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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“Does my right hon. Friend accept that too many NATO Governments and political parties have accepted energy dependence on Putin and financial dependence on dodgy donations from Russian oligarchs? Given that we spent between 4.5% and 5% of GDP on defence throughout the 1980s until the end of the cold war, will he now accept 3% of GDP on defence as a suitable future benchmark?”
“What lessons have our Government drawn from the consequences for Ukraine of its decision in 1994 unilaterally to give up all the nuclear weapons that it had inherited from the Soviet Union in return for assurances on a piece of paper?”
“T5. We now know that the cold war is back with a vengeance. We regularly spent between 4.5% and 5% of GDP on defence in the closing stages of the cold war. Has the time come to set a higher target than a bare 2%? Surely 3% should be a minimum.”
“What will the Government do to try to impress on President Putin that even if he invades the rest of Ukraine without military comeback on behalf of Ukraine, it would be a fatal error for him to think that he could then invade an outlying NATO state—one of the Baltic states, for example—without an attack on one rightly being considered to be an attack on all NATO members?”
“Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who entered the House at the same time as I did in 1997. I particularly remember working with her on a cross-party basis on a very moving campaign that she undertook in relation to the tragic loss of the MV Derbyshire with all her crew. This was the largest ship of the British mercantile fleet ever to be lost at sea. As a result of her campaigning, and that of her predecessor in Liverpool, the wreck was eventually discovered and the crew absolved of any blame for the loss that had claimed their lives. It was a pleasure to work with her on a cross-party basis then. I, and I am sure all other members of the Committee, look forward to working with her on a cross-party basis in the future. With that, Madam Deputy Speaker, I thoroughly endorse the recommendations in the motion.”
“Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) brought his keen enthusiasm for the subjects with which the Committee deals strongly to bear and, as a result, has significantly shaped the make-up of our future programme of study. We are grateful to him for all his contributions. The fact that we are gaining a former Attorney General, in the shape of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), is particularly apposite, because who better than a former Attorney General to be around to remind both the Government and the agencies of their obligations under the Justice and Security Act 2013? Sometimes those obligations are slightly overlooked, and we look forward to the strength and legal underpinning which his skills will bring to the ISC. Finally, it is a pleasure to welcome the hon.”
“I will not detain the House, but it seems a suitable opportunity just to say a word of thanks to the two members of the Intelligence and Security Committee who are leaving, and a word of welcome to the two who are joining. The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) is well known for the calmness and conscientiousness of her approach to politics, and her good sense and good judgment on all issues to which she turns her hand. Our loss is the Home Affairs Committee’s gain. I felt honour bound to vote for her for that position, even though we knew that we would be losing her services which were much valued on the ISC, but we wish her every success in her new post. My right hon.”
“How much greater would the backlog be if we had not successfully resisted the entreaties of those modellers, and indeed politicians, who wanted another shutdown over the Christmas period?”
“The answer came, bluntly, from the then Minister of State, who is now the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport: “There are no current studies specifically relating to new and improved techniques for the removal of eroded surgical mesh. However, there are five studies ongoing on surgical mesh implants and the National Institute for Health Research welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including on the removal or implantation of vaginal mesh. There are currently no plans to establish a unit in order to train mesh removal specialists.” We know that only a tiny handful of people have successfully specialised in this field. They ought to be empowered to train up a new generation to help these people, whose suffering will otherwise continue indefinitely.”
“I was most disappointed by the response to question 31274, from 12 July 2021, which asked, in part, what steps the Secretary of State “plans to take to research new and improved techniques for removal of eroded surgical mesh implants; and if he will make it his policy to establish a unit for developing such techniques in order to train a new generation of mesh-removal specialists to treat people who experience the effects of failed mesh implants in the future.” Bearing in mind what has been said about the intense difficulty of extracting degraded mesh from the flesh that has grown around it, I have often wondered whether there might be a technique to melt it away, rather than trying to extract it. However, if we do not do the research, we cannot possibly find a solution.”
“I conclude by saying that I have been disappointed with the series of responses I have had to my dozen questions, which are all easily accessible for anyone who cares to look on the written questions section of my website.”
