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
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“Can the Secretary of State confirm that the new freedom of speech provisions will ensure that, if any member of a university’s staff gives the same definition of a woman as the Prime Minister did in his most recent iteration of it, they will not be no-platformed or driven out of their job?”
“If the Government could persuade the Nobel peace prize committee to give the award to Donald Trump on condition that he stops siding with the aggressor against the victim, does the Minister think that American policy might revert to one of NATO deterrence, which prevented world war three for half a century after the end of world war two?”
“I appreciate the pressures on the Minister’s officials, but does the Minister agree that this disaster playing out in Sudan is under-reported, and, therefore, may I encourage him in the future to take every opportunity to come to the House voluntarily with statements, rather than rely on urgent questions, to give him the opportunity, which he has quite rightly taken today, to spell out where we are in this awful situation?”
“I thank the Leader of the House in advance for the very large number of follow-up letters she will be writing after this marathon session. I know that it is probably quite a chore, but we really appreciate that she does it so conscientiously. In a brief exchange about NHS dentistry on 13 March, as part of the formidable campaign being waged by the National Federation of Women’s Institutes on that subject, I was quite impressed when the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said that the problem requires, “not simply tinkering with the system as it is, but fundamentally rethinking it” —[ Official Report , 13 March 2025; Vol. 763, c. 1298.] I am sure he is absolutely right about that, so will the Leader of the House urge him to make a statement to the House on what progress he anticipates making on this very important issue?”
“I know it is not the main thrust of my hon. Friend’s argument, but does she share my concern at the detailed exposés at the end of March in the Evening Standard and The Sunday Times about the huge proliferation of barber shops, which could not possibly all be conducting legitimate trade? For example, the Evening Standard talked about 17 barbers in and around a two-mile stretch of Streatham High Road, and about 25 on a similarly sized section of Kingsland Road between Stoke Newington and Haggerston. That is clearly criminal activity on a major scale.”
“Will the Minister take a special look at the problem of rogue builders who repeatedly target our constituents—often very vulnerable people? They take thousands from them and wreck their homes, yet the only redress is said to be trading standards. Surely that amounts to fraud and there ought to be a prosecution to follow.”
“Given that the Minister no doubt sincerely believes that the offer on the table is a good one, why does he think the unions are not accepting it?”
“Coupled with the decision of the leader of the free world to describe Ukraine as the aggressor in this war is the news today that America may be considering no longer supplying the Supreme Allied Commander Europe to NATO. Is the Defence Secretary looking forward as much as the rest of us are to hearing what President Trump has to say, if he comes to this Parliament in September, about how it is that the system that kept the peace in Europe for 50 years after the second world war is no longer applicable for the future?”
“On the day that Parliament was recalled, I gather that the workers themselves had to confront Chinese executives who were intent on coming on to the site. They believe that those executives intended to take unilateral action to shut down the blast furnace irrecoverably. Is that correct? What does that tell us about the motivation and behaviour of China when it gets its hands on our strategic industries?”
“The right hon. Lady has just said something very important: namely, that she would normally expect a pre-sentence report to be given in all, or at least almost all, cases. I hope that is her position, because what seems unfair to me is that a pre-sentence report, which presumably enables people to present arguments in mitigation, should be available to some people who have been convicted of a crime but not to others. Surely it should be available either to everyone or to no one, because everyone’s individual circumstances deserve the same degree of consideration.”
“I do not think anyone is questioning the firm action the Lord Chancellor is taking. The point my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) made is: why should it be necessary for her to take that action? Surely, if the Sentencing Council cannot see the distinction she makes between its proper role and Parliament’s proper role, it is not fit to do the job.”
“I genuinely thank the Minister for the time he took to meet me and the chairman of a local residents’ association in an apartment block to discuss the problems of building new homes on top of existing apartment blocks, if the work is done badly. Has he drawn any conclusions from that meeting about how to safeguard against unsuitable and unsustainable developments of that sort?”
“The Minister should not waste the opportunity of a lifetime in the parties of the right urging a party of the left to nationalise a British industry. One organisation that has been utterly consistent in all this is the GMB union: it wrote to the previous Government’s Defence Secretary saying that a business Minister had failed to answer clearly whether virgin steel was essential for defence. Today’s Minister seems to suggest that it might not be, but we must have a quantity of virgin steel, even if we add other things to it, to embark on the process of making essential defence products. Seize the opportunity: keep the blast furnaces, and if necessary, nationalise them for good.”
“As someone who has never bought a new motor vehicle, apart from a motorcycle, may I probe the Secretary of State further on what she said about the second-hand EV market? For families that will never be able to afford a new vehicle, does she anticipate a time when the second-hand EV market will be comparable in price to the second-hand market for conventional vehicles?”
