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
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“Perhaps I could have put it to the Leader of the House, but you decreed otherwise. When we have these ad hoc business statements in the future, given that we are talking about civil liberties and very important matters tomorrow, we should be allowed to come into the Chamber, as we used to, and hold the Leader of the House to account.”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is there any reason why you have just announced that Back Benchers were not allowed to ask a question during the business statement? It was only announced today and it would have been a perfect opportunity for Back Benchers to come in on spec and hold the Leader of the House to account. There is no reason why that should not have happened. There could not have been a call list because it was only announced today. You said earlier that a very large number of Members of Parliament could not get in for the Prime Minister, despite his best efforts, and I was one of them. I might have wanted to ask him why the old should not be allowed to self-isolate if they want and the young to work if they want, but I was not able to ask that question.”
“On the subject of loaves, can I bring a message from the county of Lincolnshire, which produces 2 billion of them a year? It is the bread basket of England. This is a general point, but I was talking to farmers and I think they just want to be reassured on this point. They are the most efficient farmers in the country, and they want to be assured that when we do free trade deals, our competitors under these deals will be working under the same regulations as our farmers. That is all they want, and that was the whole point of the Lord Curry amendment about a Trade and Agriculture Commission with teeth. If the Minister can just give that commitment, they will be reassured.”
“Why does the hon. Gentleman think that so few British farmers vote Labour? Is it because they recognise Labour as a metropolitan elite outfit?”
“I remind Members that the convention still applies: if you wish to speak, you should be present at the beginning. There are quite a large number of people on the call list, so please restrict your comments to about four minutes; otherwise, I will have to impose a time limit. I will call Members as on the call list, starting with Andrew Percy.”
“Does the Chief Secretary agree that the best way to help business is to let business get on with the job, as free as possible from Government control? Will he note that when the Treasury argues against further lockdowns for business, scores of Tory MPs and tens of thousands of businesses cheer it on? After all, to quote the Chancellor, is it not our “sacred” duty to “balance the books”? What is the point of solving this problem by borrowing money? Is that not the socialist way? What would be the point of a Conservative Government if we did that?”
“Will the Secretary of State confirm that a proportionate response means that students have a right to their course and to face-to-face education? All of us, including older people such as myself, must take personal responsibility. We cannot destroy the life chances of the young. If someone is doing a history degree, they cannot be condemned to permanent online teaching. They might as well sit at home; why have they paid all that money? Will he confirm that, of course, students must self-isolate if they get ill, but we cannot have whole halls of residence being locked down? That is not the sort of university that we all want—a place of light and learning, without enforced lockdowns.”
“Actually, to be fair, the Minister has just been dealing with new clause 8, which I have tabled. I am very grateful for what he has said. He seemed to suggest that the new clause was not in itself wrong, but was not necessary. Will he accept that, certainly when this Bill goes to the House of Lords, it might be helpful for the Government to produce an idea like this as another arrow in the armoury to reassure those who want to use international law in the right way, if the EU acts unreasonably? The advantage of a unilateral interpretive declaration under the Vienna convention is that we can do it in this way, so I am grateful to the Minister.”
“We do not need to accept its interpretation of the protocol. When we face unreasonable demands, we have a chance to state our interpretation of what we agreed when we signed the protocol. We can challenge the EU with a unilateral interpretative declaration and, hence, defend our position in full accord with international law. I ask the Government to consider positively this compromise, on which we can all agree and which is offered to the Government in good faith.”
“Subsection (3) therefore requires the Government to obtain parliamentary approval before they make a legal challenge, and subsection (4) requires the Government to report back to Parliament on whether the EU has approved the interpretation. If the dispute were to continue, there would be a choice: we could seek negotiations to achieve a compromise in the Joint Committee, or we could invoke the withdrawal agreement’s arbitration procedures. If the dispute could not be resolved and arbitration were required, we would have acted in good faith—that is the point—in international law. We would have established our case and started arbitration on our own terms. The Government are right to challenge the EU. We can uphold international law. We can challenge the EU with proper legal methods.”
