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%.”
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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 11 of 75.
“The Joint Committee on Human Rights published a report entitled “Proposal for a Draft Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 (Remedial) Order 2024”, which states in paragraph 20: “It is a discretionary remedy, meaning the courts do not have to issue such a declaration”— of incompatibility with the ECHR— “when they find a provision to be incompatible with Convention rights. A declaration of incompatibility has no legal effect and does not affect the ongoing validity of the incompatible legislation.”
“When we are talking about victims of terrorists, I would ask, first of all, how likely is it that terrorists who have not been prosecuted all these years are going to be prosecuted in the future? Secondly, how do people think the victims felt in South Africa when a line was drawn for the sake of enabling the society to move forward? What the legacy Act did was the least worst option. As we have heard, the reality is that there is no obligation to act on the finding of incompatibility with the ECHR.”
“I agree with the Secretary of state that it is very important that other countries follow our example. Of the five countries that are the worst emitters of greenhouse gases, emitting over 50% in total—the USA, Russia, Brazil, India and of course China—can he tell us how many have adopted similar legislation? What hope does he have that those five in particular will follow our example?”
“I cannot think of anything more futile than giving a free pass to somebody to use a bus service which they cannot use without a companion for whom they have to pay.”
“I have been waiting with bated breath to see if the hon. Gentleman would come on to companion bus passes. I thank him for the leadership he has shown on this issue and for co-tabling—with me, the hon. Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire), and the inimitable hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who sadly is on his way to Northern Ireland this evening—early-day motion 1638 specifically on companion bus passes for the disabled. This is where a disabled person cannot use a bus alone. We have the strange situation where in two-thirds of authorities his or her disabled bus pass is allowed to cover a companion to go with them, but in one-third of local authorities it is not.”
“The Minister, I think, has conceded a key point: he has admitted that some duties are discretionary to councils, and some are statutory. The point about companion bus passes for those disabled people who cannot use a bus without a companion is, as early-day motion 1638 makes abundantly clear, that inclusion of the free companion bus pass should be statutory specifically for those disabled people who cannot use their bus pass without a companion. There is nothing discretionary about that; they simply cannot use the bus pass without the companion. Therefore, it should be part of the same statutory element by which they get the free bus pass in the first place.”
“I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this subject to the Chamber. Is she as mystified as I am by the fact that, when serving in the armed forces was at its most dangerous and there was conscription—namely during the second world war—people were only too happy for warriors of any sexuality to participate, and that many people of non-heterosexual orientation won gallantry medals, with no questions asked and full admiration rightly expressed?”
“Does the Minister agree that one of the worst features of the US justice system is the extreme process of plea bargaining, which gives such a huge differential if somebody pleads guilty that it creates a perverse incentive to do so, even if they are innocent but not confident that they will be acquitted? Can she guarantee that we are not going down that route, with a 40% discount for pleading guilty coupled with early release for other reasons?”
“I am very glad that the Minister has concentrated on the truth and justice aspect of the legacy Act. Can he reassure the House that in their proposals to repeal the legacy Act, the Government are not going to lose the opportunity of having the trade-off, as it were, between immunity from prosecution and truth recovery, which was always the basis of the legacy Act?”
“It is kind of the Minister to give way one more time. I urge Ministers not to be blinded by what political parties in Northern Ireland say, because the truth of the matter is that they have to take certain positions—usually ones that favour their side and disfavour the other side—and the prospect of getting all those parties to agree on something like this is minute. That is why the legacy Act cut through all that, in the same way that Nelson Mandela came up with a similar solution that worked in South Africa.”
“The Post Office Horizon scandal has often been compared with the contaminated blood disaster. By coincidence, this very afternoon the relevant all-party parliamentary group, led by the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford), has been having a meeting with the Infected Blood Compensation Authority. Even if the Minister does not go all the way with Sir Wyn Williams’ suggestion that there might be a standing body responsible for delivering compensation, will the Government look at the experience of the compensation body for that scandal rather than allowing separate disasters to be compensated for in separate stovepipe arrangements?”
“As we have heard, Lord Tebbit proved his courage and commitment finally in his devotion to his wife, who was grievously injured as a result of a terrorist campaign, the aftermath of which our legal system to this very day still finds difficult to cope with. Altogether, he served his country magnificently, and he was a role model of integrity and courage that people can admire, even if they do not necessarily subscribe to everything in which he believed and for which he campaigned.”
“Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I met Lord Tebbit only shortly after he had stepped down from this House, but even at that stage of his career he still had the inherent kindness and commitment to come to my constituency to support a relatively new Member of this House. Courage and commitment really are what encapsulated his character. He proved that when serving his country in the inherently dangerous role of a Royal Air Force pilot, and he proved it further in achieving something that Prime Ministers alone might have failed to have achieved in tackling the abuse of trade union power by unrepresentative militants. Trade unions are much more representative of their memberships today thanks to what he did.”
