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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“However, the Prime Minister is the Queen’s chief Minister of Government and is, by its very nature, a political office holder. It goes without saying that we have complete confidence in the present Prime Minister that no such thing would happen, but we must not make permanent laws based on impermanent situations. Our conscientious Prime Minister, who I am sure is both aware of and respectful of parliamentary privilege, may be succeeded, somewhere down the line, by a man or woman who does not esteem the dearly won privileges of this House. They are not our privileges: they are not for us; they are for the protection of our democracy and of our constituents. It may be that a future Prime Minister would be under intolerable pressure during a time of national crisis.”
“I rise to speak to my amendment 1, which is, in clause 24, page 19, line 8, at the end to insert that where the subject of the snooping, frankly, is a Member of the House of Commons, that snooping must also involve a consultation with the Speaker of the House of Commons. The Member’s explanatory statement helpfully says: “This amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult the Speaker before deciding to issue a warrant that applied to an MP’s communications.” This is a small, but I believe important amendment. It is of course perfectly proper and pertinent that, as we all agree, the Secretary of State consults the Prime Minister before deciding to issue a targeted interception or examination warrant regarding an MP’s communication with a constituent or somebody else. We all understand that, and it is not controversial.”
“I am a member of the Procedure Committee, and we examined this issue in great detail. The system—I am not defending EVEL as that is not the subject of today’s debate—seems to be working fairly well. Nobody is calling the Speaker to order or complaining about his decision, but there is in a sense a double lock that seems to work quite well.”
“All I am asking is that if the Government are taking the extreme step of intercepting communications between constituents and Members of Parliament, someone entirely non-political, namely the Speaker, should also be consulted. This is the point: he is no mere presiding officer. We do not call him “the presiding officer”, as is the case in other Assemblies and Parliaments. He is the upholder of order and the defender of the House’s privileges and immunities. I am absolutely not suggesting that he should be dragged into politics. But there is already a precedent. Have we not involved the Speaker very recently in consideration of whether amendments should be separately considered under English votes for English laws? Nobody—certainly not the Government—has suggested that that is dragging the Speaker into politics.”
“I am perfectly happy—I think everyone in this House is—with the proposal that if the Secretary of State for the Home Department wishes to investigate communications with a Member of Parliament, the Prime Minister should always also be consulted. No one objects to that. But who appoints the Home Secretary? The Prime Minister does. They are both politicians—by their very nature, they are political animals—and members of the Executive. I have to ask my hon. Friends to look beyond the present situation; they may indeed have the utmost confidence in the present Secretary of State for the Home Department and the present Prime Minister, but they should always separate their view of those currently on the Front Bench from what might happen in the future.”
“There may be a difference, but I do not think it is a substantive one. [ Interruption. ] I am delighted that you are now sitting in the Chair, Mr Speaker, because I am talking about you, which I know you always enjoy me doing.”
“Exactly. It is an inhibition, and I presume that the Home Secretary and Prime Minister would take that extreme step only because they were convinced that this was a matter of national security. Before they took such a step, which we all agree is serious, would it do any harm to consult somebody who is obviously completely separated from politics?”
“I understand that example, but it can be taken to extremes. Every day of the week the Speaker makes decisions. He decides how we conduct our business and who should be called, and we could always argue that we should not give the Speaker more powers because he might make a mistake or be called to account. We are not talking about the Speaker being involved in whether we should pass a particular Bill or controversy; we are talking about a very narrow circumstance in which the Government of the day have decided to intercept the communications of a Member of Parliament. All I am suggesting is that before they take that step, they consult the Speaker.”
“What is important is people’s confidence in communicating with their Member of Parliament.”
