Sir Bernard Jenkin
MP for Harwich and North Essex · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Despite long and historic disagreements between successive UK Governments and Israel, it has remained a steadfast ally in counter-terrorist efforts to keep our people safe in this country. We are now embarked, it seems, on a full diplomatic dispute with Israel and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats.”
“I would very much have liked to have discussed the medical devices questions arising from the Bill. The Minister made an incredibly short speech about that important matter. It is quite clear that these provisions are part of the covert dynamic alignment with the EU and the covert rejoin agenda being pursued by the Government.”
“I am as keen as anybody to get on with discussing the Health Bill, but this topic is too serious an opportunity to miss, given that the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) has raised such important issues. I really commend his speech and his initiative. Everybody should read it.”
“The Minister shakes her head, but she is yet to give a good reason as to why this measure is in the Bill. When we had an Adjournment debate in July with the then Minister for patient safety, the hon.”
“The chief executive of the CQC is wantonly conflicted in terms of looking after the safe space, so he cannot be the one left in charge of that function. The real point here is that we are missing the opportunity to save so much money. Governments keep having public inquiries.”
“I asked the Minister, in a letter I sent her after the debate in July, to give us the information on how much the transfer of all this would cost. Nothing has arrived. I never had a reply to the letter. Of course, the Government have changed the Minister and the new Minister for patient safety, the right hon.”
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“That switch does not exist. The fact is that once the submarine is at sea, the command and control of the firing of the weapons system is completely autonomous. One of the factors that give us leverage over American policy is that if this country were in trouble, or if Europe were in trouble, America too would be in trouble, because the possibility of a nuclear exchange would bind it inextricably into the conflict. Europe and the United States have many mutual interests, and there are many reasons why we should support each other’s security policies, but, in extremis, we can strengthen that position by means of the capability that we possess.”
“I do not think there is a parallel. The people who own handguns as individuals are not accountable for their behaviour. We have a licensing system in this country that is vigorous, makes people much more accountable and limits the number of such guns in circulation, particularly when it comes to people who might be less accountable. I can understand the hon. Gentleman’s rather trivial point, but it is a rhetorical debating point, so I am not going to spend much time on it. There is another question that we keep hearing: “Is this really an independent deterrent?” I have spent plenty of time around a deterrent and around people who know about the deterrent, and if the Americans had some secret switch in some bunker in the United States that could disable our deterrent and prevent us from firing it, I think that we would know about it.”
“Why does he think war between great powers ended at the same time as nuclear weapons were invented? It is because war between great powers possessing nuclear weapons suddenly became unthinkable. Other wars have occurred, but they have been wars in which the participants have not had nuclear weapons. The reason we live in what is perhaps a safer world is that we live in a world with nuclear weapons. I know that the hon. Gentleman will find that very hard to accept.”
“We do not expect the people who man the nuclear weapons systems in responsible countries such as ours—I even include Russia in that—to act as automatons; we expect them to use their judgment, and Colonel Petrov used his judgment. I would expect anyone in a position of that kind to use his judgment. As for the idea that we are all living on a knife edge because there will be some hideous nuclear accident at any minute, there is absolutely no evidence of that. The book that was referred to by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford, speaking for CND, is full of scare stories, none of which has actually led to any disaster. That is because safety is built into the systems, and those postulated disasters are extremely unlikely to occur. The point that I make to the hon. Gentleman is the point that I would make to the right hon. Lady.”
“Sometimes we put our national interests ahead of our own party interests and we get on with the job that we are here to do, which is to govern our country and keep it safe.”
“I am sorry that it did not, but I am very encouraged by the confidence and determination of the Labour party that continuous at-sea deterrence, will be maintained after the next election. There is a simple reason why that should happen: it is entirely probable, indeed almost certain, that there will be a clear majority in this House for continuous at-sea deterrence and the Trident submarine system—there was a majority last year and in 2007. Even if there is a party in coalition with a caveat, the majority of this House wants to maintain this system and that is the obligation. That is something that we can demonstrate for the public good, without party politics, across the Floor of the House. There is consensus and agreement on this.”