“I agree with the Home Secretary that that would be a major step forward. Does she agree with me that, on average, well over 1,000 people have been crossing the channel each week this year, and that there is no way any form of court procedures can keep pace with that? Does she therefore agree that nothing other than prevention, as she has described, interception or, as a last resort, detention and return can possibly be successful?”
“May I help the Minister share a little information with the House by asking him whether the Government know of any purpose for refining uranium-235 to 60% purity other than to build a nuclear weapon?”
“Whether or not any discretionary increase is provided is for the Company to determine: the Trustee has no power to award discretionary increases itself.” This may be a loophole that the Minister needs to address. If the trustees cannot award the surplus as benefits and the company says no, that is not going to benefit my constituents.”
“I am extremely grateful to the Minister for taking my intervention and for the very helpful letter he sent me on 30 June about schemes of this sort, and in particular the ExxonMobil pension scheme. His letter encouragingly states: “Following our reforms, trustees will continue to consider the correct balance of interest between members and the sponsoring employer when making decisions about the release of surplus funds. Trustees will be responsible for determining how members may benefit from any release of surplus…and have a suite of options to choose from—for example, through discretionary benefit increases.” The trouble is that these pensioners have received a letter from the trustees of the ExxonMobil pension fund stating: “The power to award discretionary increases is held by Esso Petroleum Company Limited (the “Company”).”
“Does the NHS 10-year plan include an assisted dying scheme? If the present private Member’s Bill runs out of time at the end of this parliamentary Session, and thus falls, will the Secretary of State reintroduce the legislation as a Government Bill in the next parliamentary Session?”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on the ingenuity of her statement. I am tempted to ask her if she is offering a prize to the first person to identify all the film titles she smuggled into it. Could she perhaps enlarge a bit on one of the more disappointing responses, as negative as it was, from the Government to which she referred? That is the recommendation that the Government should at least conduct research into the possibility of a statutory deposit scheme for the moving image, which I assume is a bit like having a copyright library for films in which every film gets deposited. Although I appreciate the limits on capacity of the BFI, would researching such a possible scheme not be a positive move to the advantage of posterity?”
“What’s more, they’re only going to get between £1,000 and £3,000 each, which won’t be anything like full financial compensation, so what’s the point in giving in to this demand?” I am quite sure that if the numbers were fewer and the overall bill was not so significant, we would not see this resistance to an obviously valid and viable cause.”
“It is often said in times of financial crisis that some institutions are too big to fail. Unfortunately, in this case it is a question of some campaigns being seen as being too big to succeed. I am quite sure that the real reason why the Department for Work and Pensions is so resistant to this cause is not that it does not recognise the justice of the WASPI women’s cause, so eloquently set out by the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey), who has given excellent leadership on this cause through the all-party parliamentary group. Rather, behind the scenes— I do not know this, but I am sure that I am right—it is putting forward arguments along these lines: “There are so many of them; the bill will simply be too great.”
“If the Government had come back and said, “We can’t implement the ombudsman’s recommendations in full at the moment, but we shall try and do it in stages, or over a period, or will at least go some way towards a symbolic acceptance of the wrong that has been done,” I think most reasonable people would have understood the situation and have been willing to at least consider some sort of compromise.”
“Indeed, when the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions was in opposition in the last Parliament, she was cautious in what she said about the ombudsman’s report, but she did acknowledge the following: “we will take time to give the report proper consideration too, and continue to listen respectfully to those involved, as we have done from the start.” She added: “we won’t be able to right every wrong overnight.” That would have been the basis for at least an attempt to give the symbolic redress and acknowledgement that I think most fair-minded people agree is due.”
“This betrayal left millions of women with no time to make alternative plans—with sometimes devastating personal consequences. Labour recognises this injustice, and will work with these women to design a system of recompense for the losses and insecurity they have suffered.” Admittedly, that was the 2019 manifesto, and Labour at that time was led by the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), but that does not mean that the manifesto was wrong in what it said. It was absolutely right in its summary and its recognition that something must be done.”
“I do indeed. Of course, in any event, the women realise that they will not get anything like full compensation, but they want the symbolic acceptance and acknowledgement of the injustice that they have received. As we have heard from those on both sides of the House, this resistance puts at stake the credibility of the ombudsman system itself. Undermining that will have a knock-on effect: in many future cases, the bill for implementing an ombudsman’s recommendations and findings will not be anything like as large, but people and institutions will be emboldened to defy the ombudsman. One of the best short summaries of the case was put forward in a previous Labour manifesto, which said: “a generation of women born in the 1950s have had their pension age changed without fair notification.”
