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
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“I am confused. The reality is that the conditions under which abortions are permitted are set out in statute law. They would require primary legislation to alter them. The petition appears to wish to hand the decisions to judges by establishing a right that will be interpreted by judges in exactly the way that Roe v . Wade has been reversed by judges. It is much better to stick with the position that we have, based on democratic provisions in this House and statute law.”
“I am interested to hear what the hon. Lady thinks the effect would be of having a general right to abortion in statute, because that would not set aside the provisions of the existing statute. Judges would be constrained by statute law. They cannot set it aside. It would merely be gesture politics.”
“The answer to the question that the hon. Lady asked my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) is that we take this caveat to an absolute right because there has to be a balance of rights, and there is another life involved in the question of abortion. That is why we constrain it by the proper means of parliamentary legislation, rather than handing that decision to an unaccountable judge.”
“Notwithstanding my hon. Friend’s principled view, which I respect, that life begins at conception, she has now addressed the question that my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) asked: when do rights come to the child? The answer is: on the basis of viability outside the womb. Whether we have got the dates right or not, I do not know, but that is the answer to his question. [Sir Charles Walker in the Chair .]”
“The hon. Member began his excellent summing up of the debate by quoting, I think, that 126 million women had lost their right to abortion. I do not want to get involved in the detail of US politics, but the reality is that many of those women will retain their rights under state legislation. It was simply a question of the federal right being removed.”
“The Church Times is full of adverts for well-paid jobs at diocesan headquarters, yet clergy are spread ever more thinly across the parishes. It is the wrong priority, is it not?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In an answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), the Chancellor promised a letter on arrangements to be made for park homes. Is there anything you can do, Mr Speaker, to ensure we return to what used to be the normal practice: that when correspondence is referred to, it is placed in the Library of the House? We all have skin in the game.”
“T4. When couriers demand payment of duty on goods from the European Union, with which we have a free trade agreement, are we being ripped off?”
“I thank the Home Secretary for her dedication and the work that she is doing. What are the prospects of securing an alternative airline carrier to make the Rwanda plan a reality?”
“It is the Minister’s belief that the Bill will be a remedy for the problems in the market. She will acknowledge that, while there are only a few of us in the House who do so, there is a rather larger number out there who believe that it will make a bad situation significantly worse. The Lords amendment at least gives the opportunity of finding out who is right about this—whether it is her belief that the situation will be better or mine that it will be worse. It will put some proof into the pudding. Why must she resist it?”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I hate to interrupt this poetry, and it is indeed poetry, but what has it got to do with the amendments before us tonight?”
“Last week, the Home Secretary’s sharing of a draft parliamentary answer barely got a mention. They were all over it because this was a damaging policy row with the Prime Minister’s subordinate. She lost her Home Secretary. Why does my hon. Friend think that has changed?”
“How will the Minister answer the intemperate correspondence to which many of us have been subjected, announcing that the Bill will provide for the rape of the countryside and the destruction of wildlife? Will he be able to persuade people that this is a proportionate measure that will allow us to choose the regulations by which we wish to live, and judge them on their merits?”
“There has been no moratorium on fracking for thermal energy and it has continued apace at many sites, but the science is the same, is it not?”
“As we approach the six-month point, what action can the Church take to encourage members of their congregations to step forward—and the congregations themselves to support them—where some initial sponsorships are not renewed?”
“The Minister said that the rise in price was a result of the attack on Ukraine. It is much more than that: it is a deliberate part of the attack on Ukraine. Is not the essential ingredient of any scheme that the Government bring forward that it encourages customers to reduce their consumption?”
“I present a petition in the same terms. The petition states: The petition of residents of the constituency of New Forest West, Declares that the petitioners reject the imposition of an expensive, disproportionate, invasive and ill-judged registration and monitoring system for home educated children, which undermines the long-standing statutory recognition of the primacy of parents in determining the education of their children. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons remove parts 3 and 4 of the Schools Bill and urge the Government urgently to conduct proper independent research into the outcome of home educated children and further, that the Government provide tangible support for home educating families including in the provision of access to examinations. And the petitioners remain, etc. [P002747]”
“We have certainly seen that in the evidence from Canada.”
“We have to be clear on both the implications for the medical profession—the way the nature of the medical profession will change when doctors can bring death as well as life—and the scale, which my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) touched on. My figures are rather different from his. I understand that about 400 people a year take their own lives in this country as a consequence of a terminal diagnosis. I understand that if we were like Holland, the figure for deaths assisted by the medical profession would be 21,000, taking account of the different size of population and all the rest. As many as one in six deaths in Holland may be accounted for by deaths assisted by the medical profession. Once we normalise that as a way of death, I think we would definitely dealing with dangers— [Steve McCabe in the Chair ]”
“It is not as if that case is presented fairly and equally. We have also been told that the medical profession is changing its view, with the Royal College of Physicians changing its position from being against assisted dying. I understand that in a vote by its members, 43% voted to retain its opposition to the proposals, 31% wanted to support assisted dying and only 25% wanted to adopt a neutral position. The Royal College of Physicians is now in the absurd position of having adopted the position that was voted for by the fewest of its members. We have also heard about the impact on palliative care. Obviously, there is a difference of views. However, I have sat in this Palace and heard clinicians from Canada tell us in terms that palliative care budgets were being squeezed to provide for the new service of assisted dying.”
