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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“The issuing of an ID card is a fat lot of use if there is to be no enforcement of the rules. The problem is not selective quotation, but selective enforcement of the policies. When will the Minister get a grip and start getting rid of people who overstay their visas?”
“T5. May I take the Secretary of State back to the first answer that he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley)? It is undoubtedly the case that there are very large numbers of EU migrants in this country making significant use of the NHS, particularly maternity services. Is the Secretary of State sure that we are being as rigorous as we ought in seeking payments from those foreign Governments?”
“I am deeply troubled by what the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) said, as I had not spotted that change coming. However, the Serjeant at Arms was most helpful to me on one occasion when I had acquired a formidably large chain for my bicycle. I managed to lose the key, and had to look for help from him very late one night. He immediately despatched an officer with an equally formidable device that enabled him to snap the chain there and then. I am deeply concerned that a future Serjeant at Arms would not be able to render similar help. I am hugely grateful to the Serjeant at Arms for all that he has done, both for me personally and for all hon. Members. Question put and agreed to.”
“I do not underestimate the size of the problem, which we all see in our constituency surgeries, but I am not persuaded of the extent to which price is a factor. I stay out of supermarkets, but the place where I, and most of my constituents, buy alcohol is the public house, and we find it expensive enough. Will the Minister reassure us that we are not being softened up for a great hike in taxes?”
“On bluetongue, has the Secretary of State given consideration to the French method of using pre-movement testing as a means of controlling the disease, because drawing a line on the map has an unfair—a differential—effect on those inside the zone, and midges will not take a great deal of cognisance of a line on the map?”
“My interest is in the register. The Minister says that there are no systemic problems, but let me tell him of one. The system is not paying Army cadet force personnel or Territorial Army officers on the unposted list. I spoke to an officer a weekend ago who told me that he had arrears of £5,000. He was articulate and was able to persuade someone to pay him out of an imprest account, but there are hundreds of much less articulate personnel out there who are not being paid. Will the Minister do something about that?”
“T3. On 19 November, the Secretary of State skilfully avoided the question of whether Lord Drayson “approved in advance” the closure of the Defence Export Services Organisation. The reply given was: “The decision…was taken by the Prime Minister. The Defence Secretary was consulted.” —[ Official Report , 19 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 475W.] Will the Secretary of State give a one-word answer to the question whether Lord Drayson knew?”
“The Minister will know that I have apologised to the Chancellor for yesterday. I do not hold Ministers accountable for the random actions of individuals, but Ministers do have to answer for the fact that individuals can access data, even after so many security reviews, without a relatively simple management system overlay to provide an audit trail and to ring alarm bells.”
“I accept the popularity of apprenticeships among employers. Does the Minister accept, however, that they are not popular enough among employees, given that only about 40 per cent. of people complete their apprenticeship? If we could be much more rigorous in defining what constitutes an apprenticeship, they would become more popular, by which I mean that more than 50 per cent. of people would complete them.”
“That is very kind. I think I am right in saying that there are sectors and age ranges where the drop-out rate is as high as 60 per cent. Does my hon. Friend believe that we could deal with it if we were much more rigorous about what constituted an apprenticeship and what accreditation was provided or might not that start to constrain some of the available opportunities?”
“Twenty-five million records of children’s names and addresses have disappeared. Given the amount of data that the Government are collecting, no doubt including whether the children have been bad or good, and that it is six weeks before Christmas, it is blindingly obvious who has taken them.”
“I am pleased to have this opportunity to raise the very important matter of the future of Lymington harbour. I share the Lymington river with my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis)— [ Interruption. ]”
“Equally, it might all end up being settled by a judge in court, at great expense to everyone. I want to know from the Minister whether there is any other statutory body that is in a position to demand an appropriate assessment before the matter is determined and the shore works take place. I accept that this process of dealing with the issue is better than none, but it falls far short of a proper planning inquiry, because the appropriate assessment will take into account only the environmental interests. It will take no account of the commercial interests, or, most important, the leisure craft interests. The sailors of Lymington have the most to lose, but their voice is not going to be heard—and it ought to be.”