“The Minister makes that point, but as Members of Parliament we should try to think outside the political box and our natural loyalties, and just for a moment think about what might happen in future in a time of crisis. Do we really want to codify the Wilson doctrine in legislation, and say that in future any Government—it does not matter that the Prime Minister ticks a box, because he is also a member of the Government—without any independent second guessing, can intercept those communications and act on them? I understand the Minister’s arguments and assure him that I am not trying to drag the Speaker into politics. I am trying only to protect the traditional privileges of the House. “Privileges” is the wrong word, because it conveys the impression that we are concerned about ourselves. We are not important in all this.”
“Nearly 375 years ago, William Lenthall reminded the sovereign that the Speaker had “neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here.” All I am asking in amendment 1 is that that tradition be maintained. We would do well to continue to put our trust in that defender of our law and our liberties.”
“Like many traditions and customs, we interfere with them at our peril. I appeal to the Minister of State, who is deeply aware of the importance of traditions and customs. We may wonder today why this or that one exists, but if we disregard them, we will soon find that the dangers they protect us from are very real. We also may doubt the day will ever come when a Prime Minister would dare to authorise the monitoring of Members’ communications for politicised reasons, but it is therefore better to remove even the possibility of that temptation existing by simply requiring the Secretary of State to consult the Speaker. It has been said before but it is worth saying again.”
“This is a matter of national security.” I do not believe that that is beyond his abilities. After all, he is ably assisted—is he not?—by the Clerk of the House and a band of parliamentary Clerks, most of whom have spent years accumulating knowledge, wisdom and experience of the ways of the House. They are not radicals or people who will take decisions lightly or wantonly. Together, they form a deposit of institutional memory, which the Prime Minister and No. 10, by the nature of their daily tasks of government and political management, can never be. They must always, necessarily, take a short-term view. That is not a criticism but the nature of the office. Each of the privileges of this House, in addition to being daily fought for and won over the centuries, exists for a reason.”
“I can see what the difference would be in a time of national crisis. The information will be clearly set out by the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister. I do not believe that it would be beyond the abilities of any Speaker now or in future to take an informed decision and to be convinced by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary that the interception was not a political interference but a matter of national security. All hon. Members agree on that—that the communications can be intercepted if it is a matter of national security—and we all agree that they should not be intercepted because it is politically expedient to do so. All I am asking is that the Speaker, who by the nature of his office does not consider political expediency, can say, “Yes.”
“I hope that he will also listen to the local people and not impose an elected mayor on us. That concept might be fine for Manchester, Birmingham or London, but it is not necessarily appropriate for a large rural county such as Lincolnshire.”
“I understand why the Chancellor made that announcement in the Budget—I know where he was coming from and I agree with his long-term plans on education—but I welcome the compromise that has been made in relation to small rural private schools. The same attitude applies to devolution and to mayors. I am a strong advocate of devolution. The fact is that central Government have imposed too much control on local government for too long. In Lincolnshire, we welcome devolution and we were prepared to have a very simple system in which powers were devolved to a board run by the leaders of the district councils and county councils, but there was no enthusiasm for an elected mayor in a large rural county. I welcome the fact that the Chancellor is still sitting in the Chamber, and I am sure that he is listening to what I am saying.”
“There is nothing wrong with being an ideologue if you temper it with some restraint and reason. I confess that I am an ideologue for lower taxes, for less state regulation and for the supremacy of this Parliament. That is what I have worked for, with my colleagues, all my life here, and I judge every Queen’s Speech by how it advances lower taxes, deregulation and more devolution. However, I think we should be wary of imposing our ideas on other people in a forced manner. We used to argue consistently that the one-size-fits-all neighbourhood comprehensive was wrong and causing a decline in educational standards. We therefore led the charge for academies, but I do not believe that we should force county councils, particularly rural county councils with small private schools, to academise all their schools.”
“We can certainly try it, but the difficulty is that we would have parish councils, district councils, a county council—which, by the way, the Conservatives have controlled for most of the last 100 years —an elected mayor, a police and crime commissioner, a Member of Parliament and a Member of the European Parliament. It would just be too much, frankly. Too many jobs for the boys!”