“I know the Minister has a great deal of expertise and a strong track record on issues of this sort from his former career, before he came to this House. I therefore appeal to him to at least reach out the hand of negotiation and discussion; to accept the offer that reasonable people are making to the Government; and to sit down and talk to them, and not to let the whole thing go through the courts, which would lead to an adversarial deepening of hostility and, inevitably, a less desirable outcome for everyone concerned.”
“As we have heard, despite the DWP claiming to accept the findings, and even apologising for its maladministration, it is not offering a penny in restitution, and is relying in its response on a deeply unconvincing polling exercise that supposedly found that nine out of 10 of the affected women knew in advance that their state pension age was going to change. If that was the case, why did so many of them carry on as if nothing was going to change at all? A few moments ago, the hon. Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) asked about the nature of the sampling that was done; only some 200 women born in the 1950s were included in the sample of nearly 2,000 people surveyed, which led to that misleading result.”
“Yes. In a way, the Government have fallen between two stools. The report, as we have heard, anticipated that the Government would be reluctant to the right the wrong done to so many people at once, but nevertheless the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman felt that justice required compensation to be paid. It knew that there would be this Government resistance, so it must have meant a lot to the ombudsman to still go down this highly unusual route of trying to present its report directly to Parliament, because it felt it would not get far by dealing with the Government directly. One might have expected the Government to offer a scheme that fell some way short of the ombudsman’s recommendation, but their outright rejection of any restitution at all is rather insulting to the women whose complaint was upheld by the ombudsman.”
“Will the Minister explain to the House why not one single speech in this debate until his has taken the line that he is taking? Everyone who has spoken in this debate believes that some compensation, at least symbolically, should be paid.”
“Whenever my right hon. Friend and other members of the Conservative shadow defence team bring up the question of reopening this lawfare against our veterans, Government Ministers say, “We will be sure to give veterans maximum support.” To me, that implies not protecting them from the lawfare, but supporting them as they go through the process; but the process is the punishment. Everybody knows that people involved in fatal incidents would serve only a limited prison term if, heaven forbid, they were convicted, but the probability is that they will not be convicted; the punishment lies in what they have to go through before they are acquitted.”
“On the point about not enjoying community support, when we were having these debates in great detail, the highly divided communities would always stand up and say how this was unacceptable and that was unacceptable, and then their representatives would quietly come up to us and say, “For goodness’ sake, go on doing what you are doing.” The Minister may have some legal problems to overcome, but let him not be fooled by what is said in public about what really needs to be done.”
“However, if the Minister is not able to say those things in public—there may be very good reasons why he is not—then I suspect he will not be able to tell them to the courts, either. Nobody can accuse me of being soft on anti-militarist extremist groups, but I say to the Government, with the best will in the world, that they must adopt a legal belt-and-braces policy when it comes to prosecuting this group, and not rely on this proscription alone, because I fear that I see trouble ahead from m’learned friends.”
“Although it is justified by the unacceptable behaviour of the perpetrators, I am not convinced that the policy that the Government have adopted will stand up in court, when there are plenty of other legal methods that could be used to deal with this form of extremism. It is extremism, but it does not, in my opinion, pass the threshold to be classified as terrorism, in the legal sense. If I had been able to accept the Minister’s offer to have a word with me on Privy Council terms before the debate—I thank him for that offer, and I am sorry that I was not able to take it up—he may have been able to tell me things about Palestine Action that would have convinced me that it crossed that threshold.”
“893.] My question for the Government is this: will they at least adopt a belt-and-braces policy when it comes to the prosecution of the people who did that terribly irresponsible and wrong-headed act of sabotaging those planes? Will they also prosecute them on the basis that they have done criminal damage, and have attacked the forces of the Crown and thereby done something that borders on sedition? Otherwise, by using the wrong aspects of the law to pursue people who did some very bad things indeed, I fear the Government will end up scoring an own goal, and these people will walk free with a court triumph under their belt.”
“I must say that I never thought the day would arise when I as a non-lawyer would be advising a Government of lawyers that they need to be sure of the legal basis for what they are doing. As I said in an intervention on this subject on 23 June, “it would do the country and the Government no favours if they were to lose in court a challenge to the process of proscription, because whereas the secret sabotage of planes would certainly have been an act of terrorism leading to proscription, the fact is that this was a performative act that these people announced they had done.” —[ Official Report , 23 June 2025; Vol. 769, c.”
“Almost by definition, RAF sites have to have very long perimeter fences, so it is understandable that they could be overcome at one point or another. Why were they apparently not fitted with sensors, at least, so that any intrusion would have sounded the alarm?”
“Does the Secretary of State agree that, while necessary at the time of covid, the removal of the requirement for face-to-face assessments was an opening of the door to potential abuse? If so, will she commit in principle to the reinstatement of face-to-face assessments?”
