Tom Tugendhat
MP for Tonbridge · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), rejecting this very policy as the economies of Palestine and Israel are too interconnected—innocent Palestinians and Israelis will suffer. Still this Government are pressing on in haste, despite warnings from the Labour Benches from the hon.”
“First, on the coherence of the policy, can he confirm that the advice from his Department on the practicality of sanctions has changed so dramatically that these sanctions will in reality be targeted, not area as previously stated?”
“Fifthly, what instructions has he given to the enforcement bodies to ensure that Parkinson’s, myeloma and multiple sclerosis patients will still get the drugs that keep them alive?”
“I place on record my and my party’s deep sadness at the violence we have seen in recent months and years, our commitment to the right of Palestinians and Israelis to live in dignity and peace, and our recognition of those who have been victims over generations.”
“In the week before Rosh Hashanah and the high holy days, the Government are acting without prudence, introducing sanctions that are both light and serious.”
“When they recognised the state of Palestine, only recently, they did so against the laws we ourselves have defended since 1933, in contravention of the Montevideo convention and of the principles we have set out.”
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“For those of us who were ready to go into Iraq just over 20 years ago, the comparisons between this situation and that vote are absolutely zero. The reality is that nobody is talking about ground troops or a land invasion; we are talking about striking those that are targeting our friends and allies. In the past few hours, over 500 rockets have struck the United Arab Emirates, and no doubt many have struck bases around the area. Will the Prime Minister deploy HMS Dauntless and HMS Duncan in the Gulf right now? Both are in a state of readiness, and I am sure that the Defence Secretary could give that order this afternoon. Perhaps most importantly, what conversations has the Foreign Secretary had with colleagues in the region?”
“Does the Prime Minister share with me the concern that while some ambassadors retiring in disgrace get tens of thousands of pounds in pay-offs, many other civil servants are failing to get the retirement that they are due and are expected to turn to their old Departments for bridging loans? This is clearly a scandal. Will he put all his effort behind making sure that those who have served with integrity are treated with the dignity that they deserve?”
“Many of us in this House were sanctioned by China, and the Prime Minister went over and somehow managed to sell the partial un-sanctioning of a few of us as a victory. I would have welcomed a victory that was the release of Jimmy Lai, but sadly the Prime Minister conceded all his cards before getting on the plane, leaving himself nothing to negotiate with. Can the Minister find anything else that China wants that the Prime Minister could negotiate with? Maybe he could offer them the Isle of Wight or the Outer Hebrides—he is trying to give away everything else anyway. At least the job of the Prime Minister would then be to protect a British citizen—one who, as we all recognise, has been given a death sentence by the Chinese, not the Hong Kong authorities.”
“I am slightly surprised that the hon. Gentleman is claiming that less is taken off them. Student loans, which could have received this £3 billion that this change will cost, are effectively taxing young people at 70% or 71%. Does he not think that that tax rate is high enough?”
“Sadly, although we are now having a debate about the two-child benefit cap and about £3 billion, we are really having a debate about what it means to grow an economy. Although the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Torbay (Steve Darling), made a joke out of it, the reality is that we are seeing young people paying something like 70% tax—and some are therefore making the choice to go to Dubai, to Portugal, to the United States or to Australia. That connection between young and old people is being broken, with families left in need of not only the economic connection but of the human connection between them.”
“When I say economy, I mean not just the bald rows of figures that accountants and bankers add up, but the way in which the Greeks meant it: the way a home works together, the way people interact to bring about a community and to bring about a whole. How does that work? How do we get growth? How do we get investment and reward at the right point so that we actually see the progress that society can bring? We have seen societies, time and time again, doing the well-meaning thing, and ending up costing everyone. We can read the constitutions and the promises of Governments and nations over the last century and see the human misery they led to—not because they were evil, but because those intentions were not aligned with the reality of a human economy. We have seen it time and time again.”
