Sir Julian Lewis
MP for New Forest East · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I will share with the House one particular case that is representative of many. My constituent, Mrs Gillian Pothecary, lost her husband almost a year ago. She wrote to me in July about her valiant but so far unavailing quest to obtain a civil service widow’s pension.”
“She said: “Mrs Pothecary’s…case falls under the commitment to be fully resolved by early September at the absolute latest. Capita has assured me that her case is on their escalation log and has been flagged for priority handling.” I rang up Gill just before coming into this debate and—you’ve guessed it, Dame Siobhain—she has not yet recei…”
“As the Minister seems to have run out of supportive Back Benchers, I shall endeavour to ask him a helpful and easy question. Accepting that it will be some years, to put it mildly, before we can eliminate our dependency on oil and gas, does he accept in principle that we are more secure if we exploit our own domestic oil and gas resources…”
“I warmly endorse almost everything the Secretary of State has said today, and I genuinely congratulate him on his appointment. In my first speech in this House almost 30 years ago, I promised to support Labour Governments as long as they supported the nuclear deterrent, the conventional armed forces and NATO.”
“On Monday, just as campaigners from the New Forest and Waterside were handing into Downing Street a 32,000-signature petition against the appalling and unfair outcome of local government reorganisation affecting our area, the welcome announcement was made by the Government that the local government reform proposals for Hampshire and three…”
“We are now in a situation that is worse than that at the height of the cold war, so the comparison we have to make is between what we are spending now and what we spent during the cold war, which was, in modern calculating methods, between 4.5% and 5.1% on defence. So let us not talk about increases to 2.7%.”
The complete record
Every one of 3,750 lines we hold for Sir Julian Lewis, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 1 of 75.
“Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon)—now mercifully back in action—had originally promised that boundary changes would be rare exceptions, and that particularly strong reasons would have to be put forward in justification?”
“Does the Secretary of State accept that there is an intimate link between local government reform and the successful carrying-out of major house building programmes? One of the reasons I warmly welcome her return to office is the failure of her predecessor, the right hon. Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed), either to confirm or deny on 16 July the report in The Times on 18 June that senior civil servants and lawyers in three separate Departments had been overruled when they advised him not to make local government reorganisation decisions merely at the behest of Labour-led councils. Will the Secretary of State undertake to look at this issue again, particularly in the light of the number of boundary changes involved, and given that her colleague, the hon.”
“Normally when functions and roles are devolved from London to another area, we see a diminution in the capital and an increase in the area concerned. There is an obvious danger of duplication by having a No. 10 North and a No. 10 South, so will the First Secretary, whom I congratulate on her appointment, be transparent about this and agree that the public should be able to see how many people are working permanently in No. 10 North, how many are working permanently in No. 10 South, and how many are going back and forth between the two?”
“Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon) promised us that there would be no unnecessary fragmentation or boundary changes without strong reason for them, yet my constituency is being torn apart, with the Waterside, which has looked towards the New Forest for centuries, being taken over by Southampton. The same is happening elsewhere. That was not in his party’s manifesto. It is a good opportunity for the Prime Minister to show that he means what he says about consensus.”
“As someone who was politically active in the Thatcher decade, may I gently remind the Prime Minister that it was the period that she did so well in because the Labour party was in a terrible state? For example, it embraced unilateral nuclear disarmament at the height of the second cold war—mercifully, a position that it has long left behind. I welcome what the Prime Minister said about wishing to work consensually and across party lines. In that spirit, will he look again at the shameless gerrymandering around the local government reorganisation? At the beginning of the process, the hon.”
“I know the Government will be doing their best to protect potential future victims of early release offenders, particularly those who were in jail for domestic abuse or other fixated behaviour, but it is not good enough simply to try to improve tagging measures; what one has to do is to improve the ability of potential victims to summon help if attacked again. Can the Justice Secretary confirm that the Government will make a unified representation of how such potential future victims can protect themselves—for example, by emergency alarms being fitted as a matter of routine?”
“My constituent Sue Carter lost her son Ryan, aged 25, to sudden arrhythmic death syndrome, and her friend Charlie Gradidge lost her brother, Danny, who had been a friend of Ryan’s when they were at scouts together. Had they been screened, both those relatives believe that their lost ones would still be alive. They now spend their time fundraising, £7,000 at a time, and they have done this three or four times to enable CRY to screen 100 youngsters and pick up people with irregularities. That is great work, but it ought not to be done by private individuals, ought it?”
