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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“I greatly admire and respect the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), but I fear that it would require rather more than just an improvement to the way in which service authorities investigate allegations to solve this problem, because the problem derives in large part from the application of the Human Rights Act abroad. The purpose of this Bill should not be to stop sound cases being prosecuted, and it does not do so. Its purpose should be to stop unsound cases being repeatedly investigated, and that, I fear, it fails to do. The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) seized on this point in his earlier intervention, in which he referred to intimidation by reinvestigation, and he is right; that is the nub of the problem.”
“Parliament should go back to what it intended in 1998. It would also be much better for Parliament to require the Government to derogate in relation to overseas operations and to amend the Human Rights Act so that it does not apply abroad. With good will on both sides, the Bill can be improved, and I urge those on both Front Benches to work together in pursuit of an improved outcome.”
“I absolutely accept that this is not a problem confined to us. It is something that has crept into the international scene. Law-observing democracies are finding themselves hamstrung because of the misapplication of what is essentially civil law to the battlefield. That is wrong. It was never intended to be the case, and until it is put right, we will not solve this problem. It is true that the Government, in this Bill, are considering derogating from the ECHR; clause 12 encourages, but does not require, such derogations. That would help, but according to Professor Ekins, whose work with Policy Exchange I acknowledge, that would be no substitute for amending the Human Rights Act and providing that it should not apply outside the UK, or at least that it should apply only in strictly limited circumstances.”
“Can my right hon. Friend explain to the House exactly what are the main reasons behind the fact that although the level of infection often continues to rise, the numbers of deaths is now so absolutely small?”
“It is true that various brands of Corbynism are a little less popular these days, but does my hon. Friend agree that fining a climate change denier £10,000 for an anti-lockdown protest sets a benchmark which should equally apply to those who break the law in pursuit of more fashionable causes?”
“I am a little surprised that the Leader of the House tried to draw a comparison between the presence of Members in the Chamber when we are having a debate in the later part of the day and the spontaneity of oral Question Time, which has been lost completely. I accept that he has done his best, as have the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers, to get as many people as possible into oral questions, remotely, as well as in person, but spontaneity has gone nevertheless and if a Member is unlucky in a ballot, their voice is silenced.”
“I fully accept that in certain Departments, including the Minister’s own, Ministers are trying conscientiously to weigh up the different factors, come to sensible decisions and stick to them, but will he take the message back to the Government that the inability of Government at a very high level to choose policies that seem capable of withstanding gusts of public opinion or media opinion, which is something else, is undermining confidence in the process, at least in part of Government, because if a decision has to be changed in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) described in his rather splendid opening speech, that suggests that a certain degree of rigour is absent?”
“Given that the Minister has so much to say on this subject, it is really rather sad that it is having to be said in the context of an urgent question rather than a voluntary statement by the Government. The Russia report could not have been produced to this high standard without the dedication, the expertise and, above all, the objectivity of the ISC’s brilliant staff, some of whom I have worked with previously, yet according to the journalist Tim Walker some people within Government tried to sack the secretariat and make political appointments. Will my right hon. Friend, as I still regard him, resist the temptation to fob us off with clichés about not believing everything we read in the media and give this House now a categorical commitment that no party political special advisers will be allowed anywhere near the ISC?”
“Will my right hon. Friend give any encouragement that beauty salons will be allowed to open in the reasonably near future and does he share my concern and disappointment that even though campsites are allowed to reopen, the company in charge of those in the New Forest is threatening to keep them closed until spring next year?”
“What recent representations he has made to his counterpart in the US Administration on President Trump’s proposal to reduce the number of US troops deployed in Germany.”
“I am glad that the Secretary of State has been making representations to the US about the importance of not cutting conventional forces in Europe, but can we make such representations if we ourselves have any intention to do what is reported in the press—namely to inflict swingeing cuts on the Army and to revisit the argument we won two years ago about the Royal Marines’ amphibious capabilities? Does he accept that, although we have 21st century threats to meet, that is additional to, not a substitute for, the conventional preparedness we need to maintain?”
“My right hon. Friend may not be aware that there was a six-month stand-off in 2018 between the then Defence Committee and No. 10 over whether Sir Mark Sedwill, newly appointed as National Security Adviser, should appear before that Committee, because it was argued that he appeared before the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy and he need not come to us. Can my right hon. Friend give us an assurance that this National Security Adviser will indeed testify as required before all relevant Committees, including the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Defence Committee and, who knows, the ISC, if it is re-established by then?”
