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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“How would a future pandemic be different from the previous ones in terms of strategic stocks of protective equipment, and vaccine research, manufacture and distribution, should we be visited with such a disaster by a Chinese wet market or even a laboratory?”
“That is an intriguing rationale for the fact that we gave £2.3 billion for the first year of the war and £2.3 billion for the second year of the war. Can the Minister convey to his colleagues in Government that Members on both sides of the House would be dismayed if we gave less than £2.3 billion for the year ahead? In his discussions with the Chancellor, might the Defence Secretary remind him that, when he stood for the leadership of the Conservative party, he recommended not 2% but 4% of GDP to be spent on defence?”
“If the Government ever decided that it was not in the country’s security interests for large numbers of communist Chinese students to be educated in our universities, would they be able to do anything about it?”
“I agree that we need legislation, and that human life must come first, but I do not agree that the statutory instrument, as it stands, cannot be improved. I am therefore, not for the first time, throwing myself on the mercy of this particular Minister; I look to him to give us, when he comes to wind up, an undertaking that the Government, rather than rushing ahead in a blinkered way, will have another look at the formulation that they have come up with to see whether people like Helen, who by no stretch of the imagination pose a danger to the public with their beloved pets, cannot be excluded from a blunderbuss approach, when a rapier is the weapon we ought to employ in dealing with a very real problem.”
“She says that in the midst of a cost of living crisis, she now has to decide whether to register her dog as an XL bully when she does not believe that he is one at all, “completely and pointlessly removing his freedom and drastically restricting his life, plus lose the financial backing that I have had his entire life just at the time when he will need it most…or I don’t register him as I don’t believe he is one and wait to see if someone else disagrees, reports me, and I wind up having him forcibly seized, taken away (at a point when I don’t know how much longer he has left with me) and, to top it off, become a criminal, when, as a middle-class, middle manager who has never been out of work I’ve had nothing more than a speeding ticket in my whole life.” In this individual case, Helen is saying—very much in concert with many of the contributions we have heard so far—that this is a blanket approach insufficiently focused on the actual circumstances under which people should be deprived of their dogs.”
“For example, she says that the health insurance, which she has had for the dog ever since she brought him home, would be lost to her. Without health insurance, it would have cost her more than £3,500 for a procedure that her dog had to undergo, but it actually cost her £800 with the insurance.”
“She says: “With such vague descriptors as ‘gives the impression of great power for size’, ‘blocky head’ and ‘neck is medium in length’, and the equally vague descriptor that the dog must meet ‘a substantial number of the characteristics’, I have no idea if he would fit ‘type’, and seemingly all that matters is what everybody else thinks!” She then goes on to say, “Of course, you could recommend my taking a ‘precautionary approach’” and register him anyway, because it would just mean that he would have to be on a lead and muzzled in order to comply. However, apart from this costing her dog its freedom, which she feels is wholly undeserved, she says there is much more in the way of consequences than might be expected.”
“He has never shown an ounce of aggression towards any humans, including at the vets during some incredibly negative procedures, none of which the vets have ever felt he needed to be muzzled for, including when he had to have a stent placed into his ear when he damaged a blood vessel”— a procedure she says he had done, “without pain relief!” She continues: “So you can imagine my shock, my horror, at learning that the ridiculously vague ‘breed definition’ of the XL bully, very hastily and incredibly poorly formed by the Government ‘experts’, somehow seems to have incorporated every and any large muscular looking dog in the UK, potentially including my beloved boy.” She says that according to the EFRA Committee discussion, the XL bully came to the UK in 2014, but her dog was born the year before, so she finds it hard to believe that he could so be categorised.”
“However, I think I am correct that it became a bit of a byword for legislation introduced in a hurry on an issue that turned out to be rather more complex than initially seemed to be the case, and I fear that the same may be true of the present update to the Act. It is therefore with reluctance that I say that we of course all agree that the safety of human beings must come first, but if we propose to inflict severe restrictions on pet owners, we must at least be unambiguous in what we do. Let me turn to what Helen wrote to me: “I do not have an ‘XL bully’. My dog is, by DNA testing, an American Bulldog X Neapolitan Mastiff mix, with multiple breeds mixed on the mastiff side. In other words, I have your basic mutt, or ‘Heinz 57’ dog. He will be 11 in April and I have had him since he was 9 weeks old.”