“I have come to this debate without any prior knowledge of what is proposed, so I am making this point as a result of what I have heard so far. Am I right in thinking that what the Minister particularly has in mind is people with dual citizenship who might, for example, have gone abroad to fight for a terrorist organisation, such as ISIS. There would, in such a case, be nothing forbidding us from removing their British citizenship. If they came back, even if they could be convicted of anything at all, they would be imprisoned for only a relatively short time, if at all, and then the security services would probably have to spend many years monitoring them. Is that the sort of scenario the Minister has in mind?”
“I have some sympathy with my right hon. Friend’s argument, but surely the effect of this change will kick in only if, in the end, the Government’s appeal succeeds. Therefore, it will be the case that the court previously was wrong; otherwise, the Government’s appeal against its decision will not succeed.”
“I grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. As I said in my first intervention, I am new to this whole debate, but I thought I heard from the Minister that the idea was for this measure to stand only until the Government appeal was resolved or the Government ran out of time to appeal. How long would that period be? I do not see how that would put things off for the inordinate amount of time that my right hon. Friend suggests.”
“Because of the three-minute limit for speeches, I will not be able to refer to BBC Monitoring, as I had hoped to, but it is another vital service. Both the World Service and BBC Monitoring used to be paid for by the Government. If the Government decide to pay for them in full again, they can at least put the money required towards the extra contribution of 1.5% of GDP on NATO spending, to reach a target of 5% of GDP, which they have now agreed to accept.”
“Normally, that overarching system of broadcasting by the USA would reach an estimated 427 million people. Are the gaps that will be created by these cuts going to be filled, once again, by countries hostile to western values? It goes without saying that Russia and China are both absolutely delighted with that development in the USA. As we have also heard, two thirds of the World Service continues to be funded by the licence fee, yet it is primarily a service that benefits the interests of the Government and the nation as a whole, rather than the people who pay the licence fee being the consumers of the service. By definition, their listening in is a bonus; the World Service is meant to promote values and truth overseas.”
“However, resources have not kept pace and we see the consequences in places such as Lebanon, where the Russian Sputnik radio channel now transmits on the radio frequency that was formerly used in that country by BBC Arabic, which had to be closed down after 85 years, early in 2023. By the end of that year, a Russian radio channel had taken over in Lebanon. Indeed, Russia and China are estimated to be investing between £6 billion and £8 billion in media services across Africa, Asia and the middle east. As we have heard, deplorably, the US Agency for Global Media, which runs Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, as well as funding Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting networks, has suffered huge cuts in funding and personnel.”
“Thank you, Sir Jeremy, for calling me to speak, and it is a pleasure to endorse so much of what has been said today in such a unified way across party boundaries. The value of BBC broadcasting is to be measured by the risks that people are prepared to take in order to listen to it, ranging from people in occupied countries to people in totalitarian states. From occupied France in the second world war to oppressed Afghanistan today, the BBC World Service is many people’s principal lifeline to the truth. Indeed, its current reach in Afghanistan is believed to be almost a quarter of the entire population. As we have heard today, it reaches well over 400 million people worldwide, including 64 million people every week in the world’s 20 most fragile states. No political estimate can be put on this reach other than its colossal impact for good.”
“After a worrying start, President Trump has now strengthened NATO, both by extracting promises of more money and with the positive comments he made at the end of the summit. Has the Prime Minister had a chance to assess whether that means that President Trump’s love affair with Vladimir Putin is beginning to cool?”
“May I encourage the Government not to be at all bashful about the fact that the decision on whether one of these weapons will be used—heaven forbid—will be an American one? There is a long tradition of American nuclear weapons being based in NATO countries, not least the Cruise and Pershing missiles of the 1980s, which helped to end the cold war. Will the Minister confirm that not only does this fill a gap in our deterrence spectrum, but it reasserts the commitment of the United States to the defence of the other NATO countries?”
“Given the financial incentive to universities, I would rather look to someone else to take the precautions.”
“Does the hon. Gentleman agree that something that makes the erection and maintenance of war memorials so much more poignant is that they are often paid for by the local communities themselves? They raise the money, and they continue to do so many years later. Only last weekend, I was at Marchwood village hall in my constituency, looking at a presentation about the war years with residents of that village in order to raise money to restore and refurbish their war memorial.”
“Does the Minister agree that there is a particular importance of memorials to people who have no known grave but the sea? I believe I am right in saying that the three great Royal Naval memorials at Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth commemorate more than 66,000 Royal Naval personnel who lost their lives in the two world wars. Of course, the one at Tower Hill commemorates about 36,000 merchant seamen and fishing fleet personnel who were similarly lost with no known grave.”
“What practical steps can the Government take to support women and girls in Afghanistan who, after a period of being encouraged to liberate themselves, are now cast back into domestic servitude?”