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?”
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“Will the Minister set up a specialised unit in the Home Office so that we can have some religious literacy on this matter? Nuns and priests seeking to come from Iraq have been asked why they do not have a bank account, with officials seemingly unaware that they have made vows of poverty. A sister from Qaraqosh in Iraq is a perfect example: seeking to visit her sick sister, she was asked why she had not visited her since 2011. Officials were seemingly unaware that ISIS had forced her to flee from her convent and to flee for her life. Please may we have more religious literacy from our officials?”
“My old mum told me that I should not cherry-pick rules. When we try to make free trade agreements with America, for example, will the Secretary of State confirm that, following the Chequers agreement last week, we will have to accept the common rulebook in its entirety and that nothing in those deals can deviate from it?”
“It would have been possible for the Government to have taken us into their confidence and to have allowed us to start reading the document half an hour ago, at least.”
“I was going to make my normal plea for us to leave the building at the end of this month and lock it down for three months so we can get on with repairing it, but I am struck by what has been said, particularly by you, Mr Speaker. I am a friend of the Government and, frankly, I think it is pretty bad that journalists were given this document at 9 am when we Back Benchers have had no chance to read it. If I am lucky enough, I will ask a question on the statement. You will not want me beetling out of the Chamber to try to read the document. How can I possibly understand it? Of course I could do what I normally do and rubbish it before I have even read it but, as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, we are supposed to be a grown-up Parliament.”
“Paragraph 76 of chapter 1 is ambiguous. It states that we will seek reciprocal mobility arrangements, but it does not say when. Will the Secretary of State give an absolute assurance that any preferential treatment given to EU migrants will not be part of a withdrawal agreement but will be entirely in the hands of this Parliament post Brexit? This is a vital point. The people voted for Brexit because they want to control migration. They do not want to be sold down the river on this point as the negotiations proceed.”
“I welcome the statement that our involvement is limited to training. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that there will be no mission creep and no return to combat duties? Drawing hard on the positive scenes in Kabul during the ceasefire, which were inspiring for ordinary people there, will he say, on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, that we should increase our efforts to encourage the political process and try to get the two sides talking to each other, as that is the only way we are going to get peace?”
“The EU says that it will not tolerate cherry picking, but what I fear is that we have picked the wrong cherry. By accepting a common rulebook in goods, we are locking ourselves into a sclerotic structure in which the EU has an overwhelming trading surplus. Will that not severely constrain our ability to make our business more competitive and to undertake free trade deals, which means that Brexit will no longer mean Brexit, and the Commission, where we will have no vote, regulating our business forever?”
“In agreeing with the Prime Minister, as I always do, that Brexit means Brexit, and that that generally means taking back control, may I ask her to confirm not only that after we leave the EU we will be leaving the single market and customs union, but that it is her personal position, and the settled negotiating position of Her Majesty’s Government, that we will have full and unfettered control of migration into this country, full and unfettered control in our ability to make new trade deals with the rest of the world and, above all, full and unfettered control of how we regulate our own business?”
“As the Minister knows, the Government had a manifesto commitment to remove the cap for faith schools, which they decided not to implement. However, they have promised to fund voluntary-aided faith schools 100%. Can he confirm that that pledge stands? What steps is he taking to ensure that money is forthcoming for new voluntary-aided faith schools?”
“Is Labour in favour of staying in the customs union, or a customs union that approximates to a customs arrangement that would allow us to make free trade deals with states other than the EU—the customs union, or a customs arrangement?”
“It is obvious, as we listen to the debate, that there is a real tower of Babel in this place in Members’ different views. I listened very carefully to my hon. and learned Friend yesterday, when he was replying to questions posed to him by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve). Is my hon. and learned Friend quite clear—this is a very serious and important question—that there is no way, given the complexity of the negotiations and the likely outcome, that the Government will allow the House of Commons, by a voteable resolution, to influence, unpack or defeat those negotiations?”