“My father’s last six months were horrible and frightful. Yes, I did want him to die more quickly, to end his suffering. However, he did not. He wanted to come home. I would therefore not change the law. We have heard much about the polling, but the fact is there is nothing new there. Ever since we started polling on this question, there have been large majorities in favour of changing the law, so there is nothing new in that phenomenon. However, a poll is not an argument. The Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland believes that the polling is driven by reports in our newspapers of the awful deaths that some people experience, without giving proper consideration to the advances in palliative care and the fact that many people with terminal illnesses die a peaceful death with their family around them.”
“I was speaking about the Dutch figures, not Oregon, but my hon. Friend is right that it depends on us. I last debated this issue at Durham University earlier this year against Baroness Meacher. She wanted to confine the debate clearly and specifically to the terms that she had set out in her Bill, with all the provisions and the safeguards, such as that it has to be within six months of the end of life prognosis and all the rest. Unfortunately, she was rather undermined by the seconder of her motion, who was a psychiatrist and, I understood, represented an organisation called My Life, My Death, My Choice. There was no question that this was a service that should be available for us all at whatever stage of our lives. Once we open the door and go down that road, it is a one-way street.”
“I have given way enough and my right hon. Friend has had his say. I accept entirely that people are put in a dreadful position if they have a terminal diagnosis. They have the capacity to end their lives but they want to live a bit longer and are worried about the loss of that capacity to end their lives, putting their friends and relatives in a difficult position. But it is a mistake to believe that for every one of life’s horrible dilemmas there is a lever that we can pull to make things better. My fear is that we will make things so much worse for those elderly and infirm people who will feel under pressure to do the “decent” thing and not consume resources.”
“9. To ask the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, what steps the Church is taking to tackle institutional racism.”
“The decision to refuse to ordain Calvin Robinson was a missed opportunity, but my hon. Friend is both a fair-minded and God-fearing person. I hope I can rely on him to ask the bishops to pray, reflect and reconsider.”
“Madam Deputy Speaker, can I refer you to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests? Rents are rising because of a shortage of properties in the market as landlords flee from it. Has the Minister considered that these measures may have the very reverse effect of that which he intends?”
“Notwithstanding the niceties of this particular judgment, we are going to have to grasp the nettle and extend the principle of taking back control to the convention, aren’t we?”
“Why is the Secretary of State’s departmental leadership team advertising for a deputy director, delivery, for the Covid Pass programme? What is that about?”
“I suggest that the Secretary of State addresses a problem to which national parks are particularly prone, where a historic lawful development certificate is acquired because a caravan was previously located there, affording huge development on the basis of permitted development rights over which the national park authority and the planning authority have no control. That is a power that needs to be grabbed and given back to local authorities.”
“What difference in monetary policy has protected Japan and Switzerland from the levels of inflation that we are encountering here, in the United States and in the rest of Europe?”
“I certainly welcome the movement that the Minister has made. I went to table exactly those amendments and was pleased to find that she had beaten me to it. Can I tempt her to go further with respect to my amendment and amendment 4 and require the operator, which has such disproportionate power against the landowner, to engage as a requirement in the alternative dispute procedure from the outset?”
“May I take it therefore that, if Madam Deputy Speaker is minded to allow separate decisions on my amendments, the hon. Gentleman will support them?”
“I do not know why the Government appear to have adopted the anarchist principle that property is theft. On the contrary, these measures, by denying landowners proper compensation on the basis of market value—compensation arrived at by a free and open market—and coercing them accordingly to give up their property rights, strike me as theft. These provisions in the Bill are in effect a conspiracy to promote theft: it is stealing. I just cannot understand how a Conservative Government have brought themselves to bring this measure before the House, changing the law retrospectively and so damaging property rights. I just assume that Ministers simply have not realised the enormity of the change they are making. Accordingly, I believe these amendments are vitally necessary for the Bill.”
“Until 2017, compensation was based on market value, and in 2017 the new code changed it to land value, notwithstanding the explicit advice of the Law Commission not to do so. As was entirely predictable and as was predicted, the market dried up as a consequence and there were far fewer agreements. One of the purposes of this Bill is of course to address that problem of the reduction in agreements. Therefore, the obvious remedy is to restore the position as it was and return to market value, but far from doing that—far from seizing this opportunity to remedy the situation—the Government are compounding their error by wanting to make agreements previously made under the old regime renewable under land value, actually making the problem significantly worse as a consequence.”
“My amendments 9 to 11 are designed to address what was made clear in the House on Second Reading, which is that there are examples of egregious bullying by the operators and that there is a complete disproportion of power between those operators and the landowners. The Minister has spoken of her demand for more collaborative working and collaborative negotiation, but we are asking for the process of alternative dispute resolution to be a requirement from the outset precisely because the operators know that they have the power to overawe and frighten landowners with the threat of legal action. The purpose of my amendments 11 and 12, which was spelt out very well by the Minister, is to return to the status quo ante 2017.”
“The same price shocks have left Japan and Switzerland with inflation nearer 1%. What difference in monetary policy has protected them and exposed us?”
“What is absolutely clear is that those hon. