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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“We are coming up to Christmas, one of the great feasts of the Christian year that marks the birth of Christ and the bringing of hope to all mankind, but we should recall another event, which is much more recent in time but which happened more than a quarter of a century ago: the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991. When I was elected to this House, 270 million people lived under the direct totalitarian rule of the Soviet Union, with no elections of any meaningful value; and a further 137 million lived in the other countries of the eastern bloc in Europe. On 26 December 1991, Gorbachev went on television to announce that the long nightmare was over.”
“It found that “(1) Russian Twitter accounts shared to the public, contributed relatively little to the overall Brexit conversation, (2) Russian news content was not widely shared among Twitter users, and (3) only a tiny portion of the YouTube content was of a clear Russian origin.” The fact is that the majority of the UK population—to a significant extent—is not on Twitter.”
“I am not seeking to defend the Putin regime. There is much in Russia that is not perfect. I was a member of the Council of Europe delegation to the presidential elections, and I know it is not a perfect democracy, but let us keep a sense of proportion. So much progress has been made, and Russia is an infinitely freer and better place than it was under the Soviet Union. It is not perfect, it is not pleasant and it is not our sort of democracy, so I do not defend the Putin regime, but I want to get a sense of proportion in this debate. Let us look at the evidence from the Oxford Internet Institute, which is part of Oxford University. It investigated more than 100 Russian-linked Twitter accounts and their activity in the run-up to our EU referendum. The results of the investigation are worth noting.”
“I am grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee, and of course we must keep a sense of proportion. I am quoting from a well-established institute and I want to give another point of view in this debate, which I think is fair enough. I mentioned that the majority of the UK population is not on Twitter. Of the Twitter users, the majority do not even log in daily. Facebook did an investigation into the notorious Russian “troll factory” called the Internet Research Agency and found that its advertisements reached fewer than 200 people in Britain during the referendum campaign. If that is the best Russia can do to overturn our long-established parliamentary democracy, I think we can probably rest at ease.”
“I will not give way; I have got to finish now. The paranoid tendency to see a red under every bed is very much alive, albeit changed, and there is an explanation for such paranoia. Look at Trump’s victory, and look at the success of Brexit in the referendum. Things are not going the way of the liberals’ world view, and they cannot accept that the people—the workers, even—are abandoning their ideology, presuming that they ever agreed with it in the first place. The left knows that the people are never wrong, so when the people are wrong, as with Brexit or Trump, the left has a psychological need to find some excuse for the people’s misbehaviour.”
“It was not the work of foreigners somewhere distant, plugging away at computers and unleashing Twitterbots. Authority comes from above but power comes from below, and it came from the people in our referendum. If we do not accommodate the legitimate concerns of ordinary people, we undermine the very foundations of our parliamentary democracy. We might find ourselves being replaced and irrelevant, as Mr Gorbachev did on 26 December 1991.”
“No, I will not give way to the hon. Lady. Russia is that excuse today. Perhaps the reality is that voters might not agree with the established liberal consensus on Brexit. Perhaps voters in Britain, America, Poland, Hungary and elsewhere have legitimate concerns that they feel are not being addressed. Those concerns must be addressed, and we in this House must be the ones to address them. Such was the wisdom shown by Disraeli and others in expanding the electorate. Such is the British constitution that it adapts, evolves and bends instead of breaking. The fact is that the referendum was a free and fair vote of the British people. If there was foreign interference, it was so ineffective that I doubt it made any difference at all to the final result.”
“I say to Members on the Government Front Bench, if they need any encouragement: I welcome the spirit of compromise today; I welcome the fact that we are going to be generous to EU citizens here and that we have made progress; and I welcome the fact that the Brexiteers are co-operating with every single compromise that the Government are prepared to make in order to take this process forward and ensure that we have a long and lasting friendship with our friends in Europe.”