“The evidence was ignored, the condition insight report was not recognised (despite it being a DWP authored document).” She goes on to say that PIP “was only awarded (eventually) at an Independent Tribunal; which means I will have to reapply again, from the beginning, in just over 12 months’ time…All told, the entire situation is extremely draining mentally, emotionally and physically.” Emma has also communicated with me while this debate has been under way, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, to point out that—as Southampton has been mentioned—there is, as yet, no named surgeon at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust’s so-called specialist centre.”
“It also restricts my ability to find alternative work…Mesh has cost me thousands of pounds in travel, subsistence, accommodation and parking…loss of earnings & annual leave…days off for appointments, surgery, recovery, and mesh-related ill health.” That has all taken its toll. I could go on, but I will just pick one or two examples from the long list of the consequences of this disaster for Emma. She says: “The battle to get any form of PIP was traumatic and stressful.”
“Every so often she thanks me for what I have done to support them. I feel a complete fraud when she does that, because we should be thanking her for what she is doing as someone who is suffering from this and reaching out to support other victims. I know she is watching this debate on the feed today, and I express publicly my total admiration for her. Emma says: “Mesh has cost me my career. I am no longer able to fulfil the driving element of my job and have lost my Class 1 HGV licence as I cannot pass a medical…Mesh has cost me the ability to work at a desk, in an office, therefore restricting my earning potential, and in turn my pension contributions.”
“Helen goes on: “Mesh costs me the price of a cleaner twice a week as I can no longer manage it all myself…Mesh costs me the pain of sitting in a car for over a two hundred mile round trip each time I go to see my consultant, as I can’t see my local butcher.” That leads me on to something that has been hinted at before: it is all well and good to set up specialist mesh removal centres, but if the only choice people are given is to go to the surgeon who put the mesh in, who has now, after repeated failures, been appointed to take it out, would they seriously put themselves in his or her care again? Finally, I want to talk about Emma, who is not only a victim of this herself, but someone for whom I am lost in admiration. She has acted, in a sense, as a focal point and a support for the other victims.”
“Travelling to Bristol 9 times, staying in a hotel 7 times, as I am not able to sit to drive home on the same day due to pain. So not only fuel costs but hotel fees as well…Mesh has impacted negatively as I was told one operation would fix me, so one day’s lost wages, which ultimately has resulted in 9 more operations, each requiring weeks off work, each resulting in loss of income and now ending with one more surgery which could also require more follow up surgeries.” She says that mesh, as in the case of Mandy, “has cost me my sex life” for “which there is no financial recompense”, and adds: “Mesh has cost me the ability to care adequately for my disabled husband, who now has to try to care for me…Mesh costs me monthly for my pain medication.” If time permits, I will refer to the brush-offs I have had when asking if Government would make it their policy to at least exempt these victims of NHS failure from prescription charges, with no success so far.”
“Then she comes to the topic of the failure of the surgeon. There are three entries here: “Failure to discuss risks prior to surgery Failure to suggest alternatives to TVT Failure to obtain informed consent”. On the financial loss, I will not quote from her list, because others have set out the cost to them, but Members can be sure that it applies to Mandy as well. My second constituent Helen, or Ellie, had two implants, in 2009 and 2011. This is what she has to say about the effects of these unnecessary procedures: “Mesh has restricted my ability to work full time, due to constant pain, which has impacted negatively on my family…Mesh has cost me financially to travel for hospital appointments out of area. I’ve had to travel to London three times, staying in a hotel twice.”
“She says that she has subsequently had to undergo many surgical episodes that would have been unnecessary, and that “had I been aware of the risks and the fact that alternatives were available I would not have had surgery in the first instance. Partial removal surgery made things significantly worse. To date I have had 8 operations relating to the TVT.” Mandy lists some of the costs that it has meant for her: “Left in ongoing chronic pain Loss of some independence No intimacy possible Relationship with husband negatively impacted which has an impact on work as we run a business together Negative impact on my family and friends. I used to be happy and cheerful person, but this is now a constant struggle Emotional stress of trying to appear ‘normal’ takes its toll Feeling of being a failure as a woman and in my work life”. The list goes on.”