“However, net migration of 300,000 people a year, fuelled by the imposition of the living wage on businesses and by an unreformed tax credit system, is simply unsustainable, particularly for London and the south-east. There is a vision of Britain leading the world towards free trade, controlling its own borders and proclaiming the supremacy of Parliament, and that is why, on 23 June, I for one shall be voting to leave the European Union.”
“We have made all too little progress on simplifying and converging our tax system. I know that it is difficult. I know that we cannot do it all in one step. I know that we cannot have an absolutely flat tax system because the top 1% of earners pay 25% of all taxes. I know all that, but we should make more progress every year in simplifying and merging the tax system. Before I sit down, the Chancellor talked about announcements that have been made today, but there was an important announcement on immigration figures. The fact is that we still have net migration of 300,000 people into this country every year. It is absolutely unsustainable. We welcome people from eastern Europe coming to work here. I more than any other welcome Polish people and their culture of hard work.”
“We did give 20 years’ notice, but we did not write to every woman saying, “Dear Mrs Jones, your pension age will be increased in 20 years’ time.” That is what we should have done, and we should learn from that. On the point made by the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), I am an enthusiast for lower regulation and lower taxes, but we have the longest tax code in the world, and there is still much progress to be made in that regard. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor knows, because I have said this to him again and again, that I hope he will try to simplify the tax and benefit system with every Budget he introduces. I hope that he will strip away allowances and converge taxes so that we no longer have armies of accountants advising people how to avoid tax.”
“Absolutely. My hon. Friend has made some important contributions to our debates in the past year and I welcome what she says. I know that she has taken an interest in tax credits, and I believe that we have to make more progress in cutting welfare in order to cut the deficit, but it is probably a mistake to cut the welfare benefits or tax credits of people who are already on small incomes and depending on their tax credits. We have to give plenty of warning if we are going to do that. That is surely the lesson that we should learn from the debate on the raising of the pension age for women. We should have given proper notice of that.”
“I am not sure that I saw the Minister last night at the world premiere of “Brexit: The Movie”. Unfortunately, it is not a war film. A few months ago, the Prime Minister was telling us that unless he got his way on migration, he would consider leaving the European Union. That involved a minor change in migration figures and controls. The Prime Minister now says that if we left the EU, there might indeed be a third world war. I have a graph here, so that Members can see the difference between the two figures. Does not that mismatch show that we have no idea of the net migration figure? Migration is out of control. We need to regain control of our borders, and that is what the Minister should have done by means of an emergency brake.”
“Fifteen years ago, we started a campaign in the Public Accounts Committee to try to get the BBC’s accounts and spending accountable to the Comptroller and Auditor General—and it was like pulling steel teeth from concrete. Eventually, the Comptroller and Auditor General was allowed to investigate the matters that were chosen by the BBC itself. I know the Comptroller and Auditor General, and let me make it absolutely clear that there is no chance whatever of his getting involved in editorial policy. He is an utterly independent Officer of the House, but if more than £4 billion of public money is spent, the body that spends it should be held accountable for it.”
“My hon. Friend mentioned the 1975 referendum, but there is a cautionary tale about that. In 1974, 36% of the population told pollsters that they were opposed to our membership of the then Common Market. The Government and the equivalent of the remain campaign outvoted the leavers by 10 to one with lies, innuendos and supposition. We should be aware, and the Government should be aware, that they can outvote us 10 to one, but there will be a tremendous sense of grievance about it.”
“I also believe that it is counterproductive for the Government in their campaign, because people react to it. They are not fools, and they know when they are being taken for fools and fed propaganda. It will not work, and will create a nasty taste. I regret the fact that the leaflet was published in such a way and paid for by the taxpayer. I hope that the Government will learn from the reaction to their leaflet and not make a similar mistake in the future.”
