Kit Malthouse
MP for North West Hampshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“We have heard time and time again that the situation that thousands of our constituents live with every single day is so horrific and appalling that even the best palliative care cannot alleviate their pain. I urge colleagues to consider what their vote may mean today.”
“I will not. Some of those Members had just a few months before been specifically rejected by the electorate and replaced in this House by others, and I am afraid that they cannot be trusted not to do the same thing again. I grant my right hon.”
“The Health and Social Care Committee of the House of Lords found that in territories that have assisted dying, palliative care generally improves, because people become less afraid of talking about death.”
“One of the most affecting people I have met over the last 11 years of campaigning on this issue is Warwick Jackson, who came to our party conference a couple of years ago. Warwick’s wife, Ann, was diagnosed with terminal peritoneal cancer. She basically knew that she was going to die a slow, suffocating death at the end.”
“I respect my right hon. and learned Friend’s expertise in this matter, but, as he has already heard on the Floor of the House, it is perfectly possible for this House to suggest amendments, negotiate them with the promoters of the Bill, place them against the legislation in the House of Lords and then have them come back to this House for…”
“As co-sponsor of the Bill once again, I am acutely conscious that there is more at stake today than merely the fate of those who are facing their end, because the conduct of the other place means that our democracy is also on trial today.”
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“As I am sure you, Mr Speaker, and the Leader of the House know, the number of children who have been killed in the war on Gaza now runs into the many thousands. Similar numbers of children have been mutilated and injured, and a large number of them require specialist medical treatment. As I hope she knows, countries across the west have responded by bringing those children who cannot get the treatment that they need in Gaza to their country for treatment. Shamefully, the UK has not done so, admitting only two children so far. The Home Secretary has inexplicably refused many applications to come here, despite the fact that Project Pure Hope has raised all the money required for the children’s transport, treatment and maintenance.”
“I want to add to the hon. Gentleman’s list something that the Government could do. In the main Chamber we are busy proscribing two Russian supremacist organisations. Does he think it would be appropriate for the Government to proscribe settler organisations who, as President Biden said, are perpetrating terrorism upon a defenceless Palestinian people?”
“That, again, is not something we would normally tolerate, and it is a further development of the power.”
“The Minister keeps referring to a “loophole”. In fact, it has been an important principle of British justice that successful appeal equals vindication. This Bill is trying to remove that presumption. That is not a loophole; it is a basic judicial right on which we all rely.”
“Gentleman, but this is a case in which we should be even more reliant on due process, rather than trying to legislate judges out of the room, as we are trying to today.”
“The Minister keeps referring to a loophole in justice. I do not understand why he cannot see that “innocent until proven guilty” should apply in these cases, as in any other. The idea that my winning an appeal would not automatically mean I was innocent, as it does in every other case, seems a breach of a fundamental tenet. He is also not correct to say that the power is used sparingly. Since 2010, dozens of people have been denied citizenship on the say-so of the Home Secretary, despite there being nothing proven in court. That is what is different about these cases. This is effectively something that is done in secret, behind closed doors, without the facts necessarily being proven in any way. I have a lot of respect for the hon.”
“First, the Minister’s sense is that the Supreme Court has created a loophole; my view is that it has corrected an anomaly. It has long been a tenet of the protections with which the judicial process provides me as an individual that an appeal equals vindication and that it is for my accuser to appeal, on the basis that I remain innocent, even prior to the first action that is taken against me. This regime will reverse that. The second alarming point is that the legislation is retrospective. As the hon. Member for Makerfield (Josh Simons) asked, there may be a number of cases going through the courts for which this law will have a highly prejudicial impact. The Government are effectively moving the goalposts mid-litigation to get what they want.”
“As I hope the Minister knows, I have devoted much of my adult life to keeping individuals, neighbourhoods, towns, cities and indeed the entire country safe, but I have to confess that I have never been entirely comfortable with the deprivation of citizenship regime. Unfortunately, his Bill, which he is trying to pass off as an innocuous correction, has sparked that sense of unease. The reason I am uneasy is that, although the objectives that the Minister proposes are laudable, I believe that the cost to our sense of self and the corrosiveness to our sense of citizenship and to the judicial process are perhaps too high. I will not detain the House for too long, but I want to raise three points. We have covered them to a certain extent, but they are worth reiterating.”