“Hopefully none of those fears is warranted, but I would like to hear that from the Minister.”
“What a poisoned chalice this Secretary of State is leaving for the incoming Prime Minister. I have a very specific question to put to him. A report published in The Times —online on 18 June, and in the paper the following day—stated categorically that this Secretary of State had overruled senior civil servants and lawyers from three different Departments in order to make decisions that were favoured politically by Labour council leaders. Was that report correct or was it false?”
“May I warmly endorse what the Minister said about the Falkland Islands, and ask a question or two about security aspects? Given that both we and Spain are in NATO, the reassurances about the sovereignty of the base are welcome. Can the Minister confirm that on those occasions when military assets, including munitions, have to be moved into the area, the report that I have seen suggesting that everything about munitions has to be reported to the Spanish authorities does not mean that this cannot be done in secrecy when that is required? Finally, with regard to the border, is there any danger that, without the land border, people will be enabled to get on an aeroplane and come to the UK who might pose a security threat, and then we would be in difficulty sending them back?”
“Would it not be better, from the point of view of objectivity and transparency, for Ofgem to engage whoever is going to conduct this inquiry, not the very people whose own careers will be on the line if the whistleblowers are vindicated?”
“I have some sympathy with the Minister’s situation, because this is a highly technical issue, and presumably he will have been briefed to deal with this urgent question by the senior management at NESO—or at least they will have briefed the civil servants who briefed him. What is bothering me is the lack of independence in this process. It appears that the senior management made an all-staff call in which they denounced the whistleblowers as having let the company down. From what the Minister said, it appears that the firm that is going to conduct the inquiry is an independent legal firm, which will be paid by the senior management of NESO.”
“I thank the Home Secretary for what she said about Ann, whom I first met more than 50 years ago. She was as formidable as an undergraduate as she became in later life as a mature politician. I believe that nobody on the Labour Benches other than the present Home Secretary could do more to tackle the asylum problem than she is doing. Having said that, this strategy of moving people out of hotels and into camps, or dispersing them, can only ever work if other people are not coming in constantly to replace them, so what plans does she have for truly deterring people, so that they know that if they embark on a small boat, they will physically not be allowed to melt into British society in the future?”
“I would like to think that if this Minister were Secretary of State, we would not be in a situation where 23,000 people were signing an online petition protesting against the carve-up of the New Forest in this local government reorganisation. Can she tell me: is there any truth in the report in The Times on 18 June that the Secretary of State had overruled professional advice from civil servants in three separate Departments to impose a gerrymandered solution on Essex county council?”
“The report said that the name of the home had been obscured, but software is available so that if someone puts up a picture of a place, particularly if they know the general area, it will identify the address. Let me please appeal to Members and ex-Members from whatever political party: do not throw away the gains we made, and whatever else you do, keep your home addresses as private as you possibly can.”
“It was only by accident when I suggested that to her and how flattered I was that she revealed the truth, saying, “Oh no, Julian—this is rent for the washing machine!” Mr Speaker will certainly remember that in 2008 to 2009, this House spent a lot of time taking steps to ensure that MPs’ home addresses did not, in future, have to be revealed either in answer to freedom of information requests or on ballot papers and notices of nomination. It therefore comes as a bit of a shock to me to read in one of the reports today that Ann had—it may turn out to be complete coincidence—featured in her home on a programme on television extensively only six days before she died.”
“Ann was always there when her friends needed support and, on a lighter note, she was always there ready to bring her friends back down to earth. When Ann was elected in 1987 for the first time, and I happened to be moving flats, I gifted her a relatively new washing machine that was now surplus to my requirements. For several years after she became an MP, she used to invite me once a year, almost like clockwork, to have lunch with her in this place. I naturally assumed that it was that she wished to imbibe the wisdom of my political advice.”
