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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“More important, however, is persuading the relevant bodies that I have mentioned to ensure that undergraduates emerge from medical school with a reasonable grasp of dermatology and that newly appointed GPs can recognise a malignant melanoma, which is probably the most important point of all. Those changes alone would have far-reaching, positive consequences for dermatology and for those with skin disease, and I urge the Minister to consider what can be done to make them a reality. I hope that this debate will make some difference.”
“Skin disease is not a well-resourced area, and such groups struggle to make ends meet. There is no group at all, for example, to provide support to people with acne, the previous group having run out of funds some years ago. Given that such charities are almost certainly a cost-effective way to provide what might be life-saving support to patients, perhaps the NHS should consider being a little more generous in its funding. I thank all those who have helped me to prepare this speech, particularly the British Association of Dermatologists. It is clear that a small number of important steps would make the greatest difference in this area of disease, including the appointment of a national clinical director to co-ordinate learning around the NHS and to drive uptake of new ideas and change.”
“Even if only a junior post were to be created, patients and health professionals would be given a clear line of accountability and a person to whom they could appeal who was above their local CCG lead for commissioning. Given the prevalence of skin disease, a national clinical director for dermatology, which is what I am calling for, would not look out of place among the long list of such posts at NHS England. I urge it to consider such an appointment. There is a lack of sources of peer-group, independent advice for people with skin conditions. Patient support organisations are mainly charitable institutions that rely, for the most part, on donations from individuals and pharmaceutical companies. People with skin disease place great value on the information and help provided by dermatology patient support groups.”
“Prior to the April 2013 switchover, primary care trusts were responsible for commissioning dermatology services, but the Department did at least have a policy lead on overseeing service provision. No similar post now exists in NHS England, so no one—I hope the Minister can reassure us on this—champions this area, spots good practice, or drives change. Earl Howe recently stated in the other place that dermatology would be spread across the five domains of NHS England, and that it would not, as was previously thought, sit primarily under long-term conditions in domain 2. That surely only heightens the need for a director to co-ordinate policy across the five domains.”
“We must do more about that; improved public funding for awareness campaigns, better training and stronger regulation of the use of sunbeds are some of the most obvious answers to the problem, yet very little, if anything, ever happens. Despite skin disease being very common, the direct cost to the NHS of providing skin care is relatively modest. The overall direct cost to the NHS in England and Wales was some £1.82 billion at the last estimate, in 2006. As of October 2013, there is no policy lead for dermatology in the Department of Health or NHS England; I put that point directly to the Minister. The majority of dermatology services are commissioned by clinical commissioning groups, but national oversight is necessary to co-ordinate care across the country and to drive the agenda.”
“As well as being unpleasant and demoralising for patients, some skin conditions kill; that must be emphasised. Skin conditions are not just a psychological problem. There were nearly 4,000 deaths due to skin disease in 2005, of which 1,817 were due to malignant melanoma, which is now the UK’s most common cancer. That is against a background of 13,000 malignant melanomas each year, a level that has increased 50% in little more than a decade. Those figures continue to rise, driven by the wide availability of cheap holidays in the sun, the continued fashion for using sunbeds and the inadequate resourcing of awareness campaigns.”
“I pay tribute to my consultant, Professor Chris Bunker, who is well known in the field and is president of the British Association of Dermatologists. Compared with mainland Europe, the ratio of consultant dermatologists to the general population remains low in the UK, at 1:130,000. It is estimated that there is a 20% shortfall in consultant numbers in the UK. Furthermore, there are significant issues related to vacancies in dermatology consultant posts—there were some 180 consultant vacancies at the last count. That is due both to an inability to attract people to posts in remote areas and to the widespread problem of funding being available for a post but the relevant deanery refusing to provide a training number that allows the post to be filled by a trainee.”
“That training should surely emphasise that most inflammatory skin diseases are long-term conditions and are likely to need ongoing care, often throughout a patient’s life. Similarly, the psychological effects of skin disease should be considered an integral part of any dermatological training course; I echo my right hon. Friend’s important point on that issue. There is good evidence for the effectiveness of general practitioners with a special interest in dermatology working within appropriate accreditation frameworks. More needs to be done to expand that group of clinicians, which is still all too small. In addition to poor training at primary care level, there is also an issue with the number of consultant dermatologists.”