“The Minister is quite right—not that I ever exercised those powers. But as I said, in my view the Supreme Court has corrected an anomaly that the previous Government took advantage of. Yes, absolutely, hands up, they did—I am not saying that is correct. He is proposing that in the face of a Supreme Court decision that he does not like, he will change the law to say that the court was in effect wrong and that the fundamental right on which the Supreme Court has decided—we should not forget that the courts basically decide our rights within the legal framework—is somehow not to be tolerated.”
“My right hon. Friend is exactly right. However, it does mean that the state can render someone stateless by inaction, because it can take many years for cases to work their way through the courts. It is also, as I said, highly prejudicial, because it means that for the duration of the legal action that person will not be able to come to the UK and therefore will have to litigate from outside our borders.”
“Dozens and dozens of people have been excluded, and we have to be honest about why. Sometimes it has been for safety, but sometimes, on balance, it has been to please the papers—because it looks good and plays well. We never ask ourselves about the cost of that to our sense of cohesion. The hon. Member for Makerfield gave a lyrical and poetic view of citizenship, but if a large proportion of our fellow citizens believe that they have a second class of that citizenship—if some can say, “I am undeniably and unchallengeably a citizen, but you are not, so watch yourself”—what does that do to society?”
“I do not know whether it applies to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Perhaps it is making other hon. Members think about whether it applies to them. While the Minister has been clear that we should trust him and has given us lots of undertakings, we do not make the law on the basis of a Minister we like, trust and respect; we make it on the basis that the law might fall into the hands of somebody we are not that keen on and who may be more cavalier with the powers bestowed upon them. As the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart), who spoke for the Liberal Democrats, said, we are a country that uses this power disproportionately more than any other western country. We have been free in our use of it, despite the fact that Minister after Minister has stood in the House and said, “We use it sparingly.” We do not.”
“It is an unconditional right for me as a freeborn Englishman of two English parents going back I do not know how many years. I have no claim on citizenship anywhere else. It is my absolute, undeniable, unequivocal right to have citizenship in this country, and it cannot be removed from me by any means whatsoever. That is not true of my children. I am married to a Canadian citizen, so they have a claim on Canadian citizenship. If the Home Secretary so decides, they could have their citizenship removed. That is also true of every Jewish citizen of the United Kingdom, who has a right to citizenship in Israel. There will be millions of British people of south Asian origin who feel that they have a second-class citizenship. This law applies only to certain of our citizens. It does not apply to me.”
“The Government are attempting to revert to the erroneous situation as determined by the Supreme Court. In my view, they are moving the goalposts on an individual who frankly seems to have won a case fair and square in our highest court in the land. Finally, I want to raise a more fundamental issue about this entire process. Call me an old romantic, but my view is that once you are a citizen, you are a citizen. Once you are in, you are in. Unfortunately, the development of this power over the last however many years since the 1981 Act, which brought it in, has created two classes of citizens in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross), who spoke for the Opposition—she is no longer in her place—said, “citizenship is a privilege, not an unconditional right.” That is not true.”
“As I am sure my right hon. Friend knows, there are various layers of appeal that can be taken, right up to the Supreme Court. The Bill says that, throughout that period, as long as the Government continue to pursue appeals, the person remains deprived of their citizenship, rather than what the Supreme Court is saying, which is that if the person wins any one of those appeals, they immediately become in effect innocent, and their citizenship is restored as if it was never removed in the first place. That is in the same way as if, were I accused of a crime and found innocent and the prosecutor decided to appeal my conviction, I would remain innocent until that appeal was heard and decided against me. If it were appealed beyond that, I would remain innocent then still.”
“The hon. Lady makes the point powerfully. I do not know, but she does. This legislation leaves people from minority backgrounds, second or third-generation immigrants, and those like my children who are of two parents of different nationalities, with a lingering sense of doubt about how secure they are in this nation.”
