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 Minister has covered many of the abuses that have been mentioned, but he has not made reference to China and the harvesting of organs, to which I referred. I note from the reading that I have done for this debate that whereas there have been pronouncements on the subject by the United Nations, the United States and even the European Parliament, I have not come across anything much from the British Government. I wonder what their attitude to the subject is.”
“Given the danger that these tactics, if successful, will embolden Russia to do something similar against a NATO member state, as the Foreign Secretary suggested, is any thought being given to increasing the prominence of defence expenditure among Britain’s national priorities?”
“Given that one of the most basic needs of any asylum seeker is to have a roof over his or her head, will the Minister explain a little bit more about emergency accommodation, or is it the case that asylum seekers are among those to be found sleeping rough?”
“This is two for the price of one, because I am asking this question with the strong support of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who cannot be here this morning. Given that women’s rights are currently so much in the minds of the Government and the Opposition, may we have an urgent statement on the continuing scandal of the cancellation of service widows’ pensions when they remarry or cohabit? The cost to the Ministry of Defence of removing this archaic rule would be £250,000—less than that when we take away the cost of policing the rule. This is an anachronism that ought to be removed as soon as possible.”
“It is never easy to be a whistleblower, but I cannot imagine a much tougher environment to be a whistleblower in than the police service. What practical measures of protection does the Committee recommend to safeguard the interests of people such as my hon. Friend’s brave constituent PC Patrick in the future?”
“To what extent has the ability of our European allies to wage effective economic sanctions against Russia been undermined by their dependence on Russian gas sources and do we have a strategy for trying to persuade our allies to diversify their energy sources so that that dependence will be lessened in the future?”
“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?”
“I am genuinely not sure what the previous position was on whether the pension pots of elderly people going into residential care contributed towards the total assets they were allowed to retain before they got help from the state. If that was separate and did not count, will the fact that pension pots can now be turned into cash disadvantage people going into residential care in terms of the assets they can retain, or will the situation remain unchanged from their point of view?”
“My hon. Friend said yesterday in Defence questions what a different position we would be in had we let Ukraine become part of NATO. We must realise and impress on Russia that membership of NATO involves the criterion that an attack on one is an attack on all. If we are not prepared to protect a country in that way, we must not give it bogus guarantees.”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, you noticed my eccentric gesticulations and today you note my great agitation. I think the point raised by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has wide ramifications, similar to those we were concerned about yesterday: what is the status of motions passed, either in substantive votes or nem. con. votes in this House, when they are the result of the Backbench Business Committee agreeing that something should be debated and voted on? There is something a bit wrong when the House passes a motion and the Government appear to take no notice of it. What is the point of having a vote in that case?”
“T4. Much as no one wishes to see the cold war return, do not recent events between Russia and Ukraine indicate that this is not some flight of fancy, but that it really could happen, and does that not mean that we must be extremely careful never to let down our nuclear or conventional defence guard?”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I apologise for my eccentric gesticulations, but one cannot change the habit of a lifetime. I speak as one who, within living memory, may have been guilty of that practice in getting what we considered to be a rather important vote on Syria on the record. If it is decided that the practice is unsuitable and should never be repeated, when there is an important Back-Bench debate on which there needs to be a vote to make the public well aware of the opinion of the House, and the Government choose for technical reasons to advise everyone to abstain, are there other mechanisms available that would enable that vote to be called?”
“Have the arrangements we have put in place for the safe withdrawal of troops and especially heavy equipment from Afghanistan by the end of this year in any way been affected by the tension that has arisen between us and Russia?”
“Does the Foreign Secretary accept that part of the problem is that Ukraine is a deeply divided society, in which both sides have, at one time or another, played winner-takes-all? He talks, rightly, about the importance of maintaining a unified Ukraine. Does he agree with the conclusion of Professor Anatol Lieven that “the only way to keep Ukraine together may be the introduction of a new federal constitution with much greater powers for the different regions”?”
“I am a little concerned that my right hon. Friend is bringing his arguments to a close, because he touched on one point that I was rather hoping he would develop. He said that the Committee visited Estonia. For people who, like me, were not part of the Committee’s study, it would be extremely helpful to know in concrete terms a little more about what it discovered on that visit about what a cyber-attack by a hostile neighbour can really mean.”
“I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the situation of my constituent Amanda Wooding, who is a child care specialist. She, of course, finds herself particularly in demand during the school holidays, but she has children of her own, so she can never take them on holiday at other times because of her profession.”
