Sir Edward Leigh
MP for Gainsborough · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Those of us who love the Jewish people and faith know that the reason why they have overcome all the empires that have tried to destroy them is that they are primarily people of the book and not the sword, but what is happening in the west bank is violent and egregious.”
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for looking again at Lincolnshire. I made the point to her predecessor that the proposal for a Greater Lincolnshire authority was, in the eyes of many people, just a gerrymander. Will she look again at it and stop dividing West Lindsey and North Kesteven in half?”
“If the centre does not take action, nasty extremes will take over. The fact is that we are in acute danger. These people can now launch from anywhere on the north French coast and are escorted to our shores. Frankly, we are being invaded, and the public are completely fed up.”
“May I congratulate the Prime Minister on what he said about Ukraine and on how he conducted himself there? Our enemies should know that this House is completely and utterly united in standing behind the Ukrainian people.”
“What concerns me is the jobs of my constituents who work at Scunthorpe. That is all I am worried about; I have no ideological objection. If it is what is needed now, fair enough. As long as the blast furnaces are totally uneconomic because of high energy costs, however, it can only be a sticking plaster.”
“One of the poorest wards in the entire country is Gainsborough south-west ward. Why is the Secretary of State splitting West Lindsey in half? Why is he taking Scampton away from Gainsborough? It makes no sense. Why is he cutting away the nuclear fusion site from Lincoln?”
The complete record
Every one of 6,092 lines we hold for Sir Edward Leigh, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 67 of 122.
“I can understand that many people in Spain no doubt think it wrong that, as they see it, part of their mainland is British, but these things happen in other parts of the world. Reference has already been made to the Spanish enclaves in north Africa, but leaving that aside, would I really be tremendously agitated, would I lie awake at night, if, under the treaty of Utrecht in 1704, Portland bill had been given to Spain and there were only Spanish people living there and they wanted to remain Spanish? Would I not say to myself, “Well, it’s a long time ago. It’s a part of history. These people have a right to self-determination”? Would I not say to these people, “Well, I’m never going to achieve anything by trying to bully you by closing the border or making life intolerable”?”
“He made a forthright stand and was prepared to walk out of the Council of Ministers and bring the process to an end. That is the sort of language that is understood. I cannot emphasise this point enough: Spain will only be encouraged by weakness and a belief that, although there are Back Benchers around me who are very strong on this issue, there are other people in the Foreign Office who say that we should make some concessions. I hope, therefore, that when the Minister stands up, he will be robust on this point—as robust as all my colleagues who have spoken. I have tried to understand the position of the Foreign Office. Now I will try to understand Spain’s position.”
“In fact, we will never even enter into a process without that agreement.” We want to be like a rock in our determination—both Government and Members—to say to Spain that, whatever the provocation, it will not do any good. It could close the border entirely. It has tried it before. It could make the life of its workers coming into Gibraltar a misery. That is not going to work either. Whatever it does or says, and whatever aggravation it causes us in the Council of Ministers, we will remain like a rock in defending the right of people to remain British if they want to do so. They have after all been British for 300 years—a very long time. We want Ministers like my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill).”
“The Government say that this is a matter of self-determination, but they should mean it and prove it with their actions. When the previous Government proposed joint sovereignty, as I understand it 99% of people wanted to remain British. This principle is a rock on which we stand. There is no other principle at stake here apart from that of self-determination. I commend the words of the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy), who has now risen very high to lead the Labour party in Scotland. When he was a Minister of the Crown he said: “the UK Government will never—‘never’ is a seldom-used word in politics—enter into an agreement on sovereignty without the agreement of the Government of Gibraltar and their people.”
“I do not think that the people of Spain should forget that. I urge colleagues to go to Gibraltar. It is a most moving sight. A lot of criticism has been made of both Spain and the Foreign Office. As I have been sitting here, I have been trying to understand their positions. I can quite understand that certain people in the Foreign Office take the view that Gibraltar is a very small place and Spain is a very important trading partner that we do not want to antagonise unduly. I suspect that the Foreign Office Minister accepts the argument that when one is dealing with a bully, trying to appease the bully simply makes things worse. The way to resolve this issue in the long term is for the Government, and not just us Back Benchers, to be absolutely robust.”
