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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“Gentleman arrived at the heart of the problem that affects defence policy in times of peace. In times of peace, those who try to predict the way in which peaceful times will be disrupted will almost invariably fail. Invariably, when conflict arises, there is little or no warning. That is why, in peacetime, it is always a struggle to persuade the Government of the day that they ought to invest as much in defence as defence-minded Members of Parliament would like. In my brief remarks, I shall touch on just three topics: decision making in defence, the nature of defence reviews, and the issue of NATO and deterrence. Decision making in defence has suffered in recent times.”
“I want to say a few words of appreciation for the electors of New Forest East, who did me the honour of electing me for the fifth time since the seat was created—[Hon. Members: “Hear, Hear”.] I am pleased to get such ringing endorsement from my colleagues. As well as thanking the electors, I would like to pay tribute to the candidates of the four other parties that competed in the election, who, without exception, conducted themselves with good humour and integrity. It was pleasant to take part in a general election on that basis. It was notable that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) repeatedly asked “Who would have thought this would have arisen?”, “Who would have thought that would have arisen?”, and “Who would have thought the other would have arisen?” In making those rhetorical observations, the right hon.”
“It is with real pleasure that I note that becoming Father of the House has done nothing to dampen, soften or ameliorate the rigour with which the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) pursues his causes. Indeed, I recall that, many years before I entered the House, in the period of 1988 to 1991, when the right hon. Gentleman was shadow Foreign Secretary, I greatly admired the skill with which he manoeuvred to try to extricate the Labour party from some difficult defence positions in which it had managed to entangle itself. I am sure he will feel some satisfaction at that achievement, even though—sadly from his point of view—he still has to address the Government from the Opposition Benches.”
“We, however, rely on the combination that involves lay people who become Ministers being guided by the expertise of the professional civil service. Now, the civil service has adopted a policy of opening up the possibility of more top jobs to its most high-flying people, but if they are not to be the experts, who is? I shall now say something about my second topic—the nature of defence reviews—which may not make me entirely popular with those my own side. I have said it before, and I intend to go on saying it: the 1997-98 Labour strategic defence review went about things in a better fashion than our review did in 2010. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) was good enough to acknowledge that ours was Treasury-driven. By gum, yes, it was.”
“The answer is yes, and the hon. Gentleman has saved me from uttering the sentence I was going to utter next, but the point about that review, of course, is that although it was truly strategic, it was not properly funded. Ours went to the other extreme of being properly funded but not truly strategic. We have to try to get a balance between those two methods.”
“We have heard a lot about the 2% and I do not intend to waste the House’s time by reiterating the arguments we have all heard many times, but I would just make one point on the subject: the 2% is not a target, it is a minimum, and therefore there should be no question of our failing to meet the minimum. The question is how much above that minimum we can safely manage to use as the basis for the future shape and size of our armed forces.”
“While not disagreeing with my hon. Friend, I am trying to explain to the House the means of conducting the review. That is the point I am interested in—not the way in which Labour may afterwards have carried out its defence and foreign policies, about which I would have a large measure of agreement with my hon. Friend. The fact is, it is one thing to fail to live up to a good plan, but it is another not to have a good plan in the first place; and if we want to have a good plan, we need to take our time over the strategic defence and security review, and not rush it, and not simply say, “You’ve got X amount of money; how much defence can you give us for that sum?” I want to say a quick word about NATO and deterrence.”
“I am not calling for that now, but I am certainly calling for us comfortably to exceed the NATO-recommended minimum. I hope that mine will not be the only voice on either side of the House, and I am sure it will not be, saying that we must meet that obligation and carry out our commitment so that the peace that Europe has enjoyed for so long can continue indefinitely.”
“We see that not only in its behaviour in Ukraine but in the way in which opponents of the regime are being assassinated. We recently had the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, and now we find that Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was a close associate of Boris Nemtsov, has been suddenly struck down with a very serious and undiagnosed illness and is now fighting for his life in a Moscow hospital. Those are not the features that we wish to see in a modern state that wants to play its part on the world stage; they are more of a reversion to a type of regime that held the world at bay for more than 50 years. We hoped that we were entering a new era after the events of 1989 and 1991 so, when we are deciding our priorities, let us remember that in the dark years of the cold war we thought it necessary to spend between 4% and 5% of GDP on defence.”
