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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“Blair’s “doctrine of the international community”, and with the present Prime Minister’s preoccupation with strengthening international institutions. International institutions must not become an end in themselves. They can be only a means to an end. The United Nations is, by definition, less than the sum of its parts. It can only ever act according to the lowest common factor of its members. Where the international community fails to accept our values, must we become a hostage to the interests of the hostile states that are blocking decisions in the UN? If we can only act with a UN resolution, do we not simply give Russia and China a veto over our foreign policy and our defence policy?”
“Blair argued that his experience of foreign affairs and defence since Kosovo had left him “more persuaded that the distinction between a foreign policy driven by values and one driven by interests is wrong. Globalisation begets interdependence. Interdependence begets the necessity of a common value system to make it work. Idealism becomes realpolitik.” What does that mean? What does it mean for a Prime Minister who has to make a decision in a crisis? Does it mean anything in the real world? Look at how Russia and China approach the question of Iran to see how some countries deal with their values and interests. They do not regard the Iranian bomb as a threat to themselves, so they are happy to use the west’s disquiet as a tool to further their own interests, regardless of values. This is the problem for defence with Mr.”
“They shied away from addressing the changed strategic environment, largely for financial reasons. Unless we learn from the mistakes of the SDR, we will be condemned to repeat its failures. One of the key foundations of the SDR was Labour’s so-called ethical foreign policy. Actually, the Foreign Office turned that into a foreign policy with an ethical dimension, because it realised that the term “ethical foreign policy” is nonsense. Tony Blair set out this ethical dimension in his Chicago speech in 1999 justifying the intervention in Kosovo on humanitarian grounds. That was, he argued, “a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values”. He concluded: “In the end values and interests merge.” Shortly before leaving office, Mr.”
“The SDR had the right process, but it produced the wrong result. NATO went into Bosnia in December 1995 with 60,000 troops. By the time the NATO mission ended in 2004, there were still 7,000 troops. Even now, 15 years after the original deployment, there are still more than 2,000 EU troops. The SDR did not anticipate 9/11, the rise of militant Islamists or the types of counter-insurgency campaign that we have seen in countries that are much larger, much more hostile and a lot less developed than Bosnia. We should have moved on further and faster, but the Government remained wedded to the failed strategic assumptions behind the SDR. The new chapter and the 2004 White Paper, to which the Secretary of State referred, merely tinkered at the edges.”
“The UK has never institutionalised strategy in that way, but other countries, such as the US, France and Israel do so. It is time that we did so, too. The outcome of 13 years of Labour drift in foreign and defence policy has resulted in the UK’s global stock falling, as it did in the 1960s and ’70s. Once again, we have to question our whole global role, as the UK is more exposed to external threats and global events than at any time since world war two. It has become a cliché to say that the 1998 SDR was a great piece of work, undermined only by a failure to fund it, but its failures are wider and deeper. In the light of Gulf war one, the theory of “go first, go fast, go home” enshrined in the SDR had some merits, but even by 1998, the experience of the Balkans was showing that such easy wins were the exception, not the rule.”
“Fox) said, the SDR was based on what we call a foreign policy baseline, but as I shall point out, foreign policy tends to be more about process than about strategy and has proved a deficient basis for defence policy. There is a real danger that the 2010 SDR will be about the confirmation and re-examination of what we have been doing, rather than about being prepared for what we do not expect. The key to a successful 2010 SDR will be a new UK strategic concept, which must embrace the whole panoply of policy—economic stability and trade policy, the future of the EU, NATO and the national security strategy, energy security, climate change and cyber-warfare. It is from those considerations that foreign policy and the SDR must flow.”
“I want to concentrate on the key failures of Government policy since 1997. I commend the Opposition motion, but it tells only of the symptoms of failure, not its root cause—symptoms such as funding shortfalls, a failed procurement process, shrinking manpower assets and endemic overstretch. But the root cause is far more fundamental and relates to the failure of the UK’s grand strategy. Bluntly, it seems that the UK no longer does strategy. We no longer seek to influence world events from our own agenda; we have been forced into reacting to them. Foreign and defence policy since the SDR has been characterised by three words—drift, waste and overstretch —and they all stem from the failure of strategy. Yes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr.”