“According to the Minister for the South East, in response to a written question of mine of 14 November—column 243—this planning application will be determined by the Marine and Fisheries Agency, and it will consider the opinion of Natural England that Wightlink’s proposals constitute a plan or project for the purposes of the Conservation (Natural Habitats, &c) Regulations 1994, and therefore an appropriate assessment will be required. Wightlink will argue that the proposals do not constitute a plan or a project. So the conservationists and the yachtsmen of Lymington are, in effect, looking for the Marine and Fisheries Agency to act as the seventh cavalry and come down on the side of Natural England and its assessment of what is a plan or a project.”
“A Planning Bill has been published today, and an appropriate amendment to it might prevent these situations from arising in future—but that would not, of course, be retrospective. There will, however, be a planning application. Indeed, there is one because of the effects on land. In order to accommodate the new ferries, there has to be some shore works at Lymington, and a planning application has been put in.”
“Even if such mitigation is imposed directly on Wightlink—in the form of a slower speed limit, for instance—that will affect other river users, because it will mean that ferries will occupy the river channel for longer in any hour, to their disadvantage. The following is the essential point I wish to make to the Minister. If an undertaking of this size and sort had taken place on land there would have been a planning application and all the objections and interests would have properly been taken into account in the determination of it, but because this is happening at sea apparently no one needs any permission to apply for anything, notwithstanding all the designations—I have spoken of Natura 2000. I believe this is an enormous omission in our planning system, on which Ministers should reflect and act.”
“I have no doubt that assessments, modelling and sea trials might provide some of the answers to the disputed questions, but I do not believe that that will solve the dispute itself, because the reality is that these ferries are already half-built and many people in Lymington feel that, whatever the outcome, they are being presented with a fait accompli. Into this mêlée steps the Lymington harbour commission, of which I have spoken. It insists that because Lymington is designated as an open port it has no ability to deny the ferries access. Indeed, it cannot deny anyone access; I am told that even a supertanker can have access to the Lymington river and all the Lymington harbour commissioners can do is impose measures to mitigate the impact. Measures to mitigate the impact might well affect other river users as well.”
“There is an argument that the new greatly increased size of the ferry will inconvenience them or put them in significant danger. When I refer to the size of the new ferries, I do not just mean the relatively modest increase in capacity; I am also referring to the greatly increased displacement of water, the increased deadweight and the increased thrust. The argument is that all sorts of activities that now take place in the Lymington river will not be able to continue, particularly the free sailing training that is afforded by the sailing clubs to youngsters, many of whom are from less advantaged backgrounds. All of this has resulted in an enormous row.”
“What is more, when countering a side wind, the directional thrust of the engine type that is unique to Wightlink’s operations will have a deleterious effect on the sides of the channel. The second interest is the commercial one: the need of enterprise and jobs in Lymington for an efficient ferry service to the Isle of Wight. That has to be set against the commercial interests of the trade generated by the huge number of leisure craft that operate from the port of Lymington. It is the case, however, that the current ferry service is uneconomic; it will lose money unless investment is put into new ferries that are cost-effective, modern and meet contemporary regulations and standards. The third interest is the interest of the other river users, principally the yachtsmen, the sailing clubs and the marinas.”
“Had I been granted a whole parliamentary day to examine the issue, we should still not have covered it all, as I discovered at the meeting. If the Minister will forgive me, I shall briefly summarise the issues as I see them. There are three competing interests. The first is the environmental interest. There are those who insist that the significantly increased ferry size will generate a bow wave—a wash—such that it will accelerate the erosion of the salt marshes. Equally, there are those who argue, on the basis of tests carried out in tanks in Zurich, that new modern ferries will generate a reduced wash, although the counter-argument is that those tests were carried out in relatively deep water and the port of Lymington is relatively shallow.”
“The second issue I ask the Minister to deal with is the plan by Wightlink significantly to increase the size of the ferries that operate between Lymington and Yarmouth, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner)—I am glad that he is in the Chamber tonight. A few weeks ago, I attended a public meeting about the plans in Lymington. The meeting was highly charged; it was packed—more than 300 people attended—and a number of questions were asked, which might have been answered by Natural England had it taken the trouble to send someone to the meeting. On 2 November, I wrote to Natural England asking why it had not taken that opportunity but I have not yet had a reply.”