“If we are going to do that, then come clean and say, “Okay, it isn’t the first duty of Government any more” and try to defend taking that position. I do not like this selective ring-fencing of different Departments. A Government ought to have the guts to order their priorities, to set them out, and to stand up in the House of Commons and defend them. Finally, I just want to say a word about deterrence. I am talking not about nuclear deterrence—unless provoked, the word Trident shall not pass my lips—but about deterrence in the context of the very sad situation whereby Russia, whom we all hoped would continue down the democratic path, has decided to revert, if not to a permanent type, to a type that was all too familiar to us during the cold war years.”
“That is a very good point, because even when I said that it is not a target but a minimum I was debating whether to add the sub-clause “but it is of course a target for those countries that have not even met it.” My hon. Friend is absolutely right: if we stop what we have done consistently, which is comfortably to meet, and indeed exceed, that minimum, what sort of a disincentive is it to other states—for whom it is an aspiration yet to be achieved—when they see we are beginning to lose our grip of our own hitherto much more successful allocation of resources to defence? We should also remind ourselves that every Government say defence is the first duty of Government. If so, it does not make sense to ring-fence other areas of Government and not to protect defence.”
“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman back to his place in this House. May I appeal to him not to conflate two separate issues? They are indeed separate issues. One is the very real concerns about faulty operating practices leading to potential accidents. The other is the wider issue about whether or not we should have a nuclear deterrent. It might surprise him to know that many of us who believe that we should have a nuclear deterrent are as concerned as he is about the dangers of operating faults and accidents in the systems that we have.”
“When the notice was put around at 5.45 last evening saying that this would be a matter of debating the Procedure Committee’s reports and recommendations, why was it that the first that the Chair of the Procedure Committee heard of that was when I spoke to him at 6.30? Why was it concealed from the Chair of the Procedure Committee?”
“A case can be made for an open ballot and for a secret ballot; what there is no case for at all is the staging of a debate at the eleventh hour of the last day, when people have been sent away to get on with campaigning and when people on my side— [Interruption.] I should be grateful if my colleagues allowed me to speak. People on my side of the House were due to be campaigning for my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), a Minister in a critical marginal seat, but were unaccountably told that that had been postponed. Now I know the reason why. Will the Leader of the House answer me one question?”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Can I just say that my right hon. Friend has just excelled himself in the atmosphere he has generated in this House, in precisely the way in which the Leader of the House has excelled himself in the atmosphere of the country?”
“If it helps, I’d be happy for you to make reference to any of this message in your remarks.” I need add nothing further other than to endorse those sentiments.”
“I am going to break the habit of a lifetime and say nothing myself, quoting instead a Liberal Democrat colleague with approval. Following some discussion of this matter on a programme this morning, I received the following message from the hon. Member—and he is honourable—for St Ives (Andrew George). He said: “I feel very frustrated and annoyed by this. In addition, I cannot be there. My father died last night and, as you might expect, I have other priorities today which I cannot alter. Had I been able to attend, I would object in the strongest terms to THE WAY THIS IS BEING DONE— the emphasis is his. He continued: “I don’t mind a motion being brought forward in an open and honest manner, but not in this underhand way.”
“The size of the Royal Navy has greatly diminished since 1982. Does the Secretary of State agree that countries such as Russia and Argentina tend to respond to the signals we send them? Would it not send a terrible signal to the Argentine Government if we failed to give a commitment to continue to spend at least the NATO-recommended minimum of 2% of GDP on defence throughout the lifetime of the next Parliament?”
“A number of Governments are known to have invested heavily in what might be termed “offensive cyber”. Given that we must do everything we can to protect our own systems, are there any messages we can send to such Governments about the consequences that would follow for them if they were unwise enough to launch a cyber-attack against this country?”
“As the only major party leader to trust the British people with an in/out referendum on EU membership, my right hon. Friend has certainly reassured the patriotic British electorate. Will he now go the whole way by reassuring them that throughout the next Parliament, when he is Prime Minister, Britain will not fall below the NATO recommended minimum of 2% of GDP on defence?”
