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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“The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to withdraw the draft guidance and the consultation, until it has put in place an accessible and workable complaints procedure and further has consulted with home educating parents, as it has with Local Authorities, what the contents should include. And the petitioners remain, etc.] [P002171]”
“Following is the full text of the petition : [ The petition of residents of New Forest East c onstituency , Declare that the “ Home Education - Call for Evi dence and revised DfE guidance” has been written following significant consultation with local authorities and no consultation whatsoever with the home education community; further that the consultation is consequently for little more than show as an intention to implement the content has already been stated: further that it seeks to encourage local authorities to breach the ECHR Article 8 and the GDPR; and further that the report provides no accessible means for a parent to address ultra vires behaviour by their local authority, where many of those authorities already act routinely in an ultra vires manner .”
“I rise to present a petition on behalf of 15 residents of New Forest East, led by Diana and Richard Edwin. Its terms are similar to those of the petitions that have already been presented on this topic. It states: The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to withdraw the draft guidance and the consultation, until it has put in place an accessible and workable complaints procedure and further has consulted with home educating parents, as it has with Local Authorities, what the contents should include. And the petitioners remain, etc.”
“Does the Secretary of State accept that our principal allies on the ground in Syria have been Kurdish-led? Does he share my concern that, having helped to supress and eliminate Daesh in Syria, those Kurdish-led forces may now find themselves under attack by Turkey, a country with an ambivalent record toward both Islamist extremism on the one hand and Russia on the other? What will we do if we find that our Kurdish allies are attacked by our so-called NATO ally?”
“Does the Minister accept that it is not just bleeding heart liberals and humanitarians who reject the use of torture even under the most provocative circumstances, but senior counter-insurgency professionals such as the late Sir Robert Thompson? He wrote in his seminal work, “Defeating Communist Insurgency” in 1966 as follows: “There is a very strong temptation...for government forces to act outside the law... Not only is this morally wrong, but, over a period, it will create more practical difficulties for a government than it solves.” We really should not have to learn that basic lesson over and over again.”
“On a different subject, will the Prime Minister accept that, while she has secured the future of the nuclear deterrent submarines, and while she has invested, rightly and heavily, in intelligence, security and cyber, if a black hole is found in the conventional defence budget, we will need to fill it, if we are to fulfil the ambitious programme she set out in her statement?”
“I am glad that the Minister has paid attention to the previous report that we produced on Northern Ireland. I was even more glad that the official response to that report said that the consultation would include a section of alternative approaches that would consider a statute of limitations and a truth recovery mechanism. Unfortunately —and it seems to have happened with the change of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland—that policy has been dropped. My impression, having spoken to ardent loyalists and ardent republicans, is that they are trapped by their rhetoric. They cannot say that they would go along with a statute of limitations, but in reality, if the Government took the lead, they would be able to live with it.”
“An end to disproportionate focus is not the answer we need. What we need is for a line to be drawn, and the way to draw that line is to have a statute of limitations and a truth recovery process. Why has the Secretary of State excluded that from the consultation when it was supposed to be included?”
“Within the last few hours, I have learned that I have a constituent whose grandmother had recovered from successful hip surgery without the need for any drug interventions and was sent to Gosport War Memorial Hospital for rehabilitation, only to be given a lethal cocktail of drugs that killed her. The matter was reported to Gosport police when it happened in 1998. Does the Secretary of State agree that if people are found wilfully to have administered lethal drug doses unnecessarily, they deserve to lose their liberty, and that if people are found wilfully to have covered up such crimes—for that is what they are—they deserve to lose their jobs?”
“There are various metrics by which our peacetime defence investment can be measured, one of which is how it compares with spending on other high-expenditure departmental matters such as health, education and welfare. Does my right hon. Friend recall that as recently as the 1980s, we were spending roughly the same on defence as we were spending on health and education? I am not saying we should repeat that, but given that we are spending two and half times as much on education as we spend on defence, and four times as much on health—and that was before the recent rise—does he not believe that defence has fallen a bit too far down the scale of our national priorities?”
