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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“Even those women who work, and work very hard, often define being a mother as the most important thing in their lives. I do not blame the Prime Minister, because there may be all sorts of reasons—perhaps there are no suitable people—but I do not want to get into all that. However, we need to make this place more attractive and diverse. We have not yet succeeded in attracting as many working mothers to this place as we should have done. It is our fault because of the nature of our work, our expenses regime, the salary and much else. Would a general practitioner and mother working in, say, Newcastle find becoming a Member of Parliament attractive? Her salary would probably be halved, but people are prepared to take enormous salary cuts to work in this place—it is a wonderful privilege and many of us would work here for nothing.”
“We should not be too negative about ourselves—I also serve on the Council of Europe and I look at how other parliamentarians around Europe operate, and our debates are still much more relevant and spontaneous. For instance, I only decided to speak today in the light of events this week. That spontaneity in Parliament is very important, but we have to accept that we have a problem with our image in the eyes of the public, on expenses and much else, including whether we are relevant to the lives of ordinary people. We have seen some publicity today to the effect that it is rather sad that we have no mothers in the Cabinet. I share that sadness: after all, half the population of the country are women, and we all have mothers.”
“It is a pleasure to follow a fellow member of the House of Commons rowing team. Every summer we try to raise some money for charity. It is a great privilege to be a Member of the House of Commons. I was thinking that as I was standing in the Division Lobby and looking at the marvellous architecture and reflecting on all the good work we do here. Let us be honest, however, and recognise that some of the publicity we have had this week has not been the best. I speak as the chairman of the group of MPs that liaises with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority—I served on the group with the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), for a while—and I want to talk about how we can make Parliament more relevant to people’s needs.”
“May I congratulate the Deputy Leader of the House? In all my time here, that is the fullest reply I have ever heard to any Member’s speech. It was fantastic, and we now want him to give as full a reply to all the other speeches.”
“No transferrable allowance will make anyone get married or stay married, or even encourage them to get married. The whole point is that when one person in a married couple—usually the woman—stays at home to look after the children, they are uniquely disadvantaged by the benefits system. This is simply a question of justice; we are righting an injustice in the benefits system.”
“The tax burden on the single earner married couple with two children on the average wage in the United Kingdom has increased from being 33% greater than the OECD average to now being 42% greater. Clearly, the problem is growing. Introducing a transferable allowance for married couples will disproportionately benefit poorer families and those in the lower half of income distribution. I am proud of what we are doing and I am proud that at last, this afternoon, we are recognising marriage in the tax system.”
“The transferable tax allowance will be in line with international best practice. This is not some way-out wacky idea from the Christian right, but what most countries do. Of the biggest countries in the OECD, it is only the UK, Mexico and Turkey that do not have a transferable allowance. It is only 24% of the population of all the OECD countries that are not benefiting from this transferable allowance for married couples. It is a common idea that is widely accepted all over the world. It works; it is normal; it is good. The UK is one of the only countries in the OECD not to recognise marriage in the tax system. The comparison between the United Kingdom and the OECD average is telling.”
“The 2004 Blanchflower and Oswald study in the US and UK shows that the effect of marriage on mental well-being is estimated to be equal to that of an extra $100,000. A 10-year study of British households found that the health gain from marriage may be as much as the benefit from giving up smoking. The Centre for Social Justice found that those not growing up in a two-parent family were 75% more likely to fail at school, 70% more likely to become addicted to drugs and 50% more likely to have an alcohol problem. We should pay tribute to the Prime Minister, the leader of the Conservative party, for constantly expressing his support for the institution of marriage. Marriage is even a predictor of survival rates in patients with lung cancer, according to The Independent newspaper.”
“The absence of a transferable allowance obviously makes marriage less attractive to prospective husbands and wives and more costly than it should be for some people. However, that is not the main point. The main point is that we are creating a powerful message that marriage works and it is good for children. As I said in an earlier intervention, a married couple where one partner stays at home is uniquely disadvantaged by the tax system. That cannot be fair. I agree that policy must be based on evidence, and the evidence is absolutely clear. Regardless of socio-economic status and education, co-habiting couples are between two and two and half times more likely to break up than equivalent married couples. The poorest 20% of married couples are more stable than all but the richest 20% of cohabiting couples.”
