Sir Desmond Swayne
MP for New Forest West · Conservative · United Kingdom
“That is the strategy of this Budget: not to do too much, but to have a few things that make it, in the estimation of the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), “popular”.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“According to Bloomberg data, we have lost half the billionaire wealth since 2024, either because it has left the United Kingdom or because its exposure here has been reduced. We might ask ourselves why. Well, it comes back exactly to the issue raised by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will certainly address the hon. Gentleman’s question. This Budget is certainly not popular with me—I have interests, which are set out in the register.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The problem that we have at the centre of our economy at the moment was defined—brilliantly and very candidly, I think—by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions when he said that, in all the meetings he has, the question he is asked is, “Who can we tax in order to give benefits to others?” That is essentially the issue we are having…”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West). I believe that this is the cut-and-run Budget.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Nothing could be more calculated to be devastating for the prospects of our young people languishing in unemployment than to suck in European labour. So I say we have that election.”
House of Commons28 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“Clearly, it would have been expedient to have had a special envoy for religious freedom in place; it is all very well for the Minister to say that such an appointment is under ministerial consideration. What is the problem? Do the Government not have anyone committed enough or talented enough to do it?”
House of Commons2 December 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What deterrent will the Home Secretary implement for those asylum claimants who have destroyed their papers and purport to come from regimes to which they cannot possibly be returned?”
House of Commons2 December 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To be fair to the Prime Minister, he made it absolutely clear that things would have to get worse. The difficulty is—this is my prophecy, if you like—that there is no prospect of them getting better thereafter.”
House of Commons27 November 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Can the Secretary of State imagine the plight of a shop assistant, some decades hence, when a middle-aged or elderly person presents themselves seeking to buy a packet of cigarettes? Is that shop assistant really expected to demand their bone fides?”
House of Commons26 November 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Secretary of State presented the savings as no-brainers—the ships were damaged and obsolete—but in his closing remarks he told us that these would not be the last difficult decisions. He simply cannot have it both ways. It is all about the messaging in the end. What message will be received from this statement in Buenos Aires, Moscow, Peking and Tehran?”
House of Commons20 November 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“So long as we are limited to saying how cross we all are about our different perspectives and the Minister keeps sanctions under review, China will take not a blind bit of notice, will it?”
House of Commons19 November 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What is the beef behind the Government’s reluctance to embrace with enthusiasm locally generated community energy? Why did they vote against the amendment tabled to the Great British Energy Bill by the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse)?”
House of Commons12 November 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What estimate has the right hon. Gentleman made of the impact on capital investment, which will be reduced as farmers consider the inheritance tax implications of those investments and adjust their plans accordingly?”
House of Commons11 November 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The reality, as the right hon. Gentleman knows because he wrote to his successor about it, is that he left us with a deficit that stood at fully 10%, as against the 4.3%—and in sharp decline—that we have bequeathed to this Government.”
House of Commons30 October 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“By pouring such a bucket of cold water on the British economy, what the Government achieved was to reverse what was soaring business confidence and turn it into absolutely collapsing business confidence; and business confidence is the key to investment, not the great binge of borrowing that the Government are about to enter into.”
House of Commons30 October 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Their main effort was a creating a narrative in the public mind that they had inherited a wasteland, the worst inheritance of any Government since kingdom come: that the wicked Tories had operated a scorched earth policy leaving absolutely everything broken, nothing working, and a huge black hole. As a consequence, things would have to get worse before they could get better, and there would be implications for tax in the forthcoming Budget—and, of course, we have discovered that today. The reality is that investment requires an optimistic outlook.”
House of Commons30 October 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is an enormous pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Motherwell, Wishaw and Carluke (Pamela Nash). Until recently, my cousin was a minister in Carluke. Let me give the House a piece of Swahili wisdom. Howezi kuwafukuza swala wawili: you cannot chase two antelope. That, however, is exactly what the Government have been doing since they were elected. They announced immediately after the election, and repeated today, that their overriding priority was to secure economic growth by investing, investing, investing, but in reality their main effort was elsewhere.”
House of Commons30 October 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Much of it reannounced, and much of it put at risk by the behaviour of the Transport Secretary, but nevertheless an achievement. Of course I welcome any inward investment. What I think is a huge risk is a great borrowing binge for exactly the sort of investment that we saw throughout the 1960s and 1970s, which never delivered. Real investment—investment that improves productivity—is that which is undertaken largely by medium and small firms to invest in their own enterprises, but it is crowded out by the increased costs that are entirely a consequence of the Government’s great borrowing binge. On that basis, this Budget is a disaster.”
House of Commons30 October 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Investment requires a measure of optimism, not the collapse in business confidence that the Chancellor has engineered. She would have done better to stress some of the positives that she inherited, wouldn’t she?”
House of Commons29 October 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I congratulate the Lord Chancellor on recognising that for some prisoners, the shortcomings of short sentences are properly remedied by providing for longer ones. On the review and David Gauke, it is difficult not to like him and even admire him, but I am not alone in regarding him as a notorious wet, am I?”
House of Commons22 October 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Conservative Government introduced a comprehensive Bill involving the election of peers. I was the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary at the time. It failed—notwithstanding the fact that I thought it was awful—because Labour withdrew its support for the timetable motion, which meant, as a constitutional Bill, it would have taken the Government’s entire timetable. For that reason, the Government withdrew the measure.”
House of Commons15 October 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Further to those points of order, Mr Speaker. Alex Salmond was a great friend at university and also in this House. Despite political differences, I speak from personal experience when I say that he was a man capable of very great kindness. I shall certainly miss him, and Moira certainly has my condolences.”
House of Commons14 October 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Changing tenants involves significant expense for both tenant and landlord—my interests can be found in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—and the ability of a tenant to end a tenancy after two months presents a significant risk to the landlord, particularly in the student rental market, where re-letting a property within the academic year can present a considerable difficulty. Will the Secretary of State at least consider amendments in Committee to address that issue?”
House of Commons9 October 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Would it not have been better to put that proper package of support in place before the Government withdrew the winter fuel allowance from so many pensioners?”
House of Commons8 October 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“New Forest district council has recently had its local plan agreed on the basis of local housing need. When will it be required to reopen that assessment on the basis of the right hon. Lady’s new algorithm, and when will the target become mandatory?”
House of Commons30 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is the driver of so much migration. Ultimately, we must return to that original policy, restore the 0.7%, and start building for the long term a world that is much more secure as a consequence of the economic developments available in those other places.”
House of Commons23 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Take Zaatari, the huge refugee camp on the borders of Jordan and Syria: a great city now, made from scratch. Those who are accommodated in Zaatari will find that the housing provided by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is of a substantially better quality than that available in many cities and shanty towns across the world. They will find that the World Food Programme will feed them, and their children will be educated by the UN children’s agencies. Perhaps most importantly, security will be supplied by the Jordanian forces and be of a much greater standard than they might enjoy in many other parts of the world. Despite all those advantages, people from Zaatari will spend every penny they have, and borrow, in order to escape and get the one thing that Zaatari cannot supply them: a livelihood and a future for their family.”
House of Commons23 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons23 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons23 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons23 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons23 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons23 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons22 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons16 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons16 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons1 May 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons22 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons18 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons18 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons18 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons17 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons18 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons18 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons18 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons14 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons12 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons11 March 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons22 February 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons20 February 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons19 February 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons7 February 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons7 February 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