“[Interruption.] Incidentally, we would need to develop our own warheads to deploy on any different weapons system, and that cost would have to be factored in. The “Trident Alternatives Review” has been completely trashed and rubbished. The reason that the option appears to be on the table is not that the Liberal Democrats believe it is viable—I do not believe they do—but that they think it is a bargaining chip to use in the negotiations with one of the two major parties at a time of a hung Parliament if that were to emerge after the general election. The two main parties are quite near to making it clear to the Liberal Democrats that there is simply no deal. Until that stupid policy is taken off the table, there is no conversation to be had about any future coalition with the Liberal Democrats. That is what should have happened in 2010.”
“It is strategic nonsense to move to a part-time deterrent, and the same applies in respect of submarine-launched cruise missiles. A cruise missile is a subsonic weapon, whose launch would be detected and tracked long before it arrived on target. It would be vulnerable then to interception. How many cruise missiles would we need, to be able to provide a credible deterrent? Nobody knows —nobody knows the costs of this, but they would be astronomical. In any case, it is likely that our enemy would launch a ballistic missile, which would arrive on target in our own country within minutes and long before our missile had arrived at its target. Therefore, it is not a deterrent. The same goes for land-based missiles: there is no land-based system available. Where would we put it if we were to have a land-based system?”
“Let us imagine that halfway through the Ukraine crisis we had decided to deploy our ballistic missile submarine to a continuous patrol. The cameras would have been out and the families would have known. When a submarine sails, people know about it. The submarine deploys down the Clyde on the surface, so people can take pictures of it—it is not difficult—so the world would have known that we were escalating the crisis. To make ourselves safer we have to escalate the crisis—what an absurd position to put ourselves in. Were there a real crisis at that moment of escalation, our deterrent on the surface, visible by satellite, would itself be vulnerable to attack; we would be inviting a pre-emptive attack in order to prevent us from deploying our deterrent capability.”
“We would need to have a new submarine because the payload of a nuclear cruise missile is so much bigger than a conventional cruise missile. We would need to develop a completely new submarine, which is what we are doing for the Trident system in any case—it is actually the cheapest system available. There is no alternative system. If we were to diversify into a completely new weapons system, it could be argued that we would be in breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty because we would not be replacing like with like. Let us deal with the concept of these different proposals, and the idea that we should abandon the continuous at-sea deterrence and keep our submarines on the Clyde until there is an emergency.”
“They have a completely different force concept from us, and it would be improper to import it. They do not understand how we can manage continuous at-sea deterrence with just four submarines and they admire the resilience of our system. We should not fiddle with it, or we will disturb its resilience. People then ask, “Why not have a cheaper or different system?” That argument has all been disposed of, because there is no cheaper or different system of which to avail ourselves, be it submarine-launched cruise missiles, land-based missiles or air-launched weapons. We would require new submarines. There is no submarine that can carry a nuclear-tipped cruise missile. There is no nuclear cruise missile. We would have to develop a new warhead and a new missile to have nuclear-launched cruise missiles.”
“The question is whether or not we build submarines one, two and three—I will settle for that. We have four submarines to ensure the resilience of the system towards the end of its life. If we did not have four, we would by now have suffered an interruption of the continuous at-sea deterrence. If we do not maintain that, we have a part-time deterrent, which is no deterrent; there is no point in a temporary deterrent. Let us deal with the fantasy that we could create joint-role submarines. The Americans may have them but they have 12 submarines. For them to maintain a continuous at-sea deterrence, they can have some submarines doing completely different tasks while some of their nuclear ballistic missile submarines are carrying out the deterrent role.”
“There is no evidence to suggest that the Treasury would allow the cancellation of Trident and allow the Ministry of Defence to keep that money to spend on conventional weapons. No amount of expenditure on conventional weapons that we could possibly afford would replace the stabilising and security effects of possessing the nuclear deterrent. The one really laughable bit of this debate is the Liberal Democrats’ attempt to revive their now totally discredited “Trident Alternatives Review”. Why do we need four submarines? I hear the caveat the Labour party gingerly puts on its commitment to that, but the fourth submarine is so far in the future that it will not affect the spending plans of the next Government or the one after, so the problem is almost academic at this stage.”
