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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“Will my hon. Friend take on board the point I made in my intervention a few moments ago? Although one fully accepts that one cannot give full statistical data about these sorts of activities as they relate to national security, the point that the hon. Member for Cambridge made—that the majority are about serious crime rather than national security—ought to give us the opportunity to set out many case studies that would improve the public’s understanding of why it is so important that we have these data.”
“I appreciate that my hon. Friend is mainly talking about the gathering and publication of statistical data, but it would not involve much effort for police forces to collate even half a dozen or a dozen cases per year that are reported in the press to show how these communications data are used in individual cases. A few good examples that have already been published would go a long way to help the public understand how important this methodology is.”
“I am sure the Home Secretary knows that I am, in general, supportive of the Bill, but, in the light of the vote we have just taken, what sort of guarantee can she offer the House that the same European Court that struck down the previous situation will not strike down this Bill as well?”
“Will the hon. Lady tell the House whether her research has revealed any increase in the problem since some health service foundation trusts, such as the one that serves Hampshire, closed up to 35% of their acute mental health in-patient beds? With the closure of some units—such as the state-of-the-art Woodhaven unit in my constituency—we have also lost the special facilities that were available to the police to house those who were found in mental distress.”
“In my intervention, I did not make it clear enough that what happened in Hampshire appears to be happening in other parts of the country as well. We are going through one of those fashionable phases in which there has been a swing away from in-patient acute mental health beds, which is having an effect as the facilities are not available for the people in acute distress whom the police are discovering or with whom they have to deal.”
“In welcoming what the Secretary of State for Defence has said, may I remind him that those on the Labour Front Bench have similarly committed to the retention of Trident and continuous at-sea nuclear deterrence? Does he therefore agree with me that whatever the complexion of the next Government, there can be no possible excuse for failing to renew Trident—whether in coalition, in government or in opposition? Wherever we are, we all ought to be committing to renewal in the next Parliament.”
“As Ministers cannot sign early-day motions, may I exceptionally ask the Secretary of State for a comment on EDM 252, which commemorates the sacrifice of 7,000 British soldiers in the Normandy battle for Hill 112? It was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash). What it does not say is that his father was one of those 7,000: Captain Paul Cash won the Military Cross a few days before he was killed 70 years ago yesterday.”
“One stated objective of the Homes and Communities Agency’s programme for the allocation of economic assets is to “align the assets with local economic ambitions and thereby to create more effective local economic development strategies”. However, for Hythe marine park in New Forest East, the HCA seems minded to appoint a preferred bidder on the basis of just a moderately higher bid, without regard to those other important elements. Will the Minister comment on the need for the HCA to follow its own guidelines when appointing preferred bidders for something that will have such a major impact throughout the constituency?”
“Trying, as always, to see the bright side of life—I am not going to sing it—is there not something to be said for having an obvious and overt federalist as Commission president rather than a covert and rather cleverer alternative?”
“I have massive sympathy with the right hon. Gentleman’s central point that promoting positive values in schools will be difficult because they are always changing and evolving, but does he, in return, have some sympathy with what I think prompted the Government to approach the matter in the first place? Does he recognise that there are certain extreme and intolerant views that must actively be kept from being promoted in schools?”
“It will come as no surprise to the massive total of 98 people who, according to the wonderful website theyworkforyou.com, are assiduous followers of my parliamentary speeches, because I have mentioned many times that the words are those of the late, great conservative-oriented philosopher Sir Karl Popper, who in volume 1 of “The Open Society and Its Enemies” laid down the wonderful maxim called the paradox of tolerance: we should tolerate all but the intolerant, because if we tolerate the intolerant the conditions for toleration disappear and the tolerant go with them.”
“Member for Southampton, Itchen will agree with the distinction that I am about to draw: between preventing extremists from taking over schools, and using schools that have not been taken over to prevent, through the promotion of a positive narrative, the radicalising of children. The truth is that nothing that can be done in a state school will insulate young, impressionable children if they are being radicalised outside the school. Finally, I want to supply the attribution for the paradox of tolerance that my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) alluded to earlier.”