“The system has led to numerous social problems that, aside from the obvious human cost, create an undue financial burden on the state. Ultimately, if we promote marriage and support it in the financial system, the state saves money, and we create a happier society. Creating a transferable allowance will strengthen the institution of marriage—that may be only a message, but it is a strong one. It will provide benefits for adults, children and society as a whole. I am afraid that marriage rates are at an all-time low. The scale of family breakdown as a social problem is increasing all the time. It is estimated that it has cost us between £24 billion and £41 billion to deal with it every single year.”
“I am grateful, Mr Caton. I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate, but I was at the Council of Europe. I wanted to come back here to speak on this measure especially, because I have campaigned for it for many years. This is a very proud moment for our party. We are fulfilling an election manifesto, and I am delighted that at last it will happen. I have no doubt that the party will unite today at 4 o’clock to vote through the measure. There is no doubt that marriage is the fundamental institution of society. It is the one that contributes the most to the cohesiveness and sustainability of society, and I do not think that anyone disagrees with that. But for too many families, the tax system simply punishes marriage. Why do we have a tax system that does that? It should facilitate marriage.”
“Enormous numbers of Irish men from both communities willingly volunteered. That is the key: they willingly volunteered for king and country, and many of them made the ultimate sacrifice. Can the Minister tell the House how he will use the commemorations to bring both communities together in remembrance of their common sacrifice?”
“The people in Lincolnshire will be grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for raising these issues. Does he agree that they are exacerbated by the rural nature of our county? Frankly, people in a deeply rural county such as Lincolnshire sadly get a worse service than people living in urban areas.”
“Contrary to what some have said, particularly my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), is the Prime Minister aware that many of us support his careful and proportionate response, and we think that he might be an arbiter, because there is no history between us and Russia in these matters? Is he aware that many of us welcome his remark today that Ukraine—Ukrayina, which means “borderland” in Russian—might become a bridge to peace, not a path to war, if we promote free trade for Ukraine both with the EU and with Russia?”
“If I may gently return to the Budget, I understand that the Labour party accepts the welfare cap—that is fair enough—but that it wants to restore the spare room subsidy, which would cost £465 million. Will the shadow Chancellor explain to the House what other bit of welfare he would cut?”
“My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech in favour of hard work. I read in the papers yesterday—so it cannot possibly be true—that the Chief Secretary had boasted that he had personally vetoed any indexing of relief for higher-rate taxpayers. Surely my right hon. Friend, who is pro-enterprise, cannot think it right that a police sergeant is paying higher-rate tax.”
“When we reduce taxation on the top earners, as we saw when we reduced the top rate of tax from 50% to 45%, we encourage enterprise, remove avoidance and even evasion, and generate more income and growth. This is a Conservative philosophy of enterprise and rewarding hard work, and that is what a Conservative Government must be about. I earnestly enjoin the Government to try to right this inequity against higher rate taxpayers in their next Budget, or, if not, in the manifesto.”
“When Nigel Lawson introduced the 40p rate in 1988, it was paid by just 1.35 million people. Now, 4.5 million people pay the higher rate of tax, and by 2015 that figure will have risen to nearly 5 million. I personally do not believe that this is what the higher rate of tax was designed for. It should attack people on higher rates of earnings, and that means those who earn a reasonable amount of money; it should not attack police sergeants, senior matrons or classroom teachers. That is wrong and inequitable. We need from the Government a sense of mission and direction, and the sense of mission and direction that I want to see is one that is aimed at simplifying all taxation. After every Budget speech—rather like the Secretary of State, I think I have now sat through 18—I make the point again and again that simplification pays off.”
“Let me say gently to the Business Secretary—he is not here, but I am sure he will read Hansard avidly—that I think he was being slightly disingenuous when he replied to my intervention in which I bemoaned the fact that we are not indexing the higher rate tax. He said, “Well, we’ve made a start”, but it is a very small start. Under this Budget, 400,000 more people will still be dragged into paying higher rate tax. Some 1.4 million middle-earners—small business men; managers; hard-working nurses, matrons and teachers at the top of their professions; police sergeants—have all been dragged into this higher rate of tax during this Parliament, on our watch. The higher rate of taxation is almost turning into the standard rate. The top half of taxpayers contribute 90% of all tax intake.”