“Is not the kernel of the problem that all the amendments tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and others make no deal more likely, because they give every incentive to the European Commission not to agree to a deal? The amendments would bind the Government and we would end up with the worst possible result. Therefore, they should be resisted.”
“I know that it is not in order to call any Member “disingenuous”, but I think that it is in order to call an argument disingenuous, and I do so now. I respect the House of Lords. I understand that it is not elected. I understand that it should try to improve legislation. I serve on the Procedure Committee, and when the Committee considered these matters, there was a detailed debate on the sifting committee and I could understand how the House of Lords can try to improve how we deal with legislation. That seems entirely sensible and credible, but many of us suspect that these amendments, particularly Lords amendment 19, are designed not to improve the legislation or to improve the sifting process by which we transfer these laws, but to frustrate the whole process.”
“I agree with the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) that we should use the language of respect. I, for one—and many of my colleagues, I am sure—would never use words such as “traitor”. We all accept that there are very different views in this place, but this is not the EU negotiating Bill. It is not a Bill designed from its inception to give the Government guidance about what sort of deal we should have. I thought—this has been explained to us many times by the Government—that this Bill was simply to try to transform and transfer, in an orderly way, EU laws into our legal system. That was what I understood the Bill to be; it is not an EU negotiating Bill. I said earlier that we should use the language of respect.”
“I agree with that. As I was saying, although it is perfectly in order for the other place to try to improve legislation, when it seeks to frustrate it, I think that Members of the elected House should start to get worried. Lords amendment 19 is very clear in saying: “Her Majesty’s Government may implement a withdrawal agreement only if Parliament has approved the withdrawal agreement and any transitional measures…Her Majesty’s Government must follow any direction in relation to the negotiations under Article 50” and so on. What would be the result of that amendment? I say to colleagues that we are not just acting in a vacuum. What would be the result if we fail to overturn this amendment from the other place?”
“Much more important than that—this is why I think the argument is disingenuous—is the fact those who support the House of Lords are dressing up their arguments in terms of parliamentary sovereignty. It is in order, is it not, for Parliament to debate and amend a Bill, as the House of Lords can do? That is what we do all the time, but what the Lords really want to do is to create a situation in which the whole process is frustrated.”
“No, I do not agree. I talked to my right hon. Friend the Brexit Secretary earlier today. He simply said—he does understand these things—that all the amendment tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) would do would be to implement what the House of Lords wants to do in fewer words, so I do not accept that, I am afraid. We have to bite this bullet now. We have to support the Government and reject the amendment. As I was asking, what would be the result—we do not operate in a vacuum—if the House of Lords had its way? Of course it would be a catastrophe for the Government. There would be banner headlines in every single newspaper tomorrow saying that the Government had been defeated and that the whole Brexit momentum was in danger.”
“They want to regain control of their borders and they want us to be out of the European Court of Justice. All this Bill does—it is not the EU negotiating Bill—is simply to implement the will of the people. Parliament, do not stand against the people! Implement their will.”
“I am afraid that my right hon. and learned Friend was not listening to his own speech. Was I not listening—was I not two or three feet away from him—when he said that the amendment that we passed earlier was not going to make much difference to the whole process? It was like giving a statement, was it not? What we are talking about is completely different. This really is the ultimate wrecking amendment, and it is not the wrecking of parliamentary sovereignty; it is the wrecking of the will of the people and democracy. There are so many compromises that we all have to make. There are so many things that I do not understand about this negotiating process, and about how we have got stuck on the hook of Ireland, the backstop, “max fac” and all these other things, but the essential thing is this: the people want us to leave the EU.”
“It has been said that the amendment of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) is a compromise, but people should read it. Proposed new subsection (5C) is absolutely clear. It states: “If no political agreement has been reached”, the Government must come back for “a resolution in the House of Commons”. That is exactly the same thing as in proposed new subsection (5) in Lords amendment 19. It is not a compromise; it is a wrecking amendment.”