“I came to the debate to find out more about the issue and to give voice to my constituent Helen. She is caught by what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) described as the imprecision of the rules on what actually constitutes a dog of this dangerous categorisation. The Minister is as kindly, compassionate and open to reason as any former Chief Government Whip could be, so I presume on the time of the Chamber only to quote a few extracts from a quite convincing letter from my constituent. Of course, dangerous dogs legislation has a bit of a history. I was not yet a Member of Parliament when the original legislation was passed.”
“Has the Home Secretary been struck, as I have, by the very small number of Opposition Members standing to contribute to questions on migration? Does he agree that, if democracies both within the EU and, like ourselves, outside the EU cannot find a solution to this problem, we will see the increasing emergence of far-right politicians in positions of power? That ought to frighten us all.”
“How can a two-state solution, which everybody says they want—everybody in this Chamber, at any rate—ever come to pass while Hamas remains in control of the Gaza strip?”
“From his maiden speech onwards, the Minister has relentlessly promoted the cause of service veterans, and the whole House should be grateful to him for it. Even longer in their service are tremendously experienced charities such as Veterans Aid in Victoria, under the inspirational leadership of Dr Hugh Milroy. To what extent is Government strategy drawing on the vast experience of such organisations, which know so much about the frontline issues faced by veterans who fall on hard times or even into destitution?”
“Does the Minister share my relief that both main parties in the House of Commons support the retention and renewal of the nuclear deterrent? Did he also share my relief that, in July 2016 when the vote was held on whether to renew the nuclear deterrent, there was a massive majority of 355 in favour of doing that? That sends a message to the Scottish nationalists about how unrepresentative their views are.”
“Does the Secretary of State agree that it is vital that his counterparts in the US Administration realise that if Putin does not lose in Ukraine, the peace and security of the whole of Europe is called into question, so it is in their short and medium-term interests to make sure that Putin is seen to fail?”
“Sooner or later there will be an incident, unless security on entering and leaving the Houses of Parliament is restored.”
“About 40 years ago I had an unlikely campaigning role that involved organising counter-demonstrations to certain mass marches, but one area we never had to worry about was the vicinity of Parliament, because no demonstrations were allowed in Parliament Square. The reason given for that was that Members must not be impeded in entering or leaving the Houses of Parliament. Even if demonstrations continue to be allowed in Parliament Square, it should be a common concern to those on both sides of the House that Members find themselves getting advice from their Whips on which exits they cannot use for fear of being mobbed by an unauthorised demonstration that comes right up to the gates of Parliament. This really has gone too far.”
“Will the Home Secretary explain to those of us who are not experts in this area why it is that people who arrive illegally on our shores from a safe nearby country cannot immediately be returned to that safe nearby country? Clearly it would be in breach of certain laws, so can he set out, perhaps in a statement, what those laws might be?”
“and learned Friend that a peaceful demonstration should be called off in the face of intimidation, and is it not a matter of concern that the people who made the online threats that led the police to give that advice have not, as far as I have learned, been in any way questioned, sought or prosecuted?”
“I detected that my right hon. and learned Friend had reached the closing part of his peroration, so I wanted to ask him to address one concern that I have about the policing of demonstrations. As it happens, I think the police made the right call about 11 November, given the law as it stands. What concerns me is that three weeks earlier, on 21 October, a planned demonstration in Golders Green to pray for Israel and the Jewish people was called off after the police advised that it would be subject to intimidation or violence from people who were representing it as a threat against Muslims holding a demonstration for Palestine seven miles away. Does it not concern my right hon.”
“Whether we like it or not, Israel will carry on fighting until it has established control of the area from which it was attacked. The question that then arises is what happens next. If Israel simply withdraws, Hamas will reappear. At least one moderate Arab state believes that a two-state solution will have to be imposed and policed. Are the Government giving thought as to who might carry out that job? Otherwise, the outcome that they want—a two-state solution—is wholly impracticable.”
“May we have specific detail on the help that jobcentres are giving to armed forces veterans, who must live with the consequences of decisions made by Governments?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I take advantage of a rather quiet news day to ask if there is any way in which I can place on record the appreciation of right hon. and hon. Members for the wise advice, quiet efficiency and unfailing courtesy of Mr Peter Barratt, who recently left the service of this House after more than 30 years?”