“I have heard so many well motivated and moving stories about human misery, and the truth is those are the stories of our country. Those are the stories of a country that has tried for over 100 years to introduce a social welfare service to look after the poorest in our community and to do the best for them, and, in various different ways, all of us—and I do mean all of us—seek to do that. We may have different expressions and different understandings of quite how that works, but we do all try to look after those who are most vulnerable in our society. But I think the division here comes in a very fundamental way, and it comes in the questions that one has to ask oneself when one looks at the way in which this economy, this society and this community grow.”
“I will not. This debate is not just about cash; it is fundamentally about people. There has been an attempt again to pretend that the only interaction between people is that which is metricked, divined and organised by the state, and that simply is not true. It simply is not true to say that, unless the state provides it, it does not count. Yet, again and again, we hear the same thing. Yes, I know that the Conservative Government left taxes high, but many people seem to have forgotten that covid seemed to increase the debt enormously, and that when some of us tried to vote against various lockdowns, we were accused of murdering various groups, depending on whoever the then Leader of the Opposition seemed to be siding with.”
“The reality is that this country is broke, and to a degree that nobody in this House seems to appreciate—certainly nobody on the Government Benches. We simply do not have the understanding here, among the noble and well-meaning socialists, that the reality is that they are racking up debts for their children that will mean that this state will be impoverished, we will be left weaker and the whole country will be poorer.”
“I have said I will not give way. It is true that what we are seeing in the UK today is a legacy: of poor decisions on covid that some of us condemned at the time; of promises made in the last year or two; and of debts to those who challenged leadership in the last six to 12 months. We are now seeing, falling on those who are working, a level of burden that is growing and growing, and people are voting with their feet, either by not working or by leaving. I am afraid that what we are seeing here is a false choice. We are seeing a Government making promises that will never be able to be cashed. We are seeing a Government adding to a debt, not of £2 trillion—the one that they state—but of £12 trillion or £13 trillion, depending on how we count pension liabilities, private finance initiatives and many of the state’s other debts.”
“Mr Speaker, you have been stalwart in standing with those of us who were sanctioned by the People’s Republic of China all those years ago, and you have been very clear that we stand as one in this House. Do you not find it as surprising as I do that the Prime Minister has come back with a deal that lifts the sanctions on those six of us who are still in this House, but not the one who is not, nor the lawyers, advisers and academics who support the work of this House? Is this not a direct affront to the democracy of this place, and an attempt to divide and conquer that we have seen China play against the European Parliament and that, sadly, has tricked our Government too?”
“There are two issues here, one of which is the connection of a Member of the House of Lords to a convicted paedophile, but let us not forget that he is not the only recent Labour appointee who has been connected to a convicted paedophile; Lord Matthew Doyle, who was appointed only recently, has also maintained a persistent connection with a convicted paedophile. Does the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister agree that it is not enough to refer the matter to the Cabinet Secretary, and that the police should be called immediately? We are seeing misconduct in public office, and this goes all the way to the Prime Minister’s chief of staff. The possibility of the destruction of evidence and the obscuring of a future prosecution is now increasing, and that is being masked by the Government.”
“I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for those words. Will he associate himself with the Canadian, Danish, French, Australian and New Zealand armed forces, and those from many other countries around the world, who served alongside us in that NATO operation? They stood by us, even though article 5 does not apply to Australia or New Zealand, and lost troops in combat, yet I did not hear an apology for them.”
“It is a great privilege to speak in this debate. Unusually, I pay tribute to the Minister for Veterans and People, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Louise Sandher-Jones), who could be sporting the same colours as me. As a fellow veteran from the finest corps in the country, she will no doubt have many contributions of her own to make. Today is Australia Day and India’s Republic Day. Given that we are talking about the armed forces, it is worth remembering that over the last 100 years it has been very unusual for us to have gone to war without very close allies by our side. In fact, the two largest volunteer armies in the world were the Indian army in the first world war and the Indian army in the second world war.”
“That is a huge challenge, and I appreciate that this Bill is not meant to answer all those questions, but this surely has to be the question that the armed forces are asking now. I will close by merely saying that, yes, it is of course true that the numbers are inadequate, and it is certainly striking that in the last few weeks the Iranian regime has murdered roughly the same number of people as are serving in our Royal Navy today, but it is also striking that we are still—and, sadly, increasingly—dependent on foreign technology and not able to meet our own needs, which is where the armed forces and the armed forces equipment deal need to be looking next.”