“and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind). The Committee has worked harmoniously on many issues. I should like to leave my term with the Committee by putting on the record just one thought. The intelligence agencies, the Security Service and GCHQ are damned if they do and damned if they do not. I saw this in relation to two inquiries. I shall make one point about each and then sit down to allow a great deal of unused time allocated for this short debate to be applied to other matters. In relation to the Woolwich atrocity inquiry, people asked how the intelligence services knew that the people who went on to commit the atrocity had been radicalised, yet were unable to stop them. The answer is that— [ Interruption. ]”
“I will detain the House for just a brief moment. I indicated some months ago to the Chief Whip that it was my intention not to apply to stay on the Committee if I am fortunate enough to be re-elected to another term in this House. I did so because, although the intelligence agencies are, for the most part, well-resourced, well led and do everything that we expect them to do, the situation is not so rosy for defence policy. In a choice between focusing on where I might be able to make a difference—on defence policy—and continuing with the pleasurable task of overseeing the intelligence and security services, I have opted for the former. I should like to take this opportunity to say that it has been a fascinating five years, working with the excellent staff and under the outstanding chairmanship of my right hon.”
“The question was often asked why it was that the intelligence services knew certain people had been radicalised and held extremist views yet were able to go on to commit attacks. The answer is that until people break the law they cannot be locked up. We really would be living in a police state if everybody with extreme views was followed 24 hours a day, which is the only way in which low-level and uncomplicated attacks can be prevented. There has to be evidence of attack planning. If not, some such things will inevitably slip through the net.”
“I was a little surprised—I hope you will indulge me for a moment or two, Mr Speaker—to see a short item in The Times on Saturday about a protest by some of the privacy groups that had given evidence to the ISC on this question. It reads as follows: “Civil liberties groups demanded last night that a parliamentary committee correct its report on the surveillance state, saying they had been deliberately misrepresented. The intelligence and security committee criticised the pressure groups over their opposition to GCHQ’s collection of bulk data on communications”—”
“That is exactly the case. It would take only a few hundred people with extreme views to exhaust the resources of any reasonably sized security service in a modern democratic state, and that must never be the case. Instead, we should look at how many complex attacks have been carried out successfully and how many have been thwarted. As far as I am aware, no complex attacks have been successfully carried out on British soil since the 7/7 atrocities. Moving on to the inquiry on privacy and security, this leads one to the question of where to draw the boundary between the wish to preserve the people’s privacy so their innocent communications are not examined and the need to develop leads that can be investigated further.”
“Yes, you would solve a lot more crimes and a lot more terrorists would be in jail; that would be a good thing, but it would be bad for our society as a whole.” The Chair then asked: “And that is the view of your colleagues as well?” The director of Big Brother Watch replied with one word: “Yes.” It has been a pleasure serving on this Committee. When it was put to me that it would assist my right hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) to get his feet under the table, even for the last few days of this Parliament, I was only too happy to accommodate him. He will be a splendid successor, and perhaps he will not try the patience of the House as long as I have today.”
“The Chairman asked: “If evidence emerged through bulk interception that even you acknowledged had led to terrorists being arrested or prevented from carrying out their objectives, are you saying that, as a matter of principle, you believe so strongly that bulk interception is unacceptable in a free society that you would say that that was a price we should be willing to pay, rather than allowing intelligence agencies to use bulk interception methods?” Isabella Sankey, of Liberty, replied: “Yes.” Dr Metcalfe, of Justice, replied: “Yes. Just as you would solve a lot more crimes if you had CCTV in everyone’s houses, and if you opened everyone’s mail and e-mail and read it on a daily basis.”
“Isabella Sankey, director of policy for Liberty, said: ‘Instead of attempting to put words into the mouths of privacy campaigners, the ISC should have put its efforts into scrutinising the agencies.’” People interested in the matter can judge for themselves. If they go to the ISC’s website, at http://isc.independent. gov.uk/public-evidence/15october2014, they will find the full transcript, and I suggest that they examine questions 19 and 20, put by the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears); questions 28 and 29, put by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind); and questions 32 and 33, put by the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth). In there, they will find the following exchange.”
“I assure you, Mr Speaker, that I am on my ultimate—not even penultimate—point. The report continued: “and suggested that they believed that terrorist attacks were a price worth paying for individual privacy. The report reprinted edited transcripts of evidence sessions with Big Brother Watch, Liberty, Justice and Rights Watch UK. Renate Samson, the chief executive of Big Brother Watch, asked the committee for an ‘immediate correction’ to its published report and said that the representation of the evidence session was ‘improper and false’. She said that the ISC’s portrayal of the evidence was ‘an attempt to undermine, discredit and damage our organisation’s reputation’.”
“In endorsing that important point, may I point out that, during the cold war in the 1980s, we were spending, at times, more than 5% of GDP on defence?”