“I want to give a voice to three of my constituents, who have summarised their experiences for me, and if time permits to refer to just a few of the dozen or so multifaceted written questions that I have tabled, with differing success in terms of replies, between July 2020 and November 2021. Let me first précis the summary that my constituent Amanda, or Mandy, has prepared for me. She had a procedure in 2009 for the insertion of TVT—transvaginal tape. She says that “the surgeons need to take responsibility and ensure that these failings are not perpetuated. The pain and suffering we have endured and continue to endure is traumatic physically, emotionally, and financially”.”
“Interrogating my own website on my contributions on this subject in preparation for the debate, I see that, apart from speaking on that occasion, my first effort on this topic was way back in a debate on 19 April 2018. I have to ask the Minister why, when terrible health disasters happen, it always takes so long to do the right thing. All that does is prolong the agony for the victims. I suppose the people responsible for trying to make recompense feel that they will be out of the picture by the time their successors have to pick up the pieces, but it smacks of the contaminated blood scandal all over again. Everybody knew that it was a horrible disaster, yet it took so many years, indeed decades, before compensation was finally paid.”
“I pay tribute to everybody who has campaigned on this issue. I agree with every word of every previous speaker. I do not envy the Minister in having to reply to the debate, but I offer her an apology in that, because of an inescapable commitment that has been in my diary for many weeks, I will not be present for her reply. I gave my apologies to you, Mr Rosindell, in advance, and to our hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), who will be in the Chair later. The issue was eloquently summed up by the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) when she said that she could have reread her speech of 8 July word for word and it would have been as relevant today as it was then.”
“Given that section 406(1)(b) of the Education Act 1996 already outlaws “the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school”, will the Government take appropriate action without further delay against Brighton and Hove City Council, which is planning to indoctrinate seven-year-olds with critical race theory?”
“May I advise my right hon. Friend publicly what I have said to emissaries from his campaign team privately? It is truly in his interest, in the Government’s interest and in the national interest that he should insist on receiving the full, unredacted report immediately, as I believe he can, and that he should then publish the uncensored version without any further delay.”
“Cutting out a cancer is both painful and dangerous. Is the Foreign Secretary aware that the previous Intelligence and Security Committee, in its Russia report, drew on the expertise of Edward Lucas, who today has a comment column in The Times headed, “Britain has become addicted to dirty money”? May I suggest that if she wants to be sure that the cancer will indeed be cut out of the body politic and the country’s wider economy, she could do far worse than to consult Mr Lucas before she finalises her proposed sanctions and their structures?”
“Many patients in hospital will presumably be protected by having undertaken their own vaccination process, but some will be clinically extremely vulnerable because of compromised immune systems. Is the Secretary of State saying that these people are at no greater risk of being made seriously ill or dying as a result of coming into contact with unvaccinated frontline staff? If they are at greater risk, is there something else that can be done to lessen that risk, such as a testing regime, before that contact takes place?”
“President Putin has not even waited for the gas to start flowing through the Nord Stream 2 pipeline before exploiting the stranglehold that he has been building on the German economy. My right hon. Friend has already indicated that it may be difficult for Germany to impose severe sanctions against Russia if this invasion goes ahead, so does he not agree that it is vital from our security point of view that anyone with strong Russian or communist Chinese links should be kept well away from our own critical national infrastructure?”
“I have been here purely to listen to the debate, but I have one question for the Minister. Does he accept that both Government and Opposition parties are targets of systematic attempts to buy political influence? If so, does he accept that the people who are trying to check the legitimacy of such donations must be properly protected?”
“I am sorry to come back, but that was not a reply to my intervention. I made it quite clear that parties on both sides of the House are subject to the problem. I am looking for a commitment from the Government that when people are trying to do due diligence and check on behalf of their party or any other organisation within their party that donations are legitimate—when they are trying to see whether a donation is clean money or dirty money—the Government will recognise the need for them to be protected and not sued. Will the Minister give a straightforward answer to that question?”
“I did not want to mention Charlotte Leslie specifically, but we have spent plenty of time hearing about the Charlotte Leslie case, so I will now mention her specifically. The fact is that she was trying to see whether the money that was being offered by somebody who wanted to take over a political organisation within the Conservative party was clean or dirty. As a result of her doing her duty, she is threatened with financial ruin. If my hon. Friend the Minister cannot see the relevance of my asking for protection for such people in this debate, then he needs to go back and restudy his brief. I am sorry to put it in those terms, but I cannot put it in any other way.”