“The Government will have to seek permission to appeal in all circumstances; I ask the Minister to consider whether they should have to seek also permission to maintain the condition of a deprivation of citizenship, as part of that permission to appeal.”
“Civis Romanus sum. It should mean something. It is not the keys to the executive lavatory, to be removed when you lose the privilege and rights of your position; it is something that you acquire that is fundamentally in you once you are in the club, and we should be wary of the wider impact if we decide to remove it. I have one final suggestion for the Minister. I realise that I am in a minority, and the House is not going to comply; he is going to get his legislation. However, I ask him to think carefully about the value of the judiciary in this process. Would it be possible to amend the process such that, when an appeal is won by an individual and the Government wish to continue to deprive that person of citizenship, the permission of the judge should be sought for that, pending a further appeal?”
“The United States is seeing legal challenge under its constitution on precisely those grounds of what it means to be a citizen. I do not want to detain the House for much longer, but we need to think carefully about the impact that this regime has beyond the people whom it targets. We may say of cases like Shamima Begum that what she did was completely appalling and she deserves to be punished. Obviously, the decision was taken to revoke her citizenship. I am not sure whether that was the right thing to do. I do think she needs to be punished. In many ways, I would rather she had been brought to this country, and punished and jailed here. She is nobody else’s problem but ours. As I say, by promoting this regime I think we undermine the value of what it means to be a British citizen because, once acquired, citizenship should be a right.”
“I understand the hon. Member’s point, but I am afraid that I am not interested in comparisons with the United States. I would hold us to a higher bar. We are a more ancient country that should have, as he rightly pointed out, a better developed sense of how we build a cohesive society. I would challenge whether the United States can be held up as a paragon of virtue on societal cohesion or whether actually it is a divided country, with part of that division coming from a sense that there are first, second and maybe even third-class citizens there. At the moment, it is going through a period of challenge as to what it means to be a United States citizen. We have seen litigation under—it has slipped from my mind. It starts, “We the people”. [Hon. Members: “The constitution.”] That is the word—forgive me; a senior moment.”
“I can imagine that situation, but I have been an enthusiastic supporter of lots of powers to protect the public from people from whom the Minister cannot remove citizenship. For example, terrorism prevention and investigation measures, or TPIMs—previously control orders—were specifically designed to put restrictions on individuals who presented a danger to the country but from whom the Government could not remove citizenship. If those measures are good enough for those people, why are they not good enough for the people on whom the Minister is conferring second-class citizenship? He must see that this legislation applies only to certain of our citizens, and that they are not the only ones who present a danger to this country.”
“Since the second world war, our national security has been based broadly on three pillars: our physical defences, which the Prime Minister mentioned in his statement; the alliances that we have built, which he also mentioned; and the international rules-based order, which he did not mention. What discussion did he have at either summit about the importance of international law, and the undermining of its credibility through the inconsistent way that it has been applied in the conflicts in Ukraine and in Gaza? In particular, did he try to persuade President Trump to lift the United States sanctions on the International Criminal Court?”
“One of the 180 events that the Minister mentioned will be Armed Forces Day in Andover, which I will attend on Saturday. As the Minister knows, Andover is home to the Army’s land forces headquarters. Will he reflect on the importance of the work of celebrating the armed forces in the communities that physically embrace their headquarters, camps and residences, to sustain that connection between the non-uniformed civilian population and those who protect them on a daily basis?”
“Away from the headlines, as the Foreign Secretary said, hundreds of Gazans have been losing their lives. Let us be clear about what is happening. As tens of thousands of people walk miles daily to beg for food from American mercenaries, they are being shot at random in the street. I think we in this House have moved beyond asking the Foreign Secretary actually to lift a finger and beyond mouthing the words do anything about this, but I have a wider question. Does he envisage the UK playing any part in some sort of consequence in the future for these outright murders?”
“Unless these individuals can see a return on that capital, they will not invest. I urge him, as we move towards a Budget in November, to work with the Chancellor of the Exchequer to increase entrepreneurs’ relief, cut capital gains tax, and reduce the taxation on dividends so investors can see a return on their risk.”