“I am sorry to break the cosy consensus, but has not President Trump got a point to the extent that free trade, like all these theories, depends on some level of equivalence and fair dealing, yet China, with its unlimited population, is rapidly building massive trade surpluses with the rest of the world and draining other economies dry? Given that its secretive Government have proved utterly impervious to previous pressure, perhaps history will prove that there is some method in President Trump’s madness.”
“The United Kingdom Government have devolved these issues to the Northern Ireland Assembly. It would therefore be extraordinary if the United Kingdom Government removed or changed some part of the law—that would make the law a complete mess. Whatever our views on this issue, we should have respect for both sides of the abortion debate, as I do. We should also have respect for the people of Northern Ireland who ultimately, ab initio, have to deal with this.”
“It is now some time since our debate on the restoration and renewal of Parliament, which I and my colleagues caused to happen. We were told then that there is a present fire risk to this Chamber and royal palace, yet we are still waiting for action. If there is a present fire risk, we should be setting up fire doors and stopping up vents, and one way we can start that work is by closing this building during the entire summer recess and getting on with it. If there is a fire risk, let us deal with it.”
“My hon. Friend is right to make the point that there is no such thing as Government money, only taxpayers’ money, but my constituents in Lincolnshire, and hers, think that although it is okay to talk in these overall terms, there is a fundamental unfairness against council tax payers in rural areas, in terms of the services that we receive—our policing, NHS and broadband. We pay far more in council tax and get infinitely less than people get in urban areas. The Government have to grasp the nettle and get fairer funding for rural areas.”
“When I and my rural constituents travel to the most remote areas of Scotland, we are struck by the difference between the quality of the roads there and the quality the of roads in Lincolnshire. There are no potholes, and there is wonderful broadband and wonderful public services. Is the hon. Gentleman grateful to my Lincolnshire constituents who, through the Barnett formula, are subsidising his own constituents to such an extent, and would he not be sorry to see that go after Scottish independence?”
“There is hope, because our PCC is making huge strides by using drones. It is important in these debates that we are not miserable the whole time. There are technological ways in which we can combat crime with great success.”
“T5. I will repeat the same question as last time, on the grounds that unless one makes oneself a complete bore, nobody listens. What progress has the Secretary of State made on replacing short sentences with alternatives? Short sentences in prison rarely achieve anything, due to a lack of training and rehabilitation.”
“The Policing Minister is sitting next to the Home Secretary and will be able to brief him on the crisis in police funding in Lincolnshire. He will tell the Home Secretary that we are one of the bottom three authorities in the entire country for funding, so what is the Home Secretary going to do to try to resolve this matter? It would take relatively little and relatively few steps, and it would be cost-effective to ensure that we were fairly funded in Lincolnshire to help to resolve rural crime.”
“To cut through all this debate about whether we should stay in the customs union, I seem to remember that our manifesto was quite clear that we were leaving the EU, the single market and the customs union, and that we were going to negotiate a free trade agreement. Surely the whole party and the whole House can unite around that. That is why we are having the implementation Bill and ensuring that all these existing laws are in our law. What could be more simple than a free trade deal? Let us stick to it.”
“I do not know whether my hon. Friend heard the historical analogy from the hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna), but it was entirely false, because the Labour party then was not trying to get Cabinet papers revealed—that would have been ridiculous, either in wartime or now. What it was trying to do was bring down the Prime Minister. That suggests that this motion and this debate are not about the truth; they are about trying to bring down the Prime Minister.”
“The hon. Gentleman protests too much. We all know that, deep in his heart, he loves being here. He loves engaging in the Union Parliament; he would be bored stiff in Holyrood.”
“Is the hon. Gentleman seeking to take a leaf out of the book of the Irish nationalists in the 19th century and, by filibustering and talking complete rubbish, bore the Union to death?”
“He can give no commitment that local authorities will want to use them or that the funding will be available. This is a disgraceful announcement.”
