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.”
The complete record
Every one of 1,773 lines we hold for Sir Desmond Swayne, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 32 of 36.
“What will the Minister do to encourage aerodromes to use the powers granted under section 4 of the Act and to implement the technology that will enable them to track aeroplanes that depart from minimum noise routings and to have a robust regime to fine those that do so?”
“3. What progress he has made in recovering boats and equipment seized by Iran from United Kingdom armed forces in (a) June 2004 and (b) March 2007.”
“Can the Secretary of State tell us—apart from the iPod—what radio and cipher cards were seized, the standing operational procedures for which are destruction prior to capture?”
“The Secretary of State said in her statement that she would be reporting this situation to the chairmen of Channel 4 and ITN. Can she possibly imagine that they are unaware of it?”
“Given that the Government’s own commissioner, Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green, has said that children who go into adult wards for treatment come out in a worse state than when they went in, will she guarantee that the current provisions in the Mental Health Bill that require age-appropriate treatment settings will remain unamended?”
“The right hon. Lady is setting up a straw man. Absolutely no one here is trying to suggest that we should have stuck with the original system. Her job here today should be to explain the shambles that we are now in and how we are going to get out of it, rather than to review what might have been the case in the past.”
“I was visited recently by a constituent who has lost not one, but two, pensions, and who falls outside the FAS. He complained to me that when he chided his daughters for not contributing to a pension scheme, they replied that he was a mug for having done so. Until Ministers are prepared to grasp the nettle, which our amendments last week offered them the opportunity to do, there is every likelihood that people who save for a pension will simply be told that it is a mug’s game.”
“The Secretary of State has said that he is awaiting a signal from PJHQ in respect of the recommencement of boarding operations. Is that something for him to note, or to decide?”
“The amount of money spent by my political party on the last two general elections should serve as a powerful corrective to any notion that it is of any value whatsoever. If there are to be local limits, does the Leader of the House agree that there should also be rather more rigorous scrutiny of the existing rules about how allowances are spent locally?”
“When we are considering that £200 million-odd, we must also bear it in mind that these are among the least favoured and poorest families. Although I represent a very affluent part of the country, what is obvious to me when those parents come to my surgeries is that they have not a bean left, because they have had to extend their mortgages to adapt the house. Given the conditions of having to provide 24-hour care, their incomes are very limited. However articulate and well educated they are, they are living on very limited incomes.”
“Has my hon. Friend shared my experience of surgeries and been faced with a family who are at breaking point—at the end of their tether—because of the hoops that they have been made to jump through simply to obtain a statement of special educational need? I have had that experience with well-educated families who have been in tears at my surgery because of such a situation. I just wonder how on earth those who are less articulate and less well educated manage to cope.”
“The Secretary of State has rejected criticism of the FAS on the basis that a mere 900 payments have been made so far, saying that such criticism rests on unwarranted assumptions. Can he therefore put in the public domain the figures telling us exactly how many of the sample who are eligible for assistance from the FAS have reached retirement age and secured payments?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is there nothing that can be done about lawyers who are somewhat used to being paid by the hour and, as a consequence, take an inordinate amount of time to ask a question and even longer to answer one?”
“If the official side wants to move away from the Edmund-Davies formula, why did it not announce that in September last year and seek to renegotiate a new formula? How was it that its members were unable to articulate their position at the meeting in July of the police negotiating board? They had a year’s notice of that meeting.”
“Will the Leader of the House place on the Order Paper next week the necessary motions to put an end to the scandal in a free Parliament of the European Scrutiny Committee meeting in secret? That is for the fourth time of asking.”
“Over the best part of the past half century, the Mays and the Landers and their wildfowl have become part of that cultural and natural heritage. The millionaires or footballers’ wives to whom these properties will be sold are unlikely to do so.”
