Sir Desmond Swayne
MP for New Forest West · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Just how confident is the Minister that this was not a cyber-attack? How confident is he of the resilience of the system in the event of such an attack, and how confident is he in the willingness and ability of the Government to retaliate in the event of such an attack, as the best form of deterrence?”
“I join that long list of UK Ministers who have raised, at the very highest level in Israel, the most egregious practices in the west bank, designed specifically to prevent a two-state solution, only for Israeli policy to double down. Accordingly, I congratulate the Secretary of State.”
“I am delighted by the reprieve—the New Forest was to be split, and part of it swallowed by Southampton. Will the Secretary of State accept my representation that we want the integrity of the New Forest to remain, and the last thing we want is for it all to be swallowed by Southampton?”
“To address one of the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings, that takes account of the fact that there may be different levels of need in different areas.”
“Yes, essentially today we are putting these services on a statutory footing. Of course subsequent Governments can change statutes, but this Bill makes it an explicit decision of this House and Parliament, rather than a fiat by Government decision.”
“I will address exactly that point shortly. If a child is not developing properly and is not sleeping, feeding or communicating, parents need to know that they have somewhere to turn.”
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“I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again. She is most generous. How can it be a vindication for a Scottish university such as St Andrews—a Scottish university—to limit its intake of Scottish students to 20% of the university population?”
“My right hon. Friend will, of course, recall that prior to our accession to the common market, there was no common fisheries policy. It was concocted entirely in anticipation of our accession, so that our waters could be plundered.”
“My right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) spoke of the gloom and doom on the other side of the Chamber, and I think that the hon. Gentleman put his finger on it in his complaint about the hardness of this particular Brexit. What was clear throughout the Committee stage was the harking back of Opposition Members to a previous Bill that did not make it through this House in December of last year. It did not make it through this House because those Members voted against the programme motion, and they now feel guilt for having delivered the very situation about which he complains, but which we rather regard as the intervention of providence.”
“I am alive to my hon. Friend’s concerns—indeed, I share them—but does not clause 26 provide protection by giving the Minister the power to make regulations that will have to go through this House? That is a statutory intervention, albeit not an Act of Parliament. It is by the will of this House that those intrusions would be made.”
“Throughout the proceedings yesterday the Labour Back Benches were empty. For half the time there was only one Member there—Labour’s only surviving Eurosceptic—but for most of the time there was nobody there at all and we ended up finishing early, such was Labour’s determination to provide scrutiny.”
“Is the hon. Lady in denial, or has she been living in a bubble? We had a referendum, and we have just had a general election that reinforced the referendum result. Whatever she may say from that Dispatch Box, that ship has sailed, as one of her colleagues said.”
“Is not the lesson of the prolonged, tortuous seven years of negotiation on the Canadian deal the very fact that it was an open-ended process that did not come to an end? The effect of new clause 4 is basically to ensure, in providing for an extension, that it makes that extension certain, because the knowledge that the extension can take place will take away the very pressure to make an agreement within the time that is available.”
“Thank you, Sir George. I am persuaded that the amendments are unnecessary, and I support the provisions of the Bill. But just one word of caution: I have received a number of inquiries from constituents—European citizens—who clearly have not been reached at all by any of the outreach, such are the basic questions that they ask. Indeed, I received one such inquiry today. On that score, when I think about it, I do not know whether I have been living in a bubble, but I have not seen any of that outreach at all myself. Admittedly, I have not been looking for it. Nevertheless, I just ask Ministers to re-examine the outreach that there has been and to reassure their level of confidence that it is adequate.”
“T2. Does not the blocking of Joshua Wong as a council candidate offend against the very basic principles of the Sino-British agreement, and what is the Secretary of State planning to do about it?”
“One of your predecessors, Mr Speaker, congratulated me on always addressing the Chair. If I may say so, it has been my particular privilege to address the Chair when you are in it, and, if I may also say so, those who stand beside it have always gone to extraordinary lengths to be helpful. The New Forest is being desecrated by people fly-tipping. Will my right hon. Friend have a word with her colleagues in the Ministry of Justice to ensure that we are more robust with respect to punishments—perhaps garrotting perpetrators with their own intestines?”
“9. What discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on the effective use of churches in the telecommunications network.”