“That technology is where we need to be advancing fast, but for all our talk of sovereignty, the truth is that only two nations have a sovereign artificial intelligence capability, and that does not include us. They are the United States and China. At the moment, we have only one choice, which is to use the US approach, and that is clearly the right answer for today, but is it the right answer for tomorrow? That is the question we need to be asking ourselves. We need to be asking ourselves where we can develop that technology and how we can secure—for our own defence, within our own timeframe and within our own resources—the ability to understand a battlefield, shape events and determine the technology that will actually defeat our enemies.”
“When one talks to a Ukrainian general, or in fact to a more junior officer such as a Ukrainian colonel, one finds that the conversation is not about armour, as it so often is in the UK, or even about submarines—built so brilliantly in the constituency of the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Michelle Scrogham). It is about drones and the technology that powers them. I say drones and technology because they are actually separate. The plastic, the rotors and the body—the design—last about nine months on the Ukrainian frontline and the power unit lasts about four weeks, but the technology that allows a drone to defeat the armour, get through the jamming and strike the enemy lasts between seven and 14 days.”
“They are about understanding that we are stronger together and that we are part of a greater whole. Having 700,000 young people parked on welfare is a pretty big indictment of the failure not just of Government, but of our understanding of our own place in this country. I am not saying that the armed forces are the answer to all of that, but they are surely a contributory factor that we need to be looking at. To turn to another area, over the last few years we have had long conversations about defence resources for Ukraine. We have heard about the shell shortages and the need for armour and next-generation light anti-tank weapons, but what is the real need in Ukraine? It is the need for technology that changes the game.”
“That is where I look to our young people in this country. I do not know how many Members in the House have read the recent Centre for Social Justice report on the number of graduates claiming welfare at the moment. Apparently, it is 700,000. That is a huge number of young people who have an enormous amount to offer our community, our country and our allies, but who are being parked in a system that does not include them. To come back to what the armed forces are for, they are not just for the defence of the realm against foreign threats; they are for the cohesion of the realm at home, too. They are for bringing us together, making us understand who we are as Brits and making us proud of who we may be as Northern Irish, Welsh, English or Scottish.”
“We have quite rightly heard about the emphasis on the reserve, and on the way in which medical teams, interpreters and others have contributed. I would like to pay tribute to the military leadership for the way in which it has looked to change how the armed forces work with reservists with careers or skills that are very hard to get through traditional military routes. In particular, I am thinking of cyber, because we are looking for something very different. I have huge respect for the Minister for the Armed Forces, a friend with whom I served on far too many adventures overseas, for the fact that he can do 30 pull-ups, but how fast can he hack into a Russian terminal? I am not sure it is in his skills set. These are different skills, and we need to look to the reserve to provide such skills.”
“It is certainly true that we have seen some extraordinary news out of Beijing in the last 48 hours, with generals having disappeared, presumably down a salt mine, as they have fallen out of favour with the chairman of the Chinese Communist party’s military committee. It is also certainly true that the Russians are embedded in the most gruesome and horrific war in Ukraine, where they are murdering more of their own people than they are of the enemy, although they are doing their best to kill as many Ukrainian civilians as they can. None the less, it is true that those armies, navies and forces are attacking us, and we need to be ready to face them. I would like to look at how this Bill provides a response to that.”
“One warned us that our allies may no longer be there for us, the second alerted us to the fact that the comfort is over, and the third was absolutely clear that our contributions must rise. That is where we come to this Bill and these commitments. I appreciate what the Secretary of State has said, and what my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) has countered with. I do not wish to criticise the Secretary of State for the fact that the defence budget has increased—I recognise that and welcome it—but it is not enough to increase it to the level we would like. It is necessary to increase it to the level that we need, because that is one element of the Budget that we do not choose. It is chosen for us by the threats we face: it is chosen for us by the posture of the Russian and Chinese forces we face.”
