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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“She said, “I want to thank you, because, without what you and your comrades did, we would not have a free Parliament today.” Impishly, she added, “And with my views, I would probably have ended up in a concentration camp.” Quick as a flash, Pat Kingsmill DSO said, “Yes, but we would have been in there right alongside you all the way.” I could see the backbones of these four elderly gentlemen straightening because of the way that they had been inspired by the empathy, the kindness and the dignity of this wonderful woman. I close by reminding the House that I was one of hundreds of MPs. Those are my two anecdotes, and if some of those hundreds were here, they could tell many more.”
“I went along to the Speaker’s Office and, when I explained the situation, the member of staff graciously said, “Yes, of course you can have these extra tickets, but why not bring them round, because I am sure Madam Speaker will want to see them.” Not only did she want to see them, not only did she give them a personal tour of the Speaker’s apartments, but at the end of it all she made a little oration to them that was perfectly judged. We must remember that, in their day, these elderly gents had been heroes of the second world war, but many, many years had gone by and most people of that generation did not even know about the channel dash raid or the Palembang oil refineries raid.”
“As a result of a debate on the armed forces, I was in the proud position of welcoming four second world war veterans of the Fleet Air Arm, all of whom had been decorated with distinguished service orders, conspicuous gallantry medals or, in one case, the distinguished service medal for their participation in near suicidal attacks on the German battlefleet going up the channel in 1942 or on Japanese-supplying oil refineries in Sumatra in 1945. I thought that it would be nice to get some extra tickets so that they and their wives could attend Prime Minister’s questions.”
“Betty paused, looked up at the Gallery, spotted this gentleman with silver hair who was beaming and looking very proud of being part of this wonderful occasion, and said, “Is that him up there?” When I said that it was, she said, “Well, strictly speaking, we are not allowed to make reference to anyone outside the boundaries of the Chamber itself. But as it is a special occasion, let’s give him a wave.” So Betty the Speaker and I gave my dad a big wave. The second anecdote I would like to share is from June 2000.”
“However, he said that I could go and have a word with the Speaker’s Secretary—the gentleman at the time who was standing by the Chair. I did that, and he understood and said, “You can go on the end of the queue and be sworn in when all the pre-existing MPs have done so.” For the benefit of anyone watching these tributes who does not know the procedure, I should say that one lines up, takes the Oath at the Dispatch Box, signs the register and shakes hands with the Speaker, with whom one has a gentle exchange of words. In my gentle exchange of words, I said that I was so pleased that it had been possible to be sworn in on that day as my father was 84 and he had come 200 miles to see it.”
“If I may, Mr Speaker, I will share with the House just two personal anecdotes of my experience with the late, great Betty Boothroyd. The first occurred in May 1997, on the day of my swearing in—at least, I hoped it would be the day of my swearing in, because I had inquired, checked and double-checked that on that day the new intake MPs were to be sworn in. As it was my first time, my father, Sam, had come from Swansea in south Wales. He had caught the train on time, it had arrived on time and I had picked him up on time, so I knew that something was bound to go wrong. No sooner had I got him settled in the Gallery than the then Deputy Chief Whip told me that there had been a change of plan and the previous MPs were to be sworn in on that day; the new MPs would be sworn in on subsequent days.”
“Is there a danger that the Government’s proposed legislation on freedom of speech in universities could be weakened or undermined by a requirement first to exhaust internal processes of appeal, which can be protracted?”
“I obviously welcome that the fees charged will be limited, but I presume that the colleges will be able to choose the packages that they offer, so is there a danger that they will be less inclined to offer modules if they cannot charge extremely exorbitant rates for them?”
“I recall some of these debates and it was predicted at the time that the universities, in particular, would behave in precisely the way my hon. Friend has described. I am a little bit concerned about the people who did a course that was not really viable in terms of qualifying them for a practical career. How, if at all, will they benefit from this legislation, given that, presumably, they may have used up their three years’ worth of learning allocation?”
“I thoroughly endorse the direction of my hon. Friend’s thoughtful argument. Does he agree that, even at the Russell Group university end of the spectrum, there has been a serious issue with grade inflation? So many people—a large majority, I think—are now awarded first and upper second-class honours in institutions where, 20 years ago, one in 10 might, if they were lucky, have got a first-class degree, that it becomes difficult for employers to pick out people for the right reasons and for the right jobs.”
