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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“Will the Leader of the House schedule his own statement on your excellent award, Mr Speaker? That would give him the opportunity to announce the critical role of the Department for International Development in the Benazir Bhutto scheme, and explain to the House that this scheme uses the latest biometric technology to deliver money electronically to the world’s poorest women, thereby absolutely transforming their status by providing them with a bank account.”
“That UK judges will be less creative is an open question. The notion of incorporating EU regulation, and indeed case law, gives me the collywobbles, but I assure my right hon. Friend of my support in the Division Lobby because he has bigger fish to fry.”
“I agree with my hon. Friend on that and on his excellent motion, but part of the problem is persuading courts even to impose those minimum sentences that are far too low.”
“This agreement is potentially of greatest advantage to the least developed countries, in which we have put very considerable investment. Will the Secretary of State continue to drive forward that agenda?”
“Given the failure of the regulator to identify, let alone expose, the problem, what information was in the public domain that a savvy investor could have taken into account and that might have alarmed him?”
“I have hitherto resisted the case for full compensation on the basis of two arguments. One of them was that if the returns were too good to be true, investors ought to have spotted that. However, I have begun to wonder whether that argument is sustainable, because if the benefits were too good to be true, the regulator should have spotted it. This is a regulated market in which ordinary investors ought to have had confidence.”
“The second argument I have used to resist full compensation is that we would be requiring taxpayers, many of whom would never have been able to afford such investments, to compensate the annuitants—I accept that the annuitants were also taxpayers. However, the evidence about the modesty of so many annuitants has affected the argument. Equally, I wonder whether it is sustainable to subject justice to a means test.”
“It is alleged that when Gordon Brown was put under pressure by members of his own party in the early 2000s to compensate the policyholders, he retorted, “These aren’t our people.” Whether that is true or not, would the hon. Gentleman accept that they are very much his people, as indeed they are ours as well?”
“I hate to interrupt the Minister’s flow, but I wish to take him back to my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) about the regulator’s failure to identify problems. My hon. Friend said in response that the Treasury itself was aware of Equitable Life’s problems long before they emerged; does the Minister know whether that is true?”
“The Minister has a justified reputation for his devoted and assiduous work on his ministerial duties. Has that in any way diminished his ability to serve his constituents?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. As a slavish supporter of the Government, I am in some difficulty. My article for the Forest Journal, robustly supporting the Chancellor’s earlier policy, is already with the printer. [Laughter.] Having been persuaded of the correctness of the course that the Chancellor is now following, I merely needed an opportunity to recant. [Laughter.]”
“Well, I am certainly proud. What are the Government doing to support the programme of reform in Iraq that is so necessary for delivering peace by ensuring that liberated Sunni communities are embraced by the whole political economy of Iraq?”
“The Premier of Luxembourg apparently believes that we might yet be persuaded to stay in the EU. Are there others like him? If yesterday’s emphatic proceedings did not disabuse him, will the Prime Minister do so in the nicest possible way?”
“Given the huge identity of mutual interests that Scotland shares with the rest of the United Kingdom, will not a good deal for the United Kingdom shower all sorts of benefits that can be devolved on Scotland?”
“I would be the first to say that we need to find new ways to reward entrepreneurs and risk takers in our tax system, but does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the difficulty is that at present there is no way of distinguishing between such a person and a professional such as a journalist who has sought an arrangement with their editor to be paid as self-employed? On the low-paid, 60% of people who are self-employed will see a reduction if we take into account the change in class 2 contributions.”
“Indeed, Mr Speaker. The successful proportion would not matter nearly so much if the Minister could arrange for those appeals to happen a hell of a lot quicker, and if he can fix it in Inverclyde—well, I need not spell it out, Mr Speaker.”
“Young people in their first jobs cannot afford their own accommodation, so they share with other young people or they stay at home. Why should it be different for people who are out of work?”
“Might that opportunity to increase the UK component of the component supply chain be increased if there is to be a change in our relationship with the internal market?”
“The paradox is that we starve the poor by refusing to buy food from them. Will the Minister bear that in mind when we escape from the common external tariff?”
“The issue that the hon. Lady has rightly drawn to our attention has international implications. Does she agree that one of the most important things we can do is provide the incentives for girls to remain in school much longer? That reduces the opportunity for early marriage, from which so many of the evils of which she has spoken flow.”
“Have Ministers identified the critical difference that makes a recipient of universal credit so much more likely to get into work than someone on jobseeker’s allowance?”
“What guarantees might General Motors USA be required to make to General Motors GB with respect to the pension deficit before any disposal can take place?”