“I say to the Government, by all means put the arguments—no one is criticising them for doing that; they are the duly elected Government and have a right to do it—but just try to be fair, and do not try to overwhelm the opposition with taxpayers’ money. That is what other Governments have done, in places such as eastern Europe. That is what the Council of Europe is all about, and it is why we had the debate on purdah. I know the Minister will say that he made it perfectly clear that purdah would apply only for the last 28 days. We understand all those arguments, but was not the reason for that debate our wish to make it clear that the Government should not misuse their massive power and resources to overwhelm the opposition? If the Government win on that basis it will be a dirty victory, and will not close down the debate.”
“If the result of leaving would be so utterly disastrous for peace, the economy and all the rest of it, why are we having the referendum in the first place? Why did the Prime Minister risk it? Why did he say during his negotiations that he was prepared to consider recommending that we should leave if he did not get his demands, which we know were about only minor changes on migration? Now he says that leaving would have a devastating result on the economy, the prospects for war or peace in Europe, and many other things. Why did he risk all that? Why did the Foreign Secretary say during the negotiations that he was prepared to consider leaving, whereas apparently he now says that leaving would be a disaster?”
“Is that not why we have such hugely careful spending controls in all our general election campaigns in our constituencies—because we feel that there is a right to put an argument, but taxpayers’ money should not be used to overwhelm the other side? Perhaps I may make one comment about fairness. People are asking for a genuine debate. They want genuine information. Many people are still undecided. If it were possible for the Government to help facilitate a genuine debate in which the arguments, facts and economics would be put, people would understand that, but they find it increasingly irritating that there seems to be a Government tendency to increase the war tempo of the rhetoric—there has been the latest claim today, of course.”
“I asked, “Can you organise a rally in Lincolnshire?” and the campaigners said, “Well, we’d rather you did it, because of course it comes out of our spending, which is very carefully controlled.” That is all fair enough. The leave campaign is limited to £7 million. The remain campaign will spend £7 million, and in addition the Government have produced a leaflet at the taxpayers’ expense for £9 million. That comes to £7 million plus £9 million on the remain side, compared with just £7 million on the leave side, which is fundamentally unfair. Surely the whole point about the British mentality and way of doing politics is that both sides get a fair crack of the whip.”
“This had a massive effect on public opinion and can’t have failed to have had a significant impact on the result…In the autumn of 1974, only 36 per cent of the population thought membership of the Common Market was ‘a good thing’. But by 1975, this figure had shot up to 50 per cent. It is very hard to believe that this huge increase in support for staying in was not largely down to the massive and disproportionate propaganda campaign waged by the pro-Common Market campaign.” There is history in this debate. Presumably, the remain campaign has come to the conclusion that it has to bombard the people and outspend the leave campaign. That is unfair. The remain campaign and the leave campaign are each allowed to raise £7 million. I actually talked to the Vote Leave campaign today about having a rally.”
“I say to the Government that even if they win, nothing will have been achieved if at the end of the campaign people feel a fundamental sense of unfairness and if one side—the remain side, with all its resources and backed by the Government, thousands of civil servants and so on—has had an undue advantage. There is history in this debate, as I mentioned in my earlier intervention. I will quote John Mills, the Labour donor and deputy chair of Vote Leave, who was a national agent for the no campaign in the 1975 referendum. He wrote recently: “We were deluged by propaganda heavily weighted in favour of the stay-in campaign. The total expenditure spending on advertising, leaflets, posters and all the other elements of the campaigns conducted on each side was roughly 10:1 in favour of staying in.”
“We cannot deny that the Government have a settled view, although of course we should point out that we are in an unusual situation where several members of the Government have a completely different view, which should temper some of the rhetoric. The Government have a point of view, but our question is, what is the whole point of this referendum? Is the point not to draw a line under the debate so that both sides feel that they have had a fair crack of the whip, that both campaigns have broadly spent the same amount of money and had the same amount of airtime, that the arguments have been made and that the public have decided one way or the other?”
