Sir Alec Shelbrooke
MP for Wetherby and Easingwold · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. She has outlined the will of this House, but she may remember that, during the passage of the last Bill, I asked the then Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s questions to do what has happened with similar Bills in the past—on homosexuality, on abortion and on the death penalty—which…”
“I am okay, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will struggle on, thank you very much. The Minister has outlined that there is an investment programme for technology and upgrades, but with software upgrades, there is always the concern that the premise of the programmes will keep getting changed, and that can bring in delays or bugs to a system.”
“I will call Alex Mayer to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with the prior permission of the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. As is the convention for for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.”
“With digital television, these days someone can just stick up a Squarial, point it in roughly the right direction and get their television channels—my wife and I have taken holidays in a canal boat and in a camper van, and we have been able to do that.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. Universal accessibility is vital in this debate. I agree with much of what has been said so far, but I am concerned about the switch-off of free-to-air as it stands. In the year I was elected, 2010, there were strong proposals to switch off the FM and AM signals.”
“Most of those DAB radios are now in the bin, because DAB+ was brought out and Classic FM stopped broadcasting on DAB; my previous car did not have DAB+, so I had to go back to FM to listen. I am sure we all have certain digital radio sets that now do not pick up many channels at all.”
The complete record
Every one of 602 lines we hold for Sir Alec Shelbrooke, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 4 of 13.
“Let us consider for a moment two countries that have made incredibly significant U-turns, if you will: Germany, which has a new defence posture and will spend hundreds of billions on defence, and Japan. Both countries have very much drawn a line under the events of the second world war, and have recognised that the world has changed into a much more dangerous place and needs a much bigger posture.”
“That is a really important point. When the Government act in the national interest, changes in position should be welcomed. We do not have the defence capability that we need, and it is worrying in the extreme to hear that the money for the Diego Garcia deal will come out of the defence budget. We hear people saying, “The defence budget went down under you; it was hollowed out,” and so on. It did go down, but the bit that is often missed is that that started during the cold war, and it continued through 13 years of Labour Government and across Europe. The Americans halved their defence budget over that time. However, the world is a different place now; Ukraine was invaded, and at that point, the world changed direction.”
“We get a very interesting dichotomy from Government Members; they say, “Inflation was 11% under your Government, but it’s not our fault that inflation is going up; it’s because of the war in Ukraine.” They might want to marry those two sentences up.”
“The hon. Gentleman may have been tied up this morning trying to decide whether he backs Andy Burnham, but our leader has made our posture crystal clear today. When asked whether she would be going to Beijing now, she said that she would not, because there was no point in doing so until there was a proper plan about which strategic interests we would work on with colleagues in Beijing. I am afraid that I do not believe that there is much to celebrate in a trade deal with the Chinese worth £600 million; it barely seems worth the trip. On debt, the hon. Gentleman has slightly forgotten something called a pandemic, which cost half a trillion pounds. He has forgotten Gordon Brown’s banking crisis, which also cost a half a trillion pounds, and he has forgotten that we have gone into a war in Europe that caused 11% inflation.”
“This is about a geopolitical situation, and about removing a key capability without a guarantee that we can have our nuclear deterrents. We have shown over decades that those nuclear deterrents help keep the peace. There are no SNP Members in the Chamber, but when they say, “We would never use Trident. We would never use a nuclear weapon,” they miss the point. It is not a nuclear weapon, but a nuclear deterrent. We have used it every single day since the day that the Resolution class was launched, and that has kept a semblance of peace and moved us away from war. I am deeply concerned that this debate seems to be more about what may be written on a piece of paper than what we actually have the capability to do today.”
“And it has put what it said into practice. It has raised £77 billion in taxes, but I cannot see great investments being made in defence. May I say that I do not like the idea of expressing the amount of GDP being spent on defence as a percentage? Somewhere along the line, NATO and its allies fell into the trap of thinking that we had to spend x% on defence; they say, “Well, we spent 5% of GDP on defence in the 1980s.” Yes, we did, because that was what it cost. That was not a target to get to. We should identify what we need, and then fund it, and see what that comes out as. If we do not properly defend ourselves, it may well not be possible to deliver the things that we say we want to fund. That brings me back, before I go too far outside the lines, to the point of today’s debate.”
“Does my hon. Friend share my concern that were this deal to go ahead, there will be a need for more Navy, which is expensive? At the end of the day, the increases to the defence budget that we are being told about will be used to pay for this ridiculous deal.”