“The Government are saying that fraudsters will still be relentlessly pursued. If, heaven forbid, the Minister ever had to implement such a scheme in the future, would he regard it as a satisfactory result to know that 99% of these huge sums of money went to the intended recipients?”
“My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will undoubtedly be aware of the important distinction between agents of influence or covert propagandists, and espionage agents or spies. In her statement she referred to new national security legislation. In precisely what areas does she anticipate that new legislation interfering in the activities of agents of influence and of espionage agents?”
“Mr Putin knows that NATO will not start world war three to defend Ukraine, but has he been made aware of precisely what non-military sanctions will follow? For example, are Finland or Sweden likely to proceed with an application to join NATO, as has been suggested?”
“As someone who was responsible for bringing in the original provision that people could just say the constituency where they live, the only word of caution I suggest is that we do not want to get into a competing war between candidates about who was more or less precise about where they live. It is really a security matter.”
“I congratulate the Committee on its work and thank the Government for having listened to the recommendations so positively. Will my hon. Friend put a little more flesh on the statistics? Can he give us some actual figures—if not now, then subsequently—on what point-nought-nought-something per cent. means in actual lives lost? Do those statistics show any significant differences between hours during daylight and after dark?”
“He needs to bring it to the House and let us get to work on it, because we all want the solution.”
“I differ rather from my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), as he knows, in that I actually agree much more with the Government’s suggestion that it has to be a combination of a statute of limitations and a truth recovery process. The problem that we have is that the Government seem to have thought their idea through very clearly, and yet, whenever we expect it to come forward so that we can then drill down deeper to see in which way it needs to be adjusted—perhaps a bit further away from my view and the Government’s and a bit further towards my hon. and gallant Friend’s—nothing ever happens. Having often spoken to him about the matter, I believe that the Secretary of State is well seized of the issues. We cannot understand the reasons for the delay.”
“It is worth noting that the last speech Jack made to the House of Commons was on this very subject of standing by our friends in Afghanistan. Given the unhealthy closeness of ties between parts of the Pakistani state and the Afghan Taliban, what assurances and assistance will the Minister give to Afghans in hiding in Pakistan, who may have been issued with UK visas, that they will not be deported back to Afghanistan by the Pakistani authorities when they present themselves at an airport, instead of being permitted to fly to the United Kingdom?”
“Everybody welcomes the statement of principle that it is immoral that innocent leaseholders should pay for remediation of something which was not their fault, but if that is immoral for the future, it is also immoral for everybody who has been pursued ever since the disaster at Grenfell Tower. Therefore, may I urge the Secretary of State to revisit the answers he gave to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), because otherwise he will be creating a perverse incentive for people to come down on leaseholders and extract rip-off fees before any legislation comes into play if it is only going to be forward-looking?”
“On the question of the recommendations made by the ISC, may I welcome the steps taken by the House of Lords to clean up its act in relation to the registration of work undertaken for foreign Governments? On the NATO guarantee, does the Foreign Secretary agree that it is a solemn commitment by each member of NATO to, if necessary, go to war if any other member of NATO is attacked? Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Does she agree that it is important that we do not elide from the situation in Ukraine to the next step, which will be the Baltic states that are members of NATO. We have to be very clear about what our commitments really are.”
“The Minister mentioned former Chevening scholars being eligible under one strand of the new scheme. May I once again draw the House’s attention to the scholars who are already fully validated and fully funded by the Council for At-Risk Academics, which has been rescuing scholars at risk of oppression since 1933? Most of the limited number of people CARA has validated and funded are applying for ordinary student visas, but it is taking a very long time. Will she look into that and speed it up?”
“My hon. Friend is making a brilliant speech, and thereby shortening the one that I will make very considerably. He has made the comparison with the run-up to the second world war. One of the key final shocks in that catalogue of disaster was the unexpected Nazi-Soviet pact. Would the equivalent to that be some form of Chinese move against Taiwan, which would so distract the United States as to be the last piece of the jigsaw in the picture that he is painting of a Russian plan to dominate the European continent?”