“The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to consider a ban on the sale of single use disposable barbecues within the United Kingdom. And the petitioners remain, etc. [P002585]”
“The petition states: The Petition of Kate Collison and Janette Duke, residents of the New Forest District in Hampshire, Declares that the use of disposable barbecues and their careless abandonment are a proven cause of wild fires; further declares that such wild fires not only risk human life but also cause devastation to wildlife and their habitat; notes that single use disposable barbecues comprise a tin foil tray filled with impregnated “easy light” charcoal with a wire mesh over; further notes that they are lightweight, can easily be carried to beauty spots, wildlife reserves, and beaches, and can be purchased for as little as £1.99 per unit; further notes they have no integral frame support so can be sat directly on the ground causing damage once lit; further notes they emit dangerous carbon monoxide fumes not only during use but also during the cooling process; further notes that whilst they are easy to carry prior to use they are almost impossible to carry away for many hours after use whilst they remain hot, meaning they are often left as litter with devastating consequences; further notes reports that fire services across the country have shown that these abandoned barbecues have been found in the areas where devastating fires have occurred, for example, Wareham Forest, which in May 2020, despite the efforts of 150 firefighters, burned for more than 3 days and devastated 470 acres of heath and woodland, with 11 portable barbecues subsequently found in the burn area; further notes that Chinese sky lanterns, which can pose a similar threat to wildlife and their habitat, were once seen as acceptable but are now recognised as irresponsible and dangerous; and further notes the related Change.org petitions on this matter from the same petitioners, which collectively have over 9,000 signatures.”
“As I am sure you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, single-use barbecues are designed to be disposable but are causing great risk to the forest environment, and local laws and regulations to prohibit and restrict their use have proved extremely difficult, if not impossible, to enforce.”
“Will the Home Secretary join me in praising the action of Patrick Hutchinson, who rescued a white demonstrator from the other side of the riot, as it were, because he did not wish him to be injured and thus the Black Lives Matter movement to be discredited, and will she also endorse what I think I heard the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) say, which is that trying to impose the values of the modern era on people and personalities from a past age is rather irrelevant compared with making sure we examine how people behave towards the black community today?”
“May we have a statement from the Home Secretary on the excellent idea from my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland), so far supported by 125 colleagues, of a desecration of war memorials Bill? Such a Bill would enable special circumstances and special penalties to be considered when memorials to those people of all races who saved the world from Hitlerism and Nazism are attacked. I hope it is common ground on both sides of the House that we want to honour those who died, including such people as the black airmen of the Tuskegee squadron, led by one of my personal second world war heroes, the great Benjamin Davis.”
“This is one of the worst disasters in public life since the contaminated blood scandal. Does the Minister agree that, if it is proven that Post Office executives were aware of the software faults but allowed innocent people to rot in jail, they were guilty of criminal negligence and possibly criminal conspiracy and therefore ought to be brought to justice? Will the proposed inquiry allow that to be done?”
“My right hon. and learned Friend mentions a couple of cases, including Fishmongers’ Hall. Does that not illustrate the great range of problems that have to be addressed? In recent times, was there not a case where someone had to be released even though people were sure he would reoffend at the first opportunity—he did so, and had to be trailed and stopped by an MI5 team—whereas at Fishmongers’ Hall, was the problem not that the person had claimed to be reformed and that there was no reason, apparently, not to release him? It will have to be a very comprehensive piece of legislation to cope with such a wide range of problems.”
“I strongly endorse what the right hon. Gentleman has just said about the distinction between young people and people of mature years who embrace extremist totalitarian ideologies. Looking back to the time of Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism, we see that very few people who embraced it as adults ever gave it up or could have been deradicalised, but that there are countless examples of young people who went through a phase of addiction to it and then rejected it completely. So he is absolutely right to focus on this age distinction.”
“May I say from the Government Back Benches that some of us are convinced that the right hon. Lady has been proven right, but will she acknowledge the motives of former Governments being cautious in these very delicate areas?”
“In the Minister’s references to TPIMs, he may have answered a question that I was hoping to ask him a little later: what do we do about that category of people who have gone abroad to fight for terrorist-backing organisations and return to this country, where there is not enough evidence to prosecute? I think that the Bill does not say a lot about that. If I am wrong, will he correct me? If I am right, surely that is an area where TPIMs might be relevant.”
“That is a very clear answer as far as it goes, but it appears that French patrol boats are escorting these dangerously overloaded inflatables across the channel until they reach English waters—I should say UK waters—whereupon our patrol boats pick up the occupants and ferry them to our shores. I understand that this is because we have to save people who put themselves, and sometimes their families, at serious risk at sea, but how can we remove perverse incentives to behave in such a dangerous fashion?”