“In difficult negotiations, the late, great Ronald Reagan used to say, “Trust but verify,” which I took to mean, “Be optimistic but have a reserve plan.” It sounds as if the reserve plan here is the Stormont brake, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Shailesh Vara) said, that might not apply if, for any reason, Stormont was not sitting. Is the Prime Minister satisfied that there is a plan B that would work under all circumstances?”
“Given that under the existing system people have to fill in a registration form in order to vote in an election, why should it be more difficult for people who have shown themselves capable of registering to vote to bring along a piece of identification when they come to exercise that right?”
“I have often drawn the attention of the House to the very important work done by the BBC Monitoring service. Does not this extremely worrying raid on the BBC, in a country as advanced and potentially well disposed towards this country as India, once again illustrate the importance of not placing too much reliance on sources in countries on which we are reporting, because there is always the potential for action to be taken against local sources? Services such as Monitoring should have strong representation in this country, to guard against disturbing events of the sort that we have seen.”
“Is it correct, as has been reported, that in this tragic case, the murderer’s mother appealed to the police to remove the returned firearm from him and was ignored? If that is true, is it not also the case that no change in any licensing system will be able to compensate for that level of bungling incompetence?”
“Does the Secretary of State recognise that issues like the cladding scandal being foisted on innocent leaseholders will continue until there is fundamental reform of the leasehold system? I know he has plans to do that. When does he think they might be put into effect?”
“They know who they are, so it should not be difficult for him, either now or in a subsequent announcement, to give an analysis to this House.”
“I can confirm what is in the public domain, which is that the committee is undertaking a study of Iran and its security implications, and I will just say that I am cautiously optimistic that various causes of delay in the supply of evidence and the progress of that work are within sight of being overcome. I would like to add my congratulations to the police and security authorities on the announced foiling of 15 credible threats. What I would like to know, without any prejudice to our future inquiries, is whether the Minister is in a position to tell us anything about the origins of the people making those 15 threats. Were they home-grown, or were they people who had come here from Iran? He does hint at the involvement of criminal gangs, which suggests a franchise. How are people able, in this country, to pose such threats?”
“As someone, not alone, who has called on both Front Benches for a very long time to commit to spend 3% of GDP on defence—a figure that we were still spending in the mid-1990s after the end of the cold war—I am used to hearing people say that we need to spend more when they are not in a position to do so. Could the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that if he were in a position of power, we would reach 3% of GDP as a minimum on defence?”
“Immediately, the amount we had to spend on defence would shoot up, not to 3% but probably to something like 10% or 15%. It would take every single scrap of effort, financially, economically and industrially, that this country could possibly generate. That is what always happens if we find ourselves in a war—not to mention all the costs in human life, treasure and misery. Therefore, this should be seen as an investment. If we increase our defence budget, we are investing in the freedom of Ukraine, and we are investing in the freedom and peace of the whole of the western world.”
“At the height of the cold war, in the mid-1980s, as I have said time and again to this House, we regularly and consistently spent—under the old system of accounting—between 4.5% and 5% of GDP on defence. We hear talk of arguments between the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury on whether some extra billions will be made available. We all recognise that if Ukraine succeeds in defeating this aggression, while they will be doing it for their own benefit, they will benefit the whole of the western world. It will mean that the odds of us ever having to engage in that sort of fighting ourselves, against a regime of the sort there is in Russia, will be massively reduced. Ask yourself, Madam Deputy Speaker, what we would do if we found ourselves against our will forced into a conflict of that sort.”
“A few years earlier, in 2015-16, there was a change in the accounting methods for calculating what our expenditure on defence was as a proportion of GDP. That was not an illegitimate change; it just led to us including certain items which NATO counts towards defence expenditure that we had not previously counted. If it had not been for that change in accounting, our expenditure on defence would not have been at 2.1%, which was what it was before the cash injection given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip; it would have been at 1.8%. My right hon. Friend’s cash injection would have taken it up to 2.1%. Under the old system of accounting, in the mid-1990s, we were still spending 3% of GDP on defence.”
