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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“We made an agreement back in 1970 with the wealthy countries of the world to spend 0.7% of our national income on international development in the economies of those countries from which so many people are now coming and will continue to come as long as the incentive of life being so much better here exists. It took us until the coalition Government in 2011 to actually honour that commitment to spending 0.7% of our national income, and we subsequently abandoned it—or certainly reduced it. If all the nations that had entered that agreement had honoured it and delivered it when they made it, perhaps the flow of population from the developing world would have abated substantially and we would be dealing with a different situation. Ultimately, it is all about jobs.”
“He turned to me and said, “My priority is the young men and women who are taking the battle to the Taliban, and you want me to give time and resource to those people who’ve chosen to run away?” Well, it was a fair point—of course, ultimately he ran away himself. But I had little more success in negotiations on returns agreements with other Commonwealth members. These agreements are extraordinarily hard to achieve. I think that we would have wanted a third country where we could have settled people, because ultimately our ability to do so will be finite and limited. I want to draw attention to what the Prime Minister said yesterday in his statement, when he pointed out that he had just authorised a very significant increase in money to regimes in Africa. Ultimately, that has to be the long-term answer—the very long-term answer.”
“Had it been allowed to develop, it could have been such a deterrent. It was never a silver bullet but always part of a complex jigsaw of measures, of which, of course, the holy grail would be returns agreements. The previous Government should be utterly congratulated on the returns agreement they made with Albania, which has been a tremendous success. Such agreements are hard to come by. I remember being sent to negotiate with President Ghani in Afghanistan to try to get him to take a more helpful approach, given the blood and treasure that we were expending on behalf of his regime and the people of Afghanistan.”
“It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). I spent 13 years on these Benches in opposition, and I know how frustrating it can be. The reality is that when the sheer size of our defeat became apparent, I had some difficulty in coming to terms with it. In order to characterise it, I do not think one can do better than our late colleague Peter Brooke, who, when describing a similar calamity, said, “the battle of Isandlwana is lost, so now begins the defence of the mission station at Rorke’s Drift.” I had no doubt that the Government were always going to abandon the Rwanda scheme—they made that absolutely clear, and they have every right to do it—but I do think that the House will ultimately come to regret not having such a deterrent to hand.”
“That is absolutely right, but we did not do that. We did not spend our money in that way. We supported people under desperate regimes, not by giving money to those regimes but by providing sustenance through third parties and NGOs, which delivered that. Some of the greatest damage done by much of our own press was how our international development aid effort was painted as destructive in the way that was just described. It never was. I return to my original point: we cannot take everybody, and we certainly needed somewhere else where they could have gone. Rwanda struck me as somewhere that that possibility could blossom.”
“Having organised a number of demonstrations myself, I am nervous at the prospect of being invited to contribute financially to their policing. Nevertheless, clearly there are public order issues and issues of great public nuisance, not least to retailers, commercial businesses and ordinary people going about their business. When there are a repeated series of demonstrations, may I suggest that the Government explore the possibility of confining them to a static demonstration, be it at Speakers’ Corner or elsewhere?”
“That the statement has been so necessary today is a measure of the fact that some members of the teaching profession have taken leave of their senses. In that light, will the Secretary of State consider to what extent the remedy is guidance or statutory requirement?”
“Will the hon. Lady address the prejudice touched on at the Work and Pensions Committee last week, namely that there has been an element of contributory negligence, in that the change was not a state secret—it was advertised and covered in the newspapers—and that some women who were approaching retirement or early retirement did not take proper notice? Will she knock that on the head?”
“Q14. I was the Lord Commissioner who signed into law the special pension of the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). He owes me one! The Prime Minister is right: Labour’s 75p was an insult to pensioners, yet last year our triple lock afforded pensioners the highest increase in 30 years. The Prime Minister is going to continue to deliver dignity in retirement, is he not?”
“By far, the largest cohort of applicants for the service—52%—are those who say they wanted it because they did not want to be a burden, far exceeding those who wanted it to avoid pain in death. There is a profound danger that what begins as a choice will end as an expectation, and so proceeding, we will end up with what Matthew Parris has said, and then it is not much of a jump to “Logan’s Run”. If you do not know what that is, Mrs Latham, google it.”
“She was determined to constrain the debate to all the provisions she had made in the Bill on safeguarding, diagnosis, the number of doctors giving assent and all the rest, but she was completely hijacked by her seconder, who was a psychiatrist representing an organisation called My Death, My Decision. They were determined that this was a therapy—a provision; a service—that should be available to absolutely everyone. I only want to make one further point, aside from the fact that I accept we have not voted on this for three Parliaments. We should determine what our position is; I would welcome a vote, but we should be careful what we wish for. Oregon has just released its statistics for last year.”
“A couple of years ago, on the near continent, a young woman of 23 years was euthanised, having suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder since 2016. Although physically uninjured, she had witnessed school friends being blown to smithereens in the bombing of Brussels airport. I put it to Members that if we use assisted dying as a therapy to end suffering for which other therapies exist, we will have made a profound transformation in assisted dying, changing it from being a means of ending suffering in death, to a means of ending suffering in life. I suggest that the trajectory is in that direction, as it has been in all those jurisdictions that have introduced it. I debated this subject against Baroness Meacher at Durham University, at the time when she had a Bill in the House of Lords.”
