact footprint of Division Lobbies with the oriel bay windows, would not fit in the courtyard, so the Northern Estate programme claims that this requires the entire grade II* listed building to be demolished, except for its façade, and for total replacement with a new permanent building. On 31 January 2018, the Leader of the House said that “the conclusion that we came to, preliminarily favouring a complete decant, was based on the assumption that a temporary Chamber could be put up in Richmond House.” —[ Official Report , 31 January 2018; Vol. 635, c. 885.] Demolition of Richmond House is a completely different cost basis and I, for one, would not have come to that conclusion, had we known the true picture.”
“That is what I want to address my arguments towards. I have to deal, in that regard, with the present proposal—the Northern Estate programme as it is. This is the entire demolition of Richmond House, and this is where I follow what the right hon. Gentleman just said; I would argue that it is financially wasteful, environmentally unsound and not necessary. Let me look at this in a bit more detail and go back to the original Joint Committee report, which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House signed. It said that “a temporary Chamber could be established in its”— that is, Richmond House’s— “inner courtyard and the rest of the House of Commons’ core operations could be consolidated in and around Portcullis House and the Northern Estate”.”
“There is a lot of what the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) said that I agree with. Let us get on with it. Let us come together in this. I commend both the Leader of the House for his approach and his speech and the spokesperson for the Sponsor Body, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). They both spoke in a very outgoing, moderate and sensible way. This is not a debate between decant and not decant. It is not a debate with, on one side, pragmatic modernisers who want to do what is right and, on the other side, stuffy traditionalists who just care about staying in a Palace that they love. It is far more complex than that. So it is not a debate about decant or not decant—it is about how we get on with the job of restoring this Palace and not having a gold-plate operation.”
“I do not really need to quote all the various points that have been made by numerous distinguished architects and historic buildings organisations in favour of Richmond House, which was put up only 30 years ago. Of course, demolishing it would be environmentally unsound.”
“That is extremely helpful because, as I said, I have to work with what we have at the moment, and from what the spokesperson for the Sponsor Body now says, we seem to have moved on from the demolition of Richmond House. This will be of enormous comfort to the heritage organisations such as SAVE, with which I have been working very closely. If we are looking at a grade II* listed building, even the lowest level of listing is defined as “warranting every effort to preserve” these buildings—that is according to Historic England—and Richmond House is above that. It was, of course, one of the most important public buildings created in the 1980s. I can cut short my speech, because I appear to be on a bit of a winning streak.”
“What we do not want—I will finish on this point, Madam Deputy Speaker—is a gold-plating operation. We do not want Richmond House demolished. We do not want a permanent replica Chamber created at vast cost. We do not want to surrender our fate to an army of consultants and architects to leave this place and be out of it for five or 10 years. Look at the Canadian example: we could be out of this place for up to 10 years. I do not believe that that is what the public really want. This is a citadel of our democracy. For many people in the world, this democracy is about this building. By all means, let us come together and get on with it, but let us have a short decant, not a long, highly wasteful decant of up to 10 years.”
“A Chamber with Division Lobbies could fit exactly in that space. Not ideal, but surely we have proved during this pandemic that we do not have to move out of this place for ever. I was very interested in what the Leader of the House said, and I think what the Chairman of the Committee said, if I remember rightly, that while we would want to move out all the Committees from here, we could actually seal off the Chamber and have access through the corridor past the Prime Minister’s office. I want to emphasise that this is not a debate between decant and not decant. I am perfectly happy, and all those colleagues on the Back Benches I have been working with are perfectly happy, if we have to decant for a few months, eight months, nine months, a year.”
“If the House insists on a full decant into Richmond House, however, I proffer the courtyard idea. None of these plans is set in stone. We can be clever, and we can pick and choose. Surely, time has moved on. As has been said again and again in this debate, we have proved that we can work virtually. I am with the Leader of the House; I do not like virtual working, but it can greatly shorten the time for which we have to be away from this Chamber. There are other proposals I have put which are even cheaper. We know—I know we cannot say much about it—that there is already an emergency alternative pop-up Chamber stored somewhere. If we had to move away for a few months or a year, we could use the atrium of Portcullis House. I met the architect of Portcullis House. He actually designed it so a Chamber could go in the atrium.”