“I hesitate to bracket the Chief of the General Staff within such a mistake, but it is inevitable that the defence chiefs will tend to defend what they are doing and argue for more equipment so that they can do what they do, rather than doing the more difficult horizon scanning about being prepared for things that we do not expect, such as the possibility that the next war might be fought on a coastal area, where we need sea and air power. The two land-locked wars that we have been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan may well prove to be the exception. Incidentally, I point out that we had the characteristics of state-on-state warfare in Kosovo and certainly in both Gulf wars and that much of the combat with the Taliban has elements of state-on-state conflict that would be common to both types of warfare.”
“Friend on the commendable freshness with which she always approaches such debates. She has a terrier-like determination to advance her argument, which she always does coherently and cogently. Indeed, the degree of detail on specifications and prices that she gives is far beyond what most Members bring to these debates. It is a reminder of what much defence policy is actually about. However, I warn my hon. Friend about the sweeping judgments on the nature of future conflict that I fear she was making. She referred to outdated notions of state-on-state warfare, and said that we must be ready for the much murkier and more complex issues of counter-insurgency warfare, but the joke, as Churchill used to say, is that the War Office is always trying to fight the last war.”
“Like my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Ann Winterton), I pay tribute to the armed forces and to those who have fallen and those who are injured in the course of operations. I shall not be drawn on my hon. Friend’s last-minute foray into European policy, except to remark on the speech of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson). He gave a dire warning that the European Parliament should not meddle in matters of defence, which should remain intergovernmental. I simply point out that plenty of us on the Opposition Benches warned that the Lisbon treaty would lead the European Parliament in exactly that direction, and further. He was warned, so if he did not want that to happen he should not have voted for the Lisbon treaty. I congratulate my hon.”
“It must provide clear-sighted strategic advice for whoever is Prime Minister. The objective for the SDR 2010 must not be to try to rediscover some new consensus. That is where the danger lies. It must define a new direction for our nation. That may be controversial, but it must be coherent. The SDR must recognise that stabilising the Government’s finances will be the main effort in the new Parliament, but it must also define the interests and objectives which must not be compromised, despite that. It must conclude that a UK global role remains indispensable to our national interest and to the interests of global security. We must strive to maintain our position of power and influence in the long term, and we must end the era of drift, waste and overstretch.”
“I am extremely concerned. I shall come to that in my closing remarks. If we do not have the courage to recognise strategic threats, we will never be able to face them. A new UK strategic concept must be the first paper that the Prime Minister commissions after the general election. Without it, how can the defence review decide what forces we need to tackle the threats of today and the uncertainties of tomorrow? The Prime Minister of the day must lead it, but it needs an institutional backing, as my right hon. Friend suggests, as it has in France, the US and Israel, as I said earlier. It needs to draw on advice from beyond Whitehall and particularly from a newly constructed, beefed-up ARAG, perhaps based at Shrivenham, but answerable to, and funded by, the Cabinet Office.”
“I just wanted to place on the public record the fact that as shadow Secretary of State for Defence in, I think, 2002, I suggested to the Government a process for trying to resolve the matter. That process involved setting up an inquiry with a retired judge, a retired military officer from one of the other services and a suitably technically qualified person to review the decision in order to allow the Government in a dignified manner to come to a conclusion about these issues, which cannot be resolved in the House. Why does my right hon. Friend think that the Government have refused to take such a course of action?”
“If I may be allowed a word in edgeways, it was not until recently that Ministers admitted to the Select Committee on Defence that there was any deficit. Indeed, it was only a short time ago—less than a year— that the Minister for defence equipment and support, addressing a conference called “Punching Above the Budget: A Prospect seminar”, said, “There is no…deficit.” So why have the Government now admitted that there is a deficit? It has been common knowledge among everybody who knows anything about defence that the Government have a programme far too large for their budget, so why did they not admit that years and years ago?”
“On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. To clarify, lest the House might be proceeding in some ignorance about the procedure in front of us, am I correct to say that the motions to which amendments have been tabled have effectively already been objected to and that those motions are no longer available to us and can be moved only on Thursday 4 March and not tonight?”
“That is why I was so taken by the point that this categorical assurance about the time-in and the time-out is perhaps given too lightly. That is where we are at the moment, however, so we should still welcome the proposals.”
