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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“While a long line of thinkers, not least Russell Kirk, have been keen to point out the British roots of the American system, in fact, as you will know, Mr Speaker, it is very different from our own. Our daughter-Parliaments in Ottawa, Canberra and elsewhere have grown up in a very different way from the American system. The United States does not even have general elections, with different portions of both its Houses being elected in fits and starts every two years. There is also another factor in the American system which we must avoid importing to these islands—this is an important point, which we have seen in this Parliament. With America’s fixed terms, the first half is spent legislating while the second half is spent in campaigning and raising money for the coming election campaign.”
“One highly esteemed political scientist, Juan Linz, described in 1994 the capability for an early Dissolution as a critical antidote to the temporary rigidity of presidential-style systems. Linz was wise to point out that the power of Dissolution allows for stronger Governments who are more capable of responding to emergencies or to changes in democratic expression. He wrote that the fixed tenure means that the “political process therefore becomes broken into discontinuous, rigidly determined periods without possibility for continuous readjustments as political, social and economic events might require.” Indeed, I think the whole idea of fixed-term Parliaments has a Blairite feel to it, in a fawning admiration of the American style of government.”
“Of course, the Act we are talking about today moves against the spirit of the idea that one Parliament cannot bind another. That is rubbish anyway, because if somebody gets a majority in the next Parliament, they can simply repeal this Act in an afternoon. All the checks and balances are meaningless in any event, because one Parliament cannot bind another. So, looking to other parliamentary democracies outside the Westminster system, we see that fixed terms are a rarity. Often they are based on the peculiarity of local circumstances, such as in Germany or Switzerland. France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands all provide for early Dissolution more easily than is envisioned under this Act.”
“It is not for me to speak for the Liberal Democrats—unfortunately they seem to be absent from the Chamber. May I say that I always read my hon. Friend’s speeches with the closest possible attention? Both he and I were, of course, in coalition in our beloved Conservative party with a social-liberal leadership. I sometimes think that the Conservatives on the Treasury Bench would rather be in coalition with the Liberals than with the likes of me. If that is true, it is no surprise if party membership is under stress. The contrary system to ours involves a host of smaller parties combining in smoke-filled rooms—although they are probably smokeless now—in order to make deals and hash out a coalition that may be contrary to voters’ wishes. That is often the continental system.”
“The whole point is that the American system is completely different from ours, so it would be unwise for me or anyone else in this House to lecture President Obama on when he should go. Actually, the United States does have a system whereby a President can be removed through impeachment, and President Nixon took that route.”
“I take back that cheap shot against Tony Blair—it was perhaps unnecessary—and I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Over the centuries, we have established a pretty good system. I think we are the only country in Europe never to have been a police state or had a police state imposed on it. We should be pretty proud of our slow constitutional growth.”
“I welcome Back-Bench debates, but they are taking place not through the kindness of the Government but because there is no majority in the House to do anything that would make a real difference. In my experience, the very best Conservative and Labour Parliaments have been four-year Parliaments, and the very worst have lasted for five years—in particular, our 1992 Parliament and Labour’s 2005 Parliament. Towards the end, five-year Parliaments get weaker and weaker.”
“Exactly; that is a very fair point. Our own beloved Mark Darcy, a BBC journalist who is really an ornament of the constitution, put it very well when he said that there was a danger under the Act of Parliaments “oscillating between hyperactivity and torpor” . We appear to be at the torpid end of this Parliament. I welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I regret that you cannot join us and make a speech. We recollect your coruscating arguments during the passage of the Bill, but we accept that you are of course now completely neutral. I just think that five years is far too long. We have experienced a very front-loaded Parliament. The best evidence of that has been the recent explosion in the number of Back-Bench debates, compared with the number in the early part of the Parliament.”
“In my personal view, that is a fair point. The right hon. Gentleman has intervened at a good point, because I was about to say that our insistence on a five-year Parliament has resulted in delaying elections in the devolved Administrations. That delay was proposed because, when we had an election on the same date in Scotland, there was an unacceptable 147,000 spoiled ballot papers. I really do believe in devolution, however, and it is up to the devolved Parliaments to make that decision.”