“It is absurd to ask the Lymington harbour commissioners to pay for the creation of 5 acres of salt marsh elsewhere because they are taking action to save 12 acres of salt marsh in Lymington. I accept that 5 acres occupied by the breakwaters will be given up, but that land would be lost anyway. If we do nothing we shall lose all the salt marsh and the harbour, too. I hope that the Minister will be able to provide some reassurance to the large number of organisations and people in Lymington who are rightly concerned about these developments. Those supporting the Lymington harbour commission include the harbour advisory group, the sailing clubs, the marinas, the chamber of commerce, New Forest district council, Wightlink and the hundreds of constituents who have written to my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East.”
“If the Lymington harbour commissioners cannot get Natural England to acquiesce to their proposition, and if Natural England persists in saying it will be an adverse development for the salt marsh, the commissioners’ only recourse will be to make a case to the Secretary of State on the basis of overwhelming public interest. If the Secretary of State accepts the case, the commissioners will have to enter into an arrangement with Natural England to compensate the organisation for loss of the salt marsh by paying for the creation and stewardship of an equal amount of salt marsh elsewhere in the kingdom. It is into that Alice in Wonderland world that I want the Minister to intrude.”
“However, I think I am correct in saying that, whoever the statutory consultees are, they will be led by Natural England, which has a national policy of not interfering to secure coastal protection where deterioration is the result of a natural process. The breakwater’s footprints will be on the existing salt marsh, and I understand it is likely that Natural England will judge that an adverse effect. It will not take into account the fact that, although the salt marsh footprint will be given up to the breakwater, a larger amount of the salt marsh that will otherwise disappear will be saved by the breakwaters. The salt marsh land occupied by the breakwaters will cease to exist anyway as a consequence of the continuing erosion.”
“The salt marshes fall within the Southampton Water special protection area and are a very important wildlife site, especially for overwintering and breeding birds. The area also falls within the Solent special area of conservation, which is protected by the habitats directive, and it is, indeed, a European Natura 2000 site. Notwithstanding the permitted development rights of the Lymington harbour commissioners under the Pier and Harbour Order (Lymington) Confirmation Act 1951, the proposed breakwaters will require planning permission from the New Forest national park authority. To that end, an environmental assessment has been made and I understand that the statutory consultees will scrutinise the draft assessment on 5 December.”
“Over the past two and a half years, in association with the consultants Black & Veatch, it has come up with a scheme that is both viable and affordable. I stress the word “affordable”, as we are not asking for Government money—indeed, to do so in an Adjournment debate would be out of order. The plan is to build a series of overlapping breakwaters over the next 25 years, with work starting next year, if permission is obtained. The breakwaters will do exactly what the salt marshes do now. They will protect the harbour from the waves of the western Solent but, crucially, they will also protect the surviving salt marsh that they enclose. Let us be clear: if we do nothing, we will lose not only the harbour but the salt marsh.”
“The harbour exists only because it is protected from the waves of the western Solent by Lymington’s salt marsh and mud flats, but the problem is that they have been eroding since 1920. I understand that New Forest district council’s coastal protection team estimates that the current rate of erosion is between 2 yd and 6 yd a year at the periphery, and 1 yd a year on average in the harbour itself. At that rate, the salt marshes will cease to exist by some date between 2030 and 2040. That will mean that the vast majority of existing moorings in the harbour will become unviable, which will be an economic disaster for Lymington. The Lymington harbour commission has been working on the problem since the early 1990s.”
“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I was saying, I share the Lymington river with my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East. It forms the dividing line between our two parliamentary divisions, and we have both received an enormous amount of correspondence—and of lobbying—about the issues that I wish to raise this evening. My hon. Friend has apologised to me for not being able to be in his place this evening, but he had already entered into a commitment when I learned, at 12.30 pm on Thursday, that I had secured this debate. I believe that, even as we speak, he is at sea with the Royal Navy. The port of Lymington makes a contribution to my local economy that is not far short of £100 million a year.”