“There is considerable potential for improving self-care through the provision of high-quality patient information and the development of the knowledge and skills of community pharmacists in skin diseases. That would save the NHS money, as well as improve patient care, and it is a nettle waiting to be grasped. The General Medical Council, working with the Royal College of General Practitioners, the British Association of Dermatologists, the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, plus Health Education England and NHS England, has a duty to ensure that urgent priority is given to the provision of proper dermatological training for all GPs, nurses and pharmacists.”
“I entirely agree. I talked to a doctor recently who said that one of his patients had not dared to go out for 20 years without wearing enormous amounts of special make-up because she was so worried about her condition. We should take that very seriously, because it affects hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens and their feeling of self-worth. The lack of dermatology education applies not only to GPs but to nurses and pharmacists, who also play a key role in the management of patients with skin disease. High and ever increasing sales of over-the-counter skin products suggest that people buy many products from pharmacies, yet training of pharmacists in the management of skin problems is limited, and evidence that they are providing appropriate advice is lacking.”
“Will the Minister take away to her fellow Ministers the point that the psychology of all this is very important and, in particular, read the report from the group chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford)? A lot of people, when they poke fun at others because of their appearance —their skin colour or something else—do not realise that they are causing them psychological damage. That is the particularly the case with children. It is an important point that we want to be taken away from the debate.”
“The Minister says that we should not focus too much on Christians—I understand that—but if we accept that argument we should not have complained about the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany because that would have made them a target. I do not necessarily accept all his arguments. He must accept that the overwhelming number of persecutions in the world today are against Christians. That is a fact, and so we have to focus on Christians for better or worse.”
“That makes most powerfully the point that we should make in this debate: in practising our own religion, in no way do we diminish the practice of other religions or people’s ability to practise their religion in any way they wish.”
“I very much agree with all that my good friend the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) has said and support the comments on Assyria. I do not know whether you managed to get some rest on Sunday, Mr Speaker, and watch once again on BBC4 the excellent French film entitled “Of Gods and Men”. It is a very beautiful film about the appalling murder of six Benedictine monks in the Atlas mountains. It is such a moving film because there is one scene in which Father Christian confronts one of the terrorists—the same terrorist who ultimately decapitates him and his fellow monks. Father Christian starts reading from the Koran in Arabic and quotes directly the passages that exhort all Muslims to be peaceful to other religions. The terrorist completes the verse.”
“I shall give way only once in a moment. Many of the people we are discussing—the persecuted Christians of the world—are the poorest of the poor. In Pakistan in particular, they are very much at the bottom of the heap, and they are denied human rights. All that they require in their simple lives is an ability to practise their religion, so this debate sends a powerful message about their right to freedom of expression.”
“Like him, I have been to Iraq, and I can assure you, Mr Speaker, that there is nothing more terrible than what happened to a mother I spoke to. The last time she saw her child was when he went off to church with her husband. The husband was kidnapped and never seen again. The child was murdered just because of his religion—for no other reason. My friend and I will never forget those conversations, because those attacks revealed an appalling level of hate. We invaded Iraq and we have a responsibility, so we cannot pass by on the other side. Maybe we invaded for good reasons, but we do have a responsibility.”
“If a similar outrage were perpetrated by a Christian suicide bomber going into a mosque and blowing up 120 Muslims, it would be considered appalling, and the House can imagine the consequences worldwide for Christians. I am afraid that, for all the warm words from the Foreign Office, there is still a lack of real determination to speak out. We have been in this space before, with the persecution of the Jews in the 1930s and the persecution of many minorities over time, where we as a Government have drawn back because of trade and other considerations of national policy, and we have not been prepared to speak up for minorities. I want to follow what my friend the hon. Member for Ealing North, said, because I have been there.”
“It is down to the DUP, not the Conservative Government or the Labour Opposition, that this debate is taking place on the Floor of the House, and the hon. Gentleman is to be congratulated on that. This debate is not a relative debate about human rights. It is a debate about the persecution of Christians. My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury, speaking with all the authority of his office, and everyone who has taken part in this debate demand that the Government take this more seriously and speak out more powerfully. There was an appalling case in All Saints church in Peshawar in which 120 Christians were blown up. How much publicity was there about that case?”