“No, I am not saying that. I think we should simply go back to the old system and the Prime Minister should be able to call an election when it is appropriate. I agree, however, that if we were going to have a fixed term, a four-year one would be much more acceptable. However, we are not here to honour fixed-term Parliaments; we are here to bury them. So I would rather go back to the old system, which worked perfectly well. Interestingly, in the previous century the average length of a Parliament was four years and 10 months—”
“Fixed terms will remove or at least limit the government’s capacity” to renew their mandate. We all know that the decision of the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), not to have a general election as soon as he was elected—or, rather, appointed—as Labour Prime Minister was a serious mistake and his Government never recovered from it.”
“Sorry, three years and 10 months. So if we stick with this Act, in the next century we could lose six general elections—that is six occasions on which the people are given a real choice. In short, the greater flexibility that the power of Dissolution allows is to the advantage of our parliamentary democracy. The great advantage of our constitutional tradition is that it bends rather than breaks, but fixed-term Parliaments remove that flexibility, with consequences that cannot be foreseen. Professor Robert Hazell of University College London’s constitution unit, has said that “Anthony Eden’s decision to call a premature election in April 1955 can be justified on a mandate basis: he had only taken over as PM nine days earlier after the resignation of Winston Churchill.”
“That is the other side of the coin, which is why the Liberal party, which always delights in its own rationality, came up with this idea of fixed-term Parliaments. It is strange that the Liberal party, which is so apparently rational in all respects, is so unpopular with the people—I never quite understand that. It is precisely the sort of point that comes from political scientists and leads to dangerous constitutional innovations that are not thought through and are, in the end, profoundly undemocratic. The old system was better, more democratic and more in tune with what the public want.”
“We should put this issue in our manifesto and repeal the Act, and think about repealing it now.”
“This was always going to be a loveless marriage, and fixed-term Parliaments were a pre-nuptial settlement drawn up between two parties that were never in love. Indeed, they had to bind their marriage in barbed wire to stop them ratting on each other. Is that the right way to make a major constitutional innovation? I do not think it is. These constitutional innovations of profound import for our democratic system should have been the result of lengthy debate and academic debate, but they were not. They were cobbled together in five days in May in secret meetings between the leaderships of the two parties. These things were put not to a vote of my parliamentary party, but to a show trial public meeting of MPs in Committee Room 14 with planted questions. There was no democratic mandate in our manifesto for the fixed-term Parliament.”
“They are totally irrational, and they are arguing from different points of view on fixed-term Parliaments and on a referendum on Europe. When did their support start imploding? It was when they broke their election promises on tuition fees, and they have never recovered. That was in the heady days of the coalition, which they were determined to try to maintain for five years. Indeed, now they are apparently the main body of people who have maintained that this coalition must struggle on for five years. How was the arrangement formed? It was a hash job—let us be honest about it. It was designed to keep both parties in the coalition from doing a runner on each other and it was never thought through properly.”
“That is a good point. [Interruption.] Why be fair in politics anyway—they are not. This constitutional change was not in our manifesto, although I believe it was in both the Labour and Lib Dem manifestos. Interestingly, the Liberals maintained that fixed-term Parliaments would “ensure that the Prime Minister of the day cannot change the date of an election to suit themselves.” It is telling that the Liberals speak so contemptuously of consulting the people and seeking their approbation. I believe the Liberals had previously been in favour of a referendum on the European Union before they decided they were against one—they now say they will have a referendum at the time of a treaty change. Why not have a vote on the European Union at a fixed time—they have succeeded in foisting that on us for our Parliaments?”
“This was the subject of a very good debate among experts in the Hansard Society. They pointed out that this Parliament will end on 28 March. We will have a record five-and-a half-week campaign and two weeks of negotiations, so we could have two months without a Government, which would be the longest time that this country in recent history has not had a Government. We could have a Belgian situation—I love the Belgians but they do not necessarily have the best sort of Government—with no Parliament and no Government.”
“Yes, that is true, but we all know—my right hon. Friend has been a Minister as have I—that the moment the election is called, civil servants do not allow Ministers to do anything. In theory, we still have Ministers in charge, but in practice we do not have a Government who can do anything. It is worrying that under this Act of Parliament we could have such a long period of, effectively, no Government.”