“Last year, we saw the proposals for the sale of Swan Green, and this year we have Shrike cottage and Holmsley lodge. I urge the Minister to come and see this outstanding site and to consider that once he sells this gem in the heart of the New Forest—he will sell it, because he will sign the order for the disposal of the properties—he will lose control for ever over what happens there. Before he signs—before he closes an ecologically important business and renders three elderly people homeless because, after 40 years as tenants, they have nowhere else to go—I ask him to consider his mandate and the fundamental principle, which is the conservation of the natural and cultural heritage of the New Forest.”
“I have a letter from Burley parish council, which I shall furnish to the Minister by tomorrow’s mail, that states the importance of the enterprise and of those tenants to the community. I have a petition containing the signatures of 110 local residents, which, given the sparsity of residents in that part of the forest, is something of an achievement. At the beginning of the 20th century, the New Forest was much more than the heathland and woodland that it now comprises. It was a great national estate, which included farms, mansions, shops and businesses all under the Crown estate. The Forestry Commission sold off many of those assets, until it was checked, partly by the Illingworth report in the mid-1980s. The question is whether that process has started again.”
“The irony is that those properties were probably not practical family homes. Shrike cottage had no kitchen, a leaking roof, rotten window frames and one open fireplace to heat the entire cottage, but that property has been transformed, as has Holmsley lodge, by the existing tenants. Perhaps that has contributed to such a gem being disposed of on the open market, rather than its being secured for the long-term interests of the New Forest. The Landers and the Mays have installed a vermin-proof fence around all 13 acres of magnificent landscape. They have built up a wild fowl business of national and international renown. It currently contains some 1,000 birds, many of which are endangered species, and the families are now part of the forest community.”
“In its letter to me of 15 May, the Forestry Commission stated that the properties concerned do not meet the criteria set out in the Illingworth report. On Holmsley lodge, it stated: “the house does not make a practical family home.” And on Shrike cottage, it stated: “The cottage does not make a practical family home.” I accept that the current tenants of Shrike cottage and Holmsley lodge are not practising commoners, but if we do not sell the family silver, those properties will be available to commoners in the future. Making properties available for commoning at affordable rents is a vital part of the Forestry Commission’s role. As to the practicality of those properties as family homes, tell that to the Landers, who have raised a family of five in Holmsley lodge, and to the Mays, who have raised a family of four in Shrike cottage.”
“I would not say for one moment that the verderers were bribed in the decision that they came to, but as the Under-Secretary put it to me, rather delicately, in his letter of 4 July: “Therefore if the sale is approved a proportion of the funds raised would be reinvested in affordable housing for commoners.” It is, of course, right and proper that the verderers should take that into account. I understand that the offer of one property was increased to two, and the verderers reached their decision accordingly. What the Under-Secretary did not say in that letter—perhaps the Minister will throw some light on this matter, if not tonight, then in correspondence—is the proportion of the funds generated by that sale that will be reinvested in housing for commoners.”
“Given the business that they have and the fact that they have nowhere to go and that they have been in those properties for 40 years, I suggest that a much longer time scale would be necessary. I find, surprisingly, that I am at odds with the verderers on this particular question. Because the verderers have backed the Forestry Commission’s proposal. I honestly believe that in this respect they have made the wrong call. It was a narrow decision made on the casting vote of the official verderer. Perhaps the verderers were influenced in that decision by the campsite issue, and not wanting to open up the possibility of war on two fronts with the Forestry Commision at any one time. I also understand the verderers’ concern that properties be made available for commoning.”
“I now come to a more pressing and imminent concern, and that is the disposal by the Forestry Commission of Holmsley lodge and Shrike cottage, together with 13 magnificent acres at the heart of the New Forest. I am reassured by a letter from the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Brent, North (Barry Gardiner), of 4 July when he assured me that no final decision has been taken on this matter. I hope to persuade the Minister to abandon this proposal entirely, but if I fail to do that, at least to reconsider the time scale in which this is to take place. The current tenants have been told that they need to leave by January 2007.”