“T8. Is the Minister aware of the extraordinary situation whereby workers who are here perfectly legally are seeking to persuade employers that they are here illegally so that they can compete on what they regard as the relatively advantageous terms of being able to offer their services at less than the minimum wage?”
“The interpretation of new driving licence regulations involving minibuses in a way that was never intended in the legislation may have disastrous consequences for the ability of schools to field teams and provide sports, extra-curricular activities and, indeed, other types of activity. Is there any prospect of a debate on that?”
“Will the Minister review his stated reluctance to enter into any kind of estimate of future numbers? Surely it is the case that if we cannot count them, we certainly will not be able to control them.”
“If I had thought this was modernisation, Mr. Speaker, I would not have asked the question! What the Secretary of State has not just said about the announcement today is that he is cutting the guaranteed minimum funding for schools from 3.7 per cent. to 2.1 per cent. Is that not just another way in which bureaucracy steals money from good schools?”
“Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the problem is not so much adversarial politics as local communities having lost control over the planning system? Does he agree that if local communities could determine the type of housing, where it should be, what products should be used and what is the right mix, resistance would be much less?”
“Then there will be a necessity for two Bills: one to approve the treaty, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, and another to put the consequences into English law.”
“When one contemplates breaking such a principle, it is absolutely necessary to seek the consent of the people in a referendum before doing so.”
“It doesn’t matter who gets in, you break all your promises.” We cannot complain because we know that they are right to some extent. It is their perception that politicians promise all sorts of things that they have no intention of delivering, and that goes to the heart of their loss of faith in politicians. The people were promised a referendum, and now they will not have one. In my view, a sacred principle is at stake. It was best enunciated by a former Member of this House, Tony Benn, who said that we do not dispose of power of our own in this Parliament but are merely stewards of the power of the people, which we should hand back to the people intact at the end of our sojourn. By introducing a treaty that hands over power that we cannot then return to the people of this country after we have disposed of it is to break that principle.”
“The Prime Minister is deeply embarrassed about the fact that he is not going to hold a referendum, although he said that he would and he knows that many people want one. That goes to the heart of our problem as a political caste. I was once a schoolmaster. Boys hung on my every word and gave me respect—their grades at A-level depended on it. I moved on and took up a career in banking. Rather more than is the case these days, people had some respect for bankers and their opinions—after all, their loans might depend on it. Now, as an elected representative and a member of the professional political class, I find that I am held in utter contempt by most people whose doors I happen to darken. They turn round and say, “You’re all the same.”
“Essentially, that was the question he asked, thus drawing attention to the great hole in the Queen’s Speech: the missing referendum Bill that we were promised on the European treaty by every single political party—or the three main political parties—before the last general election. The Prime Minister’s question may have to be answered at some stage. We may have to cross that bridge if we come to it, but our focus must remain on the here and now—on the Queen’s Speech and securing a referendum in this legislative programme—and not on answering a question about what might happen if we fail, thus introducing a note of defeatism and allowing the Prime Minister off the hook by concentrating on something that may never happen.”
“Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sorry for pre-empting you. We saw some extraordinary effrontery from the Prime Minister this afternoon in that great moment of theatre when he leaned across the Dispatch Box and demanded that the Leader of the Opposition intervene and answer his question. I shall paraphrase, because I have not had an opportunity to secure a copy of the report for greater accuracy: if the Leader of the Opposition came to power after the Prime Minister ratified the treaty, would he give the people of this country the referendum that the Prime Minister certainly would not give them before he ratified the treaty?”
“We all know what Giscard d’Estaing and almost every European leader has said about the identity of the two treaties, but the Government argue that we do not need a referendum because the treaty is different for us and we have our red lines. However, the Government had their red lines when they offered us a referendum in the first place—they insisted then that the issues were not of great consequence and that they had guarantees in the form of red lines, but said that we could have a referendum anyway. The arguments do not hold. The people of this country were promised a referendum at the last general election; now that the treaty has been negotiated, there should be a referendum Bill in the Queen’s Speech. That there is not is a gross betrayal of trust.”