“It is a moving experience. We hear so much criticism from so many people of our country. To be in the square with 10,000 or 12,000 people who love our country, and are absolutely determined to remain a part of it, is a most moving experience. I was speaking only on Tuesday in a debate on people who misuse their British passports to go on jihad and then try to come back. I said that there was deep anger among British people about people who do not understand our view that being British is about a love of our history and our country, and, above all, tolerance of all people. The thing about Gibraltar is that it is a wonderfully tolerant place. Over the centuries, it has been a superb melting pot for people of Jewish descent and Christians of all denominations. During the dark years of Spanish fascism, it was a beacon of light and democracy.”
“We should never forget the courage of the people of Gibraltar over many years and the contribution that they have made to the defence and security of our country. That needs saying again and again. We should also pay tribute to the courage of the Gibraltar people in the very difficult circumstances that they have faced over the last 60 years, especially when the border was closed entirely. It is very moving to talk to people from Gibraltar about those times, and their resolute determination to resist a completely illegal act. This was the first time I went to Gibraltar. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends sitting around me who have spent years fighting the good fight. But for them, we would be in a much worse position. I urge all Members of Parliament to go to Gibraltar and, in particular, to stand in Casemates square on national day.”
“I am not sure that I can follow the powerful rhetoric from my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), but I want to start by apologising to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I had to chair Westminster Hall until 3 pm, so I apologise for my late arrival. I also want to apologise to the people of Gibraltar. Although I have been a Member of Parliament for nearly 32 years, it was only last September that I went there—although I have always wanted to visit—as a guest of the Gibraltar Government at their national day celebrations. I declare that interest. I am very interested in naval history so I have always taken a close interest in the history of Gibraltar. We should always remember that, but for Gibraltar, we would have lost the second world war, with all that would have pertained.”
“The right hon. Gentleman talks about carnage and defeat. I have been around this place during many rebellions, and I do not get the atmosphere in this Chamber of carnage and defeat. I do not feel a tremendous wave of anger against the Government. Could it be that most Members of Parliament think that if it is a choice between judicial oversight or their sons and daughters being blown up on a London tube, they would rather let the Secretary of State take action, and take action quickly?”
“With respect, does my right hon. and learned Friend not realise how out of touch he is? He talks about vulnerable people and the rights of free-born Englishmen, which is all wonderful stuff, but the people that the Secretary of State is trying to exclude are crazed jihadists who hate our liberties and our country, who cut off the heads of aid workers and who would love to come here and kill our children. His wonderfully old-fashioned and legalistic arguments are not appropriate for dealing with those sorts of people.”
“We are simply saying, “You have gone abroad to fight an extremist cause, and if you want to come back here, we think the Secretary of State has the right to exclude you.””
“I suspect that a member of the public will be primarily, fundamentally and, indeed, probably wholly concerned about the safety of themselves and their family, and they will have trust. I trusted the last Labour Government. I know that the Governments of Tony Blair and the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) received a lot of stick over this, but I think they were right in wanting to protect the public. I realise that it went against many of their instincts, but they rightly took the view that such was the nature of the threat that we were fighting a war. It is a situation rather like the one we faced in the second world war, in which some sort of deprivation of traditional liberties has to take place, although we are not actually depriving anybody of their liberty here. We are not putting people in prison.”
“We are not talking about depriving somebody of their liberty. We are not talking about a free-born Englishman who goes abroad, gets in a spot of trouble, comes over here and is locked up. We are not talking about anything like that. We are talking about excluding somebody—temporarily, as I understand it—who the Secretary of State is reasonably satisfied has gone to fight jihad and engage in terrorist activity, and there is a real danger of them coming back here to blow up our children. I suspect that a member of the public is not overly motivated by complex, legalistic arguments about judicial oversight, judicial review, delay and the rights of people to claim unfettered return.”
“His amendment 18 states: “The court may impose a temporary exclusion order on an individual following an application from the Secretary of State if the court is satisfied that conditions A to D are met.” I have tried to understand how the amendments from the Labour Front-Bench team are more nuanced, but let me develop the argument. Those who oppose what the Government are trying to do are saying that there should be a court hearing in which all these factors can be discussed and through which we can assess whether a person—he may have gone to Syria, been a jihadist and all the rest of it—is a real threat to the United Kingdom. I do not know a lot about intelligence, but I suspect that much of what will motivate the Secretary of State in her actions to exclude an individual will be based on intelligence.”