“I proposed in an amendment in Committee that the Government should use this declaration to assert their position if the EU were to fail to implement aspects of the protocol. My new clause 8 now spells out in some detail how the declaration could be used. Subsection (1) specifies that the Government should invoke this procedure if the EU fails to carry out the requirements of the protocol. Subsection (2) specifies that the Government should ensure that their interpretation of the protocol is justified by, and in accord with, the provisions of the Vienna convention. It is important to note that the Vienna convention covers the need to act in “good faith” and the need to avoid results that are “manifestly absurd or unreasonable”.”
“Rather than abandoning international law, we must use the full provisions of international law to ensure that the protocol is implemented as we agreed. The general principles of international law applicable to the withdrawal agreement and the protocol are spelled out in the 1986 Vienna convention on the law of treaties. In addition, in 2011, the International Law Commission of the UN codified a guide of practice for handling disagreements about the interpretation of treaties. That allows an individual Government to issue a declaration on their interpretation of the meaning of specific aspects of a treaty. The UK can do that unilaterally, without any agreement from the EU. To leave the realm of politics and enter the realm of international law, any unilateral interpretative declaration must be sent to the depositary of the treaty.”
“and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), who was then the Attorney General, took this up to seek a time limit or a withdraw mechanism from the backstop. That was the basis of documents tabled on 11 March 2019 for the second meaningful vote. Unfortunately, the unilateral declaration issued then was not made strong enough to guarantee an exit from the backstop according to many people in this House. The Government, I believe, should have asserted a stronger interpretation. Nevertheless, in December last year, we succeeded in getting rid of the backstop. The question is whether the agreed Northern Ireland protocol will be implemented in good faith. The protocol is a good compromise.”
“We can use international law to ensure that the EU meets the commitments it made in the protocol. We can assert our position, as I have argued, in a unilateral interpretative declaration, if—and only if—the EU behaves unreasonably. The initial version of the Northern Ireland protocol agreed to in November 2018 could have bound us indefinitely to maintaining full alignment with the EU’s single market regulations and membership of the customs union. In an Adjournment debate in February 2019, I advocated the use of a conditional unilateral interpretative declaration to assert the temporary nature of the backstop. That word “temporary” was then in the protocol. My right hon.”
“In the light of that, the Government understandably introduced this Bill, so that we can act when the EU threatens the economic integrity of the United Kingdom. We are committed to implementing the protocol, which we signed up to, but we are only committed to what we actually agreed to—no more and no less. This is the nub of the problem. We are not bound by new interpretations of the protocol that the EU might seek to impose on us. We are not required under international law to accept all the proposals that the EU tables in the negotiations. We cannot accept any bargaining linkage being made between implementing what has been agreed under the protocol in good faith, and what has still to be agreed about our future relationship. There is a compromise available.”
“Many in the other place will be concerned about the possibility that the UK Government may be opening the door to breaking international law. We pride ourselves on the rule of law and we should maintain our commitment to it. The real problem is whether the EU is willing to implement the protocol in a reasonable and effective manner. We do not need to break international law; we need to prevent the EU from breaking international law by violating its treaty commitments. The EU has suggested that it would break its commitments in the protocol. It has said that it would consider breaking its commitments to allowing food from England, Wales or Scotland to be sold in Northern Ireland if the UK did not make concessions on the free trade agreement. That is on the record in Michel Barnier’s statement on 10 September.”
“I rise to speak to new clause 8 in my name. I shall attempt, within your time constraint, Madam Deputy Speaker, to get these complex legal and international law arguments on the record. The problem is not the possibility of the UK’s breaking international law, which we do not want to do, obviously; the problem is the UK’s being prepared in case the EU fails in its willingness to interpret the protocol on Northern Ireland in a proper way. We have a legal tool at our disposal that would help clarify the situation in accord with international law: a unilateral interpretative declaration. My new clause 8 describes in some detail how that could be done. It would help our negotiating position in securing an EU trade agreement, and, just as important, it would help get the Bill through the House of Lords.”
