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 hon. Gentleman illustrates the point I am making. I do not want to second-guess the decision of the national park authority for the simple reason that I did not involve myself in that debate and I only read about it afterwards. Frankly, I do not have enough information to make a judgment on whether I sympathise or not. However, what I certainly think—I hope he would agree—is that it is really unfortunate that the attitude towards cycling in general by the representatives of the national park and the community in the New Forest has been so damaged by this dispute over mass cycling events that cycling is getting a bad name.”
“I am sorry to correct the hon. Gentleman on a historical point, but my understanding is that the UN did vote for a two-state solution and five Arab armies then invaded Israeli territory, so it is not quite as he suggests, I think.”
“My hon. Friend predicted that he would provoke me to intervene and he has succeeded in that aim. I think the laying of mines across the straits of Tiran could just conceivably be described as an act of war.”
“I am glad that the Prime Minister seems to accept that air strikes alone cannot hope to be successful unless they are in close co-ordination with credible ground forces. The only ground forces he has mentioned so far are those of the Kurds and the Iraqis. What are the other Arab states proposing to do, because surely those ground forces have to be Sunni-Muslim ground forces and we need other Arab countries to supply them?”
“Just to illustrate some of the complications of the situation, if indeed we do bring Iran back in, is it not the case that Iran will make it absolutely certain that our other professed wish to bring down President Assad never happens? The relationships are very complex.”
“I am anxious to give the hon. Gentleman an extra minute, because I want to hear what he thinks we should and should not do in the situation we face today. He is in danger of getting to the end of his speech without telling us.”
“One can only try to arrange for the least worst outcome. We know what happened with the second world war and that it was the least worst outcome, but it still meant that half of Europe was enslaved under communism for decades.”
“I am afraid that experience taught me better, because, following the downfall of Saddam Hussein, the age-old enmity between Shi’a and Sunni Muslims came to the fore and we found ourselves in a strange triangular relationship with two forces, which in their most fundamentalist forms are highly unattractive and certainly no friends of democracy. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) made the point well when he compared the situation to what happened in 1941, when the choice was made for us that the menace of Soviet communism, which frightened the west during the inter-war years, ended up being our ally because of the Nazis’ invasion of Russia. The trouble with a triangular relationship with two types of force, neither of which is friendly to democracy, is that there are no good outcomes.”
“Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) observed in her excellent speech, some of us are now about to vote for the fourth time on intervention in the middle east. The first time that I voted was in favour of war in Iraq, primarily because I believed what I was told about weapons of mass destruction. I must admit, however, that at the back of my mind was the thought that somewhere in Iraq were a great many moderate, democratic forces just waiting to be liberated from the oppressive rule of Saddam Hussein.”
“Among the many important comments made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) was her statement that ISIL likes to place itself at the head of the Sunni Muslim community. That is why it is so absolutely essential that the Sunni Muslim regional partners of this Government must be at the forefront of any military action against what can be interpreted as the Sunni Muslim states. A great deal of what organisations such as al-Qaeda and ISIL do is deliberately provocative. They wish to provoke actions that will enable them to represent the ensuing conflict as one of infidel crusaders invading Muslim lands, which is a trap that we must at all costs try to avoid. As my right hon.”
“I will be supporting the motion, with reluctance and a heavy heart, because I know that there are no good outcomes. It is a mistake to think that we can get rid of this organisation from places such as Syria and cosy up to Iran while thinking that we can pull down Assad. Those things are not compatible with each other. It is a bit of a George Orwell situation with three powers constantly shifting. The only answer to dealing with such things is the practical answer of the balance of power. We have to ensure that Sunnis cannot dominate Shi’as and that Shi’as cannot dominate Sunnis to excess.”