“I fully appreciate my hon. Friend’s argument that the rich seasons help airlines and the tourist industry to function during the off-seasons. What does he think would happen if some flexibility were introduced so that schools in different areas took their school holidays at different times? Would he anticipate prices remaining low during those times, or would he anticipate the travel industry increasing prices to reflect such an expansion of the season?”
“I am slightly conflicted over the whole issue. The hon. Gentleman made the point about people needing to save money. A constituent of mine, Joy Drake, took her children on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday and saved £1,000 on the air fares. Does he not agree that, if the issue is left to individual head teachers and schools, they will be put in an invidious position in deciding which families get to save on the air fares and which families do not? Therefore, should we not look at something that enables the general discretion to be applied—other than, of course, bereavements and similar things—as to when the holiday is taken by everyone, rather than just flexibility on an individual case by an individual head teacher? [Mrs Annette Brooke in the Chair ]”
“Whether we like it or not, Ukraine is a polarised society, with large parts looking towards the west and significant parts looking towards Russia. Does the Secretary of State think, therefore, that the constitutional advice we give should include a recommendation for some form of devolved government so that Ukraine does not become a focus for east-west tension or, heaven forbid, confrontation?”
“I wonder whether she agrees with the New Forest National Park Authority, which says: “It will make a mockery of our planning rules when a resident in Southampton will still need planning permission for a dormer window, but three houses can be built in the middle of the New Forest National Park” without any such permission?”
“In order to cheer my hon. Friend up a bit, may I ask my hon. Friend whether she thinks that the Government are exercising a degree of expectation management? The proposal that national parks such as the New Forest should be open to this sort of unregulated development is so preposterous that I cannot help wondering whether it has been put up as a kite so that the Government can then dismiss it and make a great concession by doing the obvious thing, which is to exclude places like the New Forest and Dartmoor from these ridiculous provisions.”
“The Minister is being very courteous, as always, in giving way. Surely, in judging areas of such sensitivity as national parks, the body that has to be able to decide these matters is not central Government with a blanket rule but the national park authorities themselves, so why is there this blanket rule which will take away their discretion?”
“Does the hon. Gentleman believe, as I do, that the single most important point, which I hope that he will elaborate for us, is whether the identities of the people whose data are being stored are also being stored? If they are being stored, I am entirely with him; if they are not and only data without identity are being stored, there might be more to be said for the scheme. I am interested to know what he has to say.”
“My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) also referred to a major project involving people at the Maudsley hospital who had suffered serious mental illness. I want to hear from the Minister that there is no way under the sun that people who have suffered mental illness, for example, would find their data getting into the wrong hands. Without that guarantee, the project seems to be very dangerous.”
“Does the Secretary of State see any connection between the reluctance of the Afghan Government to sign the very important future security agreement and the sort of negotiations that they may be having with the Taliban?”
“This is a very complicated case and I just want to be sure that I understand exactly what the ombudsman is recommending. My understanding is that the ombudsman is recommending that a lady who has had a lot of trouble because she once previously went down the legal route should, instead of pursuing a complaint about that with the ombudsman, go down the legal route all over again. Have I got that right, or am I missing something?”
“I was not familiar with this case until I heard it outlined in such detail, but as I understand it the pointed issue is not about the merits or otherwise of this lady’s original arguments with the health service. I think I am right in saying that the only pointed issue is that the Information Commissioner’s Office directed that certain data should be removed from the record. They were not and she complained to the ombudsman, who does not seem to want to say whether it was right that they were left on her record or whether they ought to have been removed.”
“May we acclaim the fact that Members of both the Conservative and Labour Front Benches are vying to show which party is the more committed to the successor Trident nuclear system? Is the Secretary of State aware that an analyst at the normally sensible Royal United Services Institute defence think-tank has suggested that even an inactive fleet of submarines can help deter actors from seriously threatening the UK? Does he agree that to adopt such a dangerously destabilising posture would not even save any significant money at all?”
“Do we simply rush to condemn the fact that Islamists have been ejected from power in Egypt, or do we recognise the real difficulty of the choice that Egyptians have had to make between one extreme situation and another?”
“The question that must be faced by democracies looking on as such situations develop is what we do when a group of people come to power, initially with a greater or lesser degree of democratic legitimacy, and proceed to subvert the system so that they will never again have to submit themselves to democratic elections. I suggest that what was happening in Egypt was a movement in that sort of direction. The country was faced with the choice of whether it wished to see Islamism take control, as it has done following what I prefer to call the Arab uprisings, to the disappointment of many of us who were hoping to see constitutional democracies emerge in other middle eastern countries. The issue is what we do about that.”