“If the first duty of Government is to keep people safe, will the Secretary of State remember that the first duty of Parliament is to hold Government to account? I know that he wants to take public opinion with him, but will he therefore reassure us that he is also determined to take Parliament with him? In that respect, may I urge him to meet with my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady) and come to a compromise to ensure that, if there are further national lockdowns, Parliament will be fully involved in the process?”
“Despite all the scare stories, surely there is no bar to a deal. We will surely not undercut the EU on state aid—we will not return to picking winners and all that rubbish—and with the regulation of business, we will not create a bargain-basement economy or produce rust buckets like the Morris Minor I drove to university with a hole in the floor in 1968. Breaking news just now, however, is that if the deal is conducted late, there might be not indeed an extension of the transition period, but a two-year implementation period. I want now an absolute commitment from the Secretary of State: no extension of transition and no implementation period. We want a clean break, as we promised the electorate, at the end of this year.”
“My right hon. Friend said that we had brought in proxy voting to help Members for reasons of public health. The trouble is that this whole system has been corrupted. A huge number of Members of Parliament now have proxy votes. I do not believe that the great majority of them are actually shielding or medically ill—I think it is just for convenience. This shows the creeping danger of what is going on. I would like to get from the Leader of the House, as someone who loves the House of Commons, a personal view on that and a determination that if a Member wants to vote, in virtually all circumstances, they should take the trouble to turn up here.”
“May I press my right hon. Friend on that? Why do some Members have a proxy vote one week but are then here the next week, or they have a proxy vote and we see them wandering around the corridors? We all know that this is being abused, and I want the Leader of the House to give a firm commitment that he will not have this creeping corruption of our procedures.”
“I am sorry, but I cannot believe it is right that I was sitting in my garden at my daughter’s birthday party in Lincolnshire, and I could nip in and try to proxy vote. Given the circumstances we are in—we are supposed to be Members of Parliament; we are not forced to be here—most Members of Parliament can make the effort to come here in person and vote. Remote voting did not always work. I do not know what it is like in Leicester or Vauxhall, but in Lincolnshire our broadband is terrible, and at least twice the system broke down for me. Members turning up in person and being seen by their colleagues—that is the right way to vote.”
“I beg my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley): do not take this system too far. Let us recall what has happened in this period and go back to the traditional way of being here and voting in person.”
“Some people have been applying for Prime Minister’s Question Time for two years and have not got in once. This is giving too much power to the Government. It is scandalous that some Whips are going through the Division Lobbies wielding 50 votes. This is just letting the Government off the hook. By the way, I am all in favour of parental leave. I was on the Procedure Committee and I voted it through. I remember that when my son was born on a Thursday, the Whips made me turn up here on the Monday. They were pretty tough. They are quite nice people now, the Whips. In those days, they were all ex-Army officers who had had a good war and had burnt faces from burning tanks and things. They were cruel and horrible. They made me turn up three days after my son was born. I am all in favour of parental leave, but it has to be tightly controlled.”
“But Jim Callaghan, being a gentleman, said, “No, I’m not going to take that Labour MP out of hospital to come here in an ambulance to be checked by the Whips to vote—he will be allowed to stay in hospital and die in peace.” He lost the vote, lost the Government and lost the general election. People did things properly, and we must ensure that we do things properly. This is a zombie Parliament. These call lists are just terrible. The much derided Speaker Bercow, who everybody apparently now dislikes—I thought he was quite a good Speaker at the time—made sure that everybody got in. The Prime Minister was constantly coming here. Mr Cameron was constantly coming here, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) was always coming here: we were questioning them and everybody got in. Now we have these call lists.”