“The Secretary of State, furthermore, must “reasonably consider that the individual is outside the UK”. She has to act “reasonably”. Surely we must trust our Government and our Secretary of State to protect our people. If the Secretary of State acts unreasonably, we can surely trust the courts in a judicial review system to provide oversight and, if necessary, overturn it. I do not think for a moment that the Secretary of State would act unreasonably. For the sake of argument, I refer to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Walsall North. As I understand it, he wants to replace the system whereby the Secretary of State has to act reasonably, presumably on the basis of intelligence, which may be nuanced, with a full court procedure.”
“At least Sinn Fein in their worst years, even if they were blowing up Members of Parliament, soldiers or innocent members of the public, presumably saw some sort of logic in their own eyes in what they were doing. We are talking about people who are religious fanatics whose idea of fun and aggro is to cut off the head of an aid worker. The Government are not going to act in a vacuum. The Home Secretary is not going to act unreasonably. We need look only at what the Bill, which I support, says. It refers again and again to the Secretary of State needing to “reasonably suspect that an individual is, or has been involved in terrorism-related activity”, and to her “reasonably considering” that action is “necessary for a purpose connected with protecting members of the public”.”
“We are using language relating to Magna Carta, habeas corpus, and the God-given rights of free-born Englishmen; that is all very well, but I think the public view the issue in a different way. They are absolutely outraged that people who come here and are given British passports, which should be a tremendous honour and privilege—or indeed people who are raised here and have British passports—feel that this gives them the right to go abroad and fight for an extremist cause. These people not only hold views, but practise views that are wholly alien to everything this country has stood for for hundreds of years. These people are not even like Sinn Fein.”
“I wanted to speak today because I believe we need a sense of balance in this debate. We have heard reference made to “carnage”, “atmosphere”, “revolts” and the House of Commons being “up in arms” about this. Judging from how the debate has developed and from the number of Members attending it, I am not sure that that is necessarily the case. As I said in an intervention, I suspect that most Members of Parliament—and, more importantly, most members of the public—support what the Government are trying to do, and we will see what happens in the vote later. We have these debates, and I quite understand where my legal friends are coming from, and liberty is entirely important.”
“I hesitate to speak in the company of such distinguished lawyers, as I am just a former common or garden practitioner in the criminal courts, but I would like to give the view, as I understand it, of most members of the public. I very much hope in respect of what the public want that the Government will be firm today and will resist amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick). I accept that he is entirely sincere and consistent in his views, and would indeed resist the amendments tabled by the Labour party. I commend the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), which I signed. I fully understand that the Government might not be able to accept them today, but I hope they will take them away and look further at these entirely sensible amendments.”
“We are simply saying that there is evidence, based on the available intelligence, to suggest to the Secretary of State that there is a real possibility that these people have fought jihad, have been brainwashed, are extremists, and, ipso facto, are a threat to our people. I think that is a bit different from TPIMs or indeed any other part of the judicial review system.”
“I think we are talking about something slightly different. As I understand it, TPIMs deal with someone who is here and whose freedom of movement and operation in this country is being controlled. That is rather different from facing someone who has gone abroad to fight jihad. Presumably, intelligence suddenly arrives that these people are on their way back, so the Secretary of State has to act extremely quickly. I agree that the decision may be based on intelligence and that the sources of intelligence may not stack up in a court of law, but we are not trying to prove beyond reasonable doubt that these people are guilty of jihadism.”
“Of course I do not propose to leave it to the public and their anger. That is taking my arguments to an extreme limit. I am not suggesting that there should be a lynch mob and that everyone who comes back from Syria should be stopped by the public. We are not talking about the public. We are talking about the Secretary of State acting reasonably, on the basis of all the Government and intelligence sources available to her, to exclude someone temporarily from coming back to this country. This is not an assault on Magna Carta, habeas corpus or the traditional rights of English people; it is a sensible precaution, taken in circumstances in which we face jihadists who have no concept of our liberties, or indeed of any kind of logic. That is why I support the Government’s position.”
“We are simply talking about a reasonable belief that people have fought jihad and a reasonable belief that they are a threat to our people. I think that the bulk of members of the public and the majority of Members of Parliament trust the Secretary of State to act reasonably.”
“I broadly accept that point. Much as I admire the Secretary of State and her advisers, I freely accept that she may make a mistake. However, I think that, just as in the second world war, the threat is such that there must be some diminution of our traditional civil liberties to protect the liberty of the wider public. I am not saying that the end justifies the means, but we are in a very dangerous situation. We are talking about the Bill; we are not talking about hypothetical situations. The Bill lays an injunction on the Secretary of State to act reasonably, and if a court finds that the Secretary of State has acted unreasonably, it can reverse her decision. I repeat, however, that we are not talking about some fundamental assault on civil liberties, or about depriving people of their liberty in this country.”