“There was certainly popular support for the Nazis, as well as for the communists in many cases where they succeeded in coming to power. The paradox in trying to deal with such situations was that there was a degree of democratic legitimacy to the initial taking over of the country, but once that had happened, the regimes proceeded to dismantle the very framework of democracy—however great or limited it was at the time—that had enabled them to come to power on the basis of some form of popular support. Such popular support was often allied to a specific type of devious perversion of political language when the regime was consolidating its grip on power.”
“In 1941, Churchill was famously teased by one of his left-wing opponents when he spoke up for Russia after it was invaded by the Nazis. After all, Churchill was the architect of British intervention in the Russian civil war, and he famously wanted to “strangle Bolshevism at birth”. He had the right answer to his critic: he said that if Hitler invaded hell, he would at least have a good word to say for the devil in the House of Commons. In other words, he recognised that it was a choice between evils. It is often thought that when a totalitarian regime emerges, based on a totalitarian ideology, it does so in a coup, with no popular support at all. That is not necessarily the case; in fact, I would say that it is not usually the case.”
“It sometimes bothers me that people think that when a dramatic development occurs, it is automatically to be interpreted in the context of what we have experienced in recent European history. I felt the very coinage of the term “Arab spring” to be inappropriate. I did not feel that the spate of revolutions that took place in one middle eastern country after another should be compared to the attempt by central and eastern European countries, which had been well set on the path to constitutional democracy before they were hijacked by the Soviet empire, to go back to the democratic path. There was no direct comparison between those European countries asserting their right to return to democracy and what was happening in at least some of the middle eastern countries.”
“I pay tribute to both previous speakers and, despite the friendly sedentary intervention of my friend, the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), I intend to follow in their footsteps. I congratulate in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) on introducing such an important subject. I am pleased that people have not gone automatically into a mode of suggesting that all the good is on one side and all the evil on the other. In Egypt, we are confronted with a choice of which is the lesser evil. I agree with the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) that the correct course to follow is not to rush to endorse what has happened in Egypt. We should ensure that we maintain pressure on whatever Administration or regime emerges to follow a path back to constitutional democracy at the earliest opportunity.”
“The description of Islamism is the description of an extreme, intolerant ideology; there is no moderate Islamism, any more than there is moderate totalitarianism or moderate extremism. The reality is that there was a choice in Egypt between an Islamist takeover and the ejection of a group of people bent on destroying any sort of emergent democracy in that country and making a terrible mess of running it in the process.”
“Those people would probably point to the situation in Germany in the 1930s and say, “Wouldn’t it have been better if the army had thrown the Nazis out, once it became clear that they were going to rip up the constitution and remove any chance of a democratic future, and when it saw what the Hitlerites were trying to do to the German system—which had more or less democratically elected them to power in the first place—using the techniques that we are so familiar with in totalitarian takeovers, to get an iron and irreversible grip on the society?” How would we feel now if the army had stepped in then? I worry when I hear people use phrases such as moderate Islamism.”
“The paradox of tolerance is that in a free society, people must tolerate all but the intolerant, because if you tolerate the intolerant, the conditions for toleration disappear and the tolerant go with them. I am sure that this is what the people who ousted the Islamists in Egypt would argue was their justification. Although I said earlier that one must not make simplistic comparisons, I am now probably about to do just that.”
“That is absolutely correct. My hon. Friend will put me right if I am mistaken, but I recall that part of the deal at the outset was that the Muslim Brotherhood undertook not to run for the presidency—I think that I am right in saying that. That promise was very promptly broken. In my time trying to comment as best I can on defence and security-related subjects in Parliament, not too many months—certainly not too many years—go by when I do not have recourse to mentioning one of my favourite political quotations from the late, great, Sir Karl Popper in his famous book, “The Open Society and Its Enemies”. I have quoted it before and I suspect that circumstances will require me to quote it again.”
“I remember, when Sadat was assassinated by what, today, we would call Islamists, how relieved we were that somebody else came forward who carried on his policies. Nevertheless, as is always the case when people come forward and get a grip, as Mubarak did, and do not want to give it up, corruption became rife and the situation ultimately became unstable. Of course, understandably, the people became fed up with him. However, although it took quite a while for the people to become fed up with that form of dictatorship, it did not take them terribly long to be fed up with President Morsi and his group.”