“I shall proceed. Where are we with the current situation? When I was asked before this debate whether I would support the motion, I said that I would do so provided that the Government came forward with an integrated strategy in support of credible forces on the ground. I intervened on the Prime Minister earlier and I am glad that he is here to hear me make a point now. I asked him which Sunni forces would be on the ground for us to support. At the moment, he has only been able to come back to us with Iraqi and Kurdish forces. I must say to him that if our strategy is to get anywhere in the long term, the Arab League and the regional powers must step up and make their contribution. We cannot do it, because that would play into the hands of the Islamists.”
“I have previously mentioned the important work of Professor Anatol Lieven in analysing the situation in Ukraine. Time prevents me from doing more than pointing out that he has consistently said that the only way in which a disaster will be averted is for some considerable degree of autonomy to be awarded to the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine. If we try to egg on the other parts of Ukraine to win militarily, Russia will simply step up its military effort and the overall effect will be disastrous.”
“Containment sometimes has to be done by means of a balance of terror, as when dealing with a nuclear-armed state such as Russia. On other occasions, it has to be done with the more traditional concept of the balance of power, as when dealing with states such as those of the middle east. Containment by means of the balance of power often means active intervention. Let me refer briefly to two scenarios. In the case of Russia and Ukraine, what Russia is doing is not new, as the hon. Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick) observed in his interesting speech. In fact, it is based on a model of what it did in the immediate aftermath of the second world war, when countries such as Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary were first subverted and then taken over.”
“I apologise to colleagues for having missed some of the Back-Bench speeches earlier due to an unbreakable commitment related to the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. As was observed earlier, when my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) is thought about in defence terms the one word that will be associated with him will be “strategy”. When my political epitaph comes to be written, I guess most people would think that the one word that would be associated me would be “Trident”—or, if they were feeling kinder, it might be “deterrence”. Actually, a different word ought to be associated with what I am trying to outline in terms of strategy today: “containment”. Containment is the key to what we need to do in the two very different scenarios of Russia’s behaviour and ISIL’s behaviour.”
“I am absolutely delighted to look back on the fact that I was one of the people who made sure that we did not intervene to drag down Assad, atrocious though he is, because the upshot of that would have been similar to that of dragging down Gaddafi. The effect of the latter was not to further western strategic interests but the interests of our deadly enemies on the jihadist front.”
“I hope they are right, but the likelihood is that there will be no good outcome in these confrontations—that no good guys are going to come out on top, but only somebody of the stripe of an Arab dictator, on the one hand, or revolutionary jihadists on the other. That is where we move on to containment by means of a balance of power, whereby sometimes there is no ally to be helped and all we can do is try to ensure that no one of a bunch of undesirable actors on the international stage gets to be dominant. That is what we have to do in this case. That is why I gently disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex about the vote that we had last year.”
“I know that what was done in the aftermath of the second world war was nothing more than a recognition of the reality that the west could band together to protect itself by means of NATO, but it could not, at that stage, protect the countries of central and eastern Europe. Russia had to be contained by means of the balance of terror involving nuclear deterrence. Let me quickly move on to ISIL. We are not in a situation where we have a choice of good outcomes. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) set out certain conditions in hoping for a good outcome in relation to the choices that face us.”
“Sadly, that is one of the Back-Bench speeches that I missed. I am grateful, in any case, for the hon. Lady’s intervention, as it gives me a little more time to refer to the important point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth). There is a huge difference between NATO members that are covered by the article 5 guarantee and other countries, no matter how sympathetic we are towards them, that are not. When I was 16, Czechoslovakia was invaded. I thought what a shame it was that while Czechoslovakia was temporarily free we did not scoop up this poor vulnerable country under the protection of NATO. But I was 16 then—I am not 16 now, and I know the realities.”
“That is why we have to contain and control them and intervene from time to time, but we must not delude ourselves that there will be any perfect outcomes.”