“Of course we should regret, attack and be angry about any persecution of any religion. The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) mentioned that Christians were persecuted in 105 countries, or their human rights were somehow limited, but she immediately tried to be relative—I think that there is a danger of relativism in this debate—and said that there were 101 countries where Muslims had their rights affected. That may be strictly true, but the fact of the matter is that the overwhelming number of really violent and dangerous persecutions, killings and denials of human rights are directed at Christians, which is why we should congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who continues, year on year, to raise the issue.”
“I would like to echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) said in his powerful speech. It is slightly regrettable—I say this gently—that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary spoke at the beginning of the debate. It is increasingly the practice for Ministers to speak early in debates—I make this point particularly to you, Mr Speaker—but it is important that they listen carefully and respond. [ Interruption. ] The Minister will give a winding-up speech, but it will be much shorter than it would have been. I have taken part in every one of these debates, and I have heard this Foreign Office speech many times before. Dare I say that I do not detect a sense of burning anger about what is happening to Christians? This is something that has increased, and it is one of the most terrible things happening in the world today.”
“We cannot have tens of thousands of people around the world losing their human rights, or having them endangered, and thousands being murdered. The Government have a role to play in articulating our anger. It must stop.”
“I could go on and on with such appalling examples of violence and hatred shown towards that ancient Christian community in the middle east. Pakistan has been mentioned. Quite rightly, there was wonderful worldwide publicity about the shooting of Malala Yousafzai and her courage in resisting the Taliban, but how much coverage has there been of Kashmala Munawar, a Christian girl who lost one leg and nearly lost the other when she was blown up because of her religion? As I said earlier, how much worldwide coverage has there really been of the appalling massacre in Peshawar? This debate is timely. I very much hope that when the Minister responds he will reflect the powerful mood of the House of Commons. This cannot go on.”
“I have also been to Syria and heard numerous appalling examples of what is happening to innocent Christians there. Again, I make no apology for the Assad regime, but under his father there was a degree of protection. Can the Government be so sure that in arming those they call the “good” rebels, or encouraging them—they claim that they have in no way armed them—they are not also leeching support and armaments to the bad rebels? There have been appalling examples of persecution in Syria. Mass graves have been found in the village of Sadad, where 46 Christians were murdered and where a family of six—this is just one family—were blindfolded and shot in the head. A 26-year-old, Ninar Odisho, was shot in the street, murdered for his faith.”
“It was moving. To listen to a mass in Aramaic is an extraordinary experience. I make no apology for Saddam Hussein, and I quite understand the comments that have been made about Iraq, but things have become much worse since the invasion. The fact of the matter is that Iraq’s Christian population has fallen from around 1.2 million to around 600,000, because tens of thousands have fled. When I was in Mosul, in ancient Nineveh, Christians were being murdered and dozens of families were fleeing. Where did they flee to? They fled to Syria. What did we have a debate about at the end of August? We had a debate, once again, on the need to bomb Syria. Thank God some of us refused to support that and the House of Commons said no. Otherwise, what would have been the fate of the Syrians?”
“Obviously, we want to try to help people who are suffering—everybody has accepted that—but these are complex areas. The hon. Lady has spent much of her speech attacking the insurance industry, which might be fair enough, but it rather raises the question: what was going on during the 13 years Labour was in power?”
“If the Prime Minister resigns, as Margaret Thatcher did in more recent times, or sadly passes away or becomes incapacitated, the most senior member of the Cabinet would take over as acting Prime Minister. In the present Cabinet—I will hazard a guess—that is probably the Foreign Secretary. Nobody doubts that he could perfectly adequately, and indeed immediately, take over all the reins of government. There would be a rapid election among the majority parliamentary party, and the person best fitted to become Prime Minister would be elected by his colleagues. They would elect him not on the basis of some written constitution or some arbitrary list of the sort my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough has devised, but on the basis of their good sense. That is what our system is about.”
“The President of the United States is the Head of State and commander-in-chief, elected by all the people, so there has to be a procedure that lays down exactly what happens if he dies or becomes incapacitated. It is not a parliamentary system. The same goes for the French system, in which, unlike in the American system, if the President dies—President Pompidou died in office—there is an immediate presidential election. The Americans, in their wisdom, determined that the Vice-President should take over automatically, and that there should be an election for a new President, but that is a matter for them and their constitution. Our system is completely different.”