“All that stands between these potential developments being realised are the verderers of the New Forest, armed, of course, with the Minister’s mandate. Will they be supported by the Minister and his mandate, or will they be bullied into submission or even circumvented by a new national park authority, which as a local authority is armed with compulsory purchase powers? Of course, I have deliberately exaggerated in order to point to the potential danger that exists for the future. I do that in order that we recognise that danger now so that we can guard against it. The Minister’s reaffirmation of the core principle of his mandate tonight will be a powerful guard against that potential future that I have just described.”
“It then goes on to say that the objective of the new venture “will be to modernise the facilities across the network of Forest Holiday sites.” What does that all mean? It certainly means more pitches, with electric hook-ups. Does it mean more roads and paths? Does it mean, for example, security lighting, entertainment opportunities, shops, playgrounds, perhaps a swimming pool, perhaps even a swimmers’ sub-tropical paradise, as exists at Centre Parcs, or even a “stately pleasure-dome”, such as Kubla Khan decreed, in “caverns measureless to man”? Remember that we speak of the New Forest, a world heritage site, our smallest national park, where the camp sites are never far from the most sensitive parts of the forest core.”
“This has been a long-running sore—a battle between the Forestry Commission, which obviously wants to increase the services and the pitches available in those campsites in order to generate more revenue, and the verderers of the New Forest who represent the commoners and the rights of grazing. Currently, that battle is joined over the Roundhill and Hollands Wood campsites. But now something of a quite different order has arisen. In May this year the Forestry Commission and the Camping and Caravanning Club announced a new joint venture partnership, Forest Holidays. Forest Holidays will lease the campsites of the New Forest, all 357 acres, and the press statement announcing this new venture stated that it “opens the door to Forest Holidays developing even more camping and cabin sites on Forestry Commission land”.”
“It might raise revenue through commercial forestry or through commercially exploiting the leisure opportunities afforded by the New Forest. Arguably, the latter has become a more favourable target in the existing climate. I should like the Minister to deny categorically the rumours that are circulating that the Minister’s mandate will become a dead letter, and that the primacy of conservation will be superseded by the need to provide recreation opportunities. I have two specific concerns, with which I shall illustrate the problem. The first is to do with the campsites in the New Forest. They fill some 357 acres of the forest, not including the areas around the campsites that are inevitably affected and disrupted by their existence.”
“I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for this opportunity to hold an Adjournment debate on an issue of vital importance in the New Forest. I am indebted to Anthony Pasmore, one of the verderers of the New Forest and a monthly correspondent in the New Forest newspaper of record, the New Milton Advertiser and Lymington Times . The Minister’s mandate sets out the rules by which the Forestry Commission must administer the New Forest. It establishes “conservation of the natural and cultural heritage as the principal objective of management”. My purpose in asking the Minister to respond to the debate is to give him the opportunity to reaffirm that principle against the fears that it may be superseded. The Forestry Commission raises revenue. That is why it calls itself Forest Enterprise.”
“Of course, the tenants were expecting to pay more rent but there was no suggestion that the lease would end. That is always a possibility for any tenant, but I ask the Under-Secretary who makes the decision to consider those tenants’ specific circumstances, their input and the difference that they have made to that part of the forest.”
“I hope that, if the Under-Secretary responsible for the matter is not persuaded to abandon the proposal, he will consider the possibility of at least a period that is long enough for the tenants to wind up humanely a business that involves 1,000 wildfowl. From now until January next year is a short time.”
“This happens all the time. One tables a perfectly straightforward question, and the Minister answers another. Is not the answer to my question, as it appears on the Order Paper, “None”?”
“How will the Minister respond to an amendment to include on the face of the Bill the provisions that the Prime Minister e-mailed to the former Secretary of State last summer, calling for time-limiting and means-testing incapacity benefit and naming and shaming doctors who, in the Department’s view, have been a soft touch?”