“That is why it has to be a short period, and it is why—this is a firm policy of the Government and the firm view of the overwhelming majority of Conservative Members of Parliament—we will leave the single market and the customs union after that short implementation period. That does not necessarily mean that we will not be a member of a customs union or a single market, but we would not be a member of the regulatory single market, because if we were, we would not control our own borders.”
“That is good for us leavers, as we are leavers because we believe passionately in the sovereignty of Parliament. I welcome the fact that we are having 60 hours of debate and that we will come back to debate the Bill in another week. I welcome the fact that more legislation will be needed. The more Bills, the more motions, the more affirmative orders—I welcome them all, because we cannot reverse this process. I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) that, yes, there will be an implementation period. During that period, we will be law takers, not law givers. To that extent, we will be a colony of the EU.”
“All that amendment 400 does is to ensure that this Bill—it will then be an Act—marches step by step in accord with our treaty obligations under article 50. Make no mistake that, whatever amendment 7 says, it does not make much practical difference. The situation could, of course, be dealt with by simply withdrawing clause 9. The amendment prevents the Government from making preparatory orders, but it does not delay the process. I therefore welcome what the Minister has said today. He has been clear from the Dispatch Box—I say this to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who has just again repeated the question—that the Government are not seeking to subvert the will of the House of Commons as expressed last week.”
“Perhaps we should have put the date in the Bill in the first place, because Brexit means Brexit, Brexit means that we are leaving the EU and Brexit means that we are leaving the EU on 29 March 2019. For all the hundreds of hours of debate, that is all that matters because we are obeying the instructions given to us by the British people. I was slightly worried about amendment 400 when I was first told about it very kindly by the Whips Office over the weekend, but I listened to the Prime Minister’s assurance today that this measure would only be used to delay the exit date by a very short period, only in exceptional circumstances and only by an order subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.”
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that one’s own speeches seem short and incisive, while others’ seem long and discursive. If I speak for more than five minutes, please order me to exit, Mrs Laing. Frankly, there has been a lot of hype about this Bill. We have had nearly 70 hours of debate on it, which is all very welcome, but there has also been a lot of hype. All this Bill does is put into our own law what was previously in EU law. It does not change how we leave the EU. Therefore, I for one welcome the spirit of compromise that seems to have broken out today. I welcome the fact that we are all going to vote, if there is a vote, for amendment 400 and for the original amendment 381 that put the date in the Bill.”
“The European Union is estimated to have a wine cellar of more than 42,000 bottles and art work worth more than £13 million, some, one might say, metaphorically looted from the capitals of Europe. After we leave the party, will the Minister promise to take back control of our fair share of this art and wine and not leave it to Mr Juncker to enjoy?”
“My hon. Friend has taken several interventions. Some of us have loyally supported Ministers throughout this process, and we want him to be robust, keep his lead in his pencil, deliver the Bill and ensure that none of our laws are left in limbo. I encourage him to the last.”
“Despite all the prophecies of doom and gloom, the Prime Minister, with her calm, true grit, has shown that Brexit can and will be done. We congratulate her on that. Of course it is a compromise, but when Brexiteers like me look at the alternative—namely, a Labour Government staying in the single market forever and having no control over immigration—it is amazing how our minds are concentrated in support of the Prime Minister. Will she confirm that, although as a great country we can of course choose to align our regulations with those of other countries, once the implementation period is over, we will have full regulatory autonomy?”
“We know that, in several areas, EU rules have prevented us from improving standards of animal welfare. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that he is now doing the detailed preparation so that on day one of our freedom, he will be ready to take action, including to ban the trade in the export of live animals?”
“The National Audit Office’s work programme is a matter for the Comptroller and Auditor General, not the Public Accounts Commission. The NAO does not audit individual police forces, but through its access to the Home Office it published the report “Financial sustainability of police forces in England and Wales” in June 2015.”
“Of course I will pass that request to the Comptroller and Auditor General. The hon. Lady is right: although police forces have successfully reduced costs since 2011, the report that I mentioned has recommended that the Home Office works with other bodies to develop better information on the health of police services and early warnings of when a force might fail. Her question is apposite.”