“Every electrical socket, bit of wiring, air duct and climate control system can be pulled out and comprehensively done in one go. It solves the most expensive problem—the provision of temporary accommodation—by housing two plenary Chambers within the existing Palace. Richmond House will not be just preserved but integrated into the estate, to house workers displaced from the Palace. The proposal eliminates the lengthy timeframe of potential public inquiries into the demolishing of a listed building. Of course, it retains the QEII conference centre, with all the financial advantages to the Treasury of retaining its income from the centre. That is the proposal. I put it forward as probably the very cheapest option, rather akin to what we did in the second world war.”
“That is the Anthony Delarue proposal—again, he is a professional architect—which I commissioned. He accepts that a top-to-bottom renovation makes sense, because, as we have heard, the systems need a total revamp. He proposes that we move temporarily to the House of Lords Chamber, as we did in the second world war, and that the House of Lords move to the Royal Gallery. He suggests—this is a professional architect, not me—that these areas could be sectioned off with complete external servicing, with linear access to Portcullis House via New Palace Yard, and with temporary canteens, lavatories and so on accommodated in Old Palace Yard, Victoria Tower Gardens or Abingdon Street Gardens. That proposal has all the advantages of a full decant.”
“Architectural plans prove that this is possible. The building could be prefabricated off site and installed using cranes within a matter of months, and independent security consultants confirm that it is as safe as existing proposals. It is professionally costed at £46 million, in contrast to reports in the architectural press that the current plan would cost £1.6 billion. To reassure my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), the former Leader of the House, if the House of Commons insists that we decant and create an alternative Chamber, I proffer that solution. It would save a listed building and provide a perfectly adequate alternative. I must say that there is an even cheaper proposal, and I hope the House will forgive me if I share it.”
“It is so wonderful to all come together and find a way forward. I can provide a way forward, because I have been working with SAVE on the matter. This is called the Mark Hines proposal, and it is from a professional architect. SAVE commissioned Mark Hines Architects to look into preserving Richmond House. He found that a replica Commons Chamber would fit into the Richmond House courtyard. His proposal includes a full Chamber of the same size and layout as at present, Division Lobbies, public and press seating at gallery level—somewhat reduced, understandably —and handicapped access. It would fulfil the full security needs, having a separate public entrance with security clearing area and a blast-proof structure. A private security firm has assessed the plan and said that it meets security requirements.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that, following the elections, and apart from evident self-interest, the Union is ever stronger because of abundant common interest?”
“For 600 years, the House of Lords and, latterly, its Appellate Committee did a superb job of being our Supreme Court. Nobody has ever given a proper cost-benefit analysis of what has been gained by abolishing it, apart from spending so much more extra public money. I doubt that the Government, or any Government, have the guts to abolish this wasteful institution, but will the Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor make it clear that we do not have a written constitution? We are not America. The Queen in Parliament —in other words, this House of Commons—is supreme, not the Supreme Court. That is particularly important if the Scottish National party should ever carry out its threat of a unilateral referendum against the wishes of this House of Commons in an Act of Parliament. Will the Secretary of State—”
“The fact is that the slave trade was so endemic in the 18th century that there are probably hundreds of thousands of people in this country who are descended from slave owners. Slavery is wrong. It was wrong; it is wrong. We led the world in abolishing it, but the history is as it is. Similarly, when I go up to the Committee corridor, I see a picture of Queen Elizabeth I—a glorious picture of Gloriana. She ensured that my ancestor Richard Leigh was hung, drawn and quartered for no other reason than that he was a Catholic priest. But do I condemn Elizabeth I? No; it is part of our history. We have to be proud of Britain. We have to stop tearing down statues, stop denigrating our past, and accept that the past is the past, with all its benefits and regrettable occurrences.”