“Until mid-2004, the Government insisted that the treaty was of such little consequence—only of administrative concern—that no referendum was required. Notwithstanding that, they had already negotiated the red lines; there is nothing new about the red lines. Abruptly, the Government changed their opinion, and I have no doubt that that was to take account of the likelihood of a general election in 2005 and to deny Opposition parties a campaign on the issue of the referendum. So it was that we were promised a referendum. Of course, given the votes in the Netherlands and France, it became unnecessary because the whole process was, apparently, dead. Of course, it has turned out not to have been as dead as we had expected. Now the referendum pledge has been withdrawn because the new treaty is, apparently, so different from the previous one.”
“We were promised a referendum on this treaty, and a referendum in which people are invited to reaffirm their commitment to the entire European enterprise is a very different thing. That presents a danger, because a vote for the European Union in such a referendum, which is the likely outcome, would be used to railroad all sorts of additional changes to European Union structures in the direction of ever greater union and the ever greater federalism of the European model that has developed in the past 30 years. I suggest that a much healthier check on that process would be to have a referendum on any new treaty and any increment to the arrangements. Let us briefly examine the history of the referendum commitment that we were given.”
“My son is now 18, and it is perfectly possible that he wants to reaffirm those arrangements—we cannot bind generations that follow us—but I have not detected any great enthusiasm on his part or that of his generation to reopen that question. I receive a considerable number of letters demanding that the issue be reopened, but they do not tend to come from my son’s generation—they come from rather older people who claim that they were robbed and that the whole thing has turned out to be something other than what was described. I am in the fortunate position of being able to reply that it has turned out pretty well as we said it would during that campaign. A referendum on the whole European question poses a danger, because it takes the heat off this particular issue.”
“Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) agreed with the Liberal Democrat position and said that the matter should be properly addressed, not by the promised referendum on the treaty but by a referendum to reaffirm our commitment to and membership of the European Union. The argument was put that the decision to join was taken a generation ago and that no one who is currently under 50 had that opportunity. I recall having that opportunity—it was my first electoral experience—and campaigning and voting in the referendum. As it happens, I campaigned and voted to withdraw from what was then the Common Market, but I accepted the decision entirely.”
“You can go,” but the British people might not want to go—they might want the status quo ante, which is an option that should be offered to them and which was pledged to them in a referendum. We had a debate earlier in the evening, when there were rather more of us. As an aside, a number of hon. Members looked across at the expanse of green leather on the Government Benches and said how shocking and awful it was that there was no one there to speak on the Queen’s Speech, but then they went on at such great length that it might explain the expanse of green leather on the Government Benches. Leaving that aside, when we debated the referendum the hon.”
“Indeed, but at what cost? To use a simile, we are in the same position as the leaseholders of a small block of flats who think that they have a share of the freehold as well as being leaseholders but suddenly discover that, by whatever legal device or trickery, they do not have the freehold and the freeholder is about to sell the building. In that case, we might go to all sorts of lengths to announce our determination to buy back the freehold when we have the means, but that would depend on the freehold being for sale, which we cannot guarantee. We cannot guarantee that we can reverse the provisions in the treaty, because it will require the unanimous agreement of the other members of the European Union. It is all very well saying, “There is a nuclear option.”
“My constituent complains to me that when he chides his grown-up children for not making any savings they laugh in his face and call him a mug, because he saved and consequently lost not one but two pensions. He blames the Chancellor. Who does the Minister blame?”
“Given the answer that the Leader of the House gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir John Butterfill), will he acknowledge the growing consensus among colleagues that we made a dreadful mistake when we accepted the Procedure Committee’s daft recommendation to replace the Sessional Orders with a dismal homily from you, Mr. Speaker? It would meet with everyone’s approval if one of next week’s Order Papers contained a motion to reverse that decision.”
“22. What preparations the Church Commissioners have made for the coming into force of the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces with respect to cathedrals.”
“I speak with some feeling, as a man whose wedding photograph is marred by the fact that an exit sign on the ancient church door appears between my wife and myself. Will the hon. Gentleman resist the regulations vigorously? It would be ironic indeed if we were to give way on this matter as, when the members of the council of my parish church applied for permission to put up a plaque containing the 10 commandments, they were told to get lost.”