“Member for West Bromwich West said, what could be a debt-fuelled boom, which is the traditional British way of climbing out of recession. I wanted to try to start on a positive note, however, so I should quickly say that I think this Budget will be remembered for its entirely freedom-loving, Thatcherite, people-trusting measures on annuities. However, those points have been made repeatedly, so I do not need to labour them. I want to talk about what is happening to higher rate taxpayers. The top 5% pay 45% of all income tax. The top 1%—just 30,000 people—pay 30% of all income tax, which is more than the lowest 50%.”
“I may not agree with all that the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) says, but he always speaks with calm courtesy and forensic good sense, so we are grateful for his comments. I am also grateful that my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary is sitting on the Front Bench. I hope that what I am going to say is not entirely off message from what the Government believe. Because I respect and admire him so much, I have a sneaking suspicion that privately he might agree with much of what I will say. The fact is that, for all the huff and puff, when it comes to what it actually puts into and takes out of the economy, the Budget represents a 0.3% change—£2 billion out of £732 billion of spending. That is somewhat worrying when we consider the very big challenge we face on deficit reduction and, following what the hon.”
“I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the tone of this part of his speech. Despite everything that has been said over the past hour, we do have a bit of a problem in that a majority of people living in Crimea want to be part of Russia, and they had been part of Russia for 300 years, apart from administrative diktat in recent times. They also have a right to self-determination.”
“That particularly applies to Crimea, which has been Russian since the time of Catherine the Great, and Russian speakers are the dominant part of the population. I know that the Tatars have been treated appallingly, but—again, the House will not like what I say—many Russians believe that some elements of the Tatar population collaborated with what they call the fascist invaders.”
“My wife’s grandmother escaped through Crimea in 1918, and her first husband was dragged out of the woods and shot by Bolsheviks, simply because of his name and title. The Russian people—this is seared into their soul—went through the most appalling suffering during the second world war, not least in Crimea. When one goes to Kiev, as I have done, and walks around the Russian Orthodox cathedrals, one understands the Kievan Rus’, which was founded 1,000 years ago. Ukraine is not just some settlement. I am not apologising or being an apologist for Putin or what he has done; I am just trying to explain to the House how importantly Russians feel about the future of Ukraine, and how sensitive we must be to their sensibilities.”
“My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) quoted John Quincy Adams who famously warned against his country going out seeking “monsters to destroy”. I declare an interest: I have been interested in Russian culture and history ever since my Russian Orthodox wedding to my Russian Orthodox wife. I have visited Kiev, and I want to explain to the House how important Ukraine is to the Russian people. In our island, secure as we are, we sometimes do not understand the importance of history and of fear, and of the great fear of the Russian people. I am neither pro-Russian nor pro-Ukrainian, because I am also sympathetic to Ukrainians living in western Ukraine who are Catholic Uniates, and I understand the divisions of that country. History is everything.”
“We must stop these games of Ukraine ever joining NATO—thank God Ukraine is not in NATO because we would be involved in a war. We must stop these games.”
“The eastern part of the country around Donetsk and Crimea is a completely different state of affairs. We must be aware that however many speeches we give, and however many sanctions we impose, this is not just about a tyrant—Putin—invading a foreign country. A great proportion of the Russian population feels very strongly that the west is imposing double standards. The west insisted on self-determination for the Kosovans, and Serbia is very close to the Russian heart as a fellow Orthodox country. The House may not agree with that, but that is their point of view, and imposing any amount of sanctions will not change it. We must stop playing power games. It is too dangerous a situation, and the west must realise that it cannot tear Ukraine away from Russia.”
“No, of course I do not. Finland was also occupied by Sweden, but there is no time to debate that. Ukraine is a completely different ball game to Russians than Poland. My point is that Ukraine is an extraordinarily divided country. This is not a simple, liberal argument about a long-standing independent united country and a foreign aggressor. Western Ukraine is fiercely anti-Russian. As I said, it is Catholic Uniate, its capital city is Lviv, and formerly it was largely inhabited not by Ukrainians but 80% by Poles who were forcibly removed by Stalin. Before that it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and was called Lemberg. The whole of western Ukraine is therefore passionately opposed to Russia—quite understandably—and wants to break free.”