“But if someone is genuinely ill and does not want to come, they do what we have always done—they go to the Whips and say, “Can I have a pair?” The advantage of that is that we have to give a reason, and sometimes they say yes and sometimes they say no. If they say no, we can sometimes ignore them, as I have done many times, or, if we want to preserve our careers, we can obey the instruction and make sure we turn up. There is nothing wrong with pairing. We have the Whips here. It would be perfectly possible. We have always done it in the past. In the famous vote that Jim Callaghan lost by one vote, there was one Labour Member genuinely ill in hospital. Even then, we were allowed to bring people down here in ambulances and the Whips would check them in.”
“Member for Edinburgh East—we know that large numbers of SNP Members are proxy voting—that of course it is a crashing bore to have to come all the way here on the plane from Edinburgh or Glasgow, taking three and a half hours. It takes me three and a half hours to get here from Lincolnshire, but I take the view that if I want to speak and take part, I should make the effort to come. What if someone is genuinely ill and cannot be here? Again, I suspect that a lot of people who have proxy votes are not really genuinely ill—it is just very convenient to sit at home, appear on the screen up there and have their say without making the effort to make the journey.”
“Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie)—but then we wander through the Lobby, all crowded and chatting to each other. Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that we could have another voting terminal in the Lobby, or outside the Chamber, or in Westminster Hall? We could even have one in Portcullis House—at least it would still be in Parliament. People say that we are unsafe when voting, but there is a way of getting around it. This whole issue of proxy voting just shows what happens when we make these reforms. I am afraid that, human nature being what it is, people would much rather be sitting at home or doing their gardening and then tapping on a computer to vote than making all the effort of coming down here. I say to the hon.”
“Hon. Members may not know this, but in the 18th century Members used to send their servants to vote for them—they would mumble “Leigh” or whatever the name was. That is why we are not allowed to wear an overcoat as we walk through the Division Lobby. I am afraid that human nature is innately lazy, and there is a reason why we vote in person. I say to the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) that, yes, the Government are encouraging solicitors to work from home, but this is not a solicitor’s office; this is the Parliament of the United Kingdom. We are elected by the people to come here and to be here—to be seen and to see. With regard to the safety of Members, I agree that what we are doing is completely absurd. Here we are, totally socially distanced—I am not allowed to go just one step further towards my hon.”
“He suggests that we rely on encouraging people to look after themselves, to protect the vulnerable and to take responsibility for their own lives. That is the Conservative way.”
“The trouble with authoritarianism is that it is profoundly inimical to civil liberties. It is also increasingly incompetent. It relies on acquiescence, and acquiescence to lockdowns, particularly national ones, is draining away. For instance, if students are told not to go to pubs, they will simply congregate in rooms, which is even worse. If the Secretary of State will not listen to me, will he at least listen to Professor Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious diseases? He wrote in The Sunday Telegraph : “It is profoundly disappointing that six months into this pandemic, having rejected every alternative proposed, we keep coming back to lockdown”. He suggests— [ Interruption. ] I am trying to be constructive.”
“The objection seems to be that we may have to act in this way, but we do not want to break international law. Has my hon. Friend noted my amendment 45, which shows a way through? Under the Vienna convention, which is already mentioned through the conditional interpretative declaration, if another party is acting in bad faith, we can use the declaration to escape from an impossible situation. Will the Minister at least look at that amendment?”
“We need to make sacrifices in order to work together. With a little bit of malleability, making some tweaks to the integrity of our internal market, we can preserve the peace in Northern Ireland that has taken so long to achieve. Equally, if we are making some adjustments and sacrifices, the European Union needs to sacrifice its rigid attitudes. That is the compromise I propose, and I hope it is helpful to the debate.”