“What justification is there for the Secretary of State reneging on a solemn Conservative manifesto commitment, on which we all stood, to drop the totally ineffective 50% cap on faith schools? He has reneged on that commitment. He knows perfectly well that the only new free schools that will not now open are Catholic schools. Catholic schools are the most diverse, the most inclusive and the most prone to operate in deprived areas, so why has he reneged on the cap? He knows all these arguments, because he made them when he was a Back Bencher before he became a Minister. He knows there will now be faith free schools all over the country, except for Catholic schools. Before he says that we are now going to open voluntary-aided schools, he is shackling us to a model that has not been encouraged for 10 years.”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. In support of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, may I say that no one in this House has worked harder on the issue than he has? He is the local Member, and he has fought almost a one-man campaign. It defies logic and belief that he is the one person who should be excluded from the Committee. He has a right to be heard.”
“The Minister says that he should not criticise the Blair Government, but we can. Has any apology been given this morning from Mr Blair for rendering an opponent of a murderous regime into the hands of that regime? I doubt whether any apology has been given, any more than an apology has been given over Iraq. Further to that, the British Government have, quite rightly, given an apology. The British taxpayer is now paying considerable amounts of compensation, and quite rightly, too. One might ask: what compensation has this murderous former Libyan Government given to the poor people who died in the Lockerbie incident?”
“Forty years ago, I was an impecunious young criminal barrister. Typically, I was sent off to magistrates courts and Crown courts all over outer London and less salubrious parts of London, and I was paid £4 a day, four years in arrears. Life was tough then too. I did not come from a wealthy family. My father was a civil servant, and I had to live at home with my poor parents until I was 32. It has always been very tough for those starting at the criminal Bar.”
“The problem is that compared with their colleagues in other legal work, criminal barristers are massively underpaid, which is all down to cuts in legal aid. The Government have to address that issue: do they want a first-class justice system—what is more important that defending people’s freedom?—or do they not? In order to have a proper justice system we need a proper legal aid system, and that means taking difficult decisions in other areas of Government spending.”
“We cannot increase spending on defence unless we are prepared not to spend as much as we would like in other areas, such as health. I understand that certain senior people in the Government may well question whether that is politically possible—whether we could argue the case before a general election. I would argue that not only is spending more on defence in an increasingly dangerous world the right thing to do, but it is a politically sensible and popular thing to do.”
“I am going to take it on the chin and argue that we cannot devote an ever-increasing part of public sector spending to overseas aid, health and social security. Let me start with defence. I am going to make some political points. They may not be points with which everyone will agree, but I feel that they need to be made. The fact is that the Ministry of Defence is underfunded. During the cold war, we were spending 5% of our national wealth on defence; even after the peace dividend, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, we were still spending 3%; and we continued to do so until the advent of the Labour Government in 1997. We are now hovering around 2%, and there is a general consensus that we must increase that percentage. That will, of course, involve difficult decisions.”
“I am glad that I am following my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). He spoke about pressure on one part of the public service sector and, in particular, about the cuts in legal aid. He made the very fair point that the criminal justice system relies crucially on talented young people wanting to enter it and receiving appropriate remuneration. I want to make a similar point about the whole public sector. I shall argue that spending is overstressed in large parts of the public sector. I shall talk about defence for a short time, and then about transport and police funding in my own constituency. This will not—I hope—be just one of a series of speeches in which Members ask for more and more public spending, because I am also committed to lower public spending.”
“The hon. Lady leapt to her feet too soon. I am not going to argue that DFID’s spending should be cut; I am going to argue that we should spend on DFID what we can afford to spend, and what we need to spend. We should not link the arbitrary aim to spend 0.7% of GNP on aid, which is now enshrined in law, with the very different aim in respect of defence spending.”
“They must not forget the pressures that people face in rural counties.”
“In traditional Conservative counties, there are other things that people feel are underfunded. When they look at Scotland, at Northern Ireland and even at some of the big urban areas, they see fantastic internet connections, good roads and good police funding in their terms, and they wonder why the rural counties are so underfunded. My plea to those on the Treasury Bench is that they should not forget the rural counties and the real pressures that we face. Yes, there is crime, but also our roads in Lincolnshire are full of potholes. This is an important point, because people are driving at 50 or 60 mph in the middle of the road to avoid potholes, and 500 people are being killed or are injured in some form on our roads locally. These are really important issues, and the Government must address them.”