“The Minister made mention of attempts to re-designate who would be classified as victims. Do such attempts include the likes of Gerry Adams, whose convictions for trying to escape from the Maze prison have recently been controversially quashed by the Supreme Court on the basis of a dubious technicality?”
“May we have a statement in Government time about the situation of zoos and wildlife parks, which are desperate to reopen and should not be kept waiting until 4 July? Is there a possibility that the Leader of the House, the shadow Leader of the House and the Speaker might come together to decide whether there is any way in which we, as a House, can show solidarity and support for Britain’s black community in the shocking aftermath of the slow-motion murder of George Floyd on the streets of our democratic ally, the United States?”
“As my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) has often pointed out, only 500 veterans of the former Hong Kong Military Service Corps and royal naval service were offered UK passports in 1997; the rest were disregarded. Has not the time now come to pay this debt of honour to around 250 additional former servants of the British Crown by allowing them and their families the right to relocate to the United Kingdom if they wish or need to do so in future?”
“May I appeal to the Government for a statement on the plight of people, many approaching retirement, with endowment mortgages that are due to mature in the middle of this covid crisis? Such a statement would give the Government the opportunity to urge companies such as the Prudential to extend the maturation date until normality returns and the yield enables people’s mortgages to be cleared in the usual way.”
“As an alternative to using public transport during the crisis, what assessment has my right hon. Friend made of the desirability of ageing bikers like me once again using motorcycles for travelling to work, and will he be taking any steps to incentivise motorcycle usage as the lockdown is gradually eased?”
“My right hon. Friend has proved himself to be a brilliant multi-tasker, so will he kindly turn some of his attention to a firm in my constituency that has access to a network of manufacturers in southern China that believes it can supply a million items of gowns, visors, masks and other PPE equipment per week if only someone from the Government would get in touch? I am very happy to text him the details directly, but I have been trying for three weeks and still the Government have not got in touch with this firm.”
“Will Ministers consider suspending the application of the loan charge for the period of this emergency, thus stopping the hounding of the self-employed people who were the subject of an important debate in this place last week?”
“Following the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) about the Coral Princess, may I urge the Foreign Secretary to check on what is happening with this vessel? The information that I had from Ken and Doreen Hodge on board is that they are heading for Fort Lauderdale in the US, and they fear that they may then be required to stay for 14 days in isolation before coming home. Will he make a particular point of checking what is happening to the Coral Princess and the people on board?”
“In the presence of an appropriate Minister, can we urge the point that food supplies ought to be made available at the place of work for key workers? When they come off their unduly long shifts, they should not be in the position of not being able to get any food to take home.”
“Quite a major distribution and logistics firm in my constituency has offered drivers and vehicles for the cause of fighting the virus. Is there some sort of central one-stop shop to which volunteers and offers of that sort can be directed, so that they can be put to best use? I appreciate that the Minister may not be able to answer me immediately, but if she cannot, perhaps she could inform me afterward.”
“Given that the suggestions of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) could be implemented so speedily, will the Minister undertake to try immediately after this session to get an answer on whether they should be implemented?”
“[That this House honours and recognises the sacrifices that our veterans and their families make; notes the particular sacrifices that the partners of veterans make and the consequences for them of tragically losing a spouse or partner serving in the armed forces; notes the changes announced in 2014 which allowed war widows or widowers that lost their spouse or cohabiting partner in service in the armed forces before 6 April 2005, and had not remarried by 1 April 2015, to retain their war widow pension for life regardless of ongoing relationship status; notes however that this regrettably excluded war widows bereaved before 6 April 2005 that had already had to surrender their war widows pension upon remarrying or cohabiting; believes that this is unacceptable; notes that the only way this group of war widows could regain their pensions is by divorcing their current partners and remarrying them; agrees with the then Defence Secretary who said on 18 February 2019 that this was a burning injustice, Official Report, column 1187; and therefore supports the campaign of the War Widows Association to rectify this anomaly; and urges the Government to correct this injustice by providing equalisation and compensation for the small number of war widows unjustly affected.] May we also have a debate on early-day motion 307—which, more positively, is about the enhanced co-operation between Blind Veterans UK and the Blinded Veterans Association of America, which are setting up a new combined eye trauma taskforce—and look for the Government’s support in that matter?”
“In difficult times we should remember those who sacrifice most, so may we have a statement or debate on the substance of early-day motion 280 about the scandal of war widows who lost their pensions on remarriage?”