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. I thought I would get in before she gets back into her stride. Can she throw some light on an issue that has puzzled me for some time in my New Forest East constituency? A stretch of road—Southampton Road—is often used as a short cut by very heavy goods vehicles, rather than using the appropriate section of the M27 motorway. These are often very large petrol bowsers, tankers—you name it—and surprise, surprise, the roadway is constantly getting broken up and potholes appear, with all the consequences she describes. Whenever we have raised this with any of the companies to which these heavy vehicles belong, they say, “Well, it’s a public highway, and we’re entitled to drive these vehicles where we want.” Is there any obligation on companies not to do that?”
“I like the right hon. Lady, and I really enjoyed her sunlit-uplands speech—anyone would think there was a leadership contest on in the Labour party. I did not quite hear the answer to the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) about the way in which the increase in national insurance contributions will hit all nurseries at once, whereas at the moment we are getting an initial tranche of 300 out of an intended 3,000 new arrangements for her announcement to be fulfilled. Over how long a period does she expect to get from 300 to 3,000?”
“The Secretary of State says that there were technical problems with the previous legislation that rendered it in some respects illegal, but will he not accept that the persecution of elderly veterans—which cannot, in the end, lead to anyone spending more than two years in prison anyway, given the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998—will continue unless and until some form of legislation is put back in place to draw a line under prosecutions and to fulfil the other part of the requirement by a truth recovery process? Whatever he thinks about the specific legislation they are repealing, will he not accept the principle that that is the only way to protect people against this form of legalistic persecution?”
“May I remind the Secretary of State that, at a hearing in 2017, the Defence Committee took evidence from four distinguished professors of law, including Philippe Sands, with whose work he is no doubt very familiar, and they made it very clear to us that in principle there was nothing illegal about having a statute of limitation, provided that it was accompanied by a truth recovery process? That met the requirement of avoiding the otherwise illegal act of giving impunity for crimes committed.”
“I am very sorry, but that answer did not address the question of principle. The fact is that, unless the Secretary of State’s chum, Professor Sands, and three other equally distinguished professors of law were mistaken, there is no reason in principle—regardless of how flawed he, and the courts, even, may think the previous legislation was—that we cannot have a statute of limitation to put an end to these prosecutions, coupled with a truth recovery process. Of course, it will always be possible to find someone who wants the other lot prosecuted but not their lot, but it is the job of Government to cut through that and do the right thing, as Nelson Mandela did so effectively in South Africa.”
“Two of the four ugly totalitarian sisters have been included in the list so far, and I trust that China and North Korea will both be added to the enhanced tier in the fullness of time; but will the Minister take back to the Government the message that the House is concerned about the building of the biggest Chinese communist embassy in western Europe—in fact, the biggest embassy—in London? It is not clear why the Government needed to call it in on security grounds, given that the local authority wanted to refuse permission completely. Will the Minister also explain the differential between the penalty that people will face when exposed for acting on behalf of a foreign power if they have registered and the penalty that they will face if they have not registered?”
“The Secretary of State will be aware from the Second Reading debate in the Lords that a number of what I shall gently refer to as Eurosceptic peers have expressed concerns that the Bill is a form of dynamic alignment with the European Union, and that, far from taking back control over which standards are involved and which guidelines are necessary, we will be abdicating control in favour of whatever the European Union decides. Can he set our minds at rest over those concerns? I am sure he would not wish to be diverted along such a dead-end route.”
“The hon. Gentleman is being very generous with his time. His thesis seems to be that, because the direct hunting of foxes was made illegal, trail hunting is being us as a cover for it. What would happen if he had his way and trail hunting was banned as well? Would it not then be possible for drag hunting to be used in some way as a cover for illegal fox hunting? If so, is not this an endless process, and should he not come out and say straightaway that he wants every form of this activity stopped?”
“Given the recent love-in between Washington and Moscow, it is hardly surprising that the killer in the Kremlin is encouraging all his sidekicks to stir up trouble in areas such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. Are the Government aware of and keeping under very close scrutiny other potential areas where allies of Mr Putin can be expected to start to stir up trouble and destabilise things as part of his move, now that he is on the front foot in Ukraine?”
“Can the Minister explain a bit more about the mechanism by which any aid donated in this country will reach people on the ground in Myanmar? Particularly given the airstrikes we have heard about, it is hard to imagine how such aid would get to areas that are currently under attack by the regime.”
“May I give the Minister some friendly advice and suggest that he does not try to write this off as a little local difficulty? I am half expecting to hear him use the phrase, “Crisis, what crisis?” He cannot be blamed for not remembering the winter of discontent—using the wonders of Wikipedia, I see that it happened a year before he was born—but I can assure him that the Callaghan Government and the Labour party never shook off the pungent smell of the rubbish piling in the streets on their watch. He really does not want to have the same thing happen to him.”