“The NAO is continually looking at how it can save money. The most recent audited financial accounts show that the NAO has reduced its net resource costs by 21% in real terms against its 2010-11 baseline. That is even while taking on a much greater role in local government at the request of Parliament.”
“The commission constantly urges the NAO to make greater steps to reduce its costs. The NAO has been very successful, and it saves many times its own budget in looking at every other Department to ensure that we get good value for money. My hon. Friend makes a fair point that the NAO must lead the way in reducing its own staffing costs.”
“The hon. Gentleman is very well informed and of course, as we know, very bright, so perhaps he can inform the Committee of the cumulative net cost of the EU—our net payments over the last 42 years.”
“Before the commission resigned, did they suggest one radical idea for driving social mobility through the education system, and did the Government gainsay it? Namely, why do we not concentrate on the children from the most deprived backgrounds and postcodes, give them an intelligence test at 11 for which they cannot be tutored, and put them in special schools so that they have a rigorous academic education? The schools could be called grammar schools.”
“I have already made my point about the armed forces, and in that sense I agree with the right hon. Lady, but does she not realise that the cost of the national debt in interest alone is the equivalent every year of 10 Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers? I am sure she would agree with me that the way to solve the problems with the MOD budget is not to increase the national debt.”
“Britain is producing excellent white wine, but there is a real problem with increased alcoholism and liver disease. Does my hon. Friend think that the solution would be to introduce unit pricing, to try to freeze young people out of the market for very high-alcohol drinks?”
“But would we solve our problems by adopting the Labour party’s strategy, which would add to that national debt? We are already facing so many problems in repaying it. I said that the national debt will increase by £200,000 in the four minutes of this speech, but it was increasing by £300,000 a minute when the coalition Government took power in 2010.”
“Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), so I heard him say that he wants to invest for the future. That sounds plausible, but the trouble is that it does not matter what the money is spent on—schools, hospitals, capital or revenue—because if that increases the national debt, our interest repayments increase. The problem we face as a nation is that our interest repayments on the national debt are already more than what we spend on defence, about which we have been talking, and the police every year. The national debt is far too large. The shadow Chancellor tells me, “You’ve added to the national debt.” That is entirely true—the national debt is still rising by £186 million a day. I am allowed to speak for four minutes, during which the national debt will rise by £200,000.”
“I wish to follow on from what my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Sir Robert Syms) said. This has been a good week for the Government because we are focusing on the most important thing—the Budget and the economy—rather than on ourselves. When people start to think about what is going on in the economy, they start to wonder whether the Labour party yet has the answers. If I was a Labour MP, I would be worried that the opinion polls show us level-pegging. Why? Because the No. 1 problem that faces our economy—it is infinitely greater than so many other problems, particularly Brexit—is the size of the national debt. The question the Labour party has to answer is whether adding to that debt would solve our problems. I sat through the speech by the shadow Chancellor, the right hon.”
“No, it would be our children and grandchildren, because we would be loading that debt on to them. Of course, as the national debt increased under Labour’s plans, interest rates would rise even more and mortgages would become more expensive. Who would suffer? The young who want to get mortgages. Labour Members’ policies simply do not add up. Until they come face to face with reality, they will never become the Government of this country.”
“Yes, it was increasing by £300,000 a minute. The central point for the Opposition is that they have to be credible, as new Labour found out in the years before it took power in 1997. The central credibility argument is whether, when the national debt is so crippling—as I said earlier, our repayments are equivalent to paying for 10 Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers every year—we can solve our problems by adding to it. My contention is that that is absolutely not the case. Well into this Parliament, the reason why the Conservative party is still level-pegging with the Opposition, who should be way ahead, is that the Labour party has no credible economic plan to try to lift us out of our national debt, except for borrowing more, spending more and raising taxes. Who would suffer in that scenario? Would it be us?”
“Of course we accept that there should be the delivery authority and the sponsor board that the Leader of the House has spoken about, but some of us are worried that unless there is clear instruction to these boards of experts now, there will inevitably be pressure to build a replica Chamber and kick us out of the old Palace for many years. We want an amendment to test the will of the House on that matter.”