“I am surprised that my otherwise good friend the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) is suddenly taking such an interest in the Lincolnshire constabulary. To put things in perspective, the reason our budgets have suffered for many years is the sparsity factor formula put in place by the previous Labour Government which transferred resources from rural authorities to places such as Stoke-on-Trent. Having said that, we have still managed to cut crime in Lincolnshire by 20% over five years.”
“We had a very good debate on Russia and Ukraine last week, but events are moving fast. For example, evidence emerged over the weekend of discussions between President Hollande of France and Mr Putin. Various compromises may be in the air. This is an important issue. I am not asking for a debate immediately, but before Dissolution at the end of March will the Leader of the House have it in his mind, as issues relating to the Russian economy develop, to have another debate?”
“Will the Minister continue to address the grotesque divide in central Government funding of poorer rural authorities and urban authorities? For instance, my own district of West Lindsey, which is only 45 minutes from Hull, receives a staggering £282 per head less every year than Hull. That is simply unfair. People are paying £120 more in council tax, and I have in south-west Gainsborough the poorest ward in the whole country. Something needs to be done, and we need to have a fair settlement for rural authorities with a sparsity factor.”
“Will my right hon. Friend confirm that our overriding concern must be to preserve the United Kingdom and the sense of unity in the United Kingdom? Therefore, it should be possible to proceed with caution and by consensus to achieve that, and to persuade our Scottish friends and allies—our Scottish MPs—that they are valued Members of our Parliament but there has also to be a sense of justice for English voters.”
“I obviously do not want to inflate President Putin’s ridiculous comments, but the west has a slight problem. Crimea was part of Russia from the end of the 18th century. It is heavily dominated by ethnic Russian speakers who wish to be part of Russia. It was given to Ukraine by a diktat of Khrushchev in 1956. Unfortunately, whatever one may think of President Putin, the Russians in Crimea have some right to self-determination.”
“I, too, am a member of the Council of Europe. I personally think there is no real possibility of us voting to restore Russia’s voting rights, but I would be opposed to kicking Russia out of the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe is a parliamentary union that often involves states we do not agree with, but with which we may achieve some movement. It may be a forlorn hope, but jaw-jaw is always better than war-war.”
“I must intervene. It is a grotesque insult to Russia, which suffered appallingly at the hands of the Nazis, to equate in any way the Russian Government, for all their faults, with the Nazis. That is just the sort of remark that fills the Russian people with absolute despair. They were raped and pillaged and there were 50 million dead. I hope that my hon. Friend is not making any kind of equation.”
“They were allowed to sit at the western table only when they were weak and ineffective under Yeltsin as their economy was plundered by criminal oligarchs. Moscow has definite security concerns regarding NATO expansion in Ukraine. Likewise, I am sure we would have had definite security concerns had Ireland or Belgium considered joining the Warsaw pact. The US would have similar concerns if, for instance, Mexico had tried to join some Russian sphere of influence.”
“To alter, change or abolish one portion thereof, no matter how small, may have numerous unintended and unforeseen consequences, with the potential to wreak havoc on the rights and freedoms that we have inherited from those who came before us. Taking this into account, we must recognise how important it is to understand the Russian mentality. Russia suffered for decades under communist rule. Russia has experienced at first hand the future that we are marching towards and rejected it. We here all believe we are wonderful, enlightened, modern liberals, and of course we have totally and wholeheartedly rejected nationalism and all those other nasty things, but the Russians feel very keenly that they have been wronged.”
“We in Britain are not destined to be a parliamentary democracy with a prosperous economy; it has taken centuries of slow and gradual development with often quite arbitrary situations that has allowed our tradition of parliamentary democracy to emerge. Seventy years of communism perverted the spirit of the people of the former Soviet Union and prevented them from developing the institutions, the habits and the traditions that we all too easily take for granted, whether here in the House or in the United Kingdom as a whole. It is precisely why we traditionalists and Conservatives have been so defensive and circumspect when it comes to altering the traditions of this House or the British constitution.”