“We could go through the entire leaflet and tear it apart—no Back Bencher from the remain camp has bothered to come to the debate, which is faintly sinister from the point of view of fairness—but I am not sure that anything would be achieved by doing that. I want to concentrate on the argument about fairness. The Minister will quite rightly say that the Government have a particular point of view and are constitutionally entitled to put that point of view. No one denies that, and no one denies that the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Europe can give whatever speeches they like, whether or not they agree with them. We all accept that. The Minister will no doubt also say that Governments have argued particular cases during past referendums, and all the rest of it.”
“I do not want to give the Minister all the arguments about why we should remain in the EU or leave. Many of them are well known, and I am not sure that the debate is entirely about those arguments. I want to talk about fairness—that is what the debate is about. We all have strong views, and we could all give long speeches explaining why, in our view, the leaflet is wrong on a particular fact and is based on supposition. We could ask how, when the Treasury has difficulty in getting its own borrowing figures correct even for the next year, it can possibly foretell what will happen in five or 10 years or how exchange rates will move.”
“What would the hon. Gentleman have said during the Scottish referendum campaign if the Government had paid for a leaflet to be issued to every household in Scotland, urging people to vote for one side? Would he not have complained? Therefore, to be entirely consistent, should he not also complain during this referendum campaign? I am looking for consistency.”
“Perhaps all these complexities explain why so little progress is being made on our manifesto commitment to leave the European convention on human rights. When the Minister replies, I hope that he will make it clear that the Government have not gone cold on that.”
“The Minister is making a powerful critique of the convention, so perhaps he can now tell the House when we are going to fulfil our manifesto commitment to get out of it.”
“We are two powers on the eastern and western extremities of Europe. If we respectfully and confidentially engage with Russia, we will get the most out of that relationship and start making constructive advances. Blind and mindless Russophobia gets us absolutely nowhere. We should build economic links, strengthen cultural links and seek to work together on issues such as defeating Daesh, where UK and Russian interests overlap. Daesh is our enemy; Russia is not. Russia poses absolutely no strategic threat to the people of the United Kingdom. It does not and never has done in our entire history, but Daesh does.”
“Last week, I chaired an investment forum—I am chairman of the all-party group on Russia—and there is significant interest among British and European businesses in strengthening their presence in Russia. The Governments of Germany, France and Italy are actually increasing their business, unlike our Government. Given our historical alliances with Russia, the Russians cannot understand why our Government and our Prime Minister are outriders. They are way beyond the Americans, the Germans and the French in their anti-Russian stance. The Russians cannot understand it. Let us remember for a moment who, frankly, saved our bacon in two world wars. How many tens of millions of Russians died in Nazi Germany’s invasion? We should remember that, with the unfortunate exception of the Crimean war, Russia has for centuries been our natural ally.”
“Therefore, any real effort to secure peace, stability and the rule of law in Ukraine—and peace and stability is what we should be about, is it not?—must of necessity take into account Russian fears and interests. That is the reality on the ground. If it does not, and if we just take an absolutist line, imposing sanctions, putting the Russian embassy in London and the Russian Government into deep freeze, and not talking to Mr Lavrov, we will achieve nothing and there will be no prospect of success. What would that mean for the relationship between our two countries? Our strategy for Anglo-Russian relations should be to engage, engage and engage. By all means be firm, but engage.”
“The psychotic zeal for permanent expansion of the western European sphere of influence, at Russia’s expense, gains us nothing. Actually, all we have done is significantly destabilise our eastern flank; and what about the good of Ukraine? Crimea is now permanently lost to it. We know that—it is a reality. The eastern regions are enveloped in a low-level violent conflict. Whatever we may think of Mr Putin or the Russian Government, clearly our interference has not worked out for the benefit of people living in Ukraine. Russia can, we all know, with little effort or cost to itself—I am not defending it, just describing the reality—support and maintain a constant low-boil conflict in eastern Ukraine for some time.”