“Deterrence involved two main elements: the involvement of the US, as I said, in European security, and the fact that there was a nuclear umbrella that might not deter all forms of aggression but could certainly protect us from nuclear blackmail. The point about containment is that, if you are not going to go to war with your adversary but you want to stop him taking you over and destroying your way of life, then you have to be prepared to hold him in check for decades on end. What a pity that somebody did not explain this recently to President Biden, who kept talking about “forever wars”. Are the Americans involved in a forever war in South Korea? Should they withdraw their limited military presence from South Korea? What do we think would happen then?”
“There were two alternatives to the cold war: one was surrender and the other was nuclear war, so of those three, I think I know which was the preferential outcome. I also agree with the earlier observation that all the talk about grey zone warfare, and all the rest of it, is a sign that we are already involved in a cold war. It is a good thing, if we are faced by adversaries, to confront them, to stand up to them, and hopefully to prevent that from escalating into an open war: a hot war; all-out conflict. How best can we do that? Well, it worked rather well from the mid-1940s until the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union in 1991. It was a mixture of two concepts: deterrence and containment.”
“I must make a slight disclaimer at this point and say that I am speaking entirely in my capacity as a former Chairman of the Defence Committee, and certainly not as the current Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee. Nothing that I say in this debate is predicated on anything that I have read, heard or discussed in that more recent capacity. What I am about to say is the same message that so many of us have been trying to put forward for many years, which is that there is no real defence for Europe without the involvement of the United States. I was very interested to hear the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) about the fact that people should not denigrate the cold war. The cold war was a strategic success for democracy.”
“However, it is one thing for us all to agree on a bipartisan basis on the analysis of what is wrong and quite another for us to be able to take steps to ensure the safety of the west, which seems to be imperilled rather more than at any time I can think of since at least the 1980s, when there was a huge movement to try and disarm the west of nuclear weapons unilaterally. What are we going to do, what steps are we going to take, and have we got confidence in the leadership of the western world to stand up for the values that seem to be common to all participants so far in this debate? We have heard a masterly summary of the way in which Russia has been issuing ultimata to the west that are truly extraordinary.”
““In brief,” the JIC warned “although the intention may be defensive, the tactics will be offensive, and the danger always exists that Russian leaders may misjudge how far they can go without provoking war with America or ourselves.” That was in 1946. Here we are, many decades later, but one can see resonances and the relevance of that analysis to the situation that we face today. We have had two excellent speeches from Labour Back Benchers—I am only sorry that there are not more Opposition Members here, although I am hopeful that, if there were, they would have been largely singing from the same song sheet.”
“At the beginning of March 1946, less than a week before Churchill delivered his iron curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri, the joint intelligence sub-committee of the chiefs of staff concluded: “The long-term aim of the Russian leaders is to build up the Soviet Union into a position of strength and greatness fully commensurate with her vast size and resources.” The JIC admitted that firm intelligence was difficult to obtain, as “Decisions are taken by a small group of men, the strictest security precautions are observed, and far less than in the case in the Western Democracies are the opinions of the masses taken into account.” Whilst “likely to be deterred by the existence of the atomic bomb”, of which the Americans then had a temporary monopoly, “in seeking a maximum degree of security, Russian policy will be aggressive by all means short of war.” Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
“I believe that the great American people and the great American political system depend on more than any individual in the top job, but all I can say is that, if there are wise strategists around President Biden, they had better brief him a lot better, a lot more quickly and in a lot more depth than they did in the run-up to the disastrous unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
“I am not being partisan about this, because I believe that we are speaking on the very anniversary of ex-President Trump’s disgraceful behaviour in relation to the riots and the invasion of the Capitol, but I am very concerned that we are now faced with the prospect of someone who is manifestly not up to the job of taking on a ruthless, villainous gangster like Vladimir Putin and is going in to negotiate with him on the basis of an ultimatum put forward by Putin that effectively states that the NATO alliance has a take-it-or-leave-it offer: either it withdraws all its troops from the territory of any country that has joined NATO since the end of the cold war or it faces the prospect of military action in Europe.”
“All analogies are risky and no analogies are perfect, but in one sense my analogy stands up: if North Korea now knew that America would not be prepared to go on indefinitely defending South Korea, does one honestly think that South Korea would have much of a future in the face of the regime that it faces across that parallel? Of course it would not.”