“This is an issue on which the right hon. Lady has been both most helpful and assiduous, as she has been in the discharge of every duty she has undertaken in the 20 years that I have known her. I thank her for that service and wish her all the best for the future.”
“It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) referred to the holy mass. What is the meaning of the word “holy”? Daily, at Prayers, we invoke the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. I know that the hon. Member for Strangford would say “Holy Spirit”, but I prefer to stick with the original words. I have no idea how to define “holy” or “holiness”, and I am satisfied that there is no satisfactory dictionary definition, but I know holiness when I have encountered it, and we have encountered it in the presence of Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin.”
“The argument that the proper thing to have done was to extend the time available is undermined by the fact that the greatest enthusiasts for that voted in principle against the Bill. By “scrutiny” they merely mean amending the Bill so that it no longer represents the agreement and the negotiations have to be restarted and the whole wretched cycle can begin again.”
“I understand that moving the election date to 9 December would imply a Dissolution this Thursday, which would greatly constrain those of us who have made arrangements on Friday and early next week for Parliament Week. There are all sorts of protocols with respect to schools about having Members of Parliament visit them, but we would no longer be Members of Parliament and they would be obliged by those protocols to invite all the candidates, which is very difficult to arrange at short notice.”
“I do not know if it is just my easy-going charm, but the worst I have ever heard in Pontypridd, West Bromwich and the New Forest is, “Sorry, mate—I’m Labour.” I hope that the Hansard reporters will not feel the necessity to record verbatim some of the words that we have heard this evening. When the Minister replies, I would like him to comment on the implications of the difference of the three days between the two dates that stand before us and how that will impact on the date for nominations, and whether those days will fall either side of the publication of the new electoral register. When the new nomination form is filled out, the electoral numbers have to be recorded, and those numbers will undoubtedly have changed after 1 December. Is that going to present a problem? If so, I wonder if the Minister could draw attention to that.”
“We have had two Divisions in recent weeks on whether there should be an election, so I would have thought that those associations ought properly to have attended to the question of getting on with selecting candidates. I am sorry to hear that they have not, but there is not much that we can do about that. Certainly, the additional days would be of some assistance.”
“In those days, universities and university political associations went to great lengths to ensure that all their members were registered at both addresses. If that has continued, then it should not be a problem. I conclude by saying that, having heard the speech—the very impressive Second Reading speech—of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), I can assure my hon. Friends that I would not be voting for this Bill with any great enthusiasm if she were the leader of the Labour party.”
“Of course, it is important that they vote at only one of them. When I was the chairman of the Saint Andrews University Conservative Association—a former friend, Alex Salmond, will remember these events well—I saw it as my duty to ensure that all members of the Conservative Association were registered at both addresses, so that, in an election, we would be able to inform them as to where their vote would count for more. I undertook that task. Unfortunately, on the evening of the referendum, I think, in 1979, I was visited by members of Special Branch and charged with 53 offences against the False Oaths (Scotland) Act 1933. I got off the charges, but nevertheless it was certainly a very frightening experience.”
“I can assure my hon. Friend that the independent members of my New Forest association would not tolerate anyone imposing a candidate or superintending the process, and I would hope that other constituencies would follow a similar line. I will, if I may, come to the question of students. We have heard that, overwhelmingly, students choose to vote at home, that postal and proxy votes are available, and that 40 of the top universities will still be sitting on 12 September. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) was quite mistaken in an earlier intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson). He implied that students could be registered at only one address. That is not the case. Students are entitled to register at both addresses.”
“I hate to be a pedant, but my recollection is that the souls of the upright and pure who preceded salvation actually ended up in Dante’s first circle. The events of this evening prove to us that we are all much further down in hell already.”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. However unfashionable it might be, I believe that you are quite right, and by the same token, it is quite wrong to expect the voters to have to answer the same question a second time.”
“Does the Minister recall the nerve required to reach for Health and Efficiency and the looks at the counter as it was put in a paper bag? What is out there now makes H&E look like a nursery rhyme. His approach really is going to be comprehensive, is it not?”
“I welcome the Home Secretary’s refreshing approach. When a spate of crime occurs in a local area, it often comes down to one or two individuals. She can imagine the frustration when they are caught and receive only a suspended sentence. What happened to “two strikes and you’re out”?”