“I apologise for being late, Mr Speaker, but may I remind you that the labourer who turns up late at the vineyard is entitled to equal wages? May I ask my right hon. Friend about the debate on restoration and renewal that will take place in the first week back after the Christmas recess? I urge her to lay her motion early, perhaps before the recess, because I will certainly table an amendment and I will need time to have it on the Order Paper for people to sign it, if you are kind enough to select it, Mr Speaker.”
“I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I am genuinely trying to find a way out of our problems that we agree exist. I accept his point that he wants to borrow more to invest. The trouble is that we are already paying in interest more than we spend on defence and the police—that is just paying interest on our debt. I understand where he is coming from, but whatever we spend this money on, the interest will still be accrued, so how will he deal with that?”
“My hon. Friend is making some excellent points about parliamentary sovereignty, but I am not sure the point has yet been made that there has been a cosy consensus in this debate so far that everything about European human rights is wonderful and that we want to transfer those European human rights into our own law. Actually, many of us think that the advancement of European so-called human rights has been to the detriment of the rights of other people, particularly religious people, to find their own space, because European equality laws trump all other laws. When we regain parliamentary sovereignty, in this House and through our democracy, we can start asserting real human rights.”
“I encourage the Minister to redouble his efforts. Everybody knows the Government’s difficulties with immigration from the European Union, but what we cannot understand is why, after seven years of a Conservative Government, we have still not got to grips with immigration from the rest of the world. We need more police officers, more border officers and quicker decisions, and these people who have no right to stay here must leave, otherwise it undermines the whole system.”
“May I bring the hon. Gentleman back to amendment (e), to which he is the lead signatory? It would close off options and prevent us from imposing any tariffs on goods from the EU. The hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) described such closing off of options as “pathological”. The hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) always strikes me as a very nice chap; does he share my concern that his own Front-Bench spokesman thinks that amendment (e) is pathological?”
“Is the hon. Gentleman happy, then, for us to be locked for all time into a situation where we can never make a free trade deal with any country, bloc or anybody outside the EU, locked into a body with a declining share of trade and locked out of free trade deals with the growing markets in Asia and America? He is happy with that, is he?”
“We in this country are of course well known throughout Europe as a nation of animal lovers. The hon. Lady was kind enough to say that we started off this whole process. Once we leave Europe, will she join us in ensuring that in our own laws we have the best animal welfare protection in the world?”
“After Brexit, we all want to have the best environmental standards possible. Before my right hon. Friend sits down, will he return to new clause 30? If he reads new clause 30, he will see that it drives a coach and horses through the entire principle of the Bill, because in matters concerning animal welfare it would make, for all time, our courts and Supreme Court ultimately subject to the treaty of Lisbon. In that sense, new clause 30 is therefore a wrecking amendment.”
“It is essential that the Supreme Court has certainty. The first part of clause 6(2) is admirably clear: “A court or tribunal need not have regard to anything done on or after exit day by the European Court”. Why then have the Government included the following phrase at the end of the provision: “but may do so if it considers it appropriate to do so”? I think Lord Neuberger has a point, and I give the Minister an opportunity to make the Government’s position clear.”
“Imagine the outrage there would be in Europe if the European Union decided to try to detach Catalonia from Spain. But what is the EU doing today? It is saying that it will have to detach Northern Ireland from the single market and customs union of the United Kingdom. Will my right hon. Friend say that the Conservative party is nothing if it is not the Unionist party and that there will be no amendment, no truck, no surrender and no appeasement regarding keeping Northern Ireland in the single market of the United Kingdom?”
