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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“In 2015, I went to Delhi to implement the coalition Government’s decision to end grant development aid to India. That policy has not changed, has it?”
“The Minister has lifted a blight from my constituency, but as a result of these measures we are all going to be swimming in cleaner water as well, aren’t we?”
“The plight of so many charities would be significantly improved if the Secretary of State were to raise the cap on postcode lottery sales, would it not?”
“That is reassuring, given the wind-up that the bishops raised in the House of Lords over the Illegal Migration Bill. What more can the Church do to encourage people to support and take in Ukrainians?”
“This is an excellent package, but one way to ensure that investment flows to productive enterprise is to prevent it from being crowded out by growing Government debt, isn’t it?”
“Did my right hon. Friend collude in any way with any of the persons listed in the report, or with anyone else, to place pressure on the Committee?”
“The substantive part of the motion, paragraph (b)—that the Committee should have the same protection as the Standards Committee—is uncontroversial. What has become clear is that the way in which Members feel they have been impugned without a say, which makes paragraph (a) of the motion controversial. It might be best if the Leader of the House were to withdraw the motion and re-table it with just paragraph (b). We might then avoid the argument and Division that we are going to have.”
“I think it does a fifth thing, which is to introduce a thought crime. Were I to be a leader of a local authority opposed to the provisions of this Bill, once it became an Act, if I continued to say that I disagreed with its provisions and what I might wish to have done with the powers I retained were those provisions not to have been made law, I would be breaking the law. That cannot be right in a free society, can it?”
“Given the significant tightening in the measures of monetary growth, is the Chancellor absolutely sure that the Bank of England has got it right?”
“On the Wagner Group, my hon. Friend said that he keeps matters under constant review and close watch. When will it be time to stop watching and do something?”
“Pupils have been denounced as “despicable” for failing to accept the reality of a fellow pupil who identified as a cat. May we have a debate on Confucius, for it was he who observed that the most difficult thing is to search a dark room for a black cat, particularly when there is no cat?”
“This tragedy would not have occurred had there been a requirement for a face-to-face consultation and clinical administration of the drugs, would it?”
“The abandonment of respectful address, such as “sir”, will not help, will it? Apparently it is because the female equivalent, “Miss”, is considered demeaning. Might I suggest the substitution of “ma’am”? It was good enough for Her late Majesty.”
“Just how much detail will the Solicitor General require to properly implement Sir David’s recommendation on oversight? We need to keep a tight rein on the remaining tenure of the current director, do we not?”
“When these measures have their effect, surely we will then be able to treat foreign students as the booming export that they are, rather than as immigration.”
“Q14. What would be a reason for extending the general election franchise to settled EU citizens, a population of voters equal to the number in Wales?”
“If I may be of some assistance to my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), the Lord Chancellor told the House earlier today, did he not, that he was looking at using legislation already before the House for the SLAPPs?”
“There has clearly been a misunderstanding, despite the police doing a brilliant job, and that is why there has been an apology. But would the Minister not expect that misunderstanding to have been resolved well within the 16 hours for which the six were incarcerated? Surely there should be some questions asked about that.”
“On clean energy, I am very enthusiastic to see the hydroelectric generator that we used to have on the Avon at Ringwood generating electricity once again. Will my right hon. Friend use the powers afforded to him in clause 273 to take on the huge barriers to entry that prevent community energy generators from selling to customers?”
“Last Thursday, the Minister of State at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), came here and announced a strategic partnership with the Government of Israel. That ought to give us some influence over the level of vandalism and antisocial behaviour to which churchgoers are being subjected, oughtn’t it?”
“Mask wearers are to be required to remove their mask. Will the Government issue reassuring advice, drawing attention to the WhatsApp messages of the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) revealing that masks do not work, have no evidential base and were introduced only as a means of keeping up with the ultras in Scotland?”
“Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to review the dated and rather severe regulatory regime under which the postcode lottery and hospice lotteries have to operate?”
“Ministers agitated for us all to get involved in the campaign to extend the uptake of pension credit. Has the Minister any innovative plans that will make it easier for us to do so, such as toolkits and the like?”
“Will the Minister visit Morebus, serving my constituency, because there he will learn that its new buses generate fewer emissions than I do pushing my lawnmower?”
“May I associate myself with the condolences, the tribute and the condemnation that my right hon. Friend has expressed from the Dispatch Box? Has he considered the possibility that sooner rather than later we will need to decide what our priority is? Is it to preserve even the physical possibility of a two-state solution, or is it to maintain at quite the current level of intensity the strategic partnership that he has announced with the current Israeli regime?”