“Absolutely. As always, my hon. Friend, with his Foreign Office background, makes the pertinent point. Thanks to his courtesy of giving me more time, I would like to quote a recent editorial from The Spectator : “Such is the march of Islamic fundamentalism that if you remove a dictatorship in the Arab world and you don’t end up with a western-style liberal democracy, you end up with a snake pit of competing religious factions, the most malign of which tends to dominate.” What we are up against is a choice of the lesser of evils. Sometimes we will have to strike down one element of an evil choice, and sometimes we will have to suppress another. We should not, however, climb into bed with the enemy of my enemy on either occasion. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend; the enemy of my enemy can be my enemy as well.”
“I obviously did not make myself clear enough. I said that containment by balance of power often means active intervention, and at this stage it means active intervention against ISIS. I am sorry that I did not make that clear.”
“It was precisely for that reason that my hon. Friend and I made common cause against the folly of that intervention. On Afghanistan, does our policy not tend to be too reactive to the last thing that happened? It was said that as soon as the Soviets left, the west left Afghanistan to stew in its own juices. It was to prevent that from happening again that the west made the bad mistake, as it turned out, of engaging in nation building.”
“My old friend—and he is my old friend—the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) said that he would not dwell on the past, and then proceeded to spend three quarters of his speech doing precisely that. He could usefully have done at the start of his speech what I am going to do at the start of mine, which is to declare not a financial interest but a personal interest. I suspect that if he had done so, it would have been a slightly different one from mine. My personal interest is that Mr Speaker is an old friend of mine. Not surprisingly, that means that I like him quite a lot most of the time. I believe that, as has been said by others in this debate, he has exceeded all expectations in strengthening the power of Back Benchers to hold Ministers to account in this House.”
“Fourthly, should the top procedural adviser be allowed, if the roles are separated, to overrule the top CEO on management matters, or vice versa on procedural matters? My answers to those questions are clear: no, no, no, no. The reason for my answers is not only that I have wanted for years to emulate the late, great Margaret Thatcher on the Floor of the House, but that I profoundly disagree, with the greatest respect, with the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell). It is not a question of having a single chain of command, because we are not talking about a single management function. We are talking about two separate functions, which means that the people at the top of them should have authority in each.”
“In our minds, the Clerk is rightly associated with being the top procedural officer. That is what I have always regarded him as. Had anyone asked me before the dispute began to describe the functions of the Clerk, I would not have had the faintest idea that he was in a position to overrule everybody else on management matters. That is an anachronistic position. Therefore, when the Committee is set up, I suggest it asks itself these four questions. First, should a top CEO be expected to be a top procedural adviser too? Secondly, should a top procedural adviser be expected to be a top CEO too? Thirdly, should two such different roles be combined by default in future as they have been in the past?”
“I am delighted to put it on the record that my hon. Friend agrees with that. As a result of all that, I try to help Mr Speaker extricate himself from time to time from the holes that he occasionally digs for himself as a result of his passion for modernisation. For that reason, I ask the House to discount my bias. It is also for that reason that I welcomed the proposals in the motion and happily agreed to sign it at the request of various hon. Friends who have spoken. As I said in a point of order a few days ago, had anybody asked me about the matter even six weeks ago, or certainly six months ago before this dispute came up, I would have thought that the definition of the Clerk was all the definitions we have heard in the debate except one: chief executive officer.”
“From his time as Defence Secretary, the Foreign Secretary will recall the argument that the hard-won gains in places such as Afghanistan could easily be reversed unless a strategic base or bridgehead area was established for the medium to long term in the region. Given what has happened in Iraq, where equally optimistic predictions about the long-term resilience of Iraqi forces were made, what would we expect to see in terms of a long or medium-term American presence if the status of forces agreement is eventually signed?”