“The Germans have answered that by raising €100 billion, as the Secretary of State knows. We are not in a position to raise money in the same way that Germany does, because our debt has been higher, but the truth is that we are still facing the same threats as Germany—we are just facing them in a different way. We are facing them in the North sea and the Baltic. We are facing them in the Irish sea and the Atlantic, where we see Russian and Chinese vessels scraping our cables and destroying our communications, or trying to do so. We see the ways in which they are attacking our energy infrastructure. They are trying to hit our hospitals through cyber, and to undermine the security of this state in many different ways. Those three speeches should set the context for this debate.”
“There were two other speeches, however, that were rather important and, in a way, much more fundamental to the way that we should see Britain and our armed forces. The first was by the Prime Minister of Canada, who set out a very clear warning to us all that the comfort that we had got used to, and the arrangements in which we had luxuriated, are no longer valid for this era. We can talk about spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, and we can talk about spending 3% after the next election, but these are luxury beliefs. They are not realistic and do not account for a changed world. The third speech, which in many ways was the most challenging, was from the Chancellor of Germany, who correctly pointed out that Europe—he included us in that—has simply not been prepared for the challenges that we face.”
“I absolutely will. I am very grateful for the fact that those soldiers are remembered in Bournemouth, just as they should be remembered across the country. I crave a personal indulgence and remember Tim Robertson from the Australian special air forces regiment, whom I fought alongside in Iraq. Sadly, he was killed a couple of years ago while fighting fires in northern Queensland. Many veterans serve in many distinguished ways after they leave the service—some even on the Government Front Bench. We are at a moment when the world has changed. Many of us have just been watching the events in Davos, and three speeches really stood out. The first—the obvious one—is the one that the President of the United States gave, which set out a vision that led many of us to question where this world is going.”
“Will he agree that this is how real government is done—by doing the hard work over many years to find the real answers that apply, and not simply by shouting at others?”
“The shadow Minister will remember that one of the first things I did on leaving the Army in 2013 was to write a policy paper for Policy Exchange titled “The Fog of Law” on lawfare—that legal intervention on the battlefield that causes confusion and leads so many down a terrible path, of which Northern Ireland is one example, although there are many others. He will remember that our party has been on this for years, trying to clear the obstacles that have been created by various different constructs such as the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European convention on human rights. I am sure he will now be one of the champions, along with the Leader of the Opposition, on finding a proper solution to answer that.”
“I wonder whether the Secretary of State could update the House on the plans to connect Tonbridge to Gatwick through the rail network. As she knows, there have traditionally been links in that direction and it requires only a very minor change to the timetable to make it work. If she wanted, she could even connect it to the rest of the kingdom of Kent at the same time.”
“Surely the real story coming out today and over the past few days is the revelation—one we should all have known—that this country has opted out of protecting the international rules-based system. We have not significantly invested in defence, and even the commitment the Foreign Secretary speaks of does not keep pace with defence inflation. As the Prime Minister revealed on Sunday, he has not even spoken to the American President. Does this not reveal the simple truth that the Americans did this without us because they do not give a damn what this House thinks?”
“First, I welcome the Minister’s statement. I certainly agree with him on the strikes in Syria, and with the view that he has taken towards the Houthis in Yemen, who have murdered so many people over recent years. May I ask him about a separate aspect of the Iranian situation? We see extraordinarily courageous protestors on streets across Iran, in various cities and towns. We also see Russian cargo aircraft landing in Tehran, presumably carrying weapons and ammunition. We hear reports of large amounts of gold leaving Iran. Could he update the House on any of those reports, which suggest that the regime is preparing for life after the fall?”
“The reality is that we are not considered serious. We complain, understandably, that we are not part of President Trump’s talks, but we are not willing to put in the money or put a stake in the ground to show that we are a capable and equal player. We see what Poland is doing and what the Baltic states are doing, and we are not doing it ourselves. Until we are willing to do it ourselves, I am afraid that the Minister, and all of us here, are not being serious. We are not truly standing with Ukraine, we are not truly defending the British people, and I am afraid that the promises will come to naught.”