“I am basically saying that there are three outcomes when we get into a situation such as this. The first is that we can capitulate. The second is open warfare. The third is containment, otherwise known in the old days as cold war. I really resent it when people say, “Oh, you don’t want to go back to the cold war.” If the alternatives are capitulation or open warfare, then cold war is the very best we can do in staring down an aggressor. I end where I began when intervening earlier to draw attention to the state of the UK’s defence budget, notwithstanding the considerable injection of cash that was made under the previous Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Even that only brought our percentage of defence expenditure up from about 2.1% of GDP to 2.3%.”
“Well it is this, Madam Deputy Speaker: it was only after 1997 that 14 of the present 30 members of NATO joined the alliance. Starting in 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined, and then almost a dozen more followed. What the Russians were basically saying was that, unless America agrees to withdraw its support from all those newly freed democracies, and unless all NATO countries agree to withdraw their armed forces from all those NATO member countries, they can expect to find themselves in an armed conflict with Russia. The trouble is, statements of that sort do not get reported in the west as clearly as they should be—if they do at all. They are generally kept in, as it were, the specialised centres and the highly learned brains of people like Dr Françoise Thom.”
“A former deputy Minister of Defence, Andrey Kartapolov, of the Duma Defence Committee, said as follows: “Our partners”—meaning our partners in the west— “must understand that the longer they drag out the examination of our proposals and the adoption of real measures to create these guarantees, the greater the likelihood that they will suffer a pre-emptive strike.” What was in those draft treaties? I will give the Chamber one example. Article 4 states, in part, that “the Russian Federation and all participants which were, as of 27 May 1997, member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, shall not deploy their armed forces and armaments on the territory of any other European state in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997.” What is the significance of 1997?”
“One was a draft treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation on security guarantees, and the other was a draft agreement on measures to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and the member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It was made absolutely clear that these were take it or leave it offers. They were encapsulated by the deputy Foreign Minister Grushko, who said: “The Europeans must also think about whether they want to avoid making their continent the scene of a military confrontation. They have a choice. Either they take seriously what is put on the table, or they face a military-technical alternative”— that is war to the rest of us. This is a deputy Foreign Minister stating in terms that unless European states do what Russia wants, they can expect to be embroiled in armed conflict.”
“That is not a recipe for peace; it is actually a sound portrayal of a situation where, unless the democrat shows the dictator that he cannot get his own way by force of arms, the dictator will try to get his own way by force of arms. I have two other topics I shall touch on briefly in this contribution. One is to draw attention to an important analysis that appeared on the website “Desk Russie” on 30 December 2021, just two months before the invasion. It was by an old friend of mine whom I have known for the best part of 40 years. She is a brilliant French historian and former Sovietologist called Dr Françoise Thom. She drew attention to the texts of two draft treaties that were unveiled by the Russian Foreign Ministry on 17 December 2021.”
“I have talked about unpredictability and the limitations of deterrence. There is one element of deterrence—nuclear deterrence—where the results are more certain, should one dare put it to the test; but it nevertheless has to be considered in every scenario, no matter what sort of terrible fighting and atrocious behaviour may go on below the level of the nuclear threshold. Let us talk a little bit about containment. Containment is what one has to do when faced with a deeply hostile opponent. It is no good talking about battling for “mutual understanding”. The trouble is, we can have mutual understanding where one person understands that the other person is a democrat and the democrat understands that the other person is a totalitarian dictator.”
“I am sorry to share this with friends from across the Atlantic, but one reason deterrence failed in this context was that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia came almost six months to the day from the catastrophic and bungled exit from Afghanistan by NATO. I am not saying that that planted the seed in Putin’s mind to do what he did, but it certainly may have affected the timing of him doing something that he had almost certainly wanted to do for a long time. We have to bear in mind what sort of signals we were sending. The answer is that we were sending signals of weakness, and when signals of weakness are sent to an authoritarian—that is the rather mild term used these days for what most of us from another era would call the totalitarian—type of government, we ought to know what to expect their behaviour to be.”
“I said there are three concepts, and that is an example of the unpredictability of future warfare. I remind amateur strategists, such as myself, in all parties, that just as we were not prepared for the successful resistance of Ukraine, we should not now become too complacent that Ukraine cannot possibly be defeated. We could wake up tomorrow to find that there has been some terrific, unexpected Russian breakthrough and the whole strategic situation has changed completely. That is why the appeals being made so strongly from both sides of the House are that we must, to coin someone coining someone else coining a phrase, “give them the tools to finish the job”. It can be argued that deterrence failed, but why did deterrence fail in terms of Russia invading Ukraine?”