“May I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the House that the fact that I have to chair a meeting in a few minutes’ time prevents me from staying, as I would wish to do, to the end of the statement? When I went up as an undergraduate to Oxford in late 1970 and joined the university Conservative association, there were two outstanding figures a year ahead of me in that august body: one was Ann Widdecombe and the other was Nicolas Turner. A few years later, in February 1980, Ann Widdecombe and I shared a taxi to the funeral of Nicolas Turner, who had heroically sacrificed his life in an attempt to rescue his young daughter Alice—it was a double funeral—who had been swept into the sea by a freak wave.”
“I congratulate the Home Secretary on not resiling at all from the tough stance that she is trying to take. Has she received any indication that after 20 July, a Labour Home Secretary—hopefully she herself—will be able to continue to develop this important work?”
“Does my right hon. Friend agree that part of the problem is that practitioners of the legal system seem to believe that there are such things as absolute human rights, whereas most human rights are relative, and can be trumped by other people’s human rights, and in fact, can be abrogated? When you infringe other people’s human rights, you surely cannot expect your own to have priority over theirs, in a sensible system.”
“If there has to be a clash between an innocent person’s rights being infringed and the perpetrator’s rights being infringed, I—and, I would like to think, most sensible people—would say it is the perpetrator who should lose out.”
“To put the hon. Gentleman right, it is customary when a Member names another Member, particularly in a critical way, to give way to them freely, not to have to be forced into it. The fact of the matter is that I would love the hon. Gentleman to list all these absolute human rights. Even in a democracy, there is not an absolute right for people not to put themselves in danger when they get conscripted in a wartime situation. Does he or does he not accept the basic moral fact that, if someone infringes the human rights of other people, they cannot expect their own rights to be fully respected, because they abrogate those rights?”
“Having criticised successive coalition, Conservative and Labour Governments for inadequate defence spending, may I yet again remind the Foreign Secretary that during the 1980s we successfully came through the height of the cold war by spending between 4% and 5% of GDP on defence, and that was without creative accounting? On a more positive note, did she detect the seeming shift in the attitude of the American President towards the Ukraine conflict? Is that because he just wants, as always, to be on what he perceives to be the winning side, or is it a sign that the depredations of the killer in the Kremlin are finally getting through to the occupant of the White House?”
“Does the review plan to look into the question of what happens when something goes wrong in the arrangements for a disabled person receiving PIP or universal credit? This time last week I raised with the Leader of the House at business questions the fact that my casework team had been trying for six months to get an answer on behalf of someone who lost PIP and UC. We had a holding letter in February, but we have still had no substantive reply and this lady is getting more and more desperate. We did write to the Minister on 8 June. I know he has been very busy, but he should be receiving a letter, if he has not already, from the Leader of the House. When he deals with that individual case, will it perhaps serve as a guide to what is needed more generally to be able to communicate on behalf of our constituents?”
“Having spoken on this very subject the week before last, I thought that I would, for once, sit and listen to what others have to say. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the reasons for the failure of deterrence at the beginning of both the second world war and the first world war was that the United States was detached from the future of security in Europe? The success of NATO has hinged on the knowledge that an attack on any NATO country would mean war with the United States from the outset. Does he share my concern that the United States is at present led by someone with insufficient regard for that history?”
“I congratulate the Minister on acceding to office, but he needs to appreciate that the cost of all Departments goes up in absolute financial numerical terms year on year, but the way in which we measure the investment in defence is by looking at it as a proportion of GDP. During the cold war, when the risk was almost as high as it is now, we were spending 4.5% to 5% of GDP. Vladimir Putin does not have nine years for us to spend 3.5% of GDP. Those are the measurements the Minister has to look at; we are nowhere near spending enough.”
“I am a little puzzled by this excuse that offenders can always be recalled if they breach the terms. Presumably, a breach means that there has been a fresh victim of a crime, so it is rather pointless to give that as a reassurance. Does my hon. Friend know what proportion of the prison population is made up of serious sexual or other serious offenders? I cannot believe that it is such a high proportion that even if the prison system were utterly full, they could not release other inmates rather than such serious criminals.”
“I have a fairly simple question. Does the Minister have a clear idea of what categories he regards as constituting dangerous offenders, and if he does, what percentage of the prison population is made up of these people? If it is something like 10%, 15% or 25%, that still means that there are 75% or more of other categories of prisoners who could and should be released before those in that dangerous category are even considered.”