“The Minister will understand the paradox that we starve the poor by refusing to buy their food from them. Agricultural goods would not have been brought into the World Trade Organisation, however, had it not been for the success of Leon Brittan in outmanoeuvring the French during the Uruguay round. Unfortunately, Commissioner Mandelson has not been as successful. If the talks collapse, what is the Minister’s plan B in relation to the agenda of making poverty history? Did he see the remarks by—”
“I ask the Leader of the House, for the third time in six weeks, when he will put on the Order Paper a motion to allow the European Scrutiny Committee to meet in public. Last time he said: “we must not embarrass ourselves by setting up systems that subsequently fall into disrepute”. —[ Official Report , 8 June 2006; Vol. 447, c. 414.] There is nothing more embarrassing than the idea of that critically important Committee meeting in secret. Nothing would do it more good than the fresh air of public scrutiny.”
“A fortnight ago I asked the Leader of the House to place on the Order Paper a motion to enable the European Scrutiny Committee to sit in public. He said that he would think about it, so I would be interested to hear the product of his thoughts.”
“I remember Jim Callaghan saying that the Labour party owed more to Methodism than to Marxism. Should not reducing the level of gambling be a perfectly proper objective of Government policy?”
“How does the Secretary of State square his answer to the substantive question with the enthusiasm of the Prime Minister's foreword to the White Paper? It was clear that he envisaged that every school, both primary and secondary, would become a trust school.”
“The Leader of the House will know that the best way to improve scrutiny is through transparency. May I therefore urge him to place on the Order Paper a motion that would enable us to end the scandal of the European Scrutiny Committee sitting in private? That arrangement excludes Members of the House, members of the public and journalists, and it is a scandal for a free Parliament and a free people.”
“What comfort can APW workers take from this statement, who were excluded from the terms of the financial assistance scheme because of the responsible decisions that properly had to be taken by their trustees?”
“It does not yet know what services will be provided at Lymington, and will not therefore make any commitment about the services that need to be provided in any of the community hospitals. The new hospital in Lymington is due to open in January next year. Is that the way to run a national health service? We are only a few months away from the opening of the new hospital, yet we are told that decisions cannot be made about existing community hospitals because the PCT does not know about the services that it is commissioning at the new one. I understand my constituents' frustration and anger. They say, "Yes, expenditure on the NHS has increased enormously, as have our taxes—but have we had value for money?"”
“It backed off and said that it no longer planned to close them, but that it would have to work with the community to find a role for them—exactly the model that the White Paper, which the Secretary of State launched, set out. There was, therefore, progress. However, community hospital supporters now experience huge frustration and staff morale is low because nothing has emerged from the process. Whatever is suggested about the role of a specific hospital—whether in Fordingbridge, which could be a centre for best practice or nursing excellence, or the hospital in Milford on Sea—the PCT response is that there is a difficulty because it is building a new hospital in Lymington. That is one of the first new hospitals in which the PCT will employ a private supplier to provide the health care.”
“His appointment was on 6 February and the consultant told him that it would take three months for the hearing aids to be made up. My constituent wrote: "A reliable person tells me it ought to take... say, a fortnight." He waited and waited. After a further three months, he rang the hospital to find out what had happened to his hearing aids, only to be told that it would take another six months before they were delivered. That is a measure of ordinary people's experience of the health service. Can we blame them if they believe that it is getting worse? We have five community hospitals in New Forest. We launched a massive campaign in the past year to save them because the primary care trust intended to close them.”
“We have been told that the position on waiting times has changed; the claim was repeated today. We are told that a magnificent improvement has occurred, but that is not the experience of many of my constituents. At previous Health questions, I asked about audiological waits in my constituency. It has a disproportionate number of elderly people, and thus a disproportionate number suffering from poor hearing, which is one of the most socially isolating experiences. As I said in Health questions, there is a significant danger that many patients will die before they secure the hearing aids that they require. Strangely, I received a letter about the problem today—although it is not an amazing coincidence, because I am afraid that I receive such letters almost every day. My constituent's 17-month wait for a hearing test was over in February.”