“They had the mandate to do so, and they could have renewed that mandate after a year or 18 months, and we would now have a much stronger Government. We find ourselves stuck in a lowest common denominator straitjacket, which no one voted for—”
“I did not know about that, but my hon. Friend raises a good point, and I am very worried about it. Frankly, this coalition shows us that coalitions are a bad idea. It would have been much better to have had a minority Government. We could have gone to the people after a year or 18 months to seek a proper mandate. That has been done twice by Labour in the 1960s and the 1970s. There was no constitutional outrage, debate or scandal about it. Harold Wilson did it twice and nobody seemed to worry very much. People said that it was necessary to have a coalition to deal with the deficit. Leaving aside the fact that we have not yet properly dealt with the deficit anyway, a Conservative Government could have got on with dealing with the deficit from day one.”
“Indeed it could conceivably lead to a Belgian situation of weak Government and weak Parliament. As is found around the world, it could and does lead to rigidity and angry calls by a disaffected public to extra-parliamentary activity. It actually leads to the growth of extremist fringe parties, as we are finding in our own country.”
“I am coming to an end. I have put it several times to our beloved Prime Minister that we should end this coalition, which is haemorrhaging our support, and the support of the Liberal Democrats. He says that he cannot do it because, under this ridiculous Act of Parliament, he could not call a general election, and the Leader of the Opposition might be in power by teatime. I do not know whether or not that is right, but there is a certain rigidity in the system. We should end this coalition and go to the people at an appropriate moment. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act is a constitutional aberration. It was cobbled together without pre-legislative review or proper national debate. It could and does result in zombie-government in the latter part of the term.”
“Indeed, and dangerous situations can often be the result of fixed-terms. We could see, as a result of this Act, an unprecedented long period without any Government at all. This is a bad Act. It was not thought through and it is not in our traditions. It should be reviewed and repealed.”
“May I repeat the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan)? We are not going to convince the hon. Gentleman in regard to fixed-term Parliaments, but will he at least acknowledge that if we had had a proper national debate on the issue, we would obviously have decided on a four-year term, as in the case of the American presidency, rather than a five-year term?”
“Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), the Opposition spokesman, for reminding us that a fixed-term Parliament would ensure that we would have a five-year Labour Government if they get an overall majority. Finally, I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that he has made a wonderful job of defending fixed-term Parliaments, but what a pity we did not argue this before the general election. We all know that this was a short-term stitch-up, and there should be a proper debate. We have started to have that, and sooner or later I hope we will make the point that it is the people who should decide when is the right time to have a general election, when a Government are weak and running out of steam. General elections should not be set at an arbitrary date, and so we will not be withdrawing our motion. Question put.”
“I am very grateful to everyone who has taken part in this thoughtful debate. I am grateful to the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, who seemed to be arguing for a vigorous Parliament—we all agree with that. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) for quoting Oliver Cromwell. At least this Parliament is not going to run for 20 years like the Rump Parliament did—we are at least agreed on that. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) for saying that we believe in a rampant and vigorous democracy. I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Poole (Mr Syms) and for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) for the points they made about putting these matters to the people. I am grateful to the hon.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If a Member is caught indulging in corrupt actions, I have no argument with their being deprived of their seat, ultimately. That is what happens at present. I am worried that people might be deprived of their seats because they express independent or difficult views. Therefore, before the Bill becomes law, we must amend it to ensure that the House of Commons cannot expel anybody for expressing an individual view that the House as a whole does not like.”
“Everyone agrees with the hon. Gentleman about such bad behaviour, but does he agree with us on the following point, if on no other? Under the Bill, when it becomes an Act, the House of Commons should not be allowed to initiate any recall procedure on the basis of the views expressed by a Member, or his votes, or the party he joins, or any political act. The protection is similar to that which we have under the Act of Settlement: we are not held to account outside for what we say here.”
“I agree with everything that the former Leader of the House is saying, and I want to ask him a genuine question because he has tremendous expertise in this matter. Does he think that there might be scope to amend the Bill further on Report so that it is absolutely clear that no procedure may be initiated simply on the basis of a Member’s votes or views? Is there room for improvement?”