“We will still be linked to the EU.” That is a valid point, but what clear alternatives are they offering? We have a fundamental logical difficulty here. We have three important goals, and it is difficult to see how they can all be reached compatibly but in full. First, we want to support the Belfast agreement; secondly, we want to leave the customs union; and thirdly, we want a cohesive, sovereign, independent United Kingdom. We cannot reach each of those three goals in full simultaneously without a little bit of give and take, and that is all I am suggesting. We need to invoke the great British spirit of compromise. It may be called muddling through, but it is what we do best. It is the same in the family of communities that is the United Kingdom and the family of nations in the world.”
“So much of diplomacy is about saving face, and this would help the EU to do so, while securing an agreement. We would not be reopening or unpicking the protocol; we would just be making a small explanatory statement of our interpretation of what we had signed up to in good faith. Stage 3 of Brexit starts in January, when we will have established a series of new relationships between the UK, the Republic of Ireland and the EU. There have been deep and bitter rifts over this, first about the backstop and then about the new protocol, but two major improvements have taken place. First, we no longer have the backstop. Secondly, the new arrangement will last only as long as it has the consent of the people of Northern Ireland. Critics say, “Oh, but Northern Ireland is part of the UK.”
“If we use a unilateral interpretative declaration to spell out our objections, the EU must respond by either explicitly rejecting or implicitly accepting our interpretation. If it rejects, it must formulate and justify an alternative interpretation. If the EU goes along with a unilateral interpretative declaration made by the UK, it becomes a legally binding joint interpretation. If the EU opposes our interpretation, we have at least strengthened our negotiating position, pushed the EU negotiators on to the back foot and gained a basis for appealing to EU national Governments for new instructions to be given to EU negotiators. Importantly, an interpretative declaration would hand the EU a way out of the escalation, which is why I am putting this forward as a constructive idea to get us out of the impasse we are in.”
“If the Germans have given the world great music and the French have given it great pictures, we have given the world freedom under the law, under parliamentary democracy, so we must remain within the law. The point is that there may be a way for the Government to achieve their objective without breaking international law. If the EU were to act on its threat, it would violate our sovereignty—one of the most basic principles of international law. This is what lawyers call an act of bad faith in negotiations. It can also be called a manifestly absurd interpretation of the protocol, and under international law no one is bound by an absurd interpretation of a treaty that is entered into in good faith.”
“As I highlighted in the debates last year—I also had numerous meetings with the then Prime Minister and the then Attorney General, and the ideas I promoted were incorporated in the previous Prime Minister’s last suggestion—there is an instrument of diplomacy that can be applied to treaties of this kind and it is called an “interpretative declaration”. Any party to a treaty can use this legal instrument on its own initiative. To emphasise that, we refer to it as a unilateral interpretative declaration. I am sorry to get into detail, but this is terribly important. The law is important and we must uphold the law, which is why I have concerns about the current direction the Government are taking.”
“I wish to speak to my amendment 42. I am optimistic that we can reach a deal for the benefit of both the UK and the EU. My amendment outlines a way whereby in the event that the implementation period ends without a UK agreement we can still provide reassurance on the integrity of our internal market. The statement that EU negotiators made on 10 September, threatening, on the record, that the EU could control the movement of food from Great Britain to Northern Ireland was a regrettable escalation. The reality is that we do not need to accept its interpretation of the protocol. The alternative in the face of unreasonable demands is to state clearly our interpretation of what we agreed to when we signed the protocol.”
“May we have a debate on state aid? I am mystified as to why this should be a problem in the free trade talks. Will the acting Leader of the House confirm—indeed, will the Government confirm—that we have no intention of returning to the failed policies of the 1970s, and that we have no intention of propping up failed companies or picking winners? If the Leader of the House were here, he could give us a lecture on the failed policies of 18th- century mercantilism and the failed policies of autarky. Let us have a firm statement from the Government that the only freedom we want to have on state aid is to give less state aid than the EU norm. Let us have it now.”
“The problem is that if we order people about more and more, they stop listening. They realise the Secretary of State cannot enforce anything. He will become the emperor without clothes, and we will go backwards. We need an approach based on traditional self-reliance, and to trust the people.”