“As I said, I am neither pro-Russia nor pro-Ukraine, and I am in favour—this may be a cliché—of peace and humanity. I want Ukraine to have a devolved system of administration so that the west can run itself, as can the east. Ideally if we can think in terms of free-trade areas and Ukraine having some sort of free-trade agreement with the EU, that is positive, sensible and acceptable to Russians. However, we should please not take any step further, because we will be indulging in extraordinarily dangerous power games.”
“I must finish shortly as others want to get in. An attack on one NATO country is an attack on all of them. Poland is a completely different state of affairs from Ukraine. As I have said, we must stop the power games of trying to detach Ukraine from Russia. It is not going to happen. Russia will not allow it to happen, any more than we would allow an integral part of what we consider to be important to our soul and our history to be detached from us. It is a dangerous game— [ Interruption. ] Well, somebody has to give an alternative point of view. There is no point in the House of Commons if we all agree with each other all the time. I am trying to explain the Russian point of view. Encouraging Ukraine to join NATO is obviously absurd, but it is also extraordinarily dangerous to encourage Ukraine to join the EU.”
“The Minister said earlier this afternoon that the MOD cannot be “oblivious” to the country’s fiscal position, but the Treasury cannot have it both ways. If it insisted that the Army had to suffer dangerous cuts in a non-strategic review in 2010, surely in 2020, when the economy will be growing, the Army, in a dangerous world, is entitled to share in the proceeds of growth.”
“T2. An attack on one NATO country is an attack on all of them. Can we therefore thank God that Ukraine never did join NATO, because otherwise we might now be involved in a European war?”
“Given that this is obviously an incredibly important matter, akin to cloning, with a child having several parents—I know of no other country in the world that has done this—does my hon. Friend think it should be the subject of a full debate on the Floor of the House?”
“The Prime Minister is right to stress the importance of history. For instance, ultra-nationalist Lviv was once 80% Polish Lvov, and before that was Lemberg in the Austro-Hungarian empire. I wonder whether the Prime Minister—with his well-known charm, diplomatic skills and all the rest, and with no obvious self-interest, as a Briton—can act as a bridgehead between those in the European Union who want to alarm Russia by detaching Ukraine from traditional spheres of influence and Russian imperialists. I should have thought that he could play a very useful role in promoting diplomacy and good relations.”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker, I hope you will not mind me sucking up to you for a bit. In my view, you are one of the best Speakers that we have had in recent years, because you have tried to make this place more topical. We have had an interesting statement and questions on Ukraine, but such issues are complex, and it is hard to express difficult economic and historical arguments in a 30-second question. As we have a House of Commons in which we are not overburdened with work at the moment, will you use your good offices with those who decide things—I do not know how much power you have—to get a full day’s debate on Ukraine, which after all is an extraordinarily important issue that we need to discuss urgently?”
“Surely we must ensure that we cannot be accused of double standards. We were rightly prepared to violate the territorial integrity of Serbia to protect the right to self-determination of the Kosovans. Presumably, we should look equally kindly on the right to self-determination of the ethnic Russians in Crimea and Donetsk. Therefore, can we please resist the wilder talk of economic sanctions, which can only damage the fragile recovery of Europe, and instead engage in diplomatic dialogue with Russia and Ukraine?”
“Does my hon. Friend accept that, although we of course want to have as many women as possible in Parliament—not least because they are as gracious as she is—it is still a fundamental Conservative principle that Conservative associations must preserve full independence to select the best people, whatever their sex?”
“Lastly, we must not think that we will encourage more women by making Parliament more anaemic, for instance by sitting from nine to five. The fundamental job of Parliament—it might be boring and take a long time—is to hold the Government to account and to scrutinise the Government. That means that we must sit here for long hours, because that is our job. Under the present system, some of our greatest Prime Ministers have come from modest backgrounds, as have many leaders of the Conservative party, including Margaret Thatcher, Ted Heath, Michael Howard and John Major. They were all committed parliamentarians. Many of our best parliamentarians, such as Ann Widdecombe and Margaret Thatcher, were women, and we should have confidence that we can go on throwing into the mix some wonderful women parliamentarians.”