“I spoke earlier about the naval problem, but China has also built an incredible number of intercontinental ballistic missile silos. It is hugely increasing its nuclear arsenal and refuses to come to the table for negotiations on non-proliferation treaties. Is this not the most ridiculous time to give up the certainty of being able to house nuclear weapons at a strategic site?”
“Order. I remind hon. Members that they should bob if they wish to catch my eye, and that if they wish to be called to speak they must have been present at the start of the debate. It may help Members and those viewing the proceedings to know that I shall call the Front-Bench spokespeople by 7 pm. Not many people are in for this debate, so I am sure that all the points that Members want to make can be explored.”
“It will not take much of a Hansard search for Members to see that many years ago I asked Baroness May, who was then Home Secretary, to do something very similar to this, but the devil will always be in the detail. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, West and South Yorkshire are far more densely populated than North Yorkshire, which is now a big chunk of my constituency. May I ask the Home Secretary who will be involved in the consultation on the smaller policing areas, and how much credence those people will be given—because this very much has to come down to local level and local councils—and may I also ask what scrutiny we, as local Members of Parliament, will be able to give that consultation? Ultimately, that is what it will all hinge on.”
“Will the Minister update the House on the delay to the pension payment of civil servants who left employment under the voluntary exit scheme? A number of constituents have complained to me that they have been left without any income, due to the delay by the pension administrator Capita. Will the Minister take personal control of the situation, and will he update the House at some point on contingencies and a new escalation process for people who are affected?”
“I do have concerns about the undermining of democracy, not least in that some Members of the House who have always insisted on by-elections after defections now appear to be running away from the electorate. Will the Secretary of State absolutely dissociate himself from the comments made by a Member of the governing party who could not confirm, when asked three times, that the general election would never be delayed?”
“As the Energy Secretary insists that we move as quickly as possible to renewables, may I ask the Minister what steps he has in place to ensure that the materials—90% of them are processed materials—used in renewables are made without slave labour and human rights abuses?”
“We have censorship for films, which is not necessarily for violent or sexual content and sometimes for psychological content. Policing such things could be difficult. Following the consultation, it will take time to put together a report. What concerns us is when and how action could be taken, because the King’s Speech will have passed. If the right hon. Lady concludes that there has to be a social media ban for under-16s, what mechanism could be put in place in such a short time?”
“We must call out antisemitism at all levels, so I call out the deputy leader of the Green party, who I am ashamed to say is a Leeds city councillor. He drove the Jewish priest of the University of Leeds into hiding, and he is still hiding. That must be called out. Will the Home Secretary use every effort of her office and across Government to ensure that where antisemitism is still given a safe space and is not addressed, the Government call out the leaders of those institutions and consider what action may be taken? This is another watershed moment—as odd as that sounds—and this time, something really must be done.”
“To build on the comment from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden), the Jewish community in my constituency have felt under siege for a decade now. It is worth paying tribute to the Prime Minister, who, when he was Leader of the Opposition, drove out of the Labour party the people who had given antisemitism a safe space. Let us not be under any illusion, however, because many people still feel that they have a safe space for antisemitism—be it in our universities, where huge numbers of students believe that they can hassle Jewish students with impunity, or in our hospitals, as outlined in the Lord Mann and Dame Penny Mordaunt report, which I know the Secretary of State is trying to address. Antisemitism is blatant and people are allowed to get away with it.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance on whether it is appropriate for Members of this House to call into question the intentions of Members when asking questions of the Home Secretary on this issue and to accuse us all of peddling Islamophobia.”
“I very much associate myself with many of the things that the Foreign Secretary has said, but may I ask her to move beyond people’s hope for regime change? A recent NATO Parliamentary Assembly visit to the Gulf highlighted how worried Gulf countries are about instability, and that it may not be one Government that runs Iran. What meetings and conversations are taking place for the security of the whole region, including the states that will feel under threat in the event that the regime falls?”
“Disregarding the Minister’s comment that we have to wait for the investment plan, most people in this Chamber know that that is because the Treasury is letting him do it. Further to the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) and for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), I am concerned about supply chain security. We have seen China, for example, put America over a barrel by dropping off renewables and making it reverse. Having supply chains in the United Kingdom is vital. Will the Minister really emphasise to the Treasury that it is a key strategic defence requirement that we are able to supply our military needs from within these borders? Maybe that will get the Treasury to sign off on what he clearly wants to tell us but cannot.”