“] I think that it was Lord Anderson—it has come back to me—of the Anderson shelter fame. Certainly he was not the charismatic leader who saved the nation. Any student of history knows that it was touch and go whether Winston Churchill would take over. Lord Halifax was the favourite, both of the King and of the outgoing Prime Minister. Why do I make those points? We do not want a written constitution in which rules are laid down. We want people to use their good sense. That is what the British parliamentary system is all about. I do not think that it is particularly instructive to follow precedents from other countries. My hon. Friend mentioned the American constitution, which is an entirely different state of affairs.”
“Although he resigned voluntarily following a vote in the House of Commons in which his majority was severely reduced, I cannot help noticing that, according to the list set out in the Bill, the next person in line to succeed him in the event of his having become incapacitated, after the Deputy Prime Minister, would have been the Home Secretary. Just imagine what would have happened in May 1940 if such a Bill had been passed and if Neville Chamberlain had sadly passed away or become incapacitated. It would not have been Winston Churchill, the saviour of the nation, who took over, but the Home Secretary. For the moment, I cannot remember who that was. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of these matters, probably remembers. [ Interruption.”
“I have enormous respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and think that he is perfectly entitled to raise these sorts of issues, but I must confess that I have severe doubts about the Bill. If one looks back over history, one must come to the conclusion that it is wrong in our system, in which we do not have a written constitution, to lay down rules. It is much better to rely on people’s good judgment. That is what our system is based on. I can illustrate that argument by referring to the events of May 1940, when Neville Chamberlain ceased to be Prime Minister.”
“My hon. Friend is of course right to make that point. In our system, which is parliamentary as opposed to presidential, the whole point is that, as in the past, the Head of State—the Queen—appoints as Prime Minister someone who can command a majority in the House, which is what being Prime Minister is all about. There is no mystery about the job: it goes to the person best equipped to command a majority in the House, and the best way to determine who can do that is based not on some arbitrary list laid down, in all his wisdom, by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough, but on the good sense of those who sit in this Chamber.”
“I entirely accept that the scenario my hon. Friend describes is different from the events of May 1940 or the resignation of Margaret Thatcher. Luckily, not many Prime Ministers have died in office. Spencer Perceval was assassinated in the Lobby, a few feet away. As my hon. Friend may remember, Campbell-Bannerman died in office. He was replaced by Herbert Asquith in a perfectly normal way, and from my reading of the history books, I do not think that anybody at the time suggested that the procedures for appointing him were in any way wanting. He was a man of outstanding abilities, albeit he was a Liberal—I know that that is a severe disadvantage in my hon. Friend’s eyes—but for all that, there does not seem to have been any difficulty about his appointment.”
“It is a severe mistake to refer to any aspect of history when my hon. Friend is in the Chamber. I talked only this week to David Campbell Bannerman, who is an MEP—he was in UKIP but is now, I am glad to say, in the Conservative party—and he told me that story. Campbell-Bannerman was of course a very sick man and could have died at any moment, but he died in Downing street a week, I think, after he resigned as Prime Minister. I accept that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough is making a brave thrust at a very unfortunate and very rare situation, but I assure him that such playing around with our constitution is very dangerous. I have to tell him that it is what we would expect from our Liberal friends. I would have thought better of him, and that he would have trusted in the good sense—”
“I withdraw that remark. It was unparliamentary language, which I should not have used, and I apologise to my hon. Friend. He has made a brave thrust, but dare I say that he is wrong because the Bill is too rigid. Under his list, the Deputy Prime Minister—if he is in the same party as the former Prime Minister—the Home Secretary and then the Secretary of State for Defence would take over, but once people are in those posts, it will be very difficult to shift them. The present system is much better: an acting Prime Minister from among the former Prime Minister’s leading colleagues temporarily steps into the fold and, in its wisdom, the parliamentary party then takes a decision and appoints the best man or woman for the job. On that basis, I rest my argument.”
“Which Royal Navy warships are currently in the waters around Gibraltar, and do not these provocations give the lie to those who have complacently argued for years that the Royal Navy was not important? The best preservation of peace is the strength of the Royal Navy.”
“How can we trust the Iranians—a terrorist regime that poses a grave danger to the Arab world and to Israel and has a long history of lying and duplicity? This is from their own chief nuclear negotiator: “While we were talking to the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipments in parts of the nuclear conversion facility in Isfahan... By creating a calm environment…we were able to complete”. So now they keep their centrifuges; they go on enriching uranium by up to 5%; and they pocket $7 billion. What is to stop them doing a North Korea and subjecting us to more blackmail in six months’ time?”