“By coincidence, last night, BBC Three rebroadcast the three-part series about the online predator Alexander McCartney, who was caught when a victim reported him. It turned out that he had groomed 3,500 victims online around the world. In one case in America, he caused a 12-year-old girl to shoot herself dead; he knew that she was threatening to do that. The programme ended with the chilling statistic that out of 3,500 victims, only four had actually reported him to the authorities. It was one of those reports that led to the end of this terrible campaign. Back in 2024, the programme revealed that he had been sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum term of 20 years. What do the people who saw that series think about the fact that it now appears that he might be out in a fraction of that time?”
“My salary is “up to” £1 billion a year, but sadly that does not make me a billionaire. [ Laughter. ] Does the Secretary of State accept that when checking how much money a country is spending on defence, the accepted way of doing it is by percentage of GDP?”
“Is it true that the diplomats in the Foreign Office who deal with Pakistan are part of the obstacle to getting rid of this loathsome individual? Does the Minister agree that it is long overdue that the moral courage—indeed, heroism—of former Labour MP Ann Cryer, who first exposed this horrendous abuse, is properly and officially recognised?”
“On that point, I acknowledge the huge amount of effort, attention and concentration that the Minister has put into the scheme. I am therefore slightly surprised that the Haemophilia Society, which is a great champion for the community, says that in its opinion, care provided by family members is not being fairly compensated. It says that the scheme does not currently enable carers to make an adequate claim for the full impact of the care they provided, and that it does not sufficiently reflect the financial and personal sacrifices made by those who have delivered that care over decades, with particular reference to children and their educational sacrifices. I know there are no easy answers to this, but has the Minister had an interaction with the Haemophilia Society, which is well placed to represent the affected community?”
“May we have a statement from a Work and Pensions Minister on the lack of routes through which right hon. and hon. Members can contact the Department on behalf of constituents who, as in the case of one chronically ill lady whom I represent, have lost universal credit and wish to challenge that? She has been struggling for more than a year, whereas we have been struggling only for the last six months, to get an answer out of the Department. When the Leader of the House sends on that request, as he always assiduously does, may I include a summary sheet about this case for him to include with his letter to the Minister?”
“The Prime Minister has done a good deed today, and he is deservedly getting the united response from the House that he requested. He mentioned the admirable idea of putting the documentation online; will there be a facility on the website for people to upload their own stories, if they wish to do so? One aspect that is being somewhat skirted around is why this happened in the first place. The answer appears to be that there was too much state respect for dogmatic and fundamentalist interpretations of religious doctrine. Can we look at our society today and say that there is not still, in some parts of that society, too much religious repression of women, and too much respect for cultural sensitivities, which are preventing us from tackling that?”
“Last Wednesday, and again today, the Secretary of State expressed his shock at the number of senior clinicians who refused to take part in the Nottingham review. May I repeat a suggestion that I made last Wednesday? Those clinicians should be named publicly. That is a step that he could take straight away. If a parliamentary question for written answer is tabled, asking him to name those clinicians, will he answer it? I cannot think of a better or more justifiable use of parliamentary privilege.”
“At last, we have agreement on a defence expenditure statistic. When the Secretary of State says that what the settlement means is that the proportion of GDP spent on defence by the end of this decade will now be higher than at any time in the past 30 years, he is quite right. The trouble is that if we go back 30 years to 1995, what we were spending then under the new accounting rules was 3% of GDP, and that was six years after the fall of the Berlin wall. Given that we are now in a more dangerous situation today than at any time since at least the height of the cold war in the 1980s, should we not be looking at the sort of percentages we spent then? Under the new accounting rules, that was between 4.1% and 5.5%. Haven’t we still got a long way to go?”
“With the impeccable timing of an Olympic medallist and world record beater, the inspirational Fatima Whitbread is in Parliament today in room U in Portcullis House till 4 pm, stressing the importance for people like herself brought up in the care system of wraparound local authority hubs working with and including the education, sport, police and charity sectors. Will a member of the ministerial team—preferably more than one—take the trouble to leave this Chamber when questions end and go over and talk to Fatima about her interesting and constructive ideas in this important field?”