“Does that not speak to a wider point? I am sure that my right hon. Friend agrees that the shocking statistics out this week on just how few young people are able to get Saturday jobs show that if we cut business rates and allow businesses to employ people, we stand a much better chance of keeping them off welfare in the first place.”
“We are talking not just about farms; there is the whole ecosystem of rural economies. I have been to businesses in my constituency who hire out plant machinery not just to farmers during the harvest but to help ensure that the countryside and landscapes are managed. North Yorkshire and parts of West Yorkshire, including where I live, have huge historic areas that people visit for tourism. If the countryside is not maintained, there will be less income from people coming to visit. People trying to make a living in these rural communities—as they have done for decades and centuries—have seen a huge attack from every angle.”
“Within North Yorkshire there are huge areas of deprivation, but they have now seen their money cut because the overall situation of the county knocks them out of the picture. A county like North Yorkshire can also be very sparsely populated and have unique challenges that mean that funding needs to be in place. That is against the backdrop of the attacks on farming. Ninety-two per cent of my constituency is rural or rural-related agricultural business. Through agriculture my constituency supplies £2.2 billion to the Exchequer and to GDP, and there has been huge concern and widespread disbelief at the policies that the Government have introduced. Even with the U-turns they knocked out just before Christmas, there is still huge uncertainty and, crucially—even with those U-turns—a lack of faith about investing in the future.”
“I think we need to get down to some basic facts today. For all this Government’s propositions, the reality is that people are feeling this on the ground. My constituency crosses the two counties of West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire. North Yorkshire, which is Conservative-run, has seen millions of pounds of grant reductions, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith) touched on. A reduction in the services grant has knocked £14 million off the budget, and the fairer funding grant has knocked £20 million off it. The reality is that people are starting to wonder whether the Government understand rural communities and rural counties at all.”
“I want to touch briefly on how good agricultural land is being taken over by solar farms. I am fed up to the back teeth of listening to Ministers say, “We must no longer be reliant on petrochemical dictators to control our energy.” China is a dictatorship, and it controls 90% of the processed materials for renewable energy. I would have a huge amount of respect for the Minister if, in her summing up, she admitted that the dictatorship of China is no better than some of the dictatorships of the petrochemical states. We are just transferring the problem from one region to another. Ministers should not pretend that they are any different.”
“My right hon. Friend makes an important point. That is the view of a lot of people we speak to in and around rural constituencies: they say that the Government either do not understand these communities or, worse, they do not care. People feel there is this constant attitude of, “You don’t need the money. We’re going to take it to the urban areas.” At Prime Minister’s questions, we saw the Prime Minister trying to say, “We have got this bit of the economy and that bit of the economy.” That is all very well, but it does not feel like that for people sitting at home when the weather is freezing cold, wondering where they can make cuts to heat their homes. That happens in areas of deprivation in and around my constituency, which is deemed to be affluent—because of that people do not get the money they need.”
“Does my hon. Friend share my concern that such a controversial piece of legislation is being wrapped up with other things that people would find it hard to disagree with, such as the puppy farming ban, and that this is just a cheap trick by the Government so that they can say, “You voted against the puppy farming ban,” rather than having a vote on this particular issue?”
“Does my hon. Friend share my concern about a matter that I raised in another Opposition day debate before the summer? Not only are solar farms taking over agricultural land, but no research has been done on thermal runaway and what would result from the evaporation of heavy metal output on to that agricultural land.”
“In 1995, thousands of innocent men and boys were taken from a UN protectorate in Srebrenica and murdered. The main reason that that happened was because UN troops were unable to fire upon the Bosnian Serbs as they came along. May I therefore push the Secretary of State further on the rules of engagement? The rules must not say, “Do not fire until fired upon”, or there will be no deterrent. I know this has to be worked out, so I ask him to take that into serious consideration when the rules of engagement are being put together.”
“The Minister keeps talking about the principle, and why this is being done, but we should not move away from the fundamental question: who misled the Minister by saying that this could be achieved in 2026, but then came back and said, “No, sorry, it has to be 2028”? It is 18 months until elections in 2027, and we are talking about 2028. Is she not concerned about finding out who is telling her false project timelines? How can she have any faith that 2028 will be delivered? We are told that the aim is to deliver better public services, but how can that be true when the Government cannot even get the organisation correct, and when there is a gap of two years?”