“What makes hospices so remarkable is their independence. My fear is that the more one demands that they be funded by the state, that independence will be curtailed and questioned. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) put her finger on the difficulty: the problem is in the difference between the policies of different ICBs. Were they funded centrally by the grants available, as they were during the pandemic, I think it would be much better.”
“6. To ask the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, if the Church will publish a statement on its position on amendments tabled to the Criminal Justice Bill relating to the decriminalisation of abortion before Report stage of that Bill.”
“I welcome the support for new clauses 15 and 34. I think the Second Church Estates Commissioner has given implicit opposition to the new clause in the name of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), but I am gobsmacked not to have had a clear statement on the criminality of terminating a pregnancy up to the moment of birth by whomsoever. Is the intention to drive us into the arms of Rome? Is he as gobsmacked as I am?”
“Can we debate whether changes to the Standing Orders are necessary? They are the nearest thing that we have to a written constitution. Yesterday, there were multiple references to guests in the Gallery. A few weeks ago, when an hon. Member made such as reference, the fellow actually got up and took a bow. It may be that the current Standing Orders are no longer fit for purpose and that allowing such references should be in the gift of the Chair, but we ought to make the change, rather than just go on ignoring the Standing Orders.”
“Will the Minister consider a further measure to right a historic injustice? In Committee, will he entertain an amendment to allow those caught up in the loan charge access to a tribunal?”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, but—I have employed young people myself—is it not right to allow employers the discretion to discriminate between various employees on the basis of their ability and readiness to work, and indeed to pay a younger employee, perhaps, marginally more for their greater efficiency than another employee, rather than constrain all employers within the tight rules he would impose?”
“I accept that this is a very difficult equation to have to deal with, but I have always suspected that the former Chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, Frank Field, was right in his assumption that universal credit, like tax credits before it, was actually just subsidising a low-wage economy that would not otherwise exist. There are clearly costs that are not worth incurring here.”
“I entirely accept the point the Minister makes with respect to the definition of poverty, but the hon. Member for Glasgow South West makes a fair point in drawing attention to the number of people, particularly those employed by Government, who are claiming benefits notwithstanding being paid the minimum wage. It behoves Government to make some analysis of the extent to which the taxpayer is subsidising low wages, albeit one of the principal concerns drawn to my attention by small businesses is every increase in the minimum wage.”
“By stating that a free society requires that the Muslim religion accommodates itself to the same level of scrutiny, criticism and even blasphemy that Christianity has become accustomed to, am I straying into the Secretary of State’s permissive environment? I am not an extremist, am I?”
“Is the Lord Chancellor alive to a principal concern and source of frustration among Crown court judges: the frequent delisting of cases at short notice, with all the consequences that then follow for delay and increasing numbers of prisoners on remand, occasioned by a growing shortage of criminal barristers? That, in turn, will lead to a reduction in both the quantity and quality of future judges.”
“The fighting in Ukraine proves that size matters. The Minister should reconstitute the Territorial Army, which demonstrated that, with economy, quantity had a quality all of its own.”
“I heard the words of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) as well. When there is plenty wrong and plenty to complain about, it is not always the case that we should blame the established Church, is it?”
“Either I misheard, or the suggestion by the Opposition that the measure the Minister has introduced will prevent Ukrainian family members from coming to Britain is deeply untrue and highly irresponsible, isn’t it?”
“What distinguishes this recession is the 800 jobs that have been created every day since this Government came to power in 2010—the very antithesis of anything ever achieved by a Labour Government, who have always left unemployment higher than they found it—is it not?”
“Donna Jones, the police and crime commissioner for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, has launched a consultation. My view is that if constituents attach great importance to policing—certainly, my correspondence tells me that they do—then they will be prepared to pay for it.”
“Very briefly, is the Minister comfortable with our persisting in protecting our constituents from the local councils they elect with the referendum threshold? When are we going to allow local authorities to govern, and to suffer the consequences if the electorate disagrees with what they have done?”
“T9. At the meeting this evening, will the Financial Secretary review the injustice that prevents loan charge victims who have engaged with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, but who cannot agree with their assessment, having any access to a tribunal?”
“Were a media outlet in an authoritarian state, or indeed any other state, to be threatened with foreign ownership, would the Minister responsible be as scrupulous in her answers as my hon. Friend has so properly been with us today?”
“May I suggest to my right hon. Friend that his Department look into the possibility of confining marches to a static location? The fact is that all people are currently being inhibited from attending central London at weekends and that is having a significant impact on commerce and shopping in the west end. I would not want to see demonstrations inhibited by having costs imposed on them, but it seems a perfectly reasonable compromise after so many marches to have static locations.”