“The hon. Gentleman is perfectly entitled to use parliamentary tactics to pepper this Bill with different dates for referendums, but I would like to know his real view. If there were a Labour Government, does he think there should be a referendum on whether we should stay in or out?”
“Obviously, the hon. Gentleman wants Britain to stay in the European Union. That is perfectly okay and he can make those arguments in a referendum. Is he in favour of a referendum, and if so, when?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. By your reckoning, has my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) been silent this morning?”
“I cannot speak for the Minister, only for myself, but some of us want something very simple. We want to be able to control our own borders, fishing, agriculture and courts, and we want to stop small businesses being hit by ever more regulation. That is very clear and very simple, and that is the renegotiation that we want.”
“Will the Attorney-General confirm that it is the settled will of Parliament that sex-selection abortion is morally wrong and illegal, end of story? How does he explain the fact that, although Operation Monto revealed that such abortions were taking place on a considerable scale, a derisory number of prosecutions have taken place—only seven in four years? Indeed, Keir Starmer, the former head of the CPS, decided not to prosecute when there was clear evidence on the basis of which he could have done so. Will the Attorney-General now take action to ensure that the settled will of Parliament is abided by?”
“Labour Members appear to want to consult the CBI, Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all, which is fair enough, but are they in favour of consulting the British people in a referendum—yes or no?”
“Has Whitehall finally learned the lessons from what, from a public accounts point of view, must be one of the worst politically driven, stop-start contracts in our history? Will the Secretary of State assure us that never again will the Treasury insist on delaying a contract for one or two years to save money and end up with a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds more? Just so that the taxpayer knows exactly how much this has cost him, will the Secretary of State repeat what the carriers were supposed to cost originally and what they are now costing us, and when the planes were supposed to be flying operationally from them and when they will actually fly?”
“T8. As you know, Mr Speaker, I am of a nervous disposition. I was therefore alarmed this year—not three years ago—to hear predictions that 1 million jobs would be lost, there would be a decade of lost growth and the recovery would be choked off as a result of the Government’s plans. Will the Chancellor allay my fears and explain what has happened in the real world?”
“As the Secretary of State has confirmed again today that failure to achieve the reservist recruitment numbers is not an option, surely there is now no difficulty in his repeating the pledge given by his predecessor that the Regular Army will not be cut until those reservists are recruited.”
“What business hates more than anything else is the complexity of the tax system. We still have one of the longest tax codes and one of the most complex tax systems in the world. Will the Minister explain how we are still setting about our long-term objective of simplifying the tax system and achieving a much flatter rate of tax for the sake of business?”
“I am struggling to know what difference the Bill will make, frankly. Why should anybody retire from the House of Lords when they are going to get no pension, and when they have to attend only once a Session? Would anybody ever retire from this House if there were no pension and they had to turn up only once a Session? Nobody would.”
“We cannot let the Minister off the hook. He is speaking very early in the debate, which surprises me, and he appears to want to avoid any wider debate. We need to know from the Government something about their plans. What are their present attitudes to further reform of the House of Lords? Just to say that this is a very modest Bill and we should support it, giving the House no intimation of the Government’s wider plans, is not good enough.”
“However, according to my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, there are four or five people in the other place who wish to do so. Fair enough—why should anyone stop them? The fact that only a few people want to do something is not a reason for opposing their right to do it. So I have no problem with that provision. I do not think anyone has a problem with putting the House of Lords pretty much on a par with the House of Commons in terms of criminal convictions, although I think that too much is made of this point. Just as there are probably very few people who would choose to retire from the House of Lords, because it is unnecessary to do so, there are also very few people who have been convicted of relatively serious criminal offences.”
“I want to make a few points about how we could solve some of the House of Lords’ major problems. If the Bill were to become law, what would it achieve? It would allow people to retire. My hon. Friend made a fair point when he asked why anyone should not be allowed to retire. No one would suggest that the provision on retirement is a wrong notion in itself. We all know, however, that it is already possible to take leave of absence. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has intervened to make that entirely justifiable point. There are no incentives to retire, because there is no pension and because people can take leave of absence. Even under this Bill, Members of the House of Lords would have to turn up only once a Session to retain their membership. It is therefore hard to imagine why anyone would choose to retire.”