“We in the European Union invested millions of pounds, euros and dollars to influence Ukraine away from Russia and towards the west. Because one side insisted on owning the bridge and the other side, naturally, would not let it, now the bridge is in tatters and burning; and it is the ordinary people of Ukraine—and of Russia, subject to sanctions—who are suffering. Of course, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham says, Russia will never in our lifetime give up Crimea. After all, the Russians believe and know that the overwhelming majority of people in Crimea want to be part of Russia. So they believe that we are playing with double standards. They all remember that Krushchev signed away Crimea to Ukraine with a stroke of a pen in the mid-1950s.”
“The country is ideally placed as a bridge between the two worlds—Europe and Russia. Indeed, in Russian, Ukraine means “borderland”. To Russians, Ukraine is not a foreign country. Russian orthodoxy, as far as they are concerned, was founded in the Kievan Rus 1,000 years ago. We may not agree with this, but for them Kiev is as much the spiritual home of Russian orthodoxy as Canterbury is to us the home of the Anglican Church. Clever Ukrainian statesmen could have held a fine balance, playing one side against the other for the good of their country, as of course India did during the cold war. Instead, Europe and the west had to barge in with, I believe, an insufficient understanding of Russian or, indeed, Ukrainian history, or people’s thinking in the region.”
“Our relationship with foreign powers is, I believe, totally inconsistent. We chide Russia for abuses—and, by the way, nothing I say is pro-Putin; I am not getting involved in that. I am just talking about double standards. We chide Russia for abuses but kowtow to China, whose abuses are far worse. If we were outside observers looking at that situation, what conclusion would we draw? That there is a double standard; and that is the only conclusion that Russians draw. We in the west have failed totally to take into account the Russian mentality when dealing with these problems. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) on the way he moved the motion, and on trying to understand how Russians think. That is important in framing our foreign policy. Ukraine is a perfect example.”
“Of course Russia is a great power, and it naturally tests defences as part of its training of its own people, but does anybody in this Chamber seriously believe that it poses a strategic military threat to the United Kingdom? We are no longer in the cold war; it is over. I do not defend Russian aircraft approaching the United Kingdom, but I do not think for a moment that there is the remotest chance of their actually engaging in military action with us. Daesh is our real enemy. Allowing its reign of terror to continue simply because we dare not co-ordinate our plans with nasty Mr Putin is cutting off our nose to spite our face. The only winner in that scenario is Daesh.”
“That is precisely what my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham and I are saying and what we are trying to urge on the Minister. Assad and the Russians are not going to go away. As the Minister said very eloquently in the House of Commons yesterday, since the second world war, Russia has viewed Syria as an essential ally. I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. On every level, we must be constructive, confident and respectful—and I mean self-respect, not just respect for the other side. The way we kowtow to China can reach demeaning levels, which is why I say we are engaging in double standards.”
“Assad will not go away and the Russians will not go away, so the Minister should pick up the phone and encourage his boss to pick up the phone to do what Kerry is doing and speak to Lavrov every week. That does not in any way mean support for everything Mr Putin does, but only with constant engagement in building relationships can we make some progress towards peace in Syria.”
“That is a remarkable statement. How do we know what Mr Putin thinks? All I can say is that I have discussed that with the Russian ambassador, and he gives the correct line on behalf of his Government. Mr Putin has made absolutely no comment, certainly in public—we have no idea what he says in private. There is simply no evidence that Mr Putin is somehow engaged in some massive conspiracy to encourage Great Britain to leave the European Union. I rather think that in practical terms he has other things on his mind. Russia has made no statement in public. It is neutral on this matter. Constructive, confident and respectful engagement is the best way for our two countries to flourish together. If we engaged in that way, the appalling conflict in Syria might have some chance of being brought to a conclusion.”
“The Christian Yazidi and Shi’a children in Syria are suffering from genocide carried out by Daesh, and we should recognise it as such. May I urge the Prime Minister to do more to replicate the Kindertransport of the 1930s? That is what we are doing in taking children directly from the camps in Syria. If we were to take 16-year-olds from a safe environment in Europe, we would simply be causing more misery and encouraging the people traffickers.”