“The fact that all party leaders have essentially embraced the re-empowerment of Parliament as an essential part of that reform enjoins us to give a hearty welcome to the Committee’s report. By far the most important issue before the House is control of the timetable of business. As any A-level politics student will know, the degree to which the Government control the Commons timetable is the degree to which they control the House itself. I was extremely taken by the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley), who reminded us that what used to be one of the key weapons of opposition in the House—available not just to the Opposition, but to Government Members as well—was the opportunity to delay by extending the time of scrutiny for a measure.”
“I very much welcome many of the points raised by the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Dhanda), although what he said amplifies how this debate can become a Christmas tree on which everybody hangs their particular enthusiasms for what they might call parliamentary reform. I think that our debate must concentrate on the report before us and on what the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) has presented to us this afternoon, which provides a great opportunity to take a modest but extremely significant step. All parties, including the Committee itself, have described our response to the expenses scandal as being necessary but not sufficient to wider reform; it will be sufficient only if we reform Parliament itself. Even you, Mr. Speaker, made the reform of the House of Commons part of the platform for your election.”
“In fact, there never can be a complete separation of powers. The US President, for example, can veto new laws—a legislative function. He also personally appoints new Supreme Court justices. However, the founding fathers of the US constitution would have shuddered at the idea that the White House could determine the weekly business in the House of Representatives. Yet that is what our Government can do in our Parliament. That is not Montesquieu’s separation of powers, but a fusion of powers.”
“We are elected to the House for three principal purposes: to prevent the abuse of power, to ensure the passing of good laws, and to raise money for the Government, while guaranteeing that it is spent wisely, as was said earlier. Who today honestly believes that the House begins to carry out those functions effectively? That brings me to the separation of powers. When Montesquieu studied the British constitution in action in his “The Spirit of Laws” of 1748, he observed, albeit partly mistakenly, the separation of powers between the Executive, the legislature and the judiciary. The separation of powers has become a founding principle of democratic constitutions around the world; it is not something that we should fear, but something that we should seek to promote. It is particularly exemplified in the constitution of the United States.”
“First, far too much legislation passes through this House without proper scrutiny—indeed, not just without proper scrutiny, but with barely any scrutiny at all, as has been pointed out. Let us remind ourselves of what Lord Butler, the former Cabinet Secretary, said this month: “Successive Governments have come to take Parliament for granted so they rush through very bad legislation.” As has been pointed out, we now rely almost wholly on the other place to do the job of scrutiny that we are elected to carry out. That leads to the second danger: our powerlessness in the House damages the whole credibility of our democracy. If the hon. Member for Gloucester reflects on the other points that he raised, he will see that this is the key point.”
“I agree. I am not going to address the role of Select Committees, because the subject is too large, but the fundamental point about them is far more significant than the fact that they should be elected; it is that they should be given resources. Our Select Committees are very modest in comparison with their congressional counterparts, and they have very limited ability to get ahead of the political agenda and to start to set it in the way congressional committees do. We are going to need to look at that further. The key point is the importance of having control over the timetable from which the House currently suffers. The present arrangements are damaging in two particular respects.”
“The proposed House business committee can begin to redress the imbalance of power in the House, which so corrodes good government and accountability. There can only be strong government if it rests on a strong and more independent Parliament.”
“That will not challenge the ultimate authority of the majority to get its way, but it will increase transparency, allow some discourse and create more of a requirement for some explanation. A tactful and rational Government have no need to fear such a reform. If that fails, we will need to discuss something far more radical and start a process of visibly removing the Executive from Parliament altogether, although I have to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who is now addressing the Clerk, that I am still far from persuaded that that would be desirable or achievable. It is far preferable, before we turn to the radical option, that we consider the chance for moderate reform offered by the report.”
“For the modern political party, the House of Commons has become more of an electoral college for the office of Prime Minister than a deliberative assembly. That must change. Parliamentary government arose precisely because Parliament wanted to limit the power of the Crown. That is why the Commons insisted in 1713 that no demand for money would be met unless proposed in the House by a Minister of the Crown. Today’s Standing Order No. 48 derives from that time, when it was one of the very few Standing Orders of the House—quite why it is No. 48 is perhaps a reflection of the Alice in Wonderland atmosphere of this place. The House has two options. First, we can embrace the modest proposal from the Wright Committee for a House business committee.”