“I believe that I am right in saying that this is the third defence debate this year to be held in the main Chamber and if the opening speeches—”
“The Secretary of State began by paying tribute to the people who made the ultimate sacrifice in a time of war. It is certainly the case that when a war breaks out, there is no shortage of people willing to make that sacrifice, and what is more, there is no shortage of money to be invested in fighting and winning that conflict. The question that always faces us is what to do in peacetime. There is a paradox of peacetime preparedness, if Members will excuse the alliteration, which is that we prepare by investing in armed forces that we hope will never be used. That is what we have to do, and it is a difficult battle to fight to persuade people in peacetime to invest money in things that we hope we will not have to send into action.”
“This may come as a slight surprise to some Members, but it actually goes back to the end of 1941, when three small European countries, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands—who had all been overrun by Nazi Germany and whose Foreign Ministers were taking shelter in London—made an approach to the British Foreign Office. They said, “We’ve tried being neutral. We’ve tried keeping out of power politics. It has failed. Our countries have been occupied by brutal aggressors. When this terrible war is over, we want Britain to have permanent military bases on our territory so that we can never be caught out like this again.” It was from that invitation given to the United Kingdom to base military forces in countries that had put their trust in pacifism and neutralism, and had that trust betrayed, that NATO ultimately came into existence.”
“Now we spend multiples more on activities other than defence. Indeed, welfare—on which we used to spend 6% in the 1960s, just as we spent 6% on defence at that time—now takes up six times as much of our national wealth as does defence. So it is fairly easy to see that, by any standard of comparison, defence has fallen down the scale of our national priorities. We have been very focused on Europe today because of the debate that took place immediately prior to this debate. It is worth reminding ourselves of the steps that led to the foundation of NATO.”
“Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) referred to the need to move towards 2.5% or 3% of GDP, we understood the sorts of figures that we are aiming to achieve. It was slightly unfortunate that when we published our most recent report, “Beyond 2 per cent”, a few days ago, it coincided with the welcome announcement that £20 billion will be found for investment in the national health service. As I said in an intervention, while we obviously welcome the investment that is made in other high-spending Departments, it is important to remember how defence used to compare with those other calls on our Exchequer. At the time of the cold war in the 1980s, which is in the memory of most of us sitting in this House today, we spent roughly the same on health, on education and on defence.”
“As a result, we repeatedly hear phrases such as “hollowing out” and “black holes in the budget”. It was useful that she said that she felt that defence investment, in real terms, had fallen by about £10 billion. I do not think I am giving away anything more than I should by saying that in a few days’ time the Defence Committee will publish a new report entitled, “Indispensable Allies?”, referring to the defence relationship between the United States, the United Kingdom and NATO. In that report, we do some calculations and projections about defence investment. We can see that at every level at which we estimate gross domestic product to grow over the next few years, an extra 0.5% of GDP equates, roughly speaking, to £10 billion. That is why when my hon.”
“That is very generous of you, Madam Deputy Speaker. If the opening speeches in this debate are anything to go by, I think that the temperature will be very similar to that of the first two debates and show a welcome unanimity on both sides of the House about the importance of defence investment in peacetime to ensure that we minimise the chances of conflict breaking out. The shadow Secretary of State referred to the importance of investing in the whole range of conventional capabilities. As far as I can see, that is common ground among all the main parties in this House, even though there are differences of opinion about the nuclear dimension. The difficulty that we face is that defence investment costs a lot of money, and defence inflation has been running ahead of defence investment.”
“Spending 2.5% of GDP will restore us to where we were a few years ago; 3% of GDP should be our target, because only that way can we be ready for the threats that sadly face us today and show no sign whatever of diminishing.”