“One reason that the present Prime Minister has lost the trust of the public is his refusal, time and again, to give straight answers to straight questions. My Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan), asked a straight question: how many rapists and how many child abusers are scheduled for early release? Either the Minister is not answering because he does not know the answers, in which case he should tell us that, or he does know the answers but is refusing to give them. Which is it?”
“Bearing in mind an item that has appeared in the news reports today, does my hon. Friend agree that either the right hon. Gentleman or the hon. and gallant Gentleman to whom she has just referred would be a far more suitable future Secretary-General of NATO than the present Prime Minister, whose lack of proper funding of a defence policy—among other deficiencies—has led him to be looking for a new job?”
“I am going to ask the rather obvious question. Given that the plan is to be put forward under the existing Prime Minister, does that mean that if the new Prime Minister wishes to change it, it will be changed, or will the commitment that is to be made to the forthcoming NATO Assembly have to stand as it is?”
“The Minister said that NICE has “no plans to issue guidance on paediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome (PANS) and paediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with streptococcus (PANDAS)”. He also said, “should the evidence base develop further, we would look to the NICE to update clinical policy.” It seems that the early use of antibiotics is not yet accepted by the medical establishment. Does the hon. Lady know whether there is hard evidence to show that the medical establishment needs to get its act together on the matter?”
“The hon. Lady mentioned the all-important fact that early diagnosis, coupled with the prescribing of a quite common antibiotic —I believe amoxicillin is one of them—can make a crucial difference. In May last year, I asked in a written question whether the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care would take steps to facilitate the circulation of material to general practitioners, advising them on how to recognise PANS and PANDAS, and treat them with antibiotics and anti-inflammatory medications. The response that I got from the Minister for Care was that this is all a matter for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which is an independent body.”
“I am sorry if I did not express myself clearly enough. It is not so much a question of the non-recognition of PANS and PANDAS, but whether it has been recognised that early treatment with antibiotics can make all the difference.”
“At the risk of labouring the same single point I want to make again and again, there really does seem to be no downside to telling all GPs that if there is any question at all that a child might have PANS or PANDAS, the GP should prescribe them one of the basic antibiotics, because they could benefit from it tremendously, and there is no risk of harm.”
“I detected that the Minister was moving towards her conclusion, so I thought I would intervene before she did. She has a fine record, before she became a Minister, of campaigning on mesh-damaged women. That was an occasion where something simple was done that led to very complicated problems. Here, we have a complicated condition, but it is thought that something simple could be done—namely, guidance should be given to all GPs that if this condition is even suspected, a simple course of antibiotics should be given. I have not yet heard anything in what she has said as to whether the research backs that up. If the research has not been done, will she undertake to make sure it gets done and that general practitioners are advised accordingly?”
“On a similar theme, undoubtedly near the top of the Secretary of State’s to-do list today is to answer written question No. 11584, which is due for answer tomorrow. The question is about the threat posed by the BBC World Service apparently discontinuing its longwave transmitters at Droitwich, Burghead and Westerglen. What we want to know is: how will closed societies like Russia be able to receive news information when they are subject to the suppression of all the internet-based routes?”
“When whistleblowers tried to alert society to what was happening, was any action taken against them, and if it was, does that indicate that there needs to be strengthened protection for whistleblowers? At the other end of the spectrum, are those clinicians who refused point blank to take part in the review process going to be named?”
“One of the strong arguments put forward for the legislation is that it will help families to find out the truth of what happened to their loved ones, yet by repealing the Conservative legislation, it makes that less likely rather than more likely—because who is going to come forward and incriminate themselves by saying what happened to people who were unlawfully killed if they know that they will not then have immunity from prosecution?”
“Another spurious argument, which I am afraid we heard earlier in the debate, is that the legislation put our armed forces on the same level as terrorists. The truth is that everybody is on the same level before the law. In any case, the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 sold the pass on that anyway, because under it nobody—even if they were convicted of first-degree murder, as the Americans might say—goes to jail for more than two years. That put everybody on the same level before the law, as any such legislation has to do.”
“He said, memorably, that if we do not have adequate defence, we do not have all the aspects of a society that we wish to cherish; we do not have schools, we do not have hospitals, we do not have houses—what we have is “a heap of cinders”. So let us invest what we can while we can, let us get our priorities right, and let us restore the guarantee of the transatlantic relationship, which kept the peace and prevented a third world war.”