“May I start by paying tribute and offering thanks to all those on the frontlines in our uniform, guarding our seas, guarding our land and guarding our air? They will be on duty for the next fortnight, when many of us will be celebrating, and will not have the chance to be with their families. May I raise a point that I do not really want to raise, but which I am afraid is fundamentally true? The promises of defence spending are actually on the never-never—they are for after the next election. The reality, as the Minister knows very well, is that the uplift he has spoken about is actually a reallocation of money that was allocated to Ukraine and is still allocated to Ukraine. It was coming out of one budget and it is now under the defence budget. That is Treasury chicanery, not a defence uplift.”
“What provision is he putting in place to ensure that should those children wish to bring legal action against the Department, against those who took these decisions at a time when they were not able to give any form of informed consent, they will be able to have redress and their day in court?”
“I welcome the care with which the right hon. Member has approached much of this, and I appreciate that he has before him some very difficult decisions, especially because of the way the report was written. But I must come back to the simple truth that these are very young children, and decisions will be made for them—I appreciate by parents, taking that element of consent—that are genuinely irreversible. Whatever happens, we will see eight, nine, 10-year-olds grow up to be 18, 20, 25-year-olds—at least we hope we will—who have effectively been experimented on. Some of those children will resent greatly not just the system and their parents, but those who allowed this to happen, and here I identify the Department for Health and Social Care, not necessarily the Secretary of State himself.”
“Will the Foreign Secretary forgive me—I recognise that she been in the role for only a matter of months—when I say that what we are hearing, again, is the bureaucratisation of process and not the leadership that politics is supposed to offer? When we do not hear that decisions about, for instance, the embassy or the visit are potentially on the line, Beijing hears that it can just continue as normal. Let us not pretend that a fundamentally strategic decision such as the siting of an embassy is the mere duty of a bureaucrat. It is not. It is the role of a Government to offer leadership and direction, and I am afraid that at the moment this Government are offering none.”
“Let me start by saying that I greatly welcome the Foreign Secretary’s words about the horrific antisemitic murders in Australia. To those who died, let us all just say, “May their memories be a blessing.” When we talk about Hong Kong and when we talk about Jimmy Lai, we should remember that the attack on Jimmy Lai—the arrest of Jimmy Lai—is not just a punishment against his family or against him, but part of the repression from the Chinese state. It is being used deliberately to threaten and intimidate Hongkongers here in the United Kingdom. When we talk about standing up for Jimmy Lai, we are actually talking about standing up for ourselves. We are talking about defending our own freedoms and defending the liberties that British people have the right to expect, both at home and abroad.”
“I am not at all surprised that the Minister is having a little bit of a problem with the other place—after all, she is not the first Minister to have been confused as to what was in a manifesto and what was not; the Prime Minister seems to have been confused about the assisted suicide Bill. May I raise a question about the cap? The problem that many businesses will have is with insurance. Most businesses take some form of insurance for unfair dismissal. Insurance companies work on the basis that they have an understandable level of risk that they are underwriting. If they do not know what that risk is, they will not underwrite it. The challenge here is that by removing the cap, the Minister is changing the level of maximum risk and therefore making it much harder for insurance companies to underwrite it.”
“As my hon. Friend will remember, it was wonderful to see the King and the President of the United States sit down at Windsor recently. What was particularly striking was that, on the British side, only the King had run a business—he ran the Duchy of Cornwall. Nobody else had run a business. On the American side, everybody had run a business. Is that not quite a stark contrast?”
“The problem is not that those on the Labour side of the House are bad people or good people—as we all know, there are bad and good people on both sides—but that, in reality, someone with experience of a business that has only ever had an HR department, or only ever been large enough to look at different in-year cost savings in such a sense, is not the same as someone trying to pay for one person, two people or three people. Actually, 80% of businesses in this country have fewer than 10 employees, and we are talking about them.”