“I endorse that, and pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman and his party colleagues for raising this question more consistently and more often than any other group of hon. Members in the House. They are right to do so. We have to try to take a long view of the prospects for the re-emergence of some form of moderate government in Egypt. Those of us who have been in, and aware of, politics for a long time can remember the bad old days of Nasser. I am sure that some people would say, “Ah, but those days are likely to come back,” but I remember that most sensible, pro-democratic people were relieved when Nasser’s successor, Sadat, showed himself willing to moderate the more extreme outlooks of Egyptian politics and to make peace with Israel.”
“The fact was that it took the entire interview, with that question being asked over and over, to get any sort of final admission from this man that, no, it does not propose to take part. That reminded me of nothing so much as old debates with Marxists, 25 or 30 years ago: they never gave a straight answer to a straight question, because they were subject to a devious political ideology and had the language to match. These people are not democrats. They were about to subvert democracy. The people who have ousted them may not be democrats, but we at least have a chance of making them work towards democracy in a way that the Muslim Brotherhood would never have wanted to do.”
“In response to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea), I simply say that we should have a policy of positive critical engagement with whatever Government emerges. We should at least recognise that the Government who propose to emerge are at least talking the language of democracy, and can be held to that agenda, in a way that the Islamists do not. My last observation is this. A few days ago, I was listening to the “Today” programme and a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood was asked a simple question by the interviewer: “Will you take part in the forthcoming elections or not?” He could have had plenty of good reasons for saying, “We won’t do it.” He could have said, “We don’t think they’ll be fair,” or “We don’t think we’ll be allowed to campaign freely,” and so on.”
“It was the Brotherhood’s shocking incompetence at government that drove millions into the streets on June 30. And it was the Brotherhood’s decision to turn a political clash into a religious war that guaranteed the public’s blanket endorsement for brutally repressing them. The Brothers were ousted not because of their political duplicity, but because they were so bad at it.” In other words, the people saw through them. He continues: “they were later hunted down because they never understood that their countrymen preferred to risk backtracking into a functioning secular authoritarianism to the certainty of sliding into incompetent religious fascism.” If I used those words, I might come in for some criticism, but when a knowledgeable fellow of St Catharine’s college, Cambridge, uses them, we all ought to take them seriously.”
“I shall try to do so, although I am conscious that I am coming towards the end of my fair share of time. I shall try to make a remark or two along those lines at the end. I do not hold myself out as being any form of expert on middle eastern politics, so I was pleased to see the comprehensive debate pack assembled for this occasion by Library researchers, who culled many good contributions from national and international media. I was struck particularly by the contribution of Dr Hazem Kandil, who is described as a lecturer in sociology and a fellow of St Catharine’s college, Cambridge, as well as being the author of a book entitled “Inside the Brotherhood”. He says: “the Brotherhood’s opponents could not have fielded enough protesters to secure the cooperation of the high command had the common folk abstained.”
“I was afraid that you would choose me for that, Mr Speaker. Like hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber, I strongly endorse any help that can be given to vulnerable victims of war, but with regard to the second category that the Home Secretary mentioned—people who have received political asylum—can she assure the House that they are being properly screened so that we do not store up trouble for the future for our security services, as we are already worried about jihadists of our own going out to Syria and coming back?”
“The principal of Brockenhurst college in my constituency has made similar points about people who have gone on to serve the nation—for example, in the police and armed forces. Does the hon. Lady have a policy on the point that was made so clearly by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) about the differentiated VAT regimes for sixth-form colleges and other schools? If so, what is that policy, and will she urge it on the Minister?”
“I had an exchange with the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) earlier. Given that there will be this extra emphasis on people up to the age of 18, is it at least the Government’s aspiration to get rid of the value added tax anomaly?”
“I am following the right hon. Gentleman’s argument closely. Although I intend to vote with the Government, I find common ground with him on the question of relocation in one respect. Does he agree that, if terrorists move away from the more spectacular type of attack to the type that involves just a small number of them, and if people are not physically located away from one another, it makes things much harder? There will be nothing to intercept if people plan low-level attacks by meeting face to face.”
“To help my hon. Friend seamlessly to slip back into the mainstream of his present Bill, as opposed to commenting on his other Bill further down the Order Paper, will he explain what could have possessed the Government, if they decided that they wished to deter benefit tourism, to impose a non-claimability period of just 12 or 13 weeks rather than an effectively longer period? If they did not want to impose an effectively long period, why put in any period at all—other than for some sort of public relations purpose?”
“Given that we may have to wait a year or two at least before we have the opportunity to decide whether we stay in the European Union, does my hon. Friend think that the suggestion made in the letter organised by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) about this Parliament being given the right to overrule decrees from the European Union that we regard to be against the national interest might be one way of making progress, even if his Bill, for all its merits, does not succeed in the meantime?”