“That is the million dollar question. We all admire the hon. Lady for her courage and her clear exposition of why we need a referendum, but the question that I think many people will be asking is why, in her opinion, her leadership is not doing the obvious, logical, clear and democratic thing and offering a referendum to the British people by a set date. Is it because they fear the result? What is the reason?”
“I agree with everything that the Foreign Secretary is saying on this point of renegotiation. Surely in Europe, particularly in Germany, they are so desperate that we stay in—quite rightly—that we can have a substantial renegotiation, and in particular we can reclaim control of our borders.”
“This is all terribly interesting, but it is slightly irrelevant to what we are talking about today. Even if the Prime Minister fails to get anything substantial, the British people will make their choice. What I cannot understand about the actions of the Labour party—I am scratching my head about this—is that surely it wants to win the general election. Is it not quite a popular thing to do to offer a referendum by a certain date? Would it not be a good idea to shoot the Government’s foxes if it is trying to win the next general election?”
“Order. I will call the hon. Lady, but she did miss most of the opening speech. I am sure she will want to apologise, although I am also sure that there is a good reason why she was late.”
“Does my right hon. Friend agree that social mobility is often impeded in unhappy relationships? This is typified when one of the partners starts tearing a strip off his partner in public, often motivated by declining self-worth and familial support. Is not divorce the better option?”
“I remember that when I was a young barrister practising in Bow Street magistrates court—I could not get a better brief anywhere else—the police officers just rolled up with their note books and justice was swift and usually fair. [ Interruption. ] Yes, it generally was fair—if they weren’t guilty of that, they were guilty of something else. Ever since then, every single Home Secretary has tried to cut police bureaucracy, but it now takes up to a third of police time. Can we just cut through this matter and repeal the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which started the rot?”
“My hon. Friend said that he had not intended to speak and he seems to be making up for that by reading, at great speed, from an Israeli Government handout. Could we at least establish these ground rules: those of us who support the motion are still firm friends of Israel and defend its right to security, but we also believe in justice for the Palestinian people?”
“I do not understand my hon. Friend’s point about Jordan. Is he suggesting that because hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled to Jordan, often in fear of their lives, and now live there that they have their state and therefore everything is okay?”
“We have to recognise, however naive this may sound, that we are part of a common humanity, whether we are Christian, Jew or Arab. When we vote tonight—and I will vote for the motion—we will be making a gesture in favour of that common humanity, and we should be proud of that.”
“Bethlehem, of all places, should be a beacon of hope. I know we will be accused of making a gesture today and I understand the Government’s position, but they should listen to the voice of this House. Virtually everybody who has spoken—not just lefties waving placards in Trafalgar square, but virtually every Conservative MP—has said that now is the time to recognise the justice of the Palestinians’ case. I am not speaking in anti-Israeli terms—I am proud to be a friend of that state—but they have to open their hearts. They have to start relaxing controls in and out of Gaza. I know about all the problems with terrorists and suicide bombers, but they have to start relaxing controls at the Bethlehem checkpoint I was at and they have to stop the settlements. There has to be some way forward.”
“I was thinking of him only yesterday when I saw that he was an old boy of the school where my son is at the moment. He said in very powerful terms to me in his office in Jerusalem, “Look, there is absolutely no way in which we can possibly run or control the west bank. There are far too many Palestinians. We have to come to a settlement with the Palestinians and recognise their right to self-determination.” That was a former Israeli Foreign Minister. My other Damascus moment came when I was standing at the Bethlehem checkpoint and saw the appalling humiliation heaped on Palestinian people. I spoke to a nurse at a hospital I visited as part of a charity I ran. She lived in Bethlehem, just a few miles from Jerusalem. It was just a short walk away, but she was never able to go to the city without enormous difficulties.”
“We are going to be told when we vote tonight that we are being naive and indulging in gestures, but sometimes one has to be naive in expressing one’s hopes for a better world and to be prepared to make gestures, even if our power is very limited. I suppose that an Israeli living near Gaza will think that we are naive when missiles are raining down on them from Hamas. I have nothing but contempt for Hamas, which I view as a kind of Nazi organisation. I have nothing but respect and support for the state of Israel. I think that all of us are very philo-Semitic. We understand the horrors that the Jewish people have undergone and their desire for security and peace. However, my viewpoint—my strong support for Israel—started to change when I talked to Abba Eban, a former Israeli Foreign Minister and a very fine gentleman.”