“Please do not take this as unduly critical, because none of us could have done any better, but the problem for the Secretary of State— [ Interruption. ] It is easy to be wise after the event. The problem for the Secretary of State is that given the contradictory nature of advice given to people—maybe necessitated by events—fewer and fewer people are listening to him, particularly young people. I think we need a different approach. The approach of the nanny state, of ordering people about, particularly in this country, is not going to work. We have to appeal to the good sense of young people—“Stay away from grandpa and grandma. It is your responsibility.” These lockdowns and things are not going to work—it is their responsibility. And for us grandads—“Stay away from your grandchildren”.”
“Can we get back to being a proper Conservative Government who trust the people and who let the people decide how to look after their own health?”
“The truth is that young people of working age who are fit know that there is very little chance of their becoming seriously ill from this thing. I know that the Secretary of State will say, yes, but they can pass it on to older people, but may I speak on behalf of older people? I am one. I think that, at 70, I am the oldest person here and I am still kicking—just. What I can say to him is that older people do not want to be patronised. They are very well aware of their own health needs. They can be trusted to isolate if they have to. We do not want to have this thing whereby the man from Whitehall knows best. The man from Whitehall does not know best, especially as he changes his mind every two minutes.”
“The Minister talks about the welfare of fishermen. Apostleship of the Sea tells me that the industry after Brexit will be just as reliant, perhaps even more reliant, on non-European Economic Area nationals. They enter this country, or this industry, under a very opaque system that almost pretends they are not there. As a result, they have no rights and are often abused in the workplace. After Brexit, can we ensure that we work with the fishing industry and other regulatory mechanisms to ensure that these people are properly cared for and we have a robust visa system?”
“One of the justifications for demolishing Richmond House was that we needed extra places for civil servants working for us and generally for the national machine. Now that we have had covid and the civil service is so successfully working from home—and there are long-term plans to move to a three-day week and to allow civil servants to work two days a week—would the Minister accept that we no longer need all this office space in central London, and we can actually make some money by leasing it out to the private sector?”
“May I make a controversial statement—that we live in a parliamentary democracy? As regards wearing face masks, I do not think that there will be time, because the order has not been laid, to have a debate. Surely the Leader of the House—and indeed, the Government—in a matter as controversial as the enforced wearing of face masks from an increasingly authoritarian Executive, know that there should be a debate here and a vote. After all, this is highly controversial and everybody in the country has a view. Up to 70 million people will be affected by it. Lincolnshire has an infection rate of 150 in 150,000, so we have natural social distancing anyway. Why can we not just have more democracy and less authoritarianism from this Government?”
“The right hon. Lady says that the case for a full decant is strong. I do not want to get into that argument. I want to ask her about her attitude to whether it is necessary to demolish the listed Richmond House. If she wants a full decant, could we not move into a temporary, rather than permanent, Chamber in the courtyard of Richmond House, as has been fully costed and scoped by the heritage organisation SAVE?”
“There are 24-hour fire checks in many roof and basement areas. There were four fires in 2019, eight fires in 2018 and even a small fire in the basement last month. We all accept that the work has to be got on with as quickly as possible. My contention is that if we follow the present plans, we will face years of delay and public inquiries, because when the original Joint Committee met, it was told that it could fit a temporary Chamber into one of the courtyards of Richmond House. It was given the wrong measurements and that is how we started the whole genesis of knocking down all of Richmond House.”
“This debate has often falsely been portrayed as a debate between pragmatic modernisers such as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who by the way I cannot help liking and respecting—I do not know why, but I do—and traditionalists who are putting their own comfort first. Actually, the arguments are far more complex. I have spent quite a lot of time over the past few years talking to architects and mechanical and electrical engineers, and I personally believe that compared with the present plans, there are greener, cheaper, faster and better solutions. May I burnish my credentials with those who say that we have to get on with this work by saying that 25% of the space in the Palace is currently taken up by unseen historical ventilation systems? I went round some of them yesterday.”