“One of the ways forward is through the open primary system. That is highly democratic. It takes power back to the local people. It takes it away from the Whips Office—dare I say?—because people will be more reliant on what people are saying locally, so the open primary is the way. I do not think that IPSA has helped at all. For instance, would a successful woman doctor working in the north of England want to give up a successful practice to come and live under our present expenses system, to be stuck in a rented one-bedroom flat, and not just for the occasional business trip, but for half her working life? It is difficult. The problem is not so much that we have created structures that discourage women, but that women themselves do not want to come forward. I think that IPSA could help with that.”
“Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said, there is no point in a constituency denying a strong local working-class man being the Member of Parliament by insisting that in that particular constituency, where perhaps he has worked for years, there must be an all-women shortlist. No, the way forward is to recognise, as my hon. Friend said, that society is changing. It is a mystery why Conservative associations, which have always been dominated by women, have selected so few women. There was some feeling perhaps in the past of “Where I cannot go, why should I send somebody else?” There was perhaps a feeling of jealousy. All that is changing, so we do not need to impose our centralising tendencies on our local associations; we need to have confidence that they will themselves want to select more women and the best candidates.”
“This has been a good debate and we all, even reactionaries like me, are desperate to have more women in Parliament. I am. I think women MPs are much more interesting in so many ways. Do we want legions of more young, grey, ambitious men in suits? No, we want more women. We are all united. But let me say a word of caution. We must move with society. We cannot impose structures and while we should worry about the lack of Conservative women MPs, we should have confidence in our own beliefs and in the way that society matures to ensure that we have more women MPs. Therefore, I am strongly opposed to all-women shortlists. Ultimately, as my hon.”
“May I express that last question in a slightly gentler way by asking if we can avoid any Russophobia in this debate? “Ukrayina” means “borderland” in Russian, and Ukraine has always been a legitimate sphere of Russian interest. In the shape of the Kievan Rus, it was the foundation of the modern Russian state in 800 AD, so can we accept that only the Russians can bail out this state to any significant extent and we have to work with them?”
“There have been no recent discussions on extending the scope of the NAO’s role to auditing the Bank of England. As part of its wider discussions of the NAO’s budget in March 2012, the Commission considered the resource implications of the NAO’s new role in implementing the Financial Services Act 2012, in that it appointed the Comptroller and Auditor General to audit the Financial Conduct Authority. The Act did not change the audit arrangements for the Bank itself.”
“I do not think that the Bank of England should be an exception. If the National Audit Office had audited the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England during the financial crisis of 2007, there may well have been a very different result. When I was Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, I campaigned long and hard for us—this Parliament—to audit the Bank of England, which we should do.”
“I suspect that the National Audit Office would be very loth to be dragged into the debate on the future of Scotland. Clearly, if Scotland broke away, there would have to be completely different audit arrangements for the Financial Conduct Authority, which the House currently audits. Independence would indeed have implications for the National Audit Office.”
“In addition to the support it provides to the Public Accounts Committee, the NAO supports Select Committees with informal briefings, advice on selecting and designing inquiries, new research and evidence gathering in support of a Committee’s interest or inquiry, and in providing experts on short-term attachments. On monitoring the effectiveness of that support, the NAO monitors the Government’s responses to PAC reports to ensure that individual Departments have accepted and implemented PAC recommendations.”
“I am satisfied that the NAO has adequate resources, but the Commission has already imposed a 15% cut to its budget in real terms. If further cuts are demanded, the House will have to consider whether the NAO will be able to continue its excellent work to support the Committees of the House, including the Public Accounts Committee.”
“In 2012-13, the NAO’s support to the Public Accounts Committee cost £3 million and its support to other Select Committees cost £2.1 million. My hon. Friend will see that the majority of the funding supports the PAC, but the NAO does valuable work to help all our Select Committees.”
“Of course it is necessary to move on. I am afraid that is history, though. We have to address the humanitarian crisis facing us now. That is what my hon. Friend must do.”
“Yet the hospital on which her recovery depends is woefully ill-fitted to the task—riddled by equipment failures, power cuts and shortages in a mounting crisis that doctors fear is leading to a ‘health catastrophe’.” That is daily life for 1.7 million of our fellow citizens. Despite the horrors of Hamas and the rocket attacks, we cannot punish the many because of the sins of a few. That is what this debate is about.”