“That is the way in which the dice of history have fallen, but it has advantages for us. We are one of the most powerful countries in the world. We project our power and status through the possession of nuclear weapons, and we hold our position on the P5 as a nuclear weapons state. We are, even now, one of the great powers in this world, providing global security for us and our allies, and indeed for so many of the countries that might consider themselves our enemies—that is one of the ironies of the situation—and shaping the global strategic environment in all our interests, not least our own. Let us deal with another myth: the idea that scrapping Trident would allow a spending bonanza on other public programmes or on defence.”
“I hear the hon. Gentleman’s assertion. There was a great competition between two great powers from 1945 until 1990, but it never resulted in an all-out conflict because both sides possessed nuclear weapons. I think that that speaks for itself. Why must the United Kingdom be the country that carries this responsibility? That is another question that we hear. I am afraid that it is an accident of history. We must because we can, and we must because others cannot or will not. Do we want Germany to become a nuclear power instead of us? Do we want France to be the only nuclear power in Europe? Do we want Italy and Spain to become nuclear powers? No. They do not want to, and we do not want them to. It is better for us to have a limit of two nuclear powers in Europe, and to share the responsibility with the United States.”
“If France, Britain and America do not dominate the P5, who does? There is always talk about other powers joining the P5. If India, or perhaps less savoury countries, joined the P5, that would not be good for British security and the democratic world. We are there for a purpose, which is to serve the democratic world, and we do it very well.”
“May I add my voice to those supporting the updating of our communications data capability merely to keep pace with changes in technology, so that we maintain the capabilities that we have? May I also invite the Home Secretary to use this latest incident as a case study to establish what the journey is that a good Islamic person may take that finishes with them being a terrorist—what is the psychological journey, what are the stimulants that create that terrorist, and how do we get inside that process to prevent it from happening?”
“Although transferring civil servants to other locations and downsizing are necessary, do they not make the whole business of managing the personnel in the civil service much more difficult? Will my right hon. Friend give full backing to the new chief executive of the civil service to strengthen the data held by the Cabinet Office on the skills and capabilities among civil servants so that we do not disrupt the training and career paths of the people on whom we depend?”
“Would my right hon. Friend care to speculate on whether the report will be able to shed light on who was warning that the risks of this engineering programme were uncontainable and likely to spill over into the commuting timetable? Is it not important that Network Rail improves its risk management and learns how to talk about risk more openly and publicly, rather than the report’s simply allocating blame and punishment, which would not be a constructive way forward?”
“May I say how happy I am to be able to join all those who have commended the House of Commons Governance Committee report, and urge my right hon. Friend to bring forward the debate as quickly as possible so that the findings can be implemented? I say that not least because I was the guy who came up with the idea of this Committee; I drafted the motion that was accepted by the House; and I was even the first to invite the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) to take on the role of Chairman—and he has done so most ably. Moreover, the report concurs with the evidence submitted by the Public Administration Select Committee.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on the quality of his opening speech and on raising this subject. In Essex, we have a lot of recreational anglers who provide a great deal of employment and generate a lot of tourism, but we also have very small-scale inshore fishermen who catch sea bass. Do they have a future in my hon. Friend’s scheme, or will they be squeezed out by the ban on commercial fishing?”
“I am going to do something that should never be done in the House of Commons, which is to ask a question without knowing the answer. I do not intend to put my hon. Friend on the spot, but he was Fisheries Minister until quite recently, so why did he not do this? What was the obstacle? Where is the resistance? What were he and his successor having to fight to be able to implement this measure, not just in the EU, but domestically?”
“It brings life to seaside towns such as Harwich and Brightlingsea that have become so dejected in some respects because they are out on a limb and are no longer the economic centres that they became when they built ships, when there were big fishing fleets and when they were the links to the continent.”