“In support of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) has just asked, may I draw the Prime Minister’s attention to a very important article by General Jonathan Shaw, a former director of special forces, in the Evening Standard on 5 September, in which he wrote: “Deploying the Western military without a Muslim political plan would be folly”? What approach will we be taking to Saudi Arabia, which has a habit of looking both ways on these questions, and where the Government appear to be friendly but sources inside Saudi Arabia supply funds to organisations like IS?”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. May I remind the House that in 2009 we had an intense debate on the security of Members’ home addresses, in which the then Labour Leader of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), rightly said that MPs must be able to do their jobs without fear or favour and without having to look fearfully over their shoulders. What disturbs me, from what little I know about this incident, is that the police appear reluctant to intervene. If that is so, is it not absolutely disgraceful?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Given that modest pauses seem to be the order of the day, may we have a modest pause in bogus points of order made not, as is usually the case— [Interruption.] I did not heckle my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), and I will thank him not to heckle me— [Interruption.]”
“Members will alert their constituents to this fine memorial to a very fine individual, who is much missed by all of us.”
“Inasmuch as people who raise bogus points of order seek to shout me down, I shall just continue to make my points that much more clearly. A modest pause in bogus points of order would be appreciated, given that they are emanating not from people who seem concerned about the wider issue but from people who are rather more concerned to damage the particular occupant of the Chair on any issue that takes their fancy. May I instead, within the rules of order, ask whether it is possible to set on the record my pleasure, and I hope that of the whole House, at the announcement on the parliamentary website that our late and much missed friend Paul Goggins is to have a memorial prize instituted in his name by the all-party group on poverty and the Webb Memorial Trust? I hope that hon.”
“My hon. Friend is making such a superb speech that I think we need to hear an extra minute, so may I ask him if he is aware of the work of wonderful charities such as Woofability in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope)? Such charities train dogs beautifully to do tremendous work for disabled people, such as pulling their socks off, taking the washing out of the washing machine and all sorts of tasks that able-bodied people think nothing of doing, but which are of huge assistance to someone confined to a wheelchair?”
“Does the Prime Minister agree that one of the main reasons why NATO successfully deterred and contained the then Soviet Union from 1949 to 1989 was that the rulers in the Kremlin were in no doubt at all that an attack on one NATO country would inevitably mean war with all the rest? For that reason, at the NATO summit will he bear in mind the fact that NATO membership, however hard-hearted this may seem, must never be offered to a country unless we are prepared to go to war to defend that country?”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. It is usually unwise for a politician to admit total ignorance, but I have done it before and I intend to do it again. I have to confess that, until this dispute about the Clerk arose, I had not the faintest idea, despite being a Member of this House since 1997, that the Clerk of the House, an expert in procedure, was, by default, also the chief executive of the House. Now that you have sufficiently educated ignorant hon. Members such as me about that important distinction, and perhaps about the need to look at the matter rather more rationally than in the past, may I suggest that, as so many other people and bodies are so anxious to seize from you the poison chalice of this decision, you should give it to them with maximum rapidity?”
“When the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) and I gave evidence to the Prime Minister’s extremism taskforce, we emphasised the need for permanent cross-departmental co-operation. While I am pleased that the Secretary of State says she will work closely on this matter with the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government, will she try to persuade her Cabinet colleagues that it would be sensible to set up some sort of permanent machinery so that we can head off these sorts of episodes, rather than merely reacting to them?”
“I realise that the point I am about to make slightly stretches the parameters of the Bill, but given that the Secretary of State has been praising people who heroically intervene is he not as surprised as I am that the people who heroically intervened to help Lee Rigby and confronted the people who had killed them have not seen their bravery recognised? Most of us expected them to get the George medal once the trial was over, so is it not a shame that their bravery has not been recognised?”
“I think I know how the right hon. Gentleman will respond to this point, but, for clarity, I am going to put it anyway. There have undoubtedly been cases, have there not, where policemen have said, for example, that they were not prepared to pull an apparently drowned victim out of a pool for fear of not being suitably qualified to do so? Is he saying that some measure other than this Bill will try to prevent that in future? Such cases clearly do exist, as they are widely reported to a horrified public.”
“I remind my right hon. Friend that the Foreign Secretary at the time that we were being asked to intervene militarily in the Syrian civil war himself accepted, and indeed volunteered the information, that there were several thousand al-Qaeda-linked militants fighting alongside the opposition.”