“We should also recall that Russia, Ukraine and other nations of the former Soviet Union do not enjoy the same advantages that we have enjoyed, so it is inherently unfair to judge them by the same yardstick. We know that the Whig narrative of history is a myth. Anyone who believes the myth of progress after Auschwitz and Hiroshima must be wearing blinkers. Look at those photographs of modern free women studying in the universities of Tehran and Kabul in the 1960s and 1970s and then witness their condition, rights and appalling position today. Our rights and freedoms do not just arise out of the primordial fundamental; they are contingent on certain circumstances.”
“Although our own actions are coated in thick veneers of liberalism and democracy, to which we no doubt generally adhere, this idealistic terminology masks the reality that we ourselves deal with the world through old-fashioned power politics. For years, the EU, the US and the west generally have interfered in the internal politics of Ukraine in an effort to draw that country away from Russia and towards us—Ukraine has for three centuries been part of Russia. Russia has tried to counter those moves, and even though we might demonise Mr Putin, there is no conceivable leader of the Russian Federation who would not have done the same. The fact is that we are the liberal democrats and they are the strong men, but that is incidental to what is being done.”
“What we are witnessing over Ukraine is a clash between two systems of international relations: the western liberal system held up by the US, the UK and Europe versus the more traditional power politics epitomised by Russia. That was highlighted by a comment by the US Secretary of State, who said: “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in a 19th-century fashion”. With all due respect to Mr Kerry, Russia has, quite simply, proved him wrong. We in the west like to imagine that our liberal system is the universal way, but the reality is that traditional power politics is much more dominant in the rest of the world. I make no defence of that; I just make the comment.”
“I agree. Might it not be worth at least attempting to see things from the perspective of others and the perspective of most Russian people? Is it not wise to try to understand how we and our actions are perceived by them? How can we possibly make correct decisions about what to do if we have zero understanding of what makes other people tick? That is especially true if those people have extraordinarily different histories, not least the fact, as I said before, that Russian people suffered the most appalling tribulations as a result of invasion by the west within the lifetime of many Russian people.”
“However, many of us are also sensibly sceptical about the expansion of NATO and the EU into former Russian lands. I believe that a solution can be brokered, and I believe that we can play a role. We must convince Russia that we have no intention of trying to detach Ukraine from Russian influence to bring it under our own. We want Ukraine to be what it should be: free; independent; not part of the Russian sphere of influence or the NATO or EU sphere of influence; and with a strong federal structure and home rule for the east. Why should we want to break the Russian economy? Why should we want to destroy Mr Putin? If he goes, we could get somebody far worse. No feasible Russian leader would ever accept the permanent loss of eastern Ukraine. Let us be an honest broker. Let peace be our watchword, not war without end.”
“I want, if it is not too naive a thing to say, for Ukraine to be at peace. I really believe in this noble theme. I believe that there is a role for Britain and France, in particular. We have no historical axe to grind. Unlike Poland and the Baltic states, we have not been invaded or suppressed by the Russians. As for the Russians, they still harbour some justifiable historical fear of German expansionism, and with some reason today in economic terms. Unlike some Americans currently in power, we also have a sense of history. We recall from Woodrow Wilson’s time that good intentions are not always enough and can lead to war. We know that western Ukraine around Lviv was never part of Russia; it was first part of Austria-Hungary and then Poland. We know that in western Ukraine they 100% want to be part of Europe.”
“Ukrainian relations with Russia, Belarus, Poland and others are for Ukrainians to sort out, no matter how divided a people they are, and they are divided, but there is unequivocally no single shred of a reason why the United Kingdom should risk war over Ukraine. Our priority should be de-escalation, and then facilitating dialogue between the warring Ukrainian factions and between Ukraine, Russia and the west. We need to foster a breathing space in which Ukraine can make suitable constitutional reforms to allow for autonomy, as has been said. We should not put the global economy at risk, and we certainly should not risk a European war—1914 is ever present. Perhaps I have been a bit too harsh on liberal democracy. Let me finish on a positive note. I am profoundly pro-life and anti-war.”
“Particularly at this time of commemoration, when we are looking back to the events of a hundred years ago, we must force ourselves to learn the lessons of 1914. Does anyone really think that the assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne was worth the suicide of Europe? We do not want to sleepwalk into a war, the likes of which we cannot imagine. Ukraine is a beautiful country. It has deep traditions, a proud culture, a long history. We should wish the Ukrainians all the best in their journey as an independent people, but it is obvious, I am afraid, that there is no intrinsic British interest in Ukraine.”