“I cannot resist pointing out that the second name on the motion today, which is “That this House believes that defence spending should be set to a minimum of two per cent of GDP in accordance with the UK’s NATO commitment,” is indeed that of the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn).”
“Otherwise, in the words of an excellent editorial that appeared in The Times yesterday, we shall be practising nothing short of “a false economy”, along with a dangerous delusion about the action that we need to take when doing our duty for this country.”
“I do not know who is more to blame. I do not know whether it is the American strategist who is advising my Prime Minister or whether it is the British Chancellor who is advising him, but I like to think that my Prime Minister has more sense than to fall for it. Let me put it in “low” political terms: if the Prime Minister is worried about the UK Independence party taking a chunk of the Conservative vote, he should bear it in mind that even UKIP has made the gesture—it is only a gesture on its part—that it would support the 2% minimum. If the Prime Minister is worried about losing votes to UKIP, he had better match its pledge. We have had a pledge from UKIP. We have had a pledge—a very important pledge—from the Democratic Unionist party today. We need a pledge from the official Opposition, and we need a pledge from the Government.”
“When I said that we needed to focus on Labour’s defence policy at the next general election, he said, “Well, just because nuclear weapons and defence policy was a big issue in 1983, it does not mean that it will be a big issue in 1987.” My response was, “Of course it will not be a big issue unless we make it a big issue.” Of course, if we poll people at the moment and ask them how high defence is in their sense of priorities, we will not get much of a reaction. Believe me, however, things would be different if we went into the election campaign fighting hard to explain to people the dangers that threaten us and the terrible signal it would send to Vladimir Putin if we, having exhorted everybody else in NATO to meet the 2% minimum, then fell below it ourselves for the very first time—which would be appalling.”
“I have to ask myself why, at a time when we have not only the threat from international terrorism to deal with, but a re-emerging threat from a newly aggressive and revanchist Russia, politicians are calling into question even the basic NATO minimum of 2%. The only answer I get has nothing to do with grand strategy and everything to do with low politics. This is the politics of the pollsters who are trying to tell my Prime Minister that there are no votes in defence. My mind goes back to a conversation I had in Conservative central office with the then general director of campaigning of the Conservative party in about 1985.”
“When Labour came into office in 1997, the figure was 2.5%, and it remained, as Tony Blair said and as I have quoted here before, roughly constant at 2.5% for a decade, although that hid the fact that the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq, which should have been met from the Treasury reserve, were being included in the overall calculation. Even as late as the coalition coming in, in 2009-10, the figure was 2.5%, and it remained the same in 2010-11. It went down to 2.4% in 2011-12 and since 2012 it has been 2.2% and 2.1%. Frankly, I regard it as a disgrace that defence spending has declined even to that level, and I will be far from satisfied if—without redefining things—we spend only 2% of GDP on defence in the future.”
“It came as a surprise to the hon. Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick), who made a thoughtful speech, when I pointed out to him that at the height of the second cold war, in the 1980s, this country was spending more than 5% of GDP on defence. I know the economy has got bigger, but defence has got more expensive, so that excuse will not do. Let me put on the record that between 1982 and 1986, the amount spent on defence varied from 5.1% of GDP to 5.3%. From 1986 to 1990, as a result of perestroika, the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty and other measures, the figure gradually declined from a maximum of 4.8% to 4%. When we took the peace dividend, following the break-up of the Soviet Union—in other words, in the first five years of the 1990s—the figures were 3.6%, 3.6%, 3.5%, 3.3% and 3.1%.”
“This has been particularly worthwhile today because I could not have made a stronger strategic case than the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee made in his excellent speech, and I could not have made a stronger economic case than was forcefully made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind). I pay tribute to him for his outstanding service to this country, both in high office and, more recently, as Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, which I have had the pleasure of serving on throughout this Parliament. Any suggestion that the budget spent on the intelligence agencies should be redefined as defence to edge us closer to the 2% minimum would be not only outrageous, but dishonest, because we would no longer be comparing like with like. Let us compare like with like.”
“Not for the first time, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) has done the House and the country a service by bringing to the Chamber a matter that the coalition Government might perhaps have preferred he had let lie. I believe it is his intention, if we do not get the assurances we want from both Front Benches, to give the House the opportunity to put its opinion on the record by dividing. If the Whips did not know that, they had better get busy. One of the advantages of speaking last from the Back Benches in such a debate is that I do not have to repeat all the points made by everybody else.”