“Before I ask my question, may I quote the former Defence Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace)? In an important article in The Daily Telegraph at the beginning of October, he said: “Before I left office, I asked the PM to match or increase the £2.3 billion for Ukraine to add to the £4.6 billion we have spent already. The UK is no longer the biggest European donor to Ukraine—Germany is.” Does the Minister agree that this is a helpful exchange of views, because it will enable him and his team to go to the Treasury and express how united the House is on the need to continue this important—indeed, decisive—level of contribution to Ukraine’s fight for freedom?”
“For the sake of clarity, I take it that the position the Committee has adopted is that if the House feels that an individual Back Bencher has misled it, that is one thing, but it cannot compel that Back Bencher to withdraw anything if that Back Bencher feels that they have not in fact misled the House.”
“Did my right hon. Friend get any impression from his discussions with Arab leaders that they understood the purpose of Hamas terrorism to derail their efforts to find a better way of living in the middle east? Was he satisfied that they were sufficiently aware of the benefit that Russia hopes to derive from all this and the need to deter Iran from further escalation?”
“One reason why this Minister has been in his post so long is that successive Prime Ministers have judged him to be rather good at his job. For the benefit of the House, can he confirm that the civil servants who discovered the mistake made it known to Ministers at the first possible opportunity, and that Ministers made it known to the public at the first possible opportunity? Does that not reflect credit on our parliamentary democratic system?”
“I would like to reinforce what my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) said about the concern at district council level that they may be sidelined in combined authorities. We have received a persuasive letter from New Forest District Council, and I would like the Minister to reassure the House that her pledge that they can vote on areas relevant to them will be honoured.”
“It simply makes no sense that districts should be excluded from these new devolution deals.” I appeal to the Minister, once again, to make it clear both to this House and to my concerned and esteemed local district council that it will not be sidelined or excluded by the Government’s refusal to accept Lords amendment 13.”
“Indeed, the district council points to a survey of people in shire areas earlier this year, which shows high levels of trust in and satisfaction with district councils—higher levels than for other parts of local and national Government. I conclude by quoting directly from Jill Cleary’s letter: “District councils hold levers which are indispensable in creating jobs, improving economic opportunity, addressing skills shortages, tackling inequalities and reviving local pride—precisely the outcomes at the heart of levelling up agenda that the Bill seeks to reinforce. District councils are the housing and planning authorities in two-tier areas. We drive economic development in our places. We have strong links to local businesses, big and small, and a track record of attracting inward investment.”
“I have probably heard enough to prevent me from rebelling against the Government, but whether I feel I can go all the way and vote against what the New Forest District Council chairman Jill Cleary, a Conservative chairman of a Conservative District Council, feels is so important is another matter. For the record, this is what those concerns amount to. Lords amendment 13 states that, for combined county authorities: “A Minister of the Crown may by regulations establish a process for non-constituent members to become full members.” The district council feels this is a vital addition to the Bill, otherwise power will steal away from communities and be concentrated at county level without sufficient active district involvement.”
“My primary reason for making a brief contribution to the debate is to flag up the concern that I referred to earlier about the decision of the Government not to accept Lords amendment 13. I am to a degree reassured by what I heard from the Front Bench, which was reiterated quite effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) a few moments ago—namely, the assurances that district councils will in fact be able to make a contribution when decisions are made that directly affect them. Yet if there is an opportunity for further elaboration on that, I would like to hear it.”
“It is sad to reflect that, nearly 80 years later, comparable atrocities are still being carried out, for not dissimilar reasons, in parts of the middle east. As a leaseholder myself, I would like to associate myself with the comments of the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), on the vulnerability of leaseholders to abuse of power by freeholders. That is something on which he has campaigned most effectively for a number of years. I also share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) about building work that is allowed to proceed in the face of accurate predictions of future flooding. I know of more than one case of that happening in my own constituency.”