“However, I think it would be possible to promote what one might call negative values in schools—in other words, to make sure that some things are ruled out as unacceptable. I have a firm belief that in most communities, including the Muslim community, the majority of people are moderates and a small minority are extremists. I believe it is essential that extremism should be kept out of schools. The sort of extremism that provoked the present initiative is on a par with the fascist or Nazi, and Marxist or communist, extremism or totalitarianism of the past. It is an Islamist totalitarianism of the present. That must not be allowed to proceed. We should therefore be careful about what we are trying to do. I hope that the right hon.”
“One of those communities started something that had been known before the war in their country—a degree of anti-Semitic propaganda—in the United Kingdom. My father said, although I have never been able to check or verify it, that when that started the Attlee Government made a firm public pronouncement warning the community that its members were welcome to come to this country and make it their home, but they were not going to bring anti-Semitism with them because the Labour Government of the day would not tolerate it. I hope that the House can see why I told those stories and where they are leading. As I said earlier, in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen, I have a lot of sympathy with his proposition that it will be very difficult to promote positive values in schools because positive values evolve.”
“He said, “What on earth was she talking about? What on earth was she thinking of? Of course you are Welsh. Being Jewish has got nothing to do with it. Our religion has got nothing to do with it.” I know that that story is true. I can vouch for it, because I remember it. The second story— [ Laughter. ] That must have been funnier even than I intended. The second story is one that I can remember my father telling me, but I have never yet managed to research it so I do not know for certain whether it is true and will not name the country from which the community concerned came. My father told me that a large number of people were displaced from central and eastern European countries as a result of the war, and they were allowed to settle in various communities around Britain.”
“Like the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham), whom I congratulate on giving the Government a chance to think in advance about some of the more complex aspects of what they propose, I am not a particularly religious person, but I come from a Jewish immigrant family background. I have two stories to tell, about by late father, Sam. One happened more than 50 years ago when I came home from my junior school and mentioned, without any sense of trauma or discrimination, that we had been asked in class how many of us were English. Several hands went up. Then we were asked how many of us were Welsh, and most hands went up—the school was in Swansea—including mine. At that point, the teacher said, in all innocence, “Oh, but Julian, I thought you were Jewish.” When I mentioned that to my father he was outraged.”
“We will set our detailed plans in our manifesto, but throughout the time for which I have been Prime Minister, we have kept—more than kept—that commitment”. —[ Official Report , 4 June 2014; Vol. 582, c. 23-24.] This is all very encouraging stuff and I like to think that the thing is that we have a NATO summit coming up.”
“359.] That sounded reasonably encouraging, but he did not actually say that we were going to keep on spending the 2%, so I tried again on 7 May. This time, I asked whether he would “confirm that under his leadership this country will never spend less than the NATO recommended minimum of 2% of GDP on defence”, to which the answer was: “We are spending in excess of 2% and we are one of the only countries in Europe to do that. The Greeks, I believe, are spending more than 2% but, if I can put it this way, not all on things that are useful for all of NATO. We should continue to make sure we fulfil all our commitments on defence spending.” —[ Official Report , 7 May 2014; Vol. 580, c. 147.] My final attempt was on 4 June when I again asked the Prime Minister to give that commitment, and he said: “It is very important to meet such commitments.”
“There was an exchange on 26 March in which the Prime Minister said: “We should encourage other countries to do what Britain is doing in matching our at-least-2% contribution in terms of GDP and defence spending.” I thought that that was an opportunity for me to be helpful to him, as I like to be when I can, and I intervened and said: “May I take it from what the Prime Minister has just said that there is then no question of the British defence budget dropping below 2% of GDP?” His answer was: “We currently meet the 2% threshold. These things are calculated by different countries in different ways, but I am confident that we will go on meeting our obligations to NATO.” —[ Official Report , 26 March 2014; Vol. 578, c.”
“As he pointed out, the figures quoted in the Financial Times on 16 June suggested that “the UK’s military expenditure will hit 1.9% of the size of the country’s economy by 2017,” which would, of course, be below the NATO target of 2%. I found it almost incredible that this Government would ever dip below the 2% NATO GDP recommended minimum, so I have been trying to get the Prime Minister to confirm that we would do no such thing. I have not been doing too well.”
“The bit we really did not like about that was that within the rough figure of 2.5% at which it settled was included the cost of the two ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, costs that were officially met from the Treasury reserve but that in reality were effectively met from the core defence budget. If the total figure was 2.5%, it did not really matter which budget was taking the cut, as it were, but effectively the real defence budget was much nearer 2.1% or 2.2%. That is where we stand at the moment, including the costs of our current military operational deployments. I must give immense congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who has consistently raised that point.”