“Regulars in this Chamber will know that Opposition Members have habitually taken to urging Ministers to adopt their own policies. Does the Secretary of State share my difficulty that, in respect of this urgent question, none of us has any idea what their policy is?”
“T7. Will the Minister explore with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities the implications for national parks of proposals to extend permitted development rights to pop-up campsites?”
“What does it do for a respected profession that, when one visits a hospital, one is confronted by a rabble chanting like a schump of rudies, particularly when they have not co-operated with hospital authorities to minimise the impact of their absence?”
“Will the Chancellor tweak the childcare initiative to enable families in which one parent wants to care for children full-time to have a realistic prospect of being able to afford to do so?”
“Where families make a choice that one parent will remain at home for full-time childcare, their tax treatment is much, much less eligible than for couples where both parents work. If we are to have true freedom of choice in childcare arrangements, there is an agenda on taxation that we need to address.”
“How are we going to get vital private sector investment into the industries the Secretary of State is so rightly concentrated on when so many of our own institutions are concentrating on Government debt, effectively crowding out this highly vibrant sector?”
“When I raised these issues, the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and chief negotiator simply stormed out of the meeting. Does there come a time when simply raising issues is not enough?”
“If my hon. Friend were to go on Twitter now, he would find a recording of an arresting officer telling a lady that praying silently is already a crime, and we have not even passed this Bill yet. Are we not really in Orwellian territory of thought crime, as he said?”
“For years, we have told people that we could not do anything about the cruelty of live export. The Secretary of State will understand those people’s frustration now that it is in our gift and in the Bill, won’t she?”
“If habitats can be restored to a quality in which reptiles—in particular the smooth snake—can thrive, that will be good for all wildlife. That would be a good target, would it not?”
“If only I had been told before I voted for Brexit that it was going to cause frosts in Morocco, I could have made a different decision—couldn’t I?”
“These barriers have had a greater impact on EU trade than on the UK. When does the Minister anticipate the EU will wake up to what is in our mutual interest?”
“Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for making it absolutely clear that this man is not getting in here, even if the Minister is going to give him space in the office. But I ask you this, Sir: is not the very fact that an announcement of his intention to travel has been made—in the language habitual to the Government of China—“a provocation”?”
“I draw your attention, Madam Deputy Speaker, to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Is it the hon. Gentleman’s estimate that driving relatively small landlords with a few properties out of the market is the intent of Government policy, or are we just collateral damage?”
“I know that students have all sorts of quite proper concerns about their budgets, but does the hon. Member not acknowledge that there is a tremendous problem with a form of totalitarianism that, instead of encountering opposite views and challenging them, simply tries to silence them? Is he not appalled by the fact that Balliol College—Wesley’s own college—banned the Christian Union, with all the dangers that Christianity might pose to those poor delicate students?”
“6. Whether the commissioners have made an estimate of the proportion of the Church’s assets that may have a link to a historic involvement with slavery.”
“Can my hon. Friend assure me that the not disproportionate £100 million will be spent to reduce the shocking persistence of slavery in the present?”
“Having been the Government Whip on the Equal Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, I can say that this is a typical Church of England fudge, but all the more welcome for that because there are other fish that have to be fried, aren’t there?”
“My hon. Friend is most generous and kind. Those of us who voted with enthusiasm for the Bill’s Second Reading on the grounds that there was to be a permanent change for the benefit of those people wanting to get on to the housing ladder are somewhat discomfited by the fact that Government amendment 1 will make it merely a temporary measure to assist those who want to do so. We want them to be permanently assisted. Can she reassure me?”
“Has any analysis been made available to Ministers regarding the movements in wholesale prices and the tariffs actually being offered to customers going forward?”
“Were more safe and legal routes to be made available, they would quickly be taken up and the trade in small boats would then continue unabated—wouldn’t it?”
“A proportion of the gay and lesbian community in Qatar will statistically also be part of the Christian minority, and Qatar has one of the worst records in the world for persecution of Christians. What is the Foreign Secretary going to do about that?”
“The German Government have limited temperatures in public buildings to 19°C. Double that and add 30, and it is a balmy 68° in English money. We could put on an extra layer and do a lot better, couldn’t we?”
“T4. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), knows that there is a war on. Part of our contribution should be a great national endeavour to cut our energy consumption, should it not?”
“Given the sheer spunk of the contribution that my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) has made to television, it would be churlish not to restore the Whip, wouldn’t it?”