“My right hon. Friend is making an unanswerable case in logic, but I would like to put another political point to him. The cause of tax avoidance is not normally associated with such parties as the Labour party or the Liberal Democrats, but I am sure he would acknowledge that Members from both those parties have played a leading role in trying to put this injustice right.”
“Even those paying the loan charge will see HMRC continuing to pursue further sums for so-called protected years in which loans were received. The recommendation of Mr Williams is that those accepting the loan charge should be afforded finality by making the loan charge full and final settlement. I come to the conclusion that HMRC fell down on the job. It was asleep at the wheel. It bullied the victims, and let the villains who created these schemes get away with it. HMRC in this case is not just a bully; it is a negligent bully. The Government should know when they are beaten both morally and intellectually, stop flogging this dead horse and finally do the right thing.”
“Seventhly, it has been pointed out that there was something called part 7A ITEPA—part 7A of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003—which came into effect in December 2010, and this has been cited as justifying the decision for the loan charge to apply from 2010 onwards. However, I am advised by Alan Williams FCA, a constituent as well as a highly qualified professional, that this does not apply to the self-employed, so the self-employed who were so often the victims of this set-up ought not to be caught by a provision—by the assumed knowledge of a provision—that did not, in any case, apply to them. An eighth point is that the loan charge is not, in any case, full and final settlement, and therefore does not close open years.”
“People actually paid money before the Morse review for a period that has now been exempted, and they could probably negotiate better settlements, if any were still needed, than those for which they paid money that they cannot now get back, because they cannot reopen the negotiation. Sixthly, people acted in good faith on the best professional advice that they could get. They should not have been left in blissful ignorance for years on end by a Government body that is now playing catch-up. Because of the time constraints, I will not go through the harrowing personal testimonies, but will stick to a couple more theoretical points and then conclude.”
“Thirdly, if HMRC had been doing its job properly, it would have sanctioned the purveyors of those schemes and warned the victims, as soon as they sent in their first annual returns, that they were making themselves liable for charges. Fourthly—this is quite incredible—such schemes are still being sold to thousands of people who clearly still have no idea what is waiting for them from HMRC further down the line. Fifthly, the Morse review’s decision to exempt people affected prior to 2010 leaves people who were bullied into making large payments relating to the years before 2010 unable to get those settlements rescinded.”
“Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) for taking the initiative over several months to try to put this right, to the all-party parliamentary group ably led by the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), and to our former colleague, Greg Mulholland, who has done a great deal of background research in support. My understanding of the situation can be summarised as follows. First, uncertainties arising from IR35 legislation led tax experts to approve umbrella company loan schemes. Secondly, many self-employed public sector workers, among others, had no idea that they were being paid by means of such loans.”
“During business questions before this debate, I asked about the perennial issue of war widows whose pensions were stopped because they remarried or cohabited, and we were told in no uncertain terms that those pensions would not be reinstated retrospectively. On 6 February, I tabled a question to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who is present, about the apparent difference between the approach to war widows, who will not get retrospective pensions, and people who will be hit retroactively by the loan charge. I was told in the reply that the loan charge is not retrospective. We now know that the reason it is not retrospective is that it is retroactive, even if the two things are exactly the same. I pay tribute to my right hon.”
“If it were so clear and the schemes were so contrived, why did HMRC not point that out to people at an early stage, so that they would have seen what they were letting themselves become vulnerable to?”
“One other thing the Post Office must have known all along was that there was this huge spike in postmasters and postmistresses being reported and prosecuted, so they did not know that they were not alone in the matter, but the Post Office presumably knew that all this was going on at scale.”
“If the integrated review comes to the conclusion, which it certainly should, that the defence part of the review requires more than 2% of GDP to be spent on conventional and related armed forces, will the Secretary of State and his team fight like tigers to ensure we get the extra money?”
“Given that the Government are on track to deal with the hounding of our veterans within 100 days of taking office, how many days will it take to produce an ex gratia plan for the compensation of the estimated 265 war widows who lost their pension on remarriage or cohabitation?”
“Is the real problem not so much the religion itself but fundamentalism? When people get so absorbed in their religion that they can only interpret it literally, extremism and persecution take root.”
“I am very interested in the case that my hon. Friend makes. Does he see any role in this scenario for the simple personal alarms with which Members of the House have been recently equipped? They are easy to operate and make a tremendous noise, which could well stave off an attacker.”
“I have used the intervening period since my intervention to check on the price of rape and other attack alarms. From a well-known online megastore, one can get a pack of three of these extremely effective protective devices for less than £9. Does the Minister agree that, as a matter of routine, particularly where people are concerned about attacks in public places, such a modest investment is well worth making?”