“The article stated: “Government figures show that 2.5 per cent of the UK’s GDP—or around £32 billion—was likely to be spent on defence in 2005/6 compared with 4.4 per cent in 1987/88.” Of course, we know what had happened between the late 1980s and the early 21st century. The cold war had come to an end and there had been something called the peace dividend, so obviously defence spending had declined as a proportion of GDP. In fact, in 2007, when the Conservatives were sitting on the Opposition Benches, we made much of the fact that when the Labour Government of Tony Blair had come into office they had reduced defence spending as a percentage of GDP in successive years. It went from 2.9% to 2.6%, to 2.8%, to 2.7%, to 2.7% again, to 2.5%, to 2.5% again, to 2.6% and so on.”
“I propose to adopt the Speaker Bercow speech essential that has been drummed into me over 30 long years, which is that any speech, in the House of Commons or elsewhere, should preferably have one main point. My one main point is that I want to hear from the Government that as long as this Government and this Prime Minister are in office, this country will never spend less than the recommended NATO 2% minimum. My mind goes back—that is the trouble; it happens to people when they have been in this place for a long time—to the beginning of 2007, when The Daily Telegraph reported the Conservatives as bemoaning the fact that “defence spending as a proportion of the UK’s gross domestic product is at its lowest since 1930”.”
“The democracies are faced with at least two worrying blocs: the Russia, Iran and Syria axis; and the movement of jihadism on an international scale—this is extremely topical—involving not only the takeover of Muslim countries but the infiltration of non-Muslim countries and the carrying out of terrorist acts there. Whichever side one takes as to which conflict is the more important or which enemy is the greater, the one thing we can all agree on is that we are living in dangerous times indeed. Even the one thing that everybody thought had gone away, namely the traditional cold war threat from the former Soviet Union, has reappeared. Therefore, we have to ask ourselves whether we are spending enough on defence.”
“Seldom does a decade go by without one realising how brilliantly foresighted George Orwell’s classic political novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” was for one reason or another, whether it be on state surveillance, the abuse of linguistics, or—as is relevant to this debate—the constantly shifting conflicts that arise between blocs of countries. Orwell may have had in mind the dilemma of the democracies in the inter-war years, which were torn between confronting Nazism and appeasing it, and between confronting Bolshevism and learning to live with it. Often, the reason why people found that to be such a dilemma was that they felt that they could not do both, and they were not sure which was the greater of the two evils. These days, one might say that we are in a similar position.”
“May I begin with a double apology? My first apology is for the fact that, unfortunately, as is so often the case, I have committed to addressing a group of people about the workings of the Intelligence and Security Committee. That is at 4 o’clock, so I will not be able to return in time for the wind-ups, and I apologise to both Front-Bench teams and to the House more widely for that. My second apology is for the fact that, having only yesterday stepped off a transatlantic plane, my contribution today may be slightly more incoherent even than usual. [Hon. Members: “No, no!”] On cue, all my hon. Friends rush in to disagree, and I am very touched by that.”
“I am talking about trying to get a future commitment. I want to hear that as long as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is Prime Minister this country will always spend the NATO recommended minimum of 2% of GDP on defence. We have not quite had that commitment yet. He might be intending to make that commitment at the NATO summit and to encourage other NATO countries to do the same, in which case I will applaud him. I do not wish to spoil his timing. I will conclude with this point: it is necessary and understandable that this country’s intelligence services have a policy of “neither confirm, nor deny” in certain areas, but I do not think that that policy will do for this country’s Government when it comes to saying how much, as a minimum, we will spend on the defence of the United Kingdom.”
“The Prime Minister has almost anticipated the question that I was going to put to him. We are meeting our minimum 2% commitment to NATO; will he give an undertaking that as long as he remains Prime Minister, this country will always meet that commitment?”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. It would be a shame not to join the party. I can only thank all those who supported me, congratulate the winner, commiserate with the other hon. Members who stood and say that I am very sorry for whoever it was who hoped to replace me on the Intelligence and Security Committee— [ Laughter. ] They will have to wait a little longer.”
“I have the greatest respect for the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick). He is a man of great seniority in this House and we always, rightly, listen very carefully to what he has to say. There is one—and only one—reason why his proposal runs into difficulties. The simple point is that this particular Committee, unlike any other, has access to highly classified information up to the range of top secret, strap-2 level and occasionally higher. Some people believe that this country should have no secrets at all and that if we had no secrets, there would be no classified information and no case for treating the membership of the Intelligence and Security Committee differently from that of the Defence Committee.”
“If one makes that concession, one has to admit that this Committee, if it is going to see such material, has to have some sort of screening process and cannot simply be subject to the ordinary process of election, unless we are content that any single elected Member of this House can, by definition, be trusted not to do something foolish if given access to highly sensitive information.”
“Some people think that we should have some secrets but that there is not a single hon. Member of this House who could not be trusted to know them. If that is one’s view, there would not be any argument against the membership of the ISC being elected just like the membership of any other Committee. However, the membership of this House reflects society in all its varied shades, phases, types and categories. The fact is that I do not think there are many people who would say that, out of 650 Members, there are not at least some who are not quite, shall we say, discreet or tight-lipped enough to share in the most sensitive secrets of the security and intelligence agencies.”
“I hope to show that the difference between us is as small as possible. I was certainly not suggesting that the hon. Gentleman was not in favour of this country having security and intelligence services or, indeed, highly classified secrets. It was as a result of the work that he and his colleagues did back then that it became possible to open up the intelligence and security agencies to much greater scrutiny. Their activities can now be examined and debated considerably. To a large extent, that happens in the open—in the public arena of Parliament—but when it cannot be done in the open, it can now, thank goodness, be done in the closed and secure environment of the Intelligence and Security Committee. I will move on quickly, because I do not wish to detain the House for longer than is necessary.”
“I am delighted to know that. I have to admit to the hon. Gentleman that one of the reasons I put myself forward for a place on the Committee was to test the water and see if any of my past nefarious activities, as he would regard them, would result in my being black-balled. I came to the conclusion that I was appointed for one of two reasons: either it was thought that I was so discreet—”
“Member for Walsall North in that a case could be made on the basis of the argument that once all the members have been appointed, the objection would fall in relation to the Chairman. Once all the people who are regarded as appropriate to see highly classified information are known, I cannot see why the whole House could not then decide which of those cleared Members should be the Chairman, but perhaps that is for another occasion.”
“Indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker. If I may, I will just conclude that sentence by saying that I came to the conclusion that it was regarded as a suitable Committee on which to put a troublemaker who could not talk about what the Committee was discussing. In conclusion, most people think that where highly classified material is concerned—material covered by the Official Secrets Act—some people are better suited than others to be allowed to see it. It is not acceptable or compatible with that for the whole House simply to vote for any Member to be a member of the Committee, because the Committee would not be allowed to continue to receive such material. However, I hold out a smidgeon of hope for the hon.”
“I think we are getting that balance right, but does the Secretary of State agree that the greatest possible threat to peace and security in Europe would be if modern-day Russia’s success in using old-style Soviet tactics against a non-NATO country were to be replicated against a NATO country? It is not just a question of reassuring the NATO countries: it is a question of making it clear to the Kremlin what they must not do.”
“Will the Prime Minister confirm that under his leadership this country will never spend less than the NATO recommended minimum of 2% of GDP on defence?”
“What progress have the Government made towards their aim of greater honesty in sentencing so that the public at large and victims of crime in particular know that when a sentence is handed out, the time served will correspond to a greater degree to the sentence handed out?”
“As somebody from a Jewish background who read rather more than was good for my mental health at too early an age about what had happened in the medical block at the Buchenwald concentration camp, I think that the idea that that sort of atrocity could be going on in this day and age is absolutely unbelievable and abhorrent.”
“It is a profitable business for the Chinese: I understand that a kidney can raise $62,000 and a heart more than $130,000. Interestingly, there has been an enormous increase in the number of transplantation centres in China in recent years, yet there is no national scheme for organ donation that could possibly account for the very large numbers of organs being made available for money by the Chinese. It is not, I believe, denied that the organs of executed prisoners are used by the Chinese Government for that purpose. Many studies, including by special rapporteurs for the United Nations, have drawn attention to that terrible trade.”
“Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), who sadly cannot be with us today, for putting into the schedules of Parliament a meeting at which I learned about the persecution of Falun Gong in China. We are talking about not just religious intolerance, but the intolerance of atheistic regimes such as the communist regimes of China and North Korea towards groups such as Falun Gong that are spiritual but not really religions. North Korea has been identified in report after report as the most dangerous place, or at least one of the most dangerous places, in which to be a Christian in the present day. I find the phrase “organ harvesting” in relation to China and Falun Gong rather inappropriate. I would call it murder and butchery for money, which is what appears to be going on.”
“Members to cast their minds back to 1978, when the great director Michael Crichton brought a terrifying film to the cinema screen. The name of the film was “Coma”; I do not know whether that rings a bell with any hon. Members. It was a fictional story about how people would be placed in a hospital for minor operations, reduced to the state of a living vegetable, and then have their organs taken from them and sold for huge profits in an extremely sinister way. I found that film immensely unsettling, but I was able to comfort myself with the thought that, well, it was only fiction and nothing like that could really happen. Unfortunately, something like that has happened and is happening, apparently, to this day. In this connection, I pay tribute to my hon.”
“The thoughtful and very disturbing speech by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) is a piece of a jigsaw that I hope will be assembled in the course of this debate, building up a picture in country after country, affecting religion after religion—and not always just religious groups and communities—and showing a certain common template. The word that I expect to hear over and again is “intolerance”, which was flagged up by the opening speakers, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry). I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long), who has steered this topic to the Floor of the House and introduced it so comprehensively and with such a depth of detail. Before I come on to questions of religious intolerance, I should like hon.”
“I have to say that the blasphemy laws of Pakistan are a very handy weapon for those who have an enemy anywhere in society, because all they have to do is to say that someone has defamed or insulted the Prophet or the religion and that person may, like Asia Bibi, find herself under sentence of death.”
“I want to flag up the fact that the splendid report that the United Nations arranged to be compiled describes what is going on in North Korea as analogous to the crimes committed by the Nazis. It states: “In many instances, the violations of human rights found by the commission constitute crimes against humanity. These are not mere excesses of the State; they are essential components of a political system that has moved far from the ideals on which it claimed to be founded”. Pakistan has been mentioned in one context today and I am now going to mention it in another. In June 2009, a Roman Catholic woman, Asia Bibi, got into an argument with some Muslim neighbours over whether she should be allowed to drink from the same water supply as them. As a result, she was accused of blasphemy.”
“My hon. Friend, who stands up for Christians and other groups remarkably well—as I have had occasion to observe over years in this place—is absolutely right. In fact, my understanding is that, originally, the Chinese authorities were quite well disposed to Falun Gong. It was only when it became hugely popular that they felt that any mass popular movement, even one as harmless as that, posed a threat to their totalitarian control. I fully expect my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), should she catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, as I hope she will, to give us chapter and horrible verse about what is happening to Christians in North Korea.”
“That is absolutely central to the whole question. If the Commonwealth is good for anything at all, it is good for asserting the moral authority and best values that have bound our countries together. If we in this free Parliament do not speak out for oppressed minorities, nobody else will do so effectively. To revert to the case of Asia Bibi, who remains under sentence of death, what is even more tragic is that the Governor of Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, who visited her in prison, was murdered as a result of supporting her and opposing the blasphemy laws, as was the only Christian member of Pakistan’s Cabinet, the Minority Affairs Minister, Shahbaz Bhatti. The prevailing circumstances in Pakistan really are atrocious.”
“Absolutely. My hon. Friend knows far more about this subject than I do, and I hope that he will contribute to the debate. In the less than a minute that I have remaining, I want to end on a slightly more optimistic point. Although the persecution of the Baha’i community in Iran remains severe, a very recent development is that Ayatollah Abdol-Hamid Masoumi-Tehrani has rather bravely reached out to the Baha’i community by making a presentation to them and other faith communities. A lot depends on what happens to this ayatollah, but if change is to come, it will come slowly and it will involve such gestures. Let us keep our eye on what happens to this particular cleric in Iran, and let us hope that the reaction to his welcome gesture is positive and encouraging.”
“Given that we are supplying so much aid to Nigeria, does the hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps we might incentivise its Government a little by suggesting that the aid will not be forthcoming in such great quantity unless that Government take prompt action in this terrible situation?”