“Yes. The hon. Gentleman, who is a valued member of the Defence Committee, has argued that point consistently on the Committee. The Government certainly need to bear that in mind when placing orders for expensive new equipment, at least during a period of uncertainty when there is doubt that the pound will hold its value against another currency. In conclusion, we have an opportunity in this NATO summit to show that we are leading by example. It was never the case that we were anywhere near the NATO minimum of defence expenditure. It was always the case that we were second only to the Americans. We must try to restore that situation, and that means raising more money for defence and spending more money on defence.”
“Does my right hon. Friend accept that there is nothing new, and no inherent contradiction, in having available for medicinal use addictive drugs that one would not allow for recreational use? May I illustrate that by describing my personal experience of 32 years ago? When recovering from severe back surgery, I was given a rather pleasant drug and I asked for a repeat prescription, only to be told that as morphia is related to heroin, there were limits on how much they were going to give me. So why can common sense not prevail in the case of marijuana, as occurred in that case?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for that helpful reply. Would he like to take this opportunity to endorse the suggestion by his immediate predecessor that we should aim to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence by the end of this Parliament? Does he agree that that would be a useful staging post on the road to the 3% that we really need? Finally, would the forthcoming NATO summit not be an excellent opportunity to announce any such advance?”
“If we cannot protect our service personnel from the Northern Ireland campaign by a statute of limitations coupled with the truth recovery process, who is going to be next: the Falkland Islands veterans, or even the last few from the second world war?”
“I endorse what the hon. Gentleman has just said. The same applies to senior officials. The Defence Committee very nearly got to the point of issuing a summons, but common sense broke through. The Government, whether Ministers or senior officials, are required to set a good example.”
“May I just say to my hon. Friend in her role as Chairman of the Liaison Committee that she was enormously helpful to the Defence Committee—as were other members of the Committee—in getting the senior official to agree to come, and in getting the Prime Minister to agree to his attending the Defence Committee? In the end, it was a very valuable session. I do not know Mr Cummings, but I support his cause, and he is in danger of doing grave damage to the cause that he and I both support because the effect of his refusal is far more damaging than anything that could happen at a hearing if he actually gave evidence. Finally, may I appeal to her to stop using the word “backstop”, which, at the moment, is not my favourite expression?”
“May I make a practical suggestion? We sometimes hear that the overseas aid budget struggles to find the best possible causes in which to invest our 0.7% of GNI. Could the rules possibly allow for an investment from that funding in the sort of research that is necessary to find a cure for TB?”
“The right hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. It would be bad enough if these developments were happening in an ideological vacuum. but they are not. Does she agree that this is not just a power grab on the Putin model in Russia but a power grab that is allied to the dismantling of Turkey’s former reputation as the model state where there could be a Muslim society where religion was kept separate from politics? All that, too, is being put into reverse.”
“In fairness to Turkey, it must be said that, in years gone by, there were huge numbers of civilian casualties caused by some Kurdish terrorist movements, but our Government have chosen to support Kurdish fighters against ISIL-Daesh and we are entitled to expect some consistency. If Kurdish fighters are to be supported against the terrorists of ISIL-Daesh, surely Kurdish civilians should be supported against political oppression as well.”
“The right hon. Lady is painting a worrying picture of detentions. I recall that in the aftermath of the coup, and for a considerable time afterwards, we constantly heard reports of tens of thousands of people being arrested. We know that huge numbers of people were arrested en bloc, but can she share any information with the House about whether a significant proportion of those have been released?”
“Among the tens of thousands of people who responded to the consultation were my constituents, Susie Laan and Louise Ravula, who are part of a small but effective organisation called Two Million Tusks, representing the million elephants slaughtered in the past 100 years. They did some original research that showed that, in 72 auction houses covering 180 lots of ivory, 90% of the sales of those lots were unable to prove the provenance—in other words, the dating to pre-1947—of the ivory, which is a legal requirement for the sale of ivory at the moment. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that research proves that we need a pretty comprehensive ban if we cannot tell the date of the product being sold?”