“The Prime Minister places his trust in the Iraqi army. The problem is that, having caused this mess in Iraq, we armed the Iraqi army, they ran away and ISIL now has their arms. Is he seriously contending that by air strikes alone we can actually roll back ISIL, or is this gesture politics?”
“Now, it is almost too late: the Kurds have failed to protect them. Perhaps they have not got the resources. The truth is that, until now, we have done everything wrong. In our zealous liberalism, we have encouraged revolutions across the middle east and then been profoundly shocked when the forces that we have helped to unleash have turned against us. In that sense, the British Government are indirectly culpable in fostering the conditions for jihadism to thrive in Iraq and Syria. It is not surprising that last year in Maaloula, a Christian village in Syria, one civilian said to the BBC to tell the west “that we sent you Saint Paul 2,000 years ago to take you from the darkness, and you sent us terrorists to kill us.” In that sense, brutal as he is, Assad is a natural ally against jihadism.”
“I visited the Christian villages near Mosul that are most affected by Islamic State. I have heard the harrowing tales of women losing husbands, sons and daughters to death and kidnapping. It is appalling to talk to a mother and hear her say that she last saw her son or her husband going to church and has never seen him again. But attacks on Iraqi Christians and other minorities, such as the Yazidis, have been happening for years, ever since our misconceived and misplaced invasion of Iraq. That replaced an admittedly brutal strongman who protected minorities with chaos. For years, I and others have argued that Assyrian Christians in the Mosul plain needed their own province in Iraq to defend themselves. Frankly, we have been met with a complacent response from the Foreign Office.”
“We all want Syria to be a democratic, modern country, and we all want the Syrian free forces to win this battle, but a year ago we were asked in this House of Commons to bomb Assad and now we are being asked to stand on our heads. I have heard of being asked to bomb our opponents and support our friends, but what we are doing now in Syria is extraordinary and makes no sense.”
“How strange that, writing in sublime language 2,500 years ago, the prophet Nahum warned us of the fall of the Assyrians and their civilisation—and their descendants are now meeting the same fate. Therefore, although I have severe doubts about what this will achieve, and with a heavy heart and full of foreboding, I will vote for this motion tonight.”
“Yet what have we been doing with our armed forces over the past four years and how many planes have we got to bomb ISIL? What serious difference will we make? Those are the realities, which we all know, but we are where we are. We have caused this mess and we should apologise to the people of the region for it. We have no idea where this will end. We have no idea what our bombing campaign will achieve or how long it will take. But there’s the rub: we caused this mess. I want to make a personal point before I sit down. I do not think, for personal reasons, that I can walk away on the other side of the road from those desperate women I talked to in the Mosul province. I have stood beside the wrecked tomb of the prophet Nahum in the Christian village of Alqosh, which is directly threatened. I have talked to the monks nearby who live in fear.”
“We were once told that never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few, but now never have so few been asked by so many to achieve so much with no clear aim in sight. Of course, however, IS is winning against the Iraqi Government, but it is not winning against them because of superior armour or its command and control, which is easily bombed; it is winning because the Iraqi Government are corrupt and their army, which we armed, ran away. Are we going to bomb 4x4s racing across the desert? Make no mistake: this is about our amour propre as a nation. There is nothing wrong in that: we are a member, as we have been told time and again in this debate, of the Security Council, but if we want to act with a big stick in the world, we must wield the means.”
“I accept that point. The Government tell us that we are not going to follow the Americans down the road of bombing ISIL in Syria, because of the complexities that my hon. Friends the Members for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) and for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) have outlined. That border, however, does not exist. Our Government say we are only going to bomb ISIS in Iraq—a solution that makes no military sense whatsoever. What will this achieve? Most Back Benchers have no idea what the intelligence says. I suspect it is scanty. No journalist is embedded in IS, which would be a suicidal thing to do. How long will this operation last? Will bombing in Iraq alone seriously impede IS? We have only a tiny number of planes and they are based a long way away.”