“Because ultimately this will reach the public consciousness—we may even have our own TV drama; the reality is that there is plenty of scope for such a drama—and when it does reach the forefront of public consciousness, we will rue the day that we did not take the action when we could.”
“Nevertheless, it has been very uncomfortable for him to have the charge that he did not ask the right questions, he did not pursue it enough and he did not spend time with the victims. Let that be an object lesson to us and to all those Ministers who stood at the Dispatch Box giving us flannel and peddling the fiction that the limited inquiry was in some way independent. My advice to my hon. Friend the Minister today is this: set aside the brief that you have been given, and end this debate by just saying that you have sat here, you have heard what we have said and you are going to go away and ask the awkward questions and spend time with the victims.”
“The point, as I see it, is that it affords a recurring opportunity for hon. Members to recant what the House did when it created this injustice. Drip by drip and Member by Member, the tally will increase, and ultimately it will reach the public consciousness. The right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) served on the all-party group, and we are indebted to him for his chairmanship when he was in the chair of the group. He has been hounded over the last few weeks and found himself in a very unfortunate position for being the postal affairs Minister at the height of the Horizon scandal, notwithstanding the fact that he was lied to on an industrial scale.”
“We are culpable for not having spotted, not having asked about and not having examined the consequences and implications of the measure that was brought before us. It is a measure that cries foul against every tenet of proper legislation with, first, its retrospective aspect, and secondly, its taking away from our constituents the right to appeal to a tribunal with an administrative or quasi-judicial process to have their case fairly considered. It made HMRC both judge and jury in their case—and what a judge and jury it turned out to be! We now come to another of these debates in which we recount the latest injustices and enumerate the rising tally of suicides, and the Minister will in all probability make the same speech as his predecessor made the last time. I ask hon. Members: what is the point?”
“If, as Ministers insist, the law was clear in 2010, it would have been entirely unnecessary to have the 2017 legislation open up previous tax years, because my constituents who have been affected by this mis-selling scandal—for that is what it is—made their tax arrangements entirely clear in those years and were unchallenged by HMRC within the proper windows available. It was entirely unnecessary, and the reality is that the vendetta that HMRC is now pursuing, notwithstanding the obfuscation of the written answers to parliamentary questions, is exclusively against the victims of that mis-selling scandal. Happy are those Members of this Parliament who were not here in 2017 and did not vote in favour of the Finance (No. 2) Bill of 2017, which contained the measure that is now torturing so many of our constituents.”
“The mantra has been clear for many months from the Opposition Benches, including from the shadow Minister himself, about the need for safe and legal routes. Can we have some indication of what level of immigration through safe and legal routes would be needed to address the problem? I put it to him that as soon as that cap is reached, the rest will come by boat unless there is a deterrent.”
“On a point of order, Madam Chairman. The hon. Lady’s speech seems more appropriate for Second Reading. It would be helpful if she could direct her attention to the amendments, about which we are interested to hear what she has to say.”
“On a point of order, Dame Rosie. I do not want to try your patience, but clause 2 is about the safety of Rwanda and what the hon. Lady is saying has nothing to do with that at all.”
“Intimidation by hard-line settlers has prompted the Patriarch to say that clergy are fighting for their lives, and that the Armenian quarter faces a violent demise. Is a Christian presence in Jerusalem still viable?”
“T5. [R] My interest is in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Why is it Government policy to deny a landlord and tenant the ability to agree a mutually convenient fixed-term tenancy?”
“There are streets in the west end of this city, important to our economy, that would certainly benefit from the ability of tourists to reclaim VAT, aren’t there?”
“On the contrary, as the Minister will recall, the late and sainted Eric Forth would always point out to us that it is the uncontroversial legislation that goes through uncontested that leads to the greatest lapses in our legislative duty.”
“Q13. If a two-state solution is to have a chance, Hamas must be defeated, but there will also first have to be a more enlightened policy of administration in the occupied west bank, mustn’t there?”
“I accept entirely the force of what the Secretary of State has said, but clearly under section 8 many landlords will, for perfectly legitimate reasons—to get rid of a tenant for antisocial behaviour or whatever—have recourse to section 21 simply because of the convenience and ease, particularly in the face of tenants who make particular difficulties. That is why the provisions that he is making in respect of the courts being able to deal with such things effectively and efficiently are vital as part of the reform that he is bringing forward.”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I apologise; I should have referred to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests when I intervened.”
“Sustainability is top of our agenda in the New Forest, and the national park authority is keen to discuss opportunities for it with the Minister. I have sent him an invitation—will he come?”
“Q11. Aid poured into Gaza in 2005 when Israel withdrew. Enlightened governance could have made a success of it. It is Hamas that has turned it into hell, is it not?”
“I do not know what the Minister is going to say about Lords amendment 14, but if she is agin it, will she reassure me that the voice of district councils will not be lost in combined county authorities, which would create a disparity of the type that she is out to remove in the Bill?”
“Absolutely, Mr Speaker. There is a panic now in Germany as its premature ban on gas-fired boilers approaches. The Minister will want to avoid a similar panic as we approach our own premature ban on oil-fired boilers, won’t he?”