“As the parliamentary ombudsman recently told the Public Administration Committee—this is quoted in the report—there is “no visible distinction between Parliament and government.” That is something that we must address. We have also seen the increasing power and centralisation of political parties in recent times. As has been said, political parties are indispensable, but Members of Parliament are no longer elected and then apply to take the Whip of this or that party. Parties are now defined and regulated by statute. The Burkean principle of MP as representative has been progressively eroded and replaced by the notion of MP as party delegate. Party leaders can now get rid of MPs they do not like, as we saw in the Conservative party before the last election. They can also block candidates of whom they disapprove.”
“A Minister’s loyalty is to the Executive, but as an MP, his loyalty should be to Parliament. Inevitably, that presents a fundamental conflict of interest on occasion. One is reminded of Christ’s words in Matthew 6:24: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other.” Christ was, of course, referring to God and Mammon, but he might as easily have been talking about the House of Commons and the Prime Minister offering a ministerial salary to one of his Back Benchers. It is worth considering that before the second world war perhaps 50 Members of the House of Commons were on the Government payroll; today, 141 MPs are on the payroll. In a parliamentary system, there must be a recognition of that conflict of interest.”
“I will come to that point, my hon. Friend need not fear. The truth is that our Parliament is no longer composed mainly of part-time citizen parliamentarians, but of professional politicians, most of whom wish, or have wished, to become Ministers, or who are Ministers. When an MP becomes a Minister, he virtually ceases to function as an MP. Ministers continue to do their best for their constituents, but they cannot hold the Executive effectively to account, because they are the Executive. That is ironic given that the House has become obsessed by conflicts of interest, and one need think only of the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, outside interests, Members of Parliament owning investments, retiring Ministers taking jobs in private sector businesses that they regulated and the role of lobbyists.”
“I did not comment on this particular issue, because I wanted to keep my remarks short, but it would be dreadful if we thought that we could insulate Members of Parliament from the pressures involved in such decisions. Two opponents of the Iraq war have made the same point, but I doubt whether the decision would have been different, given that even public opinion was in favour of going to war by the time the vote took place.”
“Has the Minister done any analysis of the disparities in costs between different out-of-hours contracts? Is he aware of the disparities between the costs that the Ministry of Defence pays? In one case it pays £20,000 a year for 17,000 soldiers, but in another it pays £278,000 for 20,000 soldiers, which is considerably more. Why should the Ministry of Defence pay for out-of-hours care for its soldiers when soldiers pay tax and should get that service on the national health service anyway?”
“May I add my thanks to the Secretary of State for the way in which he has sought to engage with a wide range of people on this Green Paper? Does he agree, however, that this would not be the moment for an east of Suez retrenchment of the United Kingdom under financial pressures, that we cannot afford the luxury of withdrawing back to our home base, and that it is extremely unlikely that we can sustain our global role unless we maintain increases in defence expenditure?”
“As a member of the Defence Committee who recently visited Afghanistan, I can attest to the new sense of political, civil and military direction there. However, may I draw the Foreign Secretary’s attention to the fact that the Afghan national defence university cannot get off the ground for the lack of 15 British military officers whose presence would enable the United Kingdom to lead that hugely influential project? May I put that into his in-tray and ask him to look into it? It is worth lifting the military cap by just a few officers in order for us to be able to lead that enormously important project.”
“I just wish to put on record what we all know. There have been Secretaries of State in this Government dealing with matters of nuclear waste who have refused to allow any papers regarding nuclear policy to cross their desk as a matter of principle. It is ideology, such as that from the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Margaret Beckett), that has paralysed the Government.”
“3. What recent discussions he has had with his NATO counterparts on military objectives in Helmand province; and if he will make a statement.”
“Is it not the case that our superb military forces have regularly achieved their military objectives, but that that has regularly proved unsustainable because of the political vacuum at the top? Is not the most important task of the London conference to frame a political settlement with which our military objectives will need to be aligned? Otherwise, we are wasting our effort in Afghanistan.”