“There is a fundamental misunderstanding between the Conservative Members and Labour Members. Labour Members seem to believe that the Government create jobs, wealth and everything, but we recognise that individuals get up in the morning to group together into what we call companies, and they come up with ideas, stretch themselves and try different ideas. Some of them succeed and some of them fail, but relieving the pressure on them is not somehow letting them get away with something, but enabling them to express the freedom of the ideas they have. A second fundamental misunderstanding is that this is not about who has had job experience and who has not; it is who has had an HR department and who has not.”
“The Minister is a charming and, no doubt, soon to be very well-haircutted gentleman. The point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) was making—I am afraid this reinforces it—is that such a choice was clearly not in the Government’s plans, either. Otherwise, they would not have brought forward the welfare changes they planned in July, but have since been bounced out of by their own Back Benchers. It clearly was not their plan either, and that is why we are in this position.”
“I very much welcome the statement that the Chancellor has just made. Can I take that as an assurance that she will speak to her right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary and make sure that rail fares in Tonbridge do not increase when a second peak-time service is introduced when contactless is rolled out as far as Tonbridge? That, of course, would be a sleight of hand, and she would never want to do that.”
“I welcome the ambition for greater attainment, but does the Minister agree that cancelling the large programme uplift funding for schools offering the international baccalaureate, as the Government have recently done, has left year 11 students, particularly at schools like Tonbridge grammar school, which I have the privilege to represent, somewhat lost and therefore struggling to achieve the attainment of which she speaks?”
“I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman using the figure of £70 billion, and I agree with him. He knows that £30 billion of that results from the rise in the triple lock, so does he agree that the triple lock is simply not affordable?”
“Among the most tragic bits of this Budget is the £7.5 billion extra tax on the young people who have got themselves a university degree—that is hidden nicely and quietly in the OBR report—but there are also the 1 million young people who will not end up in work. Let us just think about that. It is 1 million young people who will not end up in work for another year, or another year after that. Those 1 million young people, in a few years’ time, will not have a choice, because businesses will not hire them, and the world will not be one that they are adapted to. Worse than that, they will have become, quite literally, slaves of the state, waiting for the man or woman in Whitehall to decide what they get each month and year. They will have become totally dependent. It is a crime to leave our fellow citizens dependent on the state.”
“It is somewhat depressing to speak after this Budget, which has basically picked the pocket of anybody who is trying to earn any money in this country. It has sent a very clear message to everybody in our country—a message that many people are hearing—which is, “This Government are not on your side. This Government will do everything they can to keep you where you are. They will encourage you to leave the country, rather than invest in it.” We can see that in the numbers. There is £26 billion in extra taxes, and 800,000 people are paying more. This is a welfare Budget, not a work Budget. Sadly, though, the issue is not just those bald figures; it is what they will do to so many citizens in our country.”
“It has left 60% of our savings in bonds, and only about 40% in equities, which contrasts remarkably with Australia, Canada and the United States, which have 20% in bonds and 80% in equities.”
“Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, said that there was investment in start-ups. Well, I wish there was, but all the decisions made by this Government have convinced anybody with any entrepreneurial spirit to go either to Abu Dhabi, where they are filming some new version of “Auf Wiedersehen, Pet” with British workers who have fled this country, or to the United States, which at least has the capital to invest in start-ups. All we see is a continuation of the Blair-Brown model of increasing nationalisation of savings—that creeping control that we see spreading over pensions and the insurance market.”
“Forgive me; I am going to make a little progress. That is not all of it. This Budget looked hard at fixing the very real political problems faced by the Chancellor and the Prime Minister today, admittedly, but it also looked hard at how they can simply inflate the balloon today; there was nothing about tomorrow. We can see that in the way that farmers are being taxed; it is deliberately punishing investment. We can see it in the investment figures; despite the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) claiming that there has been investment in this country, the investment figures in the UK per capita show a 4% increase. Okay, that is an increase, but the figure is 22% in Canada and 79% in the United States. This is not real growth or serious investment. Sadly, we see the knock-on effects. The right hon.”
“I will tell the hon. Member the honest truth: Liz Truss was wrong, and I made a mistake. That is the reality; that is what happened. But here is the difference: it is true that what she did put pressure on the economy, but this Chancellor has increased debt to the highest-ever levels and the cost of borrowing to the highest in the G7.”