“It is one thing to demand, quite properly, face-to-face negotiations, but pursuing a policy in respect of illegal settlements makes those negotiations much more difficult, particularly when that policy is driven by an increasingly strident ideology.”
“Our Department for International Development employees in Jerusalem, who travel into the city daily on a tortuous commute from the areas around Bethlehem, are young people in their mid-20s to mid-30s. The only interaction that they ever have with an Israeli subject is when, during that journey, they are challenged to show their papers under the operation of what I would call the pass laws that exist to ensure that people’s ability to live, stay and work in their own city is restricted. I entirely understand how we got to that dreadful situation: because of the obscenity of suicide bombing. Israel—no Government—could not possibly tolerate the wholesale slaughter of its innocent citizens. The key question for us is, having got to this dreadful situation, how we get back from it.”
“Given the investment that we have made in a two-state solution, my question to the Minister is: aside from standing on the touchlines watching the players on the field and shouting advice, what more can we do while our friend and ally pursues a policy on settlements that is bound, so proceeding, to deliver a situation in which the two-state solution becomes geographically and economically unworkable? Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir Eric Pickles) rightly challenged the Prime Minister about the need for face-to-face negotiations. He is a champion of the case for greater investment in strategies and projects to bring about the integration of Palestinian and Israeli citizens, and he is right about that, too.”
“I beg to move, That this House reaffirms its support for the negotiation of a lasting peace between two sovereign states of Israel and Palestine, both of which must be viable and contiguous within secure and internationally recognised borders; calls on the Government to take an active role in facilitating a resumption of international talks to achieve this; welcomes UN Security Council Resolution 2334 adopted on 23 December 2016; and further calls on the government of Israel immediately to halt the planning and construction of residential settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories which is both contrary to international law and undermines the prospects for the contiguity and viability of the state of Palestine.”
“He said that if the two-state solution were abandoned, Israel could no longer be both a democracy and a Jewish state because, as a consequence of abandoning the policy, it would have to accommodate Palestinian citizens and all their civil and political rights within the state of Israel.”
“The reaction of the security forces to protect their newly resident citizens is to impose an exclusion zone, and to cordon off and sanitise the access and areas around those properties. So proceeding, Palestinians find that they are excluded from the heart of their city and, indeed, from the environs of their own homes. It has all the appearance of what we used to describe as petty apartheid. Secretary Kerry explained at the turn of the year why the United States would no longer pursue its policy of exercising its veto in respect of UN Security Council resolution 2334.”
“On Monday, Mr Speaker put a rather different gloss on Mr Trump’s election but, nevertheless, it is absolutely clear that a significant proportion of the Israeli political establishment is in thrall to an increasingly strident settler movement that regards Palestine as a biblical theme park—Judea and Samaria. The more strident and aggressive outriders of the settler movement are not people we would necessarily welcome as our neighbours. I particularly refer to what is now happening in Hebron. Setting aside some of the ruses that are used to acquire property, when the settlers move in, it is actually their Palestinian neighbours who have to erect grilles and meshes over their windows, and fences around their yards, to exclude projectiles and refuse.”
“I will give way when I have developed my argument. On Monday night, when a Bill was passed in the Knesset retrospectively legalising 4,000 homes in illegal settlements, the Israeli Minister of Culture welcomed the result, saying that it was “the first step towards complete…Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.” The words “Judea and Samaria” were chosen carefully. When President Trump was elected, the Israeli Interior Minister, no less, welcomed it by saying that we are witnessing “the birth pangs of the Messiah when everything has been flipped to the good of the Jewish people”.”
“I certainly was not sneering. I entirely accept that that was what John Kerry said—I do not dispute it for one moment. Frankly, the motion could not be more anodyne.”
“Very well. I shall return to my point about John Kerry. The key question is the one I put to the Minister at the start of my speech: what can we do? I was delighted by the activism of the United Kingdom Government on UN Security Council resolution 2334.”
“Not yet. I was, of course, dismayed by the subsequent inactivity of Her Majesty’s Government in respect of the Paris conference. That comes back to the question of what we do every time there is some outrageous announcement on settlements.”
“I am absolutely convinced that his representations will be much more robust than mine but, so long as they remain representations, the Government of Israel will continue to act with absolute impunity. The question to the Minister is: what do we do beyond representations? What else exists in his armoury to escalate the situation? I accept that that is an extraordinarily difficult question because Israel is our friend and ally. It is a democracy, and a nation in which we have huge commercial interests and with which we share vital intelligence agendas.”