“Speeding cyclists on rural roads in the New Forest are putting residents and other pedestrians at risk, simply because they cannot be bothered to fit a bell on their bikes so that they can warn pedestrians of their approach. When I wrote to a Transport Minister about this issue 18 months ago, he replied: “Through rule 66 of the Highway code we recommend that a bell is fitted to a bicycle and used as necessary. Under current regulations the cyclist is not compelled to keep the bell fitted after the bicycle has been purchased. We have no plans to make bells compulsory as this would be difficult to enforce.” May we have a statement from the Government about that rather insipid reply, so that my constituents, such as Margaret Verdon JP, can go about their business without fear of being mown down by silent road cyclists?”
“Will the Leader of the House join me in paying tribute to the outstanding service offered to Members by the counter staff of the post office in the Members Library? Does she share my concern that it is impending that this service will be withdrawn, and should not Members be consulted more widely before that happens?”
“I would like my hon. Friend to address the point that was raised in the earlier intervention. There is a natural repulsion that one feels about equating the treatment of soldiers with that of terrorists, but that pass, surely, has already been sold because the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 provides that anyone—whether soldier or terrorist—convicted of having killed someone unlawfully cannot be sentenced to more than two years in jail. If the price of protecting soldiers against trials so long after the event is that we also have to protect everyone else, is not that a price that we ought to be willing to pay?”
“Does my right hon. Friend recall that the previous Secretary of State for Northern Ireland suggested that the possibility of dealing with legacy cases through a statute of limitations coupled with a truth recovery process would be included as an option in the forthcoming consultation exercise? Does she accept that that is a legitimate option for consideration, and will she therefore ensure that it is not excluded from that consultation exercise?”
“While the signing of treaties of this sort can lead to political advance, does my right hon. Friend agree that the history of the biological weapons convention of 1972, which was exposed in 1992 as having been broken from day one for 20 years by the then Soviet Union, shows that in reality our security depends on the twin pillars of the independent strategic nuclear deterrent and our alliance, through NATO, with the United States of America?”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I am frankly surprised that common-sense advice from the point of view of an untrained civilian should be extended—if indeed it is—to those who are professionally engaged in maintaining the security of this place and those who work in it. Of course we expect people to rise to the occasion when they are on duty, and we expect those who are not charged with being on duty to keep out of the way of those who are. How concerned is my hon. Friend at the prospect that people who work in the security field are beginning to think that they might pay some sort of financial penalty if they do what most of us would admire, and tackle the danger rather than hide from it?”
“Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke have made clear, they find themselves in peril of being brought before the courts in relation to actions that have often been investigated over and over again without there being enough evidence available for any proper prosecution to be brought forward.”
“Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) raised the question of the legal persecution of soldiers who had fought in Northern Ireland in an attempt to mount a successful security operation against enemies who were bound by no accepted rules, norms or laws of conflict. In that counter-terrorist campaign up to 40 years ago, they had to make sometimes life and death decisions in fractions of a second in a form of conflict for which, for the most part, they were entirely untrained. Now, up to 40 years later, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham and my hon.”
“He rightly paid tribute to the work of Lord Heseltine, as he now is, and others who fought and won that battle. They not only won the argument but won the election on the basis of the strength of the argument, because of the commitment of the British people never to leave this country wide open to aggression from undemocratic and, indeed, dictatorial states. At the time when my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and I were waging that political campaign, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) was engaged in somewhat more dangerous activities, fighting to defend the integrity of the United Kingdom and the security of its citizens in Northern Ireland. Some time ago, he and my hon.”
“My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) is one of the most decent and good-hearted Members in any part of this House. It is therefore a pleasure, as well as a privilege, to follow him in this short debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and I are acquaintances and friends probably going back longer in our political association with one another than either of us does with any other Member of the House. We began to work together politically in 1981 and, as he said in the somewhat reflective part of his contribution, the issue on which we were working was to counter the dangerous and widespread movement for one-sided nuclear disarmament that was in its heyday at that time at the height of the second phase of the cold war.”