“The letter states: "Since then I and friends have telephoned this number many times only to hear an automated voice saying 'The number you called is busy. To ring back please press five'. Furthermore, if you press five a similar voice tells you 'Sorry, there is a fault please try again'." He writes that he tried the number on 3 April from 1.55 pm to 2.25 pm, from 3.30 pm to 3.50 pm and from 4.43 pm to 4.52 pm. He tried again on 4 April between 1.45 pm and 2.10 pm, and 4.10 pm and 4.35 pm. Each occasion met with the same result. Let that be a measure of the frustration of ordinary constituents in trying to secure the NHS treatment to which they rightly believe that they are entitled. Those perceptions mean that there is an understandable belief that things have got worse.”
“As a consequence of the Government's policy, it is much more difficult to secure NHS dental treatment. However, my constituents have been told that the seventh cavalry is on the way, and that some 12,500 new dental registrations will be available to the good people of New Milton. To take advantage of those as yet virtual dental registrations, a new model is to be used to avoid the inconvenience—and, of course, the attendant unpleasant publicity—of long queues forming and being photographed. The people of New Milton have been invited to telephone a number to secure their dental registration. I have a letter from a constituent who tried that. The announcement was made in February and he began to make telephone calls.”
“The Secretary of State acted to right that perceived wrong. Instructions were issued to primary care trusts whereby they were empowered to prevent dentists from maintaining children-only NHS lists. So in the past few months, parents in my constituency, particularly vulnerable families, have been receiving letters from those self-same dentists saying, in effect, "You will recall my letter of such and such when I undertook to keep your children on as long as you remained as a registered private patient at the practice—well, sorry, that deal is off and your children will either have to find another dentist or stay with me and pay." That is a very worrying letter for the many families with children who have orthodontic requirements and all sorts of work to be done.”
“He went on to tell me that it was all the Tories' fault for having closed down the dental schools. A decision by the university grants funding body more than 10 years ago is not germane to our problem now. The problem is that NHS dentists are leaving the NHS. It is not a question of a shortage of dentists but of how they are employed. The problem got worse. Several constituents wrote to me complaining that they had received a letter from their dentist saying that he was no longer going to be an NHS dentist but would nevertheless continue to treat their children under the NHS as long as they, the parents, remained as private patients with the practice. They did not like being held hostage in that way, but felt fortunate at least to have their children still being treated as NHS patients.”
“It got so bad that constituents of mine who were lucky enough to have an NHS dentist were receiving letters telling them that there were not going to be any more NHS dentists, but they were welcome to stay on as private patients if they wished. When I raised that at Prime Minister's Question Time, the Deputy Prime Minister, who was answering on that occasion, said : "I am well aware of the problem that the hon. Gentleman mentions because I have experienced it. My dentist declared that he was going private and I declared that I could not stay with him. Many of our constituents have faced this problem. As the hon. Gentleman said, each one of us has been confronted with it." —[ Official Report , 9 June 2004; Vol. 422, c. 270.] That does not actually address the problem.”
“I have written to the Secretary of State saying, "Please find enclosed a copy of a letter from my constituent complaining about X, Y or Z. I remember the Prime Minister saying he was going to do something about it—what has happened?" The answer is, "You can rest assured that patient satisfaction will be one of the measures on which general practitioners will be remunerated in future." That does not deal with the perceived deterioration that my constituents experience in booking an appointment. Let us examine the possibility of booking an appointment with one's dentist. A couple of years ago the situation deteriorated.”
“My constituents write to me in droves complaining that they can make an appointment with their GP only on the same day. It does not suit most people to have to spend hours ringing the surgery in the morning, only to find it engaged, when they would like to organise their lives so as to see the doctor at a time convenient to them, as they used to in the past. They feel that the situation is not as good as it was before. That is entirely a consequence of the targets to which general practitioners have been subjected. During the election campaign, on the "Question Time" interview, the Prime Minister was confronted with that problem, appeared greatly surprised, and said that he was going to do something about it. I have not noticed any result.”