“I will not give way. What we do—I have heard the Minister say this from the Dispatch Box—is we make representations at the highest level. I have also said that at the Dispatch Box, and of course we do make those representations. I am certain that the Prime Minister will have made representations to the Prime Minister of Israel on Monday. I last made representations to an Israeli politician at a meeting in the Knesset with the chief negotiator with the Palestinians and Deputy Prime Minister. Halfway through that meeting, he stormed out announcing that I had launched a brutal assault—moi! As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am a pussy in comparison with the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), who is a terrier.”
“I am afraid that my hon. Friend has missed his opportunity. As I conclude, may I make one gentle suggestion to my hon. Friend the Minister? He might consider giving effect to this House’s instruction that we should recognise the Palestinian state. I have heard him say that we can do that only once, and that therefore we need to choose the moment at which that will have the maximum impact. I agree with him, but he needs to consider this: it would be truly absurd if we were to delay that recognition till after the point at which the reality of any such Palestinian state could actually be delivered.”
“Resolved, That this House reaffirms its support for the negotiation of a lasting peace between two sovereign states of Israel and Palestine, both of which must be viable and contiguous within secure and internationally recognised borders; calls on the Government to take an active role in facilitating a resumption of international talks to achieve this; welcomes UN Security Council Resolution 2334 adopted on 23 December 2016; and further calls on the government of Israel immediately to halt the planning and construction of residential settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories which is both contrary to international law and undermines the prospects for the contiguity and viability of the state of Palestine.”
“My fear is that a sufficient number of Israeli politicians have drawn precisely the opposite conclusion to John Kerry and believe that they can indeed build towards the exclusion of a Palestinian state and yet withhold civil rights within Israel on the grounds that the Palestinians must seek those civil rights in Jordan or in sub-state Bantustans. This is the 50th year of the occupation, so I am grateful to the bishops, fresh from their visit to the region, who, in their communiqué, quote Leviticus, chapter 25, verse 10: “You will declare this fiftieth year to be sacred and you will proclaim the liberation of all the country’s inhabitants.” Question put and agreed to.”
“If it is not in the interests of builders to sufficiently reduce price by increasing supply to the necessary extent, is not the answer to afford greater empowerment to the public sector?”
“I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend, but these new clauses come before any such rational intervention by reasonable business people across Europe. They are based on the fact that Opposition Members genuinely believe in their doomsday forecast, and they are just waiting for it to play out. That is the whole point of delaying the process—it is in the hope that when the sky falls in, the British people will change their minds.”
“Unsought though it is, I am delighted to have the opportunity to ask: has there been any discussion hitherto about the assets of the European Union to which we might have some claim after 40 years of being a major contributor?”
“How about 83A? I whipped Bills through Committee perfectly effectively before we introduced the dismal practice of routine guillotining, but perhaps we were all better behaved and more reasonable then.”
“When European subjects have come to my surgery to talk about their rights, they have left in agreement that those rights must go hand in hand with the rights of UK subjects living in their own country. I hope the Secretary of State has got the message.”
“Given the reservations that my right hon. Friend has expressed and the mitigation that he has secured, what further opportunities will there be to maximise our influence? May I suggest that a return visit by the President is a rather obvious one?”
“If my hon. Friend has not seen Professor Patrick Minford’s analysis of the liberating effect of escaping from the common external tariffs, I, as a former economics beak, am happy to give him 45 minutes on the subject.”
“Does the existence of the rebel Iranian-backed regime pose an existential threat to the stability of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the entire region?”
“If the deliberations used by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, particularly for metastatic breast cancer, take insufficient account of the needs of young families to spend more time with their mothers, is the remedy something that NICE itself can provide by altering the way it goes about those deliberations, or is it something that we in this House and the Government need to do?”
“This is essentially the same question I asked earlier. I think that we all accept that a mistake has been made and that the decision was wrong. The key question is this: what is the remedy? Does the remedy lie within NICE’s remit, and therefore it could change its procedures and considerations, or does it lie within the statutory framework that Parliament and Government have set for it to work within? We have to come to an answer on that.”
“There is an all-party group for almost every disease known to man, with the possible exception of rigor mortis. If patients and campaigners are to have confidence in clinical decision makers, there will have to be profound changes. At the moment, people lobby their MPs, who are uniquely unqualified to make these decisions. May I suggest to my hon. Friend that one of the changes might need to involve a thorough review of the framework and guidance under which the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence operates?”
“Any obligation placed on the Government’s negotiating position during the passage of the Bill may subsequently be subject to judicial review, with consequent delay. I hope that my right hon. Friend will judge the intentions that have been announced to amend the Bill in that light.”