“That is how this Government will be a success—by giving people a stake in their own society, so that they are not just renters. That is a true levelling-up agenda. I am also grateful to the Government for taking on the issue of free speech in universities. It is none of my business, really, but if the Labour party is to reconnect with so many of its natural supporters in the north, it has to turn its back on this woke, politically correct agenda of denigrating our past. The past is the past. I understand that, on my mother’s side, my grandfather was born in Barbados—he was the son of a missionary—but it is quite probable that his grandfather and great-grandfather were involved in the slave trade and may even have owned slaves. Am I to denounce my own family?”
“The next issue is housing. Some of my colleagues who represent prosperous seats in the south-east are rightly worried about the planning Bill. Personally, I see no point in encouraging developers to build on green-belt land. They always want to build executive housing on green land; we want to build housing in the cities, the towns, the north of England and the midlands. I think we should reconnect with people by committing ourselves to a Macmillan Government-type programme of building 300,000 houses a year. His mistake, perhaps, was to build council houses. I want to build housing for young people that they can afford so that they can convert rent into purchase. That will really connect with young people, who, in places such as the south-east, simply cannot get on the property ladder.”
“If we do not take action, this trade will continue; it will get worse and worse, and sooner or later there will be a horrible tragedy in the channel and people will drown and they will die. The Bill is welcome, but we have to be robust on this. We cannot protect ourselves simply by creating a wall around the country. Why do people come here? These are not bad people; they are good people. They just want a better future. They come here because their own countries are in chaos. Therefore, we have to commit ourselves to international aid and overseas development. I will not labour the point, but I have been critical of the way the budget has been cut. We have promised to restore it, but we have to concentrate aid in a practical way, on the poverty that is motivating this mass migration. Immigration is a vital issue.”
“Brexit was won not because people like me were wittering on about parliamentary sovereignty for many years, but on the issue of immigration, and people in the midlands and the north of England feeling that their Government were out of touch on immigration. I welcome the new Bill that is being promoted. The fact is, though, that there are perhaps a million people in this country whom we do not know about who are here illegally. That is a real issue and of real concern. What really angers people is seeing these daily pictures of illegal crossings on the channel. I believe that the only way to stop that is to make it a criminal offence to try to enter this country illegally—one that, if proven, would entail a custodial sentence and deportation.”
“He did do one thing right, which was calling a referendum on Europe, although of course he never thought for a moment that it would ever happen. He thought that he would still be in coalition with the Liberals and that if it did happen, there would be just a few right wingers, as he would have termed them, arguing for Brexit and he would win easily—but Brexit has changed everything. That is now the problem for the Labour party in reconnecting with its voters in northern and midlands seats such as Gainsborough, which I represent. The Government are in a strong position, but I counsel against hubris. If we are to hold on to our gains in areas such as the one I represent, we must not just talk the talk but walk the walk and take the action. That applies particularly to immigration and housing.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on the passion with which she speaks on behalf of early learning. I feel a bit bereft by this Government, because normally I like to make constructive criticism of my own side, but I have to say that there is very little in this Queen’s Speech that I disagree with—perhaps I had better sit down straight away, but you will forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I say a few words. To compare that with previous Governments, I found it very difficult to agree with a single thing that the Government of David Cameron were doing. He took the view—some in the Labour party may take it now—that his party was unelectable and he had to veer towards a kind of liberal agenda.”
“I do not want to get into the whole transgender issue, but a well-known feminist writer should not be barred from speaking in a university just because she has made a few comments on transgender issues. Finally, I want to talk about the Union, which is the single most important issue we have to deal with—even more important than immigration and housing. We have to fight for the Union. I counsel the Government when they say that it is just an economic issue. Of course, we have to take on the SNP on the economic issues, but we must not make the mistake of the remainers in the EU referendum by saying it is all about money. We must not play Project Fear. We must say, “We love being together with Scotland. We love the Scottish people. We love the Union. We have achieved so much together. Let’s keep it going.””