“I asked him: “If, as appears likely, Ukraine gets overwhelmed, will we offer to give sanctuary to a Government in exile, pending Ukraine’s future freedom?” The then Prime Minister replied, quite sensibly: “One of the points I made to President Zelensky this morning was that it might be necessary for him to find a safe place for him and his Cabinet to go.” —[ Official Report , 24 February 2022; Vol. 709, c. 570.] I was quite sensible in asking that question, and my right hon. Friend was quite sensible in giving that answer because, let us be frank, not many people—at least, not many outside the Cabinet and Government of Ukraine—thought that Ukraine had much chance of resisting what appeared to be, and indeed was, a massive, albeit ill-conceived, onslaught against numerically far smaller forces.”
“It is a matter of great satisfaction that we have American visitors present today to witness the absolute unity of outlook on both sides of this Chamber. It can never be stressed too often that three concepts lie at the heart of defence and security: deterrence, containment and the unpredictability of future conflicts. To give an example of the last, one has only to look at the exchange between the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and myself on the day of the invasion.”
“Before my hon. Friend concludes, may I just put it on the record that I would like to think on both sides of the House there could be no better Member of Parliament than he has proved to be during his time here?”
“I am slightly sorry about the lack of consensus in the Chamber, although that illustrates the point that when views are strongly held, reaching consensus may be an ideal goal that is not always realisable. However, drawing on the shadow Home Secretary’s comments, may I ask my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary to focus on the voluntary aspect of the Prevent programme? Although one can understand that it will always have to operate in a fairly gentle and very carefully worded way to encourage people voluntarily to engage with it, does that mean that there is a gap in the system whereby people espousing extreme views who would benefit from a course on the Prevent programme are, by simply refusing it, allowed to proceed without any attempt at all to encourage them or deter them from an extreme position in the future?”
“May I appeal to the Treasury team to do everything they can in the forthcoming Budget to prevent people on fixed-rate mortgages from facing financial disaster when the fixed-rate term comes to an end?”
“A situation of this sort in a fellow NATO member would seem to be tailor-made for military assistance from us to their civil powers. Do we not have any Royal Navy ships in the area, and are there not Royal Marine contingents that could be put quickly to work, with the agreement of the Turkish authorities?”
“May I ask the hon. Member, who is clearly something of an expert in this area, how reliable he thinks the diagnoses are when people eventually get their appointments? Two of the three cases brought to my attention feature quite strongly a resistance to making the diagnosis of ADHD, even though in these cases—one involving a child and the other a young adult female—they were absolutely convinced that this was the answer. All sorts of reasons are found, including a lot of misinformation, for not making what we think is the correct diagnosis.”
“Celebrity cases are frequently diagnosed on the basis of a private diagnosis. There is something wrong if we have a two-tier system whereby those who can afford to pay can find out what is wrong with them, while those who cannot have to carry on thinking that they know what is wrong but without ever getting a diagnosis until perhaps, in some cases, it is too late.”
“His response was, ‘I don’t know a lot about it, other than that it’s very difficult to diagnose as an adult and the medication is amphetamine, so you probably want to think very carefully about pursuing that.’” She then gives a long list of severe symptoms and difficult experiences through which she had to pass, culminating in her making plans to end her own life. She says: “If it weren’t for one GP questioning the dosage of the aforementioned antidepressant”— which she was being incorrectly prescribed— “and actually listening to me, I would probably have spent the last 6 months taking medication I didn’t need and still not have an answer. And there is a distinct chance that I might not be here at all.” She concludes, and I endorse her point, that she was in the fortunate position of being able to get a private diagnosis.”
“I spoke to her on the telephone just before it began and I have her permission to quote from her letter to me, in which she says: “I was recently diagnosed with ADHD myself, having been able to access an assessment through private medical insurance. Not only are the waiting lists for NHS assessment unduly long but the knowledge and experience of doctors and psychiatrists of the condition is, in my experience, severely lacking. My mental health first deteriorated to the extent that I needed psychiatric intervention in 2018. At this point, I was suicidal. I had read about ADHD and mentioned to the psychiatrist that I believed that I had it.”