“They have an opportunity to, and I hope that they will.”
“He specifically said that the option of introducing a statute of limitations on the basis I have described would be included in that consultation exercise. I do not expect the Deputy Leader of the House to be able to respond today, but I do expect him to take away my concern about the suggestions that that option may not now be included in the consultation when it eventually happens. That would be a retrograde step. As we have seen with Brexit, we cannot always have our cake and eat it. Sometimes we have to decide whether we are going to have—in other words, keep—our cake or eat it, and we cannot put off the point of making that direct choice forever. If that is true of Brexit, it is also true of the ongoing problem of the vulnerability of our armed forces to one-sided prosecution. The Government need to grip this matter.”
“They said that we could not have a statute of limitations that favours only one side in a conflict, because that could be interpreted as the state legislating for its own impunity, but they emphasised that if we were to combine a statute of limitations with what they call a “truth recovery process” for everybody, that could indeed be entirely legitimate in the face of any form of international legal regime. The reason for my raising this issue yet again today is my concern about one particular point. The previous Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), whom we all welcome back into the Cabinet in another capacity following his successful surgery, initiated a consultation exercise that is supposed to be going ahead.”
“I believe that there is a basis for a comprehensive solution to that problem. People would be best able to get to the root of what happened to their loved ones if other people, on any side of this multifaceted and horrible conflict, could come forward to explain to the best of their ability what they remember of those circumstances so long ago, without fear of finding themselves in a state of self-incrimination. We have the example of what happened in South Africa and the lesson taught to us by Nelson Mandela. In the course of the Defence Committee’s inquiry into these matters, we took evidence from eminent professors of law.”
“The Select Committee on Defence has looked into this matter in some depth, and we had an extensive debate on the subject on 25 January in Westminster Hall. I do not propose to rehearse the arguments made there. I just wish to remind the House of something that I have pledged constantly to keep reminding it of—that there will be no end to this process until the Government have the determination to bring in a statute of limitations for all terrorist-related incidents up to and including the date of the Belfast agreement. I have had many conversations with many people about this, including Sinn Féin MPs, who had their own concerns that also have some power and force to them. For them, there is the issue of many unresolved deaths for which inquests have not yet been held.”
“Everything I have heard about the conduct of my hon. and gallant Friend, not only in Northern Ireland but in Bosnia and in other dangerous parts of the world, testifies to one single unanimous assessment: that he was an inspiration to the troops he led and that they would follow him anywhere. It is quite right that he has done so much in his time in this House to repay that admiration and to honour the trust that they rightly put in him. What concerns me is that we are not repaying the debt that we owe to servicemen, who in those days were very young who were put in an invidious position in a counter-terrorist environment in circumstances for which they had received no special training.”
“While it will be for the review to investigate and report on why the fault with the algorithm was not discovered earlier, can the Secretary of State throw any more light on the circumstances in which it eventually came to be discovered? He said, for example, that it was in the course of a computer upgrade. Obviously, the circumstances that led to its discovery could be a pointer towards greater safeguards for the future.”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. At the risk of pushing my luck, are you prepared, at least in the context of the personal statement you have already made, to confirm that the great majority of members of staff in your office have served you for a substantial period of years and that the great majority of those who have left your service during your speakership have left on perfectly amicable terms?”
“I only wish I had known my hon. Friend was going to make that point, or I would have looked up the name of the very distinguished Afro-Caribbean officer from world war two who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and was one of many people from that background who were recognised for great gallantry in the fight against fascism and Nazism.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I welcome the substantial central Government grants that have been made to enable Jewish buildings to be better protected? But given that three quarters of all anti-Semitic incidents happen in Greater London and Greater Manchester, will the new Secretary of State seek out the Mayors of those two cities to see what more can be done to protect their Jewish communities?”
“From his earliest days as a Member of this House, my right hon. Friend has spoken out uncompromisingly against all forms of anti-Semitism. What will he do to encourage some other people in some other parts of this House to follow the fine example he has set?”