“I did not hear the interview. All I can say is that antisemitism, like Islamophobia and all the isms, is completely wrong, regrettable and horrible. I would have hoped that it would not be necessary to bring in such a Bill because there will be all sorts of unintended consequences. I heard a university vice-chancellor say yesterday, “How are we going to police it?” I understand all this. Therefore, it is down to the leadership of the universities and the schools to ensure free speech, within reason. Free speech should be governed by good manners. It should not be governed by laws. We should therefore protect free speech, and it is down to headteachers and vice-chancellors to ensure that this ridiculous no-platforming stops.”
“It is all very interesting for the future. My right hon. Friend cannot give a definitive answer now, but will he at least have an open mind on how we can deal with future pandemics?”
“At the end of his statement, the Prime Minister echoed the words of his predecessor, Sir Winston Churchill, who said: “let us go forward together”. —[ Official Report , 13 May 1940; Vol. 360, c. 1502.] Of course, precisely 80 years ago, on 12 May 1941, my right hon. Friend’s predecessor was standing in this devastated Chamber when he committed us to freedoms in the future. In that spirit, may I ask a practical question about the future? We had compulsory ID cards in the war, and they worked so successfully. Does the Prime Minister acknowledge that, if we had them now, the whole test and trace system would have worked superbly? They could be made to work in future—for instance, it could be made clear on a person’s smartphone that they had been vaccinated or whether they had been in touch with infections.”
“All the pressure on my right hon. Friend has been from one direction, so let me try to right the balance. When this is over, in terms of a smaller state, deregulation and lower taxes, are there any Thatcherites left in the Government?”
“The A1—the great north road—is a beautiful road linking Scotland and England, and I think that to honour the upcoming jubilee we should rename it the Queen’s highway. Why not? But it is not an entirely safe road. I have spent hundreds of hours on it, and there are many fatalities on it. I cannot understand why all the roundabouts have been stripped away between Newark and the Black Cat roundabout, but going south from the Black Cat to the north circular there are still roundabouts. There are also many crossing points in Lincolnshire and other places. Will the Minister now commit to really upgrading the A1 to make it entirely safe by getting rid of all the traffic lights, roundabouts and crossing points? Let us make it a true Queen’s highway.”
“Over the years, quite a few people—including, I must admit, myself —have questioned aspects of international aid and its efficiency, but I wonder if the Minister will acknowledge that public opinion is changing in the middle of a global pandemic, with international aid being seen not just as a moral duty—we are part of one humanity. If health systems around the world collapse, sooner or later it will come back to bite us. In that respect, can the Minister give a categorical assurance that the recent overseas aid budget cuts will not have affected in any way our ability to help the world’s poorest countries deal with this global pandemic?”
“I think this is quite important. The House is perfectly entitled to change its rules, but it is an absolutely fundamental part of natural justice that laws should not be changed retrospectively. Just for the sake of argument, we may, for instance, be dealing with a historical case that happened several years ago and the Member has left this House. It is absolutely vital that the Leader of the House makes it clear that that person would be judged according to the rules at the time, not according to the way we are changing the rules now. Do I make myself clear? If he makes that clear, that would be very helpful.”
“Would it not be helpful if the Leader of the House, when he sums up this debate, made it absolutely clear that in the case of historic allegations, if the subject of that complaint is no longer a passholder, then that complaint should be judged firmly on the rules of the time?”
“Can the Minister name any country in the world that, 50 years after the event, would prosecute two of its own soldiers for killing a terrorist?”
“Why are we causing such incompetence and chaos in the Department?”
“I am no pinko leftie and I sometimes pointed out distortions caused by the 0.7% commitment at the end of the financial year, but I am completely mystified from a public accounts point of view about what is going on here. Is it not a fact that, because of the contraction of the economy, the aid budget would have declined by some £2.9 billion anyway? The Minister is now imposing another £4 billion cut on that. We are causing complete chaos, with international development staff all running around trying to cut the budget. Now, by the Minister’s own logic, he is going to revert to 0.7%. We know the economy is going to bounce back, so having cut all this money, they are going to have to put it all back again. What is the logic from a public accounts perspective in what we are doing?”