“For example, it was suggested that it was the loss of the husband and father that was causing the child such disturbance, when in reality the child had been struggling with his symptoms since the age of three—long before the loss of his father. Indeed, the notes also suggested that the child was affected by having to move out of the family home to live with grandparents, when in fact no such thing had happened. So, even allowing for the fact that I am hearing only one side of the story, it seems unlikely that my constituent could misreport such incontrovertible issues of fact. I will finish with the final case, which involves a young lady who contacted me specifically to urge me to take part in this debate.”
“His mother says that the problem is that CAMHS locally has no full-time psychiatrist who can provide the medication that he needs. Admittedly, the letter about this case came to me only within the last few days, so my office and I have not yet had the chance to find out if that statement is in fact correct, but if it is, that is obviously a serious gap in the system. The second case is worrying because it involves the consistent refusal to give an ADHD diagnosis for a 12-year-old boy whose widowed mother, after a very long delay, finally gained access to the notes of his previous assessments, which were clearly full of demonstrable inaccuracies.”
“Anyone who knows anything at all about the methods of interrogation and torture used by totalitarian regimes will know that the strongest and bravest person alive can be broken if they are incessantly deprived of decent, slow-wave, restorative sleep. It is appalling that young people and older people struggle for years before they receive a diagnosis that might lead them to the sort of treatment that could ameliorate the suffering described by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West and many others, so I hope and trust that this debate will go some way towards alleviating that situation. In the short time available, I will touch on the three cases that I alluded to earlier in a brief intervention. They are all different. The first case is of an 11-year-old boy who was correctly diagnosed as having ADHD three years ago.”
“I have learned a great deal from so many of the speeches that it seems invidious to pick out anyone, but I would like to compliment the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) because of her concentration on treatment. We have heard a great deal about diagnosis, but I was interested to hear about what the treatment options are. I have no medical expertise or qualifications, but it is fairly obvious even to me that although many people who experience severe sleep disruption are not suffering from ADHD, people who are suffering from ADHD also commonly seem to have the terrible burden of a huge shortage of high-quality, slow-wave, deep sleep.”
“One group with a strong claim to be here are the former interpreters in Afghanistan and other locally employed civilians who helped our armed forces. Will the Minister explain to the House whether such applications are caught up in the general collection of applications made by people who have come here illegally, or whether any form of priority and extra attention is given to those very deserving Afghan refugees?”
“Will the Secretary of State join me in applauding Poland’s historic announcement today that it is raising its defence budget to 4% of GDP? Can he imagine what conclusion I think our Government ought to draw from that example?”
“From 2005 to 2006, there was a campaign within the NHS to close many in-patient beds in community hospitals. I was pleased by what the Secretary of State said earlier about beds in community hospitals having a role to play. In that connection, will he reconsider the future of the site of Fenwick Hospital in Lyndhurst in my constituency, where the in-patient beds were closed? The NHS is now proposing to sell it off, but I would have thought that, with a bit of imagination, such a site could increase capacity.”
“I declare an interest as a leaseholder. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the progress he has made. If he does reform the freehold and leasehold systems, what provision will he make so that people with short leases are able to take over their freehold without having to pay huge charges for extending their lease, which is the current situation?”
“I appreciate how my right hon. Friend is trying to give helpful pointers to Government Front Benchers about ways in which the Bill could be improved. Does he agree with a point made to me by a regional representative of the TUC: that there is so little detail in the Bill that it gives Ministers too much discretion to decide what constitutes an adequate service level? That needs to be looked at again, especially because, where such legislation applies in European countries, the unions are involved in deciding what the minimum service levels are.”
“I understand the thrust of my hon. Friend’s argument, and I agree with a lot of it. But does he agree that it might have a better chance of working if, when those minimum service levels are set for each industry, agreement can be reached with union representatives on what those minimum levels should be? Having reached that agreement, it would be far easier to implement the legislation.”
“What further steps can be taken to reduce the effectiveness of the criminal Wagner organisation? Is the Ministry of Defence satisfied that all its expenditure on helping Ukraine is being fully reimbursed from the Treasury reserve?”