“My right hon. Friend worked in the hospice sector, and particularly the children’s hospice sector, long before he came to this place. Does he agree that the pressures on hospices, which are basically run by charitable contributions, have not been taken into account in all the Budget measures introduced since this Government came to power?”
“There has been too much obfuscation today between what the Office for Budget Responsibility did in leaking its report early and the fact that the Office for Budget Responsibility told the Chancellor before she made her statement about there not being the fiscal black hole that she made out. There were leaks to the press, and Mr Speaker stood in this Chamber and admonished the Government for leaking. It was not speculation in the press; this has been nothing but “Jackanory”. How can this Government start to rebuild trust with the public when they are simply trying to do smoke and mirrors and not face up to the fact that they kept leaking to the press?”
“Signals matter. Right now, Putin thinks he is getting his own way but, as a point of principle, would the Prime Minister sit around a table if the indicted war criminal Putin was sitting at it?”
“We have seen bias at the BBC and a rise in antisemitic language and incidents in the NHS—which, despite the Health Secretary saying they are unacceptable, the General Medical Council clears. It is reported that 51% of students in Russell Group universities feel that it is okay to insult Jews. Can there please be a root-and-branch review from the Government to make sure that bodies are truly independent and are not hiding their blatant antisemitism?”
“Let us cut to the chase: Jew hatred in this country has been on the rise for over a decade. It was given a safe space in the past, and that has grown. I have a significant Jewish population in my constituency, who will tell you that Leeds sometimes feels like a really threatening place because of the protests. But the reality is that the protests that take place are okay under freedom of speech, which I support, as long as they do not break the law. These fans were not breaking the law, and they should have been allowed to go to the match, but it appears that there were people—for example, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) outlined, in the safety advisory group—who had a biased intent. Will the Government start to analyse and audit these groups, which are supposed to be independent?”
“I have two prisons in my constituency, at Wetherby and Wealstun. I also have two on the outside of it, at Askham Grange and Full Sutton. They will have heard the Secretary of State say that he has put in place some of the strongest measures ever. The only question that my constituents want an answer to is this: when they will be able to say that they no longer fear dangerous criminals being released on to the streets to terrorise their communities?”
“We have heard and all believe that the BBC is a respected journalistic organisation, but this is probably the biggest crisis it faces because right now we can honestly say that it faked the news.”
“I was pleased to hear the Government announce last week that they will tackle fake news in the curriculum. I always say to children when I go into schools that, “You can trust journalism if you can sue the person who wrote it,” so I actually welcome the writ coming from America, though I hope it can be sorted out, purely to say that if something is wrong, you can do that. The basis of why we are here today—forget all the politicking about who is on the board, what it is about Trump and anything else—is that the BBC faked a piece of news. We have to get to the heart of how that happened. May I ask that the Secretary of State use her offices to work with the current director general to get right to the heart of how this was ever allowed to happen?”
“My Jewish community have been coming to me for years to say how unsafe they feel and that antisemitism has reared its head in this country for many years. The Secretary of State’s tone is welcome, and she is absolutely right, but let me put it bluntly: Jewish hatred in this country has grown and grown. May I ask the Secretary of State to pull every lever she can to ensure that the idea of Jewish hatred is not borne out by people saying, “Because you are Jewish or because you are Israeli, we hold you all responsible for the actions of a Government”? The reality is that that is xenophobia, racism and antisemitism, and it needs to be called out.”
“Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said something important when she talked about marine deforestation and some of the mainstream media shows that had footage that she had heard had been too shocking to show. That represents a real problem in this debate. Are we wrapping this up in cotton wool for some people, to not show exactly what we are trying to deal with? She made the important point that we should not hide from what is going on in the world.”
“I know that she speaks from a position not just of expertise but of passion, and she has shown that over so many years, with a commitment to our oceans and with the work that she has led on. May I say to the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings), that she shows why it is so important that we have people in this House with such wide-ranging experience, who have had lives outside this place? She has brought expertise to the debate and I am sure that many of us envy her in what she has been able to do, the intellect that she has applied to the argument and the fact that we can all listen carefully to what she has said. The hon.”
“This has been a wide-ranging and important debate on a vital Bill. There have been many valuable and informed contributions, not least from the hon. Members for Glasgow North (Martin Rhodes), for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff), for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby) and for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne). The hon. Member for Exeter (Steve Race) is rightly proud of the great academic institutions in his constituency, highlighting the important role that UK research plays in the world. It was a pleasure to see the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) making one of the first Back-Bench contributions. She reinforced the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) made about the destruction of the marine environment.”