“I begin by adding my congratulations, in her temporary absence from the Chamber, to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) on her maiden speech, which strongly impressed the House with her environmental commitment and credentials and which included generous tributes to some of her predecessors—not least to David Heath, whom many of us remember with affection and respect, and also to the late Mavis Tate, who may not be so well known to hon. Members of the House. She was a Conservative Member of Parliament during the war years, and indeed before the war. Unfortunately, she was a member of the team of 10 parliamentarians who went to visit the Buchenwald concentration camp, and what she saw there so undermined her mental health that she took her own life two years later in 1947.”
“Does the necessity for the Government to take that sort of action show the danger that leaseholders are under from the abuse of freeholders’ power? May I, through him, gently remind the Secretary of State of an assurance he gave me when talking about leasehold? He said: “We need to end this feudal form of tenure and ensure individuals have the right to enjoy their own property fully.” —[ Official Report , 20 February 2023; Vol. 728, c. 3.] Is that still intended to be in the King’s Speech?”
“Does the Prime Minister accept that what Hamas did was not terrorism for its own sake, but an act of calculated barbarism with a strategy behind it? The present war will not feature Egypt and Jordan as enemies of Israel as was the case in previous wars, so does he agree that that strategy is to try and prevent similar peace agreements with countries such as Saudi Arabia? Does he accept that Hamas are a creature of a client state of Russia, and while we are talking about this we must remember that Russia is still at war in Ukraine?”
“The Lord Chancellor is clearly well on top of this subject, so may I bowl him a couple of googlies? What safeguards will there be to prevent deported foreign criminals from coming back here if they are not imprisoned overseas? Will he be very careful before going down the road of plea bargaining, as in the States, whereby there is a perverse incentive for the innocent to plead guilty because of the huge disparity in the sentences they may receive?”
“I have been watching this developing disaster with increasing horror. The reason that may lie behind some of it appears to be a disastrous venture into property investment. Does my hon. Friend know about the headquarters of the girl guides, which spent millions on itself, and millions more on a hotel venture that went bust, owing unpaid rent to the girl guides of nearly £2.8 million? All that is alleged to be completely unconnected to the decision to close the overseas activities and the training and activity centres, one of which, Foxlease, is in my constituency. This reminds me of the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, with the exception that it is cutting its own limbs off and not waiting for other people to do it.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; she is being generous with her time. Does she agree that it is almost as if the people at the top of the organisation, who do not seem to be answerable even to their own council, still less their own mass membership, are determined to take steps that are bound to lead to the closure of the organisation? Given that the organisation seems to have a very undemocratic structure, does my hon. Friend agree that we ought to look to the Minister for support for the idea of the Charity Commission investigating what has been going on in the organisation, which appears to have strayed far from its founding objectives?”
“I fully recognise that this matter falls outside the Minister’s responsibilities, but does he agree that where millions of pounds appear to have been fire-hosed away from the objectives of the organisation, and where there is clearly a lack of internal democratic accountability, we have to look to the Charity Commission as a last resort to see whether the mismanagement can, even now, be limited in its terrible effects?”
“I will take the opportunity to stress that when Girlguiding UK says that only 10% of the movement uses the five centres, we are still talking about tens of thousands of young people. The response to the situation has been not, “We have to close one centre in order to subsidise the others”, but, “We have to close the whole lot while simultaneously losing millions upon millions of pounds on inappropriate investment in property hotel ventures.” That has to be questioned. The reason for donating Foxlease to Girlguiding 101 years ago was not so that it could be used for commercial development; it was donated to be used by young people.”
“The Minister will have heard the excellent speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who talked about taking it on himself to send leaflets to his GPs to raise awareness. Does the Department have a mechanism for alerting all GPs to these conditions, which seem to be relatively unknown? If so, could GPs be encouraged by her Department to consider prescribing amoxicillin or a similar antibiotic at a very early stage, because that seems to be an almost risk-free option?”
“In certain countries, academics are in serious danger because of their sexual orientation. Elsewhere, those who defend democracy and denounce state corruption are subjected to arbitrary arrest and physical violence, as happened as recently as July to Dr Gubad Ibadoghlu, a renowned senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, who was seized in Azerbaijan while visiting his mother and, disgracefully, is still incarcerated. It is therefore just as well that the organisation originally founded to rescue academics from the Nazis is still at work today. Now known as the Council for At-Risk Academics, or Cara, it is busier now than at any time since the 1930s, fielding hundreds of applications for support, especially from Afghanistan, Ukraine and the middle east, but also from many other countries around the world.”