“I do not intend to detain Westminster Hall for more than a few minutes. Do we not all share a feeling of rising anger and frustration, which almost brings tears to our eyes, as we listen to the debate? We have heard about the manifesto commitment on which the Labour party was elected, and my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), the former Fisheries Minister, has said he wishes he had acted when he was in office—a candid response to my remark. Like many of those present for the debate I am a fisherman, and like thousands of others I have caught sea bass off the Essex coast. I treasure the species from an emotional point of view, but also from the point of view of the coastal communities.”
“However, in my experience, lawyers always advise doing the more cautious thing from their point of view—not necessarily from the point of view of the public interest.”
“We have seen European law, human rights law and fear of judicial review take over the whole of government in some Departments—DEFRA may be one of the worst instances—but we expect our Ministers to govern. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister please to exercise his best judgment. He will then be vindicated for what he does. If he submits to the legal advice, he will be condemned. When we think about why our system of government feels so unaccountable with respect to so many Ministers, the question we should ask is how they respond to the advice that they are given and whether the House should empower them to act in the national interest rather than submit to the rather blind legal advice they are often given. That advice is given for the best of reasons; that is the job of the lawyers.”
“It is not right to blame officials, who give their best advice, but there is also the question of legal advice. Legal advice is not an instruction on how to behave; it is something to be taken into account in making a decision. If the risk of being taken to court—to judicial review—is balanced against the risk of losing the fish stock, which is the bigger risk? The Minister must be accountable for the decision. He is not being accountable to this House if he just submits to the legal advice. Legal advice is to be listened to, but in many cases it is to be overridden. It is to be disregarded—well, not disregarded; it is to be taken into account. The judgment that the Minister then makes is not about blindly accepting the legal advice. Otherwise we do not have accountability; we might as well be ruled by lawyers.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) said, the debate is not anti-commercial interests, anti-jobs or anti-employment. It is pro-economic, social and environmental development. It is about what all the political parties in the House believe in, yet we have had 10 years of debate and have achieved nothing. As Chairman of the Select Committee on Public Administration, I have the word “accountability” in mind: that is the crunch. All the democratic pressure on successive Ministers was to get something done; my hon. Friend the Minister must ask himself why it has not been done. I invite him to consider what my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury—and indeed the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw)—said about wishing they had been tougher with their officials.”
“May I commend to my right hon. Friend the debate in Westminster Hall this morning, which was kicked off by my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery), on the catastrophic decline of sea bass stocks across northern Europe? We heard that successive Governments have been trying to persuade the EU for decades to address that problem. Will the Prime Minister undertake to put the Government’s entire weight into addressing the collapse of sea bass stocks when considering European Union fisheries policy this month?”
“A hospital in Harwich, which was built under the last Labour Government, has two operating theatres that have never been used because the CCG, and its predecessor the primary care trust, would not commission services through those facilities.”
“I welcome every word of my right hon. Friend’s statement, not least because his fourth pillar on culture change echoes the work done by the Public Administration Committee on complaints handling and the need for openness. His statement addresses all the needs and challenges we face in north-east Essex: the problems of openness and transparency in the local hospital and the need to transfer more of what the hospital does back to the community providers—to the multidisciplinary providers that need to be in the community. I welcome the £1 billion fund for developing community facilities, but how is he going to persuade the CCGs to transfer some of their commissioning power to these units?”
“May I remind my right hon. Friend that our net contribution to the European Union is already larger than our fastest growing expenditure programme on overseas aid and we are paying that money to an organisation that has not had its accounts signed off for 19 years? Therefore, may I commend him for taking a robust stand on this matter, and will he undertake to make sure that Parliament gets a vote before we pay another penny?”
“It was in no fit state to fight one, so of course it also supported the Act. This has created a politicians’ paradise. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stone said, it is designed to shut the British people out of the decision about what kind of Government they should be able to choose.”