“I had the pleasure back in May of being part of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly visit to Svalbard. The University Centre in Svalbard has dozens of countries, universities, academic institutions and hundreds of nationalities studying that region, climate change and the effect it has on the Arctic, and the effects on ecosystems. It is absolutely vital, as we see the geopolitical tensions forming in areas where they have not been before, that we have those strong protections in place.”
“We will raise these areas in Committee, even if that is through probing amendments, because we want to ensure that the Bill can do exactly what it intends to do. The reality of the Bill also comes into some of these situations that we see on the horizon. We know about the opening up of the Arctic, the melting of the sea ice and the opening of the north-east passage, which for many months—certainly weeks—of the year is fully navigable; the ice has gone away by that much. At the same time, we know that President Putin and the Russians have said that there are hydrocarbon resources in that ocean that they want to mine. That would be devastating for the fragile ecosystems that exist in that unique area of the world, which is almost completely untouched.”
“Friend the Member for Romford spoke, he made some very serious points, not least about how we can ensure that the responsibilities that the United Kingdom has always taken towards marine fisheries do not get overridden if we cannot control our work entirely. He made the point that, in the scheme of things, we must ensure that we do not hand over the ability to other countries to stop us doing that work. The reality is that—again, I will touch briefly on this because it is not part of the debate—the UN Security Council, set up for a reason, finds it hard to react to what is happening in Ukraine because Russia can override anything with its veto. We must ensure that we have the ability, as a Government and a country, to employ the laws and protections that we need to put in place.”
“Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) pointed out her genuine delight in the fact that this House has so many experts to speak on such an important issue. She echoed the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Romford on what will happen with the Chagos Bill. I do not want to go into great detail on that, because we are going to be here a long time on Monday evening debating that Bill, but I think she was driving at the fact that the assurances in the Chagos Bill do not go far enough in protecting the blue belt. I welcome her clarification that my party has raised the issue of the blue belt. She comes with expertise and deserves to be listened to when she is raising these important points. The Minister opened the debate by talking about the urgency and importance of this moment. That is true. When my hon.”
“I do not know whether he will expand on this in later debates, but I noticed that he did not appear to be fully supportive of giving up on the fisheries from the EU with the EU reset. I wonder whether he may have things to add to that debate at another time, but perhaps now is not the time and place. However, he does make an important point that we can only do what we have to do as a country if we have the ability to do it in those waters. The way that the hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane) approached the subject of the Conservative party’s record in this area was a real pity. I am proud of some of the work we did on the blue belt, including working on this Bill, and as we have seen during the debate, there is wide support for it across the House. The right hon.”
“It has often been said that space exploration gets lots of coverage and we talk about it very much—indeed, we are talking about manning the moon again, and maybe using it as a launch pad to go to Mars—yet so much of our own planet is completely unknown and unexplored. That brings me to the hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner), who has a genuine interest and expertise. He gave a wide ranging and important speech and made an important point about the ocean being one of the biggest solutions to climate change. He is indeed right that the European economic zones are a legacy from the days when we owned half the world. One of the great achievements of the last Conservative Government is the work we did on the blue belt and on ensuring that we protected important marine environments.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that important intervention. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) raised the importance of mainstream media. We are grateful for her apology to my hon. Friend the Member for Romford for misinterpreting his drive about the importance of the Chagos islands. It is disappointing that the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), who is no longer in his place, felt that not enough of my colleagues were in attendance, but those of us who were here have stayed here—Mr Speaker has commented on many an occasion that I can often be more than enough. The hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) pointed out how little we know about the oceans. That is an important point.”
“I will not be drawn quite into that trap about releasing Joint Intelligence reports. However, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point, because there is no doubt that we are talking about sovereign security if we do not get this right, and that applies to all countries around the world. If we allow climate change and not the protection of valuable ecosystems, as has been described by many hon. and right hon. Members across the House, it is all of us who will suffer. We have our concerns about some areas of the Bill. We will be tabling some amendments in Committee and probing those areas, but on the whole we hope that we can support the Bill, and it is important to carry on the work that our Government started.”
“The Liberal Democrats are quick to attack the Conservatives, but I remind them that it was Nick Clegg who stood at the Dispatch Box and cancelled a nuclear power station project, saying: “I am not willing to spend money on things that will not happen until 2022.””