“Although I welcome this short discussion about Yemen, we are only having it because of al-Qaeda. Would it not be instructive if the Government were to produce a document about the international strategy against al-Qaeda, or hold a conference in London at which international partners could be invited to talk about that? That would be better than waiting for statements about other countries in which al-Qaeda is operating that may not be in the news at the moment.”
“Who authorised the Downing street spokesman to brief so emphatically that information about the Detroit bomber had been passed to the Americans before the bombing?”
“I very much welcome the Haddon-Cave report and I commend the Secretary of State’s response to its findings, but will he confirm that he has had independent, third party representations from people who are concerned about one or two of the report’s more subjective findings on individuals in the command chain, where conclusions appear to have been drawn without substantial evidence? I do not wish to tempt him to comment on any investigations in progress, but can he say anything about that part of the report and will he undertake to give those individuals a fair hearing at some stage during the investigation?”
“The Secretary of State deserves respect for taking some very tough decisions that his predecessors should perhaps have taken many years ago. Nevertheless, he said in his statement that from the £900 million to be raided from the core budget, he is funding body armour, night vision goggles, Bowman tactical radios and counter-IED capabilities. By no stretch of the imagination is that justified, because he is raiding future defence capability to fund current operations, which the Treasury should be paying for directly.”
“May I ask the Prime Minister, is it a responsible policy to fund at least part of the cost of current operations by raiding future defence capability?”
“1. What representations he has received from English Nature on the environmental effects of proposals for a new nuclear power station at Bradwell, Essex.”
“I thank the Minister for his response but, even though I am an enthusiast for new nuclear power stations, may I draw his attention to the serious concern expressed to me, particularly by local fishermen and oystermen, that the volume of the outfall from a new power station is likely to be four times greater than that from the previous power station, thus causing serious continuing damage to the ecology of the Blackwater estuary? Can he assure me that that will be addressed, perhaps by ensuring that the intake and outfalls will be sufficiently far away?”
“2. What progress is being made towards holding a conference on future policy on Afghanistan in January 2010 as proposed by the Prime Minister in his Guildhall speech?”
“May I express a degree of surprise that the Secretary of State wrote a letter to the chair of governors of Great Tey primary school on Thursday, asserting that the school has failed to follow its published complaints procedures, on the basis of representations from the parents of only one child and apparently without consulting the local education authority, which is responsible for giving impartial advice? Is he aware that the letter is being used in a public campaign against the school, and was it his intention that it should be used in that way?”
“May I remind the Secretary of State that new Labour was originally elected on the slogan “24 hours to save the NHS”? That now rings all too hollow to people who rely on Colchester general hospital for their health care. Will he reflect on that and explain why he is still having to make announcements of this nature, given that health expenditure has doubled since the Government were first elected?”
“On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. This morning, the Select Committee on Reform of the House of Commons produced an extremely important report. Unfortunately, at last Thursday’s business questions the Leader of the House declined to say when the report might be debated and declined to come to give a statement to the House today on how the Government might respond to it. Could you use your good offices to advance the case made by this excellent report and, indeed, to give the House an opportunity to debate it, so that we may add to or subtract from it as we see fit?”
“We look forward to the Government responding to proposals about how Government business can be much better scrutinised, so could the Leader of the House tell us how she will respond to the Committee’s findings? I remind her that she had to withdraw her original motion.”
“Pursuant to that last question, may I remind the Leader of the House that the Committee on Reform of the House of Commons was established precisely to address people’s perception that this House is not doing its job of scrutinising Government business properly? Given her answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope)—that she could give no guarantees about how the results of the Committee’s work would be dealt with—let me return to the point made by my right hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House that it would be appropriate to make a statement on the publication of the report next Tuesday. We will have time to read it before she stands up to make it, as the report is to be published in the middle of the night.”
“The Secretary of State spoke of the requirement for the extra troops to be properly equipped. Is he saying, in effect, that he has received no offers of extra helicopters for Afghanistan?”
“The Bill purports to solve all the problems of coastal access, but it demonstrates a thoughtless, rather broad-brush approach that a lot of people have complained about because it will hurt rural parts of the coastline, conservation, privacy and other vital things. Little has been said about how the exclusion of ports could lead to more situations such as that at Mistley quay. The Bill does absolutely nothing to help to resolve that issue, and I would be grateful if the Minister could address that fact.”