“Members of the Scottish National party have been licking their lips in public at the prospect of blackmailing one of the two main parties into delaying or abandoning the replacement of the Trident submarines. Will the Prime Minister confirm that if he is still Prime Minister in 2016, as he should be, he will ensure that the maingate contracts for four successor submarines are signed that year?”
“Does the Chief Secretary agree that no British Government should fail to invest in the infrastructure, the personnel and the equipment of the armed forces at a rate less than the NATO-recommended minimum? Will he have a word with his leader and with mine to make sure that the necessary commitment is given before the general election?”
“They do not do it by reference to whether a peaceful democracy that has a minimum nuclear deterrent, as we do, decides to keep hold of it.”
“Gentleman has always assisted me when I wanted to have a debate about the importance of Britain’s strategic minimum nuclear deterrent. That, I am afraid, is as far as the points of agreement go. In the brief time available I will take up a number of the differing suggestions and arguments that we have heard so far. “Who are we to criticise this, that or the other country for obtaining nuclear weapons if we persist in renewing ours?” I’ve got news for people who use that sort of argument: countries that are on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons are not going to take a blind bit of notice of exhortations or criticisms from the likes of us. When countries acquire nuclear weapons, it is the result of a hard-headed reading of their own strategic interests.”
“I will do my best, Mr Deputy Speaker. I always like to start on a point of agreement with the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) where I can, and I can certainly agree with him that whenever there is a major conference of this sort coming up, it is only fit and proper that it should be debated in advance on the Floor of the House of Commons. Therefore, he can always count on me to assist him from my very different point on the disarmament versus deterrence spectrum, and the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) can count on me to assist her, as I did on this occasion, to obtain the debate. I shall always approach the Backbench Business Committee for these debates, just as the hon.”
“These countries, with France and China as well, promised to a) respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in its existing borders, b) to refrain from the threat or the use of force against Ukraine, and c) to refrain from using economic pressure on Ukraine in order to influence its politics. Don’t these promises look good in the light of the carnage we see on our TVs every night? Yet that is what Ukraine got in return for unilaterally disarming. Some bargain. And it is legitimate to ask this; would Crimea have been grabbed and Eastern Ukraine occupied if the Ukrainians had kept some of their nukes?””
“It certainly does, and to show the ecumenical nature of that concern, let me quote from a recent article in The Herald of Glasgow by a former Labour Defence Secretary, later the Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Robertson: “Those people seduced by the SNP’s obsession with abolishing Britain’s nuclear deterrent should perhaps Google the Budapest Memorandum of December 1994. They would see there a document representing the deal struck when Ukraine, holding the world’s third largest nuclear weapons stockpile, agreed to give them up in return for solemn security assurances from Russia, the US and the UK.”
“We don’t want to get rid of those conventional forces, because aggressors would take advantage of that against victim countries.” However, if that is what we think those aggressors would do if we get rid of all our conventional arms, we should ask ourselves what they would do if, without resolving those tensions and rivalries, we get rid of the nuclear stalemate and open up the world once again for conventional slaughter on a massive scale.”
“We do not want to create a situation where, unless we are crazy, we abolish one type of deadly weapons system—whose use lies not in the firing of it, but in the possession of it so that nobody starts firing any such weapons—and replace it with a world that is riven by all the old rivalries that bubble away beneath the surface and that would rise to the surface once again if the threat of the balance of terror is removed. When we get to that happy state—when we have a world Government and the lion lies down with the lamb—we can be absolutely confident that the moment has come to get rid of those nuclear weapons and, while we are at it, get rid of the navies, the armies, and the air forces as well. Some might say, “That’s nonsense.”
“Article VI goes on with a commitment to “nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” That leads me to my final substantive point. There has been a lack of emphasis on the overall picture of what is recommended by article VI. It recommends not only a nuclear-free world, but a conventional arms-free world, so that we do not end up in a situation whereby countries get rid of all of their nuclear weapons and leave conventional arms bristling in the hands of the protagonists.”
“It states: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date”. In so far as that affects Britain, it can be seen that we do not engage, and never have engaged, in a nuclear arms race. We have a policy of possessing a minimum strategic nuclear deterrent. Indeed, over the years, successive Governments—both Labour and Conservative—have reduced the number of warheads in that deterrent. And what direct response has there been to each and every one of those unilateral reductions? A big, fat zero. The ending of the nuclear arms race certainly applies to Russia and the United States, but it does not apply to China, Britain or France, because none of us has ever engaged in it.”