“I did table a question in February that drew attention to a particular world-leading expert called Dr Dionysios Veronikis, who, I gather, has developed extremely effective mesh-removal methods in Missouri. I believe that he has, in the past, offered to give the benefits of his research and successful practice to members of the NHS. I would hope that the Minister would take this away and consider whether an effort should be made to reach out to the best practitioners worldwide on mesh removal and take advantage of their expertise.”
“I must say, the hon. Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards) has done us all a service by outlining in detail one case out of what are understood to be a minimum of 10,000; some estimates put the number of people damaged by mesh as high as 40,000. We should bear that statistic in mind when we think about the limited redress that people have had so far through the courts. In the time available, I wish to touch briefly on the topics of research, legal cases, waiting lists and financial support. I make no apology for coming back to the question of research, because as we have heard, the victims of the mesh implant scandal are still suffering today, and there is no definitive gold standard of how to remediate their suffering.”
“I would also like to look at the question of removal centres. There are nine of these specialist centres, and we have established that people who are justifiably extremely worried about going back to one of them that might be run by the very person who inserted the mesh, do have the option of visiting other centres. However, when it comes to waiting times there is a huge variation. The waiting time for Bristol, which has a particularly high reputation, is much longer than for some of the other centres. Finally, on the question of financial support, we know that the Government have had to take moves to deal with the question of personal independence payments. We hope that will not affect these victims adversely.”
“I understand that many of those rejected were rejected because they were out of time, which leads me back to a point that I highlighted during the previous debate we had on this, in December 2024, in which it was pointed out that the 10-year limit on initiating action arising out of medical devices needs to be extended because, in this particular case, the limit has often long passed before it can be established that the victim was damaged by mesh in the first place. I said we should remember that minimum figure of at least 10,000 mesh-damaged women and bear in mind that out of that pretty large figure—and the real figure is probably much larger still—only 1,200 legal actions were initiated. That is hardly surprising because of the extra burden placed on someone initiating a legal action.”
“That is exactly right. The problem is that people are going back for partial remediation time and time again, and it is not achieving the desired outcome. When we move on to the question of how someone can get financial redress other than by virtue of a Government scheme, we find that of the 1,252 legal cases initiated between 2014 and 2024, only 356 were settled in or out of court with damages, but 678 were concluded without any such damages being awarded.”
“I think it is true to say that the author of the Hughes report anticipated that the Government would want to take their time over these matters, but that is why Dr Hughes—and Baroness Cumberlege, I believe, as well—recommended an interim payment. If at least that interim payment could be made, people might be more patient about the bells and whistles that have to be added to the response later.”
“The Leader of the House will surely agree that when we send our armed forces into dangerous situations, they deserve to be protected against vexatious litigious claims that are ultimately thrown out, but only after great expense, distress and strain. There was a rather inconclusive exchange at Defence questions on Monday about whether we should withdraw from the European convention on human rights, or have a derogation for the proposed force that may go on a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine. May we have a statement from a senior Law Officer confirming that it is perfectly possible to derogate from the ECHR for a specific mission like this, without in any way committing ourselves to staying in or leaving the ECHR in the long term?”
“I am sorry, but that answer had nothing to do with my question, which was to ask why the Government are ordering the permanent sealing of Britain’s only two shale gas wells. The Government are perfectly entitled on environmental grounds not to exploit such wells in normal conditions, but does the Prime Minister not recognise that taking a decision now to concrete these things over so that a future Government cannot use them in a desperate situation, such as an international conflict where other sources of power were cut off from us, is an extremely irresponsible and reckless thing to do?”
“I welcome the Chancellor’s emphasis on defence expenditure and her support for the nuclear deterrent, but does she agree that, by his actions in Ukraine, Putin has restarted the cold war? Will she bear in mind that during the 1980s, up to the end of the cold war, we were regularly spending between 4.5% and 5% of GDP on defence? That is the sort of scale that is required.”
“In this age, when the plot of “The Manchurian Candidate” appears more like a documentary on US politics than a work of fiction, have the Government received any indication that their efforts militarily to support Ukraine would be actively opposed or blocked by the Trump Administration?”
“The shadow Leader of the House referred to his admirable father’s national service in the course of his tribute, and that took place during a cold war that was prevented from turning into the third world war by the presence of American forces in NATO, led by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Up to now, that has always been a senior US army or other officer. Reports are now saying that in the Trump Administration’s latest move away from the security system that prevented a third world war until the collapse of the Soviet empire, America is proposing to give up the post of SACEUR and allow a European or Canadian—prior to annexation—to take it over. May we have a statement about what the Government are doing to prevent such a dangerous and foolish outcome from proceeding?”