“Lincolnshire is one of the lowest funded police authorities in the country—it is in the bottom three or four—and for 35 years we have been having meetings with Policing Ministers and begging for more resources. I understand the pressure that the Minister is under. He tells us that, officially, austerity is now finished with regard to policing. All our constituents want more policing, but we have to provide the funds. We have already heard mention of the security threats in London, and it is difficult for a Policing Minister to transfer resources from the capital city to a rural county such as Lincolnshire, even though there is plenty of crime in Lincolnshire that I could talk about. I could even talk about my own personal experience of crime. It is a real issue. We clearly have to increase the resources for police funding.”
“I will leave it there, but I earnestly implore the Government to take heed when even the former Defence Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon), who has just left his post and who was a very careful pair of hands who honestly defended the Government while he was Secretary of State, argues that we need to spend at least 2.5% of our national wealth on defence and we are simply not spending enough. That is one area where we have to make difficult decisions. We have already talked about legal aid, and we are talking about the difficult decisions we have to make on defence, and now we have to take difficult decisions in our own constituencies. Earlier this week, Lincolnshire Members of Parliament held a meeting with the Policing Minister.”
“I would argue in terms of our commitment to the Baltic states that, while admirable in every respect and while underpinned by the NATO alliance—treaties and article 5 and everything else—unless we are prepared now to commit real hardware to their defence, we could be in an extraordinarily dangerous situation in which Russia would believe she could intervene and undermine those states and could even intervene militarily, because by the time she achieved a successful military intervention it would be too late and our only recourse would be to nuclear weapons. We clearly cannot rely entirely on nuclear weapons, therefore. There must be a whole range of deterrents at all levels. That is why at the moment the armed forces are struggling: the Royal Navy is struggling, and there are threats to various regiments.”
“He said, “Look at what happened in that Fulham by-election. What would have happened to the Conservative party if we had advocated increased defence spending when it was so unpopular?” I am not saying we are in as dangerous a position now as we were in the 1930s, but defence spending is an insurance policy. This is all about the value of deterrence, and we cannot know what the threats of the future will be. What we do know, however, is that Russia is increasingly proactive and is probably run by a criminal mafia regime. We know that there is an existential threat to the Baltic states, too, and one lesson of history from the 1930s, particularly from our pledge to Poland in the late 1930s, is that there is no point in giving pledges to defend a country in eastern Europe unless we have the means and will to carry them out.”
“There was an understandable, almost universal, desire for peace in the 1930s—part of the Oxford Union debates and many other factors, with people remembering the carnage of the first world war—and rearmament was not considered to be a popular policy, although clearly after 1933 when the Nazis came to power in Germany it was necessary; and I am thinking now of what is going on in Russia. So it was necessary to rearm but that was perhaps unpopular, and Baldwin, who was a very successful Conservative Prime Minister, gave the “appalling frankness” speech in the late 1930s when he was criticised for not rearming early enough. We only started rearming in 1936 or thereabouts and almost left it too late; we only won the battle of Britain by a whisker. When Baldwin was criticised, he gave the “appalling frankness” speech.”
“That 1983 election hinged very substantially on defence, and the Conservative party won it. Political parties have to major on, and argue on, the areas in which they are strongest, and every public opinion poll suggests that the Conservatives are trusted most on defence, so this is one of our strong areas and it is not an area that we should feel that we are continually criticised because we are not doing enough. I am also reminded by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East that these arguments have raged back and forth for many years. In the early 1930s, the Conservative party lost a by-election in Fulham, and there was a peace candidate—a Labour candidate, I think—standing for the Opposition. George Lansbury was leader of the Labour party; he famously in the 1930s wanted to abolish the RAF entirely.”