“I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. This is the sixth industrial strategy announced from that Dispatch Box since “New Industry, New Jobs” by Gordon Brown in 2009. While they have all been filled with a box of chocolates selected by the Secretary of State, with his or her preference often underpinned by a huge subsidy, not a single one of them has made any significant difference to the UK’s growth rate, and that is because they all miss a particular piece of the jigsaw. I urge the Secretary of State to recognise that the Government can build as many roads and bridges as they want, train as many young people as they like, pump as much money into the British Business Bank as they want, but unless they can find individuals to take a risk with their own capital, they will not get any investment.”
“We do not honour life by prolonging suffering. We honour life by giving it meaning and power. The one thing that dying people ask for in their agonising final moments is control over the disease that is destroying them. The status quo, my friends, is completely unacceptable. Whatever you think of the Bill, it is indisputable that it is an improvement on what we have now, and I urge you to support it.”
“To those who talk about misdiagnosis, I say that the Bill requires two independent doctors, clear clinical criteria and a final check at the point of delivery. Even then, the person must still be mentally competent and willing at every step. The answer can be no, but at the last—at last—there will be the possibility of a choice. To those who ask, often movingly, what if the patient lives longer than expected, I would say, “Good—they live.” This law does not force a single death. It simply allows a dying person to decide when enough is enough. Madam Deputy Speaker, I will finish with this. I have sat with dying friends. I have watched the slow unwinding of bodies that once held vigour, humour and pride. I have seen families trying to honour the unspoken wishes of someone too far gone to speak. Finally, I will say this.”
“To ensure the right expertise, legal oversight and continuous consent checks are in place from beginning to end. This is how Parliament should legislate: carefully, collaboratively and with humility in the face of complexity. To those who worry about coercion, I would say that the greatest risk of coercion is under the status quo. Today there are no checks, no panels, no oversight. We do not know who is choosing freely because there is no system to ask and no conduct to examine. We have heard the argument about a slippery slope, and I would say this. This law is very tightly drawn. There is no constitutional pathway here for expansion by stealth. Any change would require this House—us—to decide again. It cannot drift. It cannot slide. It is anchored in law and in the authority of this place.”
“We see loving spouses prosecuted for holding the hand of someone they have loved for 50 years. We see lonely suicides in quiet suburban bedrooms: lives ended not because of terminal illness, but because of a lack of legal options. The Bill brings order where there is confusion; it brings safeguards where there is silence; and it replaces secrecy with structure and fear with honesty. Notwithstanding the claims made today and elsewhere, it has been built in the right way. This House has taken its duties seriously, in all its forms of legislation. The Bill has gone through detailed scrutiny in Committee and concerns about coercion, training, eligibility and oversight have been met head on and addressed through carefully considered amendments. The panel model that we have now is shaped by those concerns.”
“We are here today to ask a simple question: in essence, is the law, in those final, often agonising moments, to be a barrier? Are we to be a barrier, or are we here to be a companion, to assist those people to fulfil their dying wishes? I believe in autonomy—I believe in dignity—but, more than that, I believe in compassion governed by care, not chaos. That is what the system lacks. Right now, friends, as the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) said, we live with the cruel illusion that doing nothing is neutral. It is not. Those who have objected to the Bill are conspicuous in not saying that they accept the status quo for however long the Bill may take to reappear if it fails. We have heard, again and again, stories of people forced to travel abroad to die in lonely circumstances.”
“Those of us who have come here today to support the Bill do not speak lightly of life and death, as some have accused us: we come here to recognise that this House has a responsibility to draw lines where there are none. Many of us have campaigned for many years, as the Mother of the House, the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), said, to give voice to dying people—not because they want to be rescued, but because time and again they are begging us for mercy. It is worth reiterating that this Bill is about not choosing death but how to face death when it is already at the door. It is about that final chapter of life—that short chapter. As many of our constituents have told us time and again, it is a chapter that they write in pain, fear and desperation.”
“claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36). Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put. Question agreed to. Question put accordingly, That the Bill be now read the Third time.”
“All our thoughts are of course with the British citizens caught up in this horrible and alarming exchange of ordnance. The Foreign Secretary said he was keeping his eye on Gaza, but I am not quite sure what that means. It is certainly the case that the eye of the world has been drawn to the footage that has emerged as the missiles have flown—footage of young children shot and bleeding out their lives in the sands of Gaza. As he said, 50 people were hospitalised over the weekend or shot dead while begging for food. Just this morning, 38 people were killed while queuing for food or attempting to obtain food from the new American-sponsored distribution system. What comfort should all the bereaved families in Gaza take from the fact that he is keeping his eye on this situation?”
“(3) Regulations under this section may make provision that could be made by an Act of Parliament, but may not amend this Act or the Suicide Act 1961.” —(Paul Waugh.) This amendment would limit the exceptions that can be created to the advertising ban set out in NC14 and also provides that regulations cannot amend the Suicide Act 1961, which includes the offence of assisting and encouraging suicide. Question put, That the amendment be made.”
“Amendment proposed to new clause 14: (b), in subsection (2), leave out from “exceptions” to the end of subsection (3) and insert— “( ) for the following— communication made in reply to a particular request by an individual for information about a voluntary assisted dying service; (b) communication which is— (i) intended for health professionals or providers of voluntary assisted dying services, and (ii) made in a manner and form unlikely to be seen by potential service users.”
“(4) But regulations under this section— (a) may not amend this Act, and (b) must provide that any offence created by the regulations is punishable with a fine. (5) In this section “voluntary assisted dying service” means— (a) any service for or in connection with the provision of assistance to a person to end their own life in accordance with this Act, or (b) any other service provided for the purposes of any of sections 5 to 27.”— (Kim Leadbeater.) This clause imposes a duty to make regulations prohibiting advertisements to promote services relating to voluntary assisted dying under the Bill. Brought up, and read the First and Second time.”
“claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36). Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put. Question put and agreed to. New clause 13 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill. New Clause 14 Prohibition on Advertising “(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations make provision prohibiting— (a) the publication, printing, distribution or designing (anywhere) of advertisements whose purpose or effect is to promote a voluntary assisted dying service; (b) causing the publication, printing, distribution or designing of such advertisements. (2) The regulations may contain exceptions (for example, for the provision of certain information to users or providers of services). (3) Regulations under this section may make any provision that could be made by an Act of Parliament.”
“The undertaking given then by the Government was that MPs would exercise their judgment about the proportionality of these organisations beyond the police, counter-terrorism and normal enforcement organisations that were really the primary targets of the legislation.”
“To me it feels a little low that a request so intrusive and, in certain circumstances, speculative could be authorised by a no doubt hard-working and dedicated duty manager of an ambulance control room, rather than somebody who we might imagine was part of a senior management team of an organisation who is able to take a strategic view about whether a request was proportionate. As I say, I understand the need for the legislation. It was introduced in 2016 in my first year in the House; I was not the Minister at the time, but obviously I voted for it. It seemed to be the right kind of construct, but we always knew the day would come when we expanded it.”
“On authorisation levels, the Minister said that there is no requirement because the organisations are all going for authorisation direct from the IPC, but in the regulations, in the column that is amended in the legislation, it gives authorisations at particular levels. For example, it states that in the East Midlands ambulance service, a duty manager of an ambulance control room is able to authorise a request. In the Department for Business and Trade, “so far as relating to the Insolvency Service” it specifies: “Grade 7 in the Investigation and Enforcement Services Directorate”. Will the Minister explain why he is happy with that level of internal organisation?”
“Are there real examples that Members can look at and say, for example, “Okay, we understand that East Midlands needs it because it is particularly prone to fraud in which this kind of data is useful for prevention and detection, but the other ambulance services aren’t”? Similarly, for the other organisations, I can see why location data would matter for DVSA, but I have never heard of the integrated corporate services counter fraud expert services team. I do not know what it does; I would love to know. It would be great if either now or afterwards we could get some information on what it feels like in the real world so Members can make a proportionate judgment, albeit after the fact.”