“Was the Leader of the House as uncomfortable as I was a few moments ago to be surrounded by advocates and apologists for the Spanish judiciary, when some of our own are not that good? Perhaps we could debate that on Saturday.”
“Is not the problem with reports of this sort the assumptions on which they are made—not least the assumption that though circumstances change dramatically, behaviour will not change at all?”
“If a 16-year-old’s DLA stops before PIP starts, should not the contractor be made liable for the maintenance of that child until the PIP settlement is determined?”
“Were any of the frightful diminution of rights mentioned by the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) to occur, it would clearly require primary legislation by this Parliament, wouldn’t it?”
“There is a strategy. The Prime Minister is the last thing standing against ending the Brexit enterprise entirely. He can expect no quarter. Absolutely everything is going to be thrown at him, isn’t it?”
“My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) is right: we had notice of the intention to prorogue. With your assistance, Mr Speaker, we could have entertained motions against it, or even a motion of no confidence. So it was a coup, wasn’t it?”
“There is one purpose in denying this motion. That is to ensure that the British people have no say whatever over what takes place at the European Council on 17 October, isn’t it?”
“I once took a train to Manchester to negotiate the price and purchase of a Morris Minor, having purchased only a one-way ticket. It was not a sensible negotiating strategy, was it?”
“Earlier in the year, when it appeared momentarily that we might leave without a deal, Mr Barnier announced that there would not, after all, be a hard border and that other arrangements would be relied upon. Where could he have possibly got that idea?”
“Will my right hon. Friend also have a go at the Ministry of Justice and ask it to put sufficient resource into the tribunal system, so that case law can be expedited to make the new telecommunications code work?”
“What estimate has the Minister made of the possibility of meeting the substantial financial costs of the measure by having recourse to the sometimes quite wealthy institutions that perpetrated the abuse in the first place?”
“Why are young men locked up in their cells for the greater part of the day, with all the pent-up frustration that that gives rise to, when they should enter their cells with relief at the end of the day because they are so knackered, having been involved in vigorous activity?”
“What can the Minister do to expedite the provision of primary care services in those rural areas where the population is growing fast as a consequence of new housing?”
“My hon. Friend is aware—isn’t she?—that any proposal for repeal will be resisted as passionately in the country and on the Government Back Benches as it has just been advocated by those on the Opposition Benches?”
“How will it work for houses that do not have a driveway or reserved on-street parking, and what does the Minister mean by the term “en suite”?”
“What is particularly terrible about immigration detention is its indeterminate nature and the fact that detainees have so little information about their own cases and, indeed, about their rights. Habeas corpus is still one of our fundamental principles, isn’t it?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You were not in the Chair at the time, but the word that the Minister heard was “indefinite”. My recollection is that the word that I used was “indeterminate”. Thank you for indulging me so that I could get that on the record.”
“If the Minister’s instructions had been more prescriptive, as some hon. Members appear to be demanding, would it have been easier for teachers to implement?”
“Given gambling’s tendency to be habit forming, the later that it can be put off until, the better. Certainly, gambling should not begin before adulthood, should it?”
“I think the Minister said there were 2 million victims; if that is the case, they will overwhelmingly be women, and if they are to be freed, that means changing the attitudes of men. How is that to be achieved?”
“The Prime Minister said that international development expenditure would be aligned with emissions reduction, but last week the Secretary of State told us in terms that his main effort was resilience, not emissions reduction. The Prime Minister’s priority is the right one, but does the Secretary of State know?”
“There is undoubtedly fault in a divorce but, in my experience from continual exposure at constituency surgeries, the attribution of that fault leads parents to use their children as weapons in a continuing battle with their former partner.”
“But the new telecommunications code has wrecked the market by advantaging big business at the expense of small sports clubs and churches. Can I enlist the support of the Commissioners?”
“I have constituents who are furious at repeatedly receiving penalty notices that subsequently have to be quashed. The system is rubbish, isn’t it?”
“How can the anger of the public be assuaged when, notwithstanding the powers granted to the courts, they see continually repeat offences rewarded only with a suspended sentence?”
“The Secretary of State will recall the green deal. Will he ensure, now we have a new target, that we have a commensurately robust plan to incentivise households?”