“Our cack-handed sanctions allow him to portray us as anti-Russian, thus further legitimising his position as the defender of Mother Russia. Global economic recovery, we know, is extraordinarily precarious. Provoking crises with Russia risks unsettling the recovery, not just that of Russia but ours. With all due respect to the Ukraine, for Britons is it worth this possibility? One need not add BP’s significant investment in Russia, the billions of pounds of Russian money involved in the City of London, and European reliance on Russian energy. We must always remember that the existential threat to us is global Islamic jihadism, and Russia is an absolute crucial ally in that. Why put that at risk?”
“Economically speaking, we are continually arguing for globalisation, the integration of world economies, free trade, allowing everyone to grow in prosperity together—all things that I and everyone else speaking in this debate agree with. Why, then, are we allowing politics to interfere with our economic links to Russia, which are very strong, and to frustrate Russia’s further integration in the world economy? Those who seek to undermine Mr Putin would be much wiser to seek to strengthen these links, to incorporate Russia much more closely in the wider world. Surely that would strike more deeply at the heart of Mr Putin’s separatist way of doing things, drawing the Russian people in rather than casting them out. Instead, we are playing into Mr Putin’s hands.”
“It is all very well to pronounce the sacred inviolability of the borders of sovereign states, but when one does so, having undermined the borders of sovereign states as we did in Serbia, which many Russians point to, when we went to war over Kosovo, whose independence we now recognise, in their view it begins to look hypocritical. Russia, we know, is certainly involved in the supply of weapons to the rebels in eastern Ukraine, but in Kosovo NATO forces—this is often mentioned in Russia—effectively acted as the air force for the Kosovan Liberation Army. In the war against Serbia, NATO forces bombed hospitals—this is what many Russians say—bridges, journalists’ offices, public markets and even the Chinese embassy. Russia has done wrong, but it has not done what the Nazis did in Ukraine.”
“I make no defence whatever of the previous corrupt Ukrainian regime, but we preach respect for the law then completely disregard the Ukrainian constitution, article 111 of which lays out specific provisions for the impeachment and replacement of the President of Ukraine. These provisions were not applied, thus a succession, in the view of many, is at best irregular, at worst unconstitutional. Let us remember 1993 in Russia. Yeltsin unconstitutionally dissolved the Duma and sent in tanks against a democratically Parliament, and the west backed him. What may have been the beginnings of a Russian idea of parliamentary sovereignty and the accountability of the Executive were nipped in the bud, with western powers nodding approvingly.”
“We in the west seem to have lost our critical faculty. We make the fatal error of believing our own propaganda and, worse, expecting other people to believe it too. None of us here believes Mr Putin’s propaganda. I do not support him or believe in him or defend him to the remotest degree, but why do we expect people in Russia, the Crimea or eastern Ukraine to believe our propaganda? They judge us not by our words but by our actions. Why should they do otherwise? Look at our immediate recognition of the seizure of power in Kiev this past February, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale).”
“Absolutely right. I agree entirely with that. I am not pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian. I fully accept the appalling suffering of the Ukrainian people, particularly under Stalin, and the dreadful suffering that they experienced from the Nazi invasion. I am not making that point; I am simply trying to explain that the Russians have a point of view, and if we are to do the right thing, we must understand that. We may not agree with it. Nothing I say militates against a free, independent and prosperous Ukraine. We have to wake up to the reality that many Russians think, act and feel differently from us, and that no amount of bullying on our part with sanctions will turn them into western liberals with our point of view. Not all Russians agree with what I am saying, but many do. Many take quite the opposite point of view from us.”
“I agreed with the Secretary of State when she said: “as much as I want the next generation to be able to solve a quadratic equation, I also want them to be able to make a compelling pitch for a job”. If we are going to win the global race for excellence, we need top-flight scientists and mathematicians, and a disproportionate number of them are provided by our remaining 160 grammar schools, yet under this Government funding for grammar schools has been cut, meaning that the top-performing grammar school in Lincolnshire gets £4,000 per pupil per year and the worst-performing comprehensive gets £7,000 per head per year. We must do more to help our excellent schools provide the top-class mathematicians of the future.”
“Last week, a primary school in my constituency at Middle Rasen was marked down from “outstanding” by Ofsted for being too British. That follows other faith schools that have been marked down because they are falling foul of the Secretary of State’s new British values. Let us be honest: not a single traditional Catholic or Anglican school preaches intolerance in this country. When will the Secretary of State take action to ensure that we have freedom of faith in our faith schools?”