“It was self-interested on the part of the Conservative Ministers who wanted to give themselves tenure. It was self-interested on the part of the Liberal Democrats to give themselves tenure not only in this coalition but in a future hung Parliament to guarantee that the only option would be another five-year coalition in which they, the smallest party, would once again have influence disproportionate to the number of votes they received. Even I missed the point about why the Labour party was so happy to give tenure to the coalition. The Labour party knew it was in a mess. It had a deeply unpopular ex-Prime Minister who had just been thrown out of office. It was going to have a long, protracted leadership election process. The last thing it wanted was another general election within six or 18 months.”
“I look back at previous Prime Ministers and think to myself: did Gordon Brown ever act in a partisan manner? No, no, never! Did Sir John Major or Tony Blair ever act in a partisan manner? No, no! The Fixed-term Parliaments Act was obviously yet another selfless Act introduced by a Prime Minister, with no party considerations involved! I think we are being asked to stretch our imaginations a little too far. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act is one of the most partisan and self-interested Acts of Parliament that has ever been put on the statute book. It did not just provide MPs with tenure; it provided the coalition Government with tenure. It was providing the coalition with security; it was providing them with a five-year guaranteed supply of money from the taxpayer for their Administration.”
“Friend the Member for Stone described—I understand he has had to leave the Chamber in a rush because he is attending to other duties in the House—has turned this place in upon itself even more than it was before. We are even less focused on what the voters think because we have given ourselves tenure. We have given ourselves security. We have given ourselves a fixed-term lease that cannot be challenged. And there is the idea that this was done as some selfless and noble act! I am amazed that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) —I am afraid he is not in his place at the moment—should keep raising the question of how the Prime Minister might exercise his power with regard to partisan considerations. Well, perish the thought that any Prime Minister would ever do anything with partisan considerations in mind!”
“We were told that we were ushering in a new era of the new politics that was going to transform the people’s perception of how we conduct ourselves in this place. It was going to show the parties re-engaging with the enthusiasm of the voters and that, as a consequence, this would be a much happier country. I remember having a conversation with a Minister on the stairs going up to the Committee Corridor. He said to me that politics, after five years of the coalition, would be unrecognisable—that is what he said. If we ask voters today what they think about how politics looks today compared with four years ago, I think they would say that it is all too recognisable. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act, as my hon.”
“I realise I am craving the indulgence of the House. I would not normally seek to intervene in a debate when I was unable to attend the opening speeches. I understand, however, that the main protagonists have yet to speak, so I will use this brief opportunity to give my pennyworth in the hope that they may each be able to reply to one or two of the points I will make. I have been listening to the debate, but I wonder if I could take the House back, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) did, to the beginning and to when the coalition was being formed. When it was formed, I remember it was announced that there were going to be some constitutional changes, including this one.”
“Well, we have all learned our lesson, and the Conservative party will not be forming a coalition in the next Parliament until we have seen the coalition agreement in draft, and we will want to go through it line by line to ensure that such sleights of hand are not repeated.”
“English votes for English laws, which many of us, including Labour Members, want, would require only a minor adjustment to Standing Orders and the running of the House, yet people are saying, “Oh, we’ll have to have a constitutional convention.” The Act made a far greater change but without a constitutional convention or any consultation; there was absolutely no debate. It was not even explained to the Conservative parliamentary party before we agreed to the coalition. It only became apparent that there would be a Fixed-term Parliaments Bill when the coalition agreement was published.”
“The need for a separation of powers was the lesson that the American founding fathers thought they had learned from him about the British constitution. However, in the American constitution the President, the Executive, vetoes legislation and appoints the judiciary, and the legislature conducts pre-appointment hearings on the senior people in the judiciary. There is always overlap between the functions of government, and ours is a system of parliamentary government in which the Executive can hold office only with the permission of Parliament. The Act has fundamentally altered the balance of power in our constitution.”
“Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) wants not only a written constitution and the continuation of fixed-term Parliaments, but the separation of powers. Basically, he wants an American constitution rather than a British constitution, but let us look at the American constitution. First, it is paralysed. It cannot get its deficit down and it cannot elect a strong Government. It can elect a President, but the separation of powers means that Congress can defeat everything the President wants to do. I do not think that that is a very good recipe. We do not want to follow that. In any case, the separation of powers is based on a misapprehension of how constitutions work. There is, in fact, no such thing as a separation of powers in any constitution. That was what Montesquieu thought he understood about the British constitution.”
“I totally agree. The whole question of House of Lords reform was also being advanced for party political interests. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley asked who should have the power to dissolve Parliament. Should it be the Prime Minister? I put it to him that holding that power is part of the authority of being Prime Minister. As my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) described it, part of the poisoned chalice of office is that the Prime Minister holds that power. By passing the Act, we have robbed the Prime Minister of part of that authority. We have robbed the Government of part of the authority of office that the Government live on a day-to-day basis, subject to the confidence of the House of Commons. That has been taken away and represents a fundamental change in our constitution. The hon.”
“Under Article 9 of the Bill of Rights, what is said or done in Parliament cannot be questioned or impeached in any other place. However, the Act could result in the courts adjudicating on what kind of vote has taken place in Parliament, because it provides that the Speaker would have to write a certificate stating there had been a vote of no confidence or a two-thirds majority in favour of a Dissolution before the Prime Minister has the authority to go to the Queen and ask for one. It is possible that those votes could be disputed, and because it proceeds from an Act of Parliament, those disputes about who went through which Lobby and on what basis would end up being argued about in a court. This potentially runs a coach and horses through the very important question of parliamentary privilege.”
“I am a little mystified by that intervention. If we are to make changes to our constitution, we need a mechanism by which to do it, and that will have to be done by elected representatives—it is called democracy; that is what we believe in—and so it will finish up here. If there was ever to be a codified constitution in this country, it would have to be debated and decided here, if perhaps subject to a referendum. I am mystified by the idea that in the estates, villages, towns and cities, the constitution is going to write itself, like some virtual programme on the internet. I don’t think so. The Act is a fundamental and dangerous change to our constitution because it threatens the privileges of the House. I do not mean our special, personal privilege; I mean the protection of our freedom of speech from questioning by the courts.”
“The Act, passed to create political certainty, could become a source of the very uncertainty, instability and crisis it was intended to avoid. In that case, I hope Parliament would have the sense to take a Bill through this place and the other place as quickly as possible to clear this off the statute book. I commend the other place for its attempt to respect the wishes of the coalition to fix the term of this Parliament but to include a sunset or renewable clause so that it would have to be renewed at the beginning of each Parliament. At least that would have put the choice in the hands of the new Parliament. As it is, if we have another hung Parliament, we could find ourselves in that crisis sooner than we thought but with no sunset clause to get us out of the crisis.”
“Yes, I did. On Second Reading, those of us in the other Lobby were staggered at how few we were—this was in the glowy aftermath of the announcement of the new politics—and I said, “You might feel lonely today, but don’t worry. One day, this whole Parliament will rue the day it passed this Act.” It will either be got rid of or we will find ourselves in the midst of the most almighty and intractable political crisis where a majority wants to dissolve Parliament and have a general election but we cannot do so. That is the prospect held out by the Act. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stone said, we still do not really know what the Act means. It stipulates fixed-term Parliaments, but then it makes provision for shortening Parliaments. We have no idea what uncertainty it will create.”
“The problem the hon. Gentleman has is that I was told by a member of his party’s Front-Bench team that they were delighted that we were putting the Act through, because it meant that Labour would not face an early election for which it was completely unprepared.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a case for transferring the prerogative power to this House. What is the basis of the argument in favour of a two thirds majority requiring a Dissolution? Surely that is taking power away from the House and giving the Executive tenure?”
“As a Member of Parliament who represents a port, I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. This is an example of how the single market is used as an all-enveloping pretext for Community action at Community level, whatever is the case, even though it is very difficult to argue that there is a single market between the ports of Harwich and Felixstowe and those of Marseilles or Piraeus, which is the basic premise of the argument behind the directive.”