“I do not quite see it myself. I might be missing something—I am not an expert in intellectual property—but it would be helpful to see the use case that I presume it made to the commissioner for the authorisation. Has that been published? The guidance states that there has been a consultation with the commissioner. I presume that the consultation has been published, although I have not been able to find it. If it has, does it contain information about how the commissioner tested the use cases? Has the commissioner tested the proportionality—that is what we are making a judgment on here—of the case made by each organisation?”
“One would have thought that in normal circumstances there would be some separate authorisation system that was then assessed to be adequate by the commissioner. That conflict causes me some problems, and I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on it. My second question is about the use case, which was raised by both the hon. Member for South West Devon and the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam. It seems odd that some ambulance services are saying, “We don’t actually need this,” but others are saying that they do. What is special about the East Midlands ambulance service that means it needs to retain this power? It would be interesting to understand the use cases for all these organisations. For example, why is location and time data for telephone communications useful to the Intellectual Property Office?”
“As Members of Parliament, whose job it is to balance the rights of the public against the Government’s ability to intrude on them, we need to think carefully about whether what we are doing today is proportionate. My first question, which troubled me when I was at the Home Office, is about the internal conflict for the commissioner. The way that the Act is drawn, the commissioner both authorises and supervises. Although the commissioner is responsible to Parliament and produces reports to it, I am not entirely sure that the commissioner should effectively be both judge and jury on whether an organisation should have authorisation and therefore, presumably, whether its internal structures for controlling and managing the data are satisfactory.”
“It is a great pleasure to appear before you for the first time, Dr Murrison. I do not want to detain the Committee too long, but I have a couple of questions. Obviously, I am familiar with this legislation, having served at the Home Office. We should be under no illusion: the powers that we are extending today are actually very intrusive. While the Minister is absolutely right, for example, that there is not a single murder in this country that is not solved without this kind of data, the extension of these powers to the organisations named in the regulations is broadly what was predicted by critics of the Investigatory Powers Bill when it was introduced in 2016. Slowly but surely, they said, everybody would grab these powers just in case they needed them.”
“I guess what we are asking is why these four did not respond. Was there communication with them to say, “We haven’t heard from you. Should you have responded? Have you missed it? Is it in the pile?” Six have made the case that they have never used the powers. Four have not responded—I would guess they have not used the powers either but just did not respond. How far did the investigation go? From our point of view, it would be interesting to understand why Birmingham objected. What is the real-life case for which an ambulance service needs this data? Make it live for us, Minister. Give us a story that we can tell our constituents.”
“Let’s see if we can persuade the Minister whether, once he has put the Intellectual Property Office in, we can be in as well.””
“I guess the issue is where the line is between criminality, violence, terrorism or serious and organised crime, and more commercial matters. Take the Driving and Vehicle Standards Agency: it may be a crime under DVSA regulations to do x, y or z, but the British public would not put that up there with terrorism. That is the proportionality that we are asking about: whether we are straying too far. The Government obviously do not think so, which is why they have put the regulations forward, but I ask the Minister whether he has satisfied himself about the point I am making. I am sorry to make this slightly long intervention, but my prediction is that we will be here again in 12 months’ time. Suddenly all sorts of organisations will be saying, “D’you know what? It might be useful to have a bit of a fishing trip—we just don’t know.”
“I do not want to cast any aspersions on Brian Leveson, whom I know well—not least because he was educated at the same school as I was; obviously, a little before. The challenge is about proportionality. We all acknowledge the importance of such evidence if we are dealing with serious criminality, violence or terrorism—as I said, 100% of murders are solved with the use of this data—but I guess my concern starts when the powers stray into matters that are primarily commercial, for example. The Intellectual Property Office deals essentially with commercial matters—disputes about patents and intellectual property, and possible fraud thereabouts. It is unlikely that anybody will go to prison as a result of the operation of the Intellectual Property Office, although they might pay a big fine or compensation to somebody.”