“Their contribution to the arts and sciences here in the UK and elsewhere proved to be immense: 16 of those helped by the AAC/SPSL later won Nobel prizes, 18 were knighted and over 100 became fellows of the Royal Society or the British Academy. Ninety years on, sadly, many academics around the world are again at risk. Some are caught up in conflict. Their universities may have been destroyed or left without power or water, making productive work impossible. Just getting to and from work may now mean running a gauntlet of rival militia gangs. Others face violence or persecution at the hands of repressive regimes or extremist groups, which see a free-thinking and free-speaking academic as an intolerable challenge to their authority. As we know, women in Afghanistan can no longer go to university at all.”
“It was a mission to save not just the individuals and their families, but also the hard-won knowledge and skills held within their heads. The founders’ appeal for funds immediately bore fruit. Between May and August 1933, the AAC raised nearly £10,000 to get its work off the ground—about £900,000 in today’s values—and much of that came from UK academics. In the following six years until the outbreak of war, the AAC—later called the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning or SPSL—and its individual council members helped between 1,500 and 2,000 academics to escape from Germany and other countries under fascist influence or control.”
“The result, on 22 May 1933, from the rooms of the Royal Society at Burlington House the founding statement was launched of what was initially called the Academic Assistance Council, or AAC—a major initiative of which the UK can rightly be proud. In just a few weeks, 41 university chancellors and vice-chancellors, distinguished professors and other public figures had come together to pledge support for the planned rescue of their colleagues and counterparts in Germany. They included no fewer than nine members of the Order of Merit and, I am pleased to say, a serving Member of this House, the then Conservative MP for Hastings, Eustace Percy. They defined their mission as “the relief of suffering and the defence of learning and science”.”
“Jews, other non-Aryans and political opponents were also barred from holding positions as teachers, professors or judges. Up until then, the German educational system, and especially its universities, had been among the best in the world. Leading German academics were outstanding in their fields and had many contacts and connections with their counterparts in the UK, yet the new law meant that many faced immediate dismissal with no prospect of further work in Germany. Happily, the reaction of their colleagues here in the UK was immediate and decisive. The prime mover was Sir William Beveridge, then the director of the London School of Economics, who happened to be in Vienna that April and was horrified to hear about the purge. Returning home, he immediately began to create an organisation to raise funds to help its victims.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered UK support for at-risk academics. Yesterday evening, I was privileged to attend a remarkable 90th anniversary event hosted by the Royal Society and the British Academy. In 1933, the skies over Europe were darkening. The Nazis had come to power in Germany and were already making racial discrimination against non-Aryans, principally Jews, part of their state policy—the early steps on the road to the holocaust. One of the first such steps came on 7 April that year, with the passing of the so-called “law for the restoration of the professional civil service”. An innocuous title covered a grim reality. The law forced out of their posts civil servants of non-Aryan origin, primarily those of Jewish descent, together with members of political organisations that were deemed to be hostile.”
“Nadiya, a Ukrainian academic with vast international experience in civic education and citizenship linguistics, was forced to flee Ukraine with her 12-year-old daughter after Russia’s invasion. Cara helped her to secure a visiting research fellowship at the department of education at Oxford, where she is now continuing her research. Wynne was a renowned environmental researcher and activist in Myanmar with over 30 years’ experience, who sought Cara’s help after the 2021 military coup. He is now a visiting fellow at Oxford, researching drought and water insecurity. Oleksandra was a professor of economics in Kyiv. She left with her daughter after Russia’s invasion and is now a visiting researcher at the London School of Economics.”
“The hope is always that Cara fellows will one day be able to go home safely, and some do, with individuals recently returning to Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Turkey, Iraq, Palestine and Azerbaijan, which we just mentioned in another context. Others, however, must continue to wait. I could provide dozens of examples but shall limit myself to just a few. For their safety and that of their relatives and friends still in their home countries, some of the names are pseudonyms. Naila was an accomplished academic in Yemen in the field of public health. When she first contacted Cara, she was living with her husband and a young child. They were under siege and fearing for their lives. With Cara’s support, she secured a placement at Cambridge University, where she now works on a global talent visa.”