“Lady account for the fact that if harassment were really occurring outside these facilities, it would be perfectly possible for Marie Stopes to call the police, yet we see no ongoing prosecutions for harassment or instances where police powers to disperse crowds have been used? I would have thought that it would surely be easy and common for the police to intervene if harassment were indeed occurring.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) for how she has spoken on this very difficult and sometimes emotional issue, but I believe that it is my duty to offer another point of view, so that Parliament hears both sides of this difficult issue. I would hope that the hon. Lady would listen to women who have benefitted from help from groups outside abortion clinics, who would be denied that help if buffer zones were imposed around those abortion facilities. I want to ask the hon. Lady whether she has talked to those women who say that they have benefitted from the offers of help by those groups outside the Marie Stopes abortion facility. If not, surely both sides of this story deserve to be listened to. It is very important that we listen to both sides. How does the hon.”
“She’s an amazing, perfect little girl and the love of my life. I want MPs here today calling to introduce buffer zones to realise, that she would not be alive today, if they had their way.””
“I talked to the woman on the gate again, who offered any support I needed to keep my baby and this gave me the confidence to leave where I was supported by the group that this women worked with. I didn’t find any aggression from the people offering support outside the Ealing clinic at all. They did have leaflets documenting the development of a baby, a fetus, in the early stages. The potential introduction of buffer zones is a really bad idea because women like me, what would they do then? You know, not every woman that walks into those clinics actually wants to go through with the termination. There’s immense pressure, maybe they don’t have financial means to support themselves or their baby, or they feel like there’s no alternatives. These people offer alternatives. I had my baby who is now three and a half years old.”
“Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who cannot be here, from Kate—she does not want to give her full name, which is fair enough, for fear of retaliation. This is her testimony: “I never wanted to go through with an abortion but I felt a lot of pressure from people around me who offered it as a no brainer solution. On the way into the clinic at the Marie Stopes clinic at Ealing I was offered a leaflet by a woman who I spoke to briefly. She just told me she was there if I needed her. I then went into the clinic, still not happy about being there for an abortion, but under immense pressure from a group of people that were with me to go through with it. Once in the clinic, while the group were distracted I leapt out of the ground floor window and cleared 3 fences to escape.”
“Member for Ealing Central and Acton not think that it is unwisely illiberal to introduce a measure that would simply exclude all vigils of this sort, regardless of individual behaviour? Surely, that is a sledgehammer. In the case of Annen v. Germany—I know that the hon. Lady dealt with this point, but I am not sure she did so adequately—a pro-life advocate, Klaus Annen, engaged in peaceful protest outside an abortion clinic and was found by the European Court of Human Rights to have a right to engage in such activity under article 10, the right to freedom of expression. If so, and given the precedent, how does she expect the European Court of Human Rights, which we are fully signed up to and continue to support, to treat a legal challenge to buffer zones? I want to end by reading out the testimony that was given to my hon.”
“That is a perfectly fair point. I know that it is an agonising decision for women. I remember talking to one of the women who stands outside those clinics. She was an elderly lady, the kindest, most gentle person that one could possibly consider. So many children call her granny, because they feel that this lady, who is the kindest and gentlest person—admittedly, a religious person; there is nothing wrong with that—would never hurt a soul. She is simply trying to express a point of view. I agree that harassment is quite wrong. Given that the current law allows for individuals who harass others to be reported to the police, yet does not affect others who protest peacefully, does the hon.”
“What the Minister has said is perfectly reasonable, but I urge him to release the documents in full as quickly as possible, as redactions only enflame interest. I have lived through many of these rows, and once such documents are published, they are often found to be very long and boring. When Parliament gets itself into a fine passion about this sort of thing, the travelling is often more fun than arriving.”
“We have the Foreign Secretary in front of us today, and he has chosen his words very carefully, so I think we should reserve our ire for the evil of this regime. However, may I ask him about what this statement is really about, which is why Islamic State grew in the first place? Has the Foreign Office learned the lesson—here, I follow my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis)—of our catastrophic invasions of Iraq and Libya? Our deliberate destabilisation of Syria has unleashed untold misery. Has the Foreign Office really cottoned on to the fact that, if we undermine deeply unpleasant authoritarian leaders, we simply unleash totalitarian movements such as Daesh? And who suffers? The minorities in the middle east.”