“Although I found myself in the opposite camp over arming the rebels in Syria, I say to my right hon. Friend who secured this debate that I was amazed at the courtesy and forbearance that he always showed, even though we were totally at loggerheads over the issue. I know that was not unique to me; that is the way he behaves with everybody.”
“In relation to the question of his medium being abused for serious criminal or terrorist purposes, he said: “We don’t want to frustrate the access of law enforcement agencies; only, that they should come through the front door and ask us, not sneak in by the back door.” The companies want something that is clearly laid out in a proper legal format, so that they can fulfil that promise not at the whim of some private or backstairs approach by some unnamed Government official, but through a proper on-the-record procedure.”
“My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) asked an important question: what will the Government do when a company does not wish to co-operate? I would like to put on the record something that I cannot attribute to a particular individual, other than to say it was a comment made by a very senior member of one of the main communications services providers in modern media.”
“I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, who is a fierce defender of the rights of individuals. I hope he agrees that if we can build on the attitude I have described from one of the most senior providers, then, by consensus, we ought to be able to set an example of an agreed arrangement whereby providers can be satisfied that they are assisting the law enforcement authorities in a proper, open and legitimate way, with no question of their being party to underhand arrangements. Finally, may I apologise to the House for my late entry to this important debate, and, indeed, for my attire? I spent the entire day at the Farnborough air show, where the screaming of fast jets must have excluded the noise of my telephone ringing repeatedly from Downing street, offering me an alternative way to serve the nation.”
“They are under the impression—in the context, it must be said, of the paranoia over the Edward Snowden affair—that we are doing this in a desperately swift and ill-considered way. Personally, I accept that there is some strength in the argument that the time the Government have made available at this very late stage is probably enough for most of the people who are likely to contribute to the debate in the Chamber to do so; but not enough time has been given to those in the country who want to develop the wider public argument. One would not like to give the impression that one was trying to get this Bill through in a rush before a suitable momentum of public concern had the opportunity to build up, but, if that was not the reason for the delay, what was?”
“Having made a brief intervention earlier that was largely helpful to Members on both Front Benches, I will now rectify the balance by saying that, however one looks at this debate in terms of whether or not enough time has been made available for those who want to speak to have their say, the overall impression that has been given to the public has been unfortunate, to put it mildly. My understanding is that this Bill has been made necessary because of an ECJ judgment that was arrived at in April. It is now mid-July. Why on earth has it taken so long to get from that judgment all those weeks ago to the position now, whereby it appears to the public that we have to make what I believe to be very necessary changes in a terrible rush?”
“I hope my right hon. Friend accepts that the nub of my short contribution is to say that we should not have found ourselves in this position. When the ECJ judgment was made we should immediately have swung into action so as to give people reasonable warning that this debate was going to take place, and then they could have done the degree of research necessary to avoid the impression that things were being rushed through in unseemly haste.”
“Friend the Minister, who does these things with such panache and dependability, to put his head above the parapet and simply say that this was one of the many disadvantages of coalition politics—which Conservative Members and Labour Members look forward to seeing the back of in a few months’ time.”
“I always love it when an Opposition Member precisely anticipates my final point. My love, affection and esteem for coalition politics are legendary. I want Ministers to give me the explanation—so far, we have been denied it—that there is indeed a rational alternative to the paranoid belief currently abroad that all this is being rushed through because we wanted to stifle debate, were afraid what the public would say and feared the context of all the revelations of secrets. Let us get to the heart of it: if the truth is that it took this long for the Conservatives and the Liberals to agree what they wanted to introduce, there is nothing to be ashamed of in saying so; it is a natural downside of coalition politics. I appeal to my hon.”
“I warmly endorse what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Does he agree that if more examples were given of a collated nature—such as those we read about frequently in individual criminal court cases—about the vital role that such data play, that would go a long way to allaying unnecessary public suspicion about the importance of having such data available for the forces of law and order?”