“Have the Government received any indication or formed any view about what the current Israeli Government would do if—admittedly against all expectation—Hamas were to release all the hostages forthwith?”
“As a believer in parliamentary democracy, I fully support the Government’s right not to exploit shale gas deposits in the UK on environmental grounds. However, may we have an urgent statement from the appropriate net zero Minister on the Government’s decision from next week to start filling in and putting permanently beyond use the two existing shale gas facilities in this country, rather than keeping them in reserve for an emergency should a future Government ever need to exploit them?”
“Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) are being consistently and rightly lobbied by such formidable organisations as the New Forest branch of the women’s institute?”
“Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the worst and most intractable problems that the founders of the NHS had to deal with was the involvement of medical practitioners and consultants who were used to receiving a private income in a national service where they would not receive anything like the same remuneration? If he agrees, would he accept that there is a similar situation with NHS dentistry today? The Darzi report said: “There are enough dentists in England, just not enough dentists willing to do enough NHS work, which impacts provision for the poorest in society.” How does he think his reforms will help address that particular crisis, on which Members like myself and my right hon.”
“I congratulate all three Front- Bench spokesmen on their excellent contributions. Does the Minister know whether the BBC will be broadcasting some of the films—not jingoistic, but thoughtful and realistic—that were made and broadcast in cinemas during the war years? Will there be any reminder of the fact that the end of the war, though joyous for the liberated nations, did not mean the same thing for those countries in central and eastern Europe—including Poland, for which we went to war—that were left occupied by the Soviet Union, and that at the start of the cold war, only our alliance with America prevented a further conflict following? I hope some of those lessons will be carried forward in the commemorations that the Minister has outlined.”
“In his extremely important upcoming discussions with other nations about Ukraine, will the Prime Minister focus on the fact that it was standard Russian procedure to take over other countries by having bogus elections and installing puppet Governments? Will he therefore impress on other colleagues the need to be very wary of calls to hold elections in Ukraine during a wartime situation, which could result in the subversion and takeover by Russia of the entire country?”
“I understand the Minister’s point that it has been known all along that at some point the fixed budget would be exhausted. A simple question for him: on which day were Ministers first informed that that budget had been exhausted?”
“This argument about opting in and opting out of trade union levies goes back to at least the 1970s—probably beyond—when I remember arguing about it as an undergraduate. If there are to be levies that people have to opt out of, a defensible case can be made for them provided that the process of opting out is easy and advertised to every member. Does my hon. Friend know whether the Government propose to institute mechanisms to make it known to every member how easily they can opt out?”
“I take the opportunity to acknowledge the hon. Lady’s bravery in standing up for what she believes in. Does she agree with me that there is a wider political danger from this form of indoctrination and extremism about gender and sex, which is that if the only people in politics who are prepared to speak out about it are from extreme right-wing movements, and mainstream politicians are too afraid to say anything, it pushes ordinary people in the direction of political extremes?”
“When someone enters this country illegally from another country to which we are not allowed to deport them, and when they have previously expressed support for terrorism and terrorist organisations, but not in this jurisdiction, is the Secretary of State content that the Government have enough powers to protect the community from such a person walking free in our society?”
“I thank the Minister for the clarity of his statement and his answers. Is it not extraordinary that there is such uncertainty about whether so deadly a cargo as sodium cyanide was being carried on one of the vessels? He said that tugs might have to intervene to prevent the vessel running aground on the shores of this country. Has he considered that if the fire is too dangerous for the tugs to approach, then in those extreme circumstances, the Royal Navy’s involvement might be necessary?”
“I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He talks of truth and justice. He will be aware that the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 means that if prosecutions carry on, no one will serve more than two years in jail. If prosecutions carry on, people will do everything they can to cover up the truth in defending themselves. When people criticise the legacy Act, which did propose a truth and reconciliation commission, are they not really criticising a measure that would have given them a much better opportunity for the truth to come out, once the threat of prosecutions was removed, given that the punishment would not fit the crime even if someone was found guilty?”
“After some delay, the admirable Hounsdown school in my constituency has been promised a letter by the middle of March releasing funds for the replacement of its crumbling reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete roofing. If that letter fails to materialise within the next week, may I appeal to a Minister to intervene?”
“The collapse of Assad was always going to be a setback for Russia, but it was also always going to be a boost for the Islamist opposition. Even if there is only a 5% chance of forming an inclusive, democratic, stable Syria, the Government are clearly right to try to promote that, but they should also recognise that the real threats to us are chemical weapons falling into Islamist hands and the Syrian Democratic Forces no longer being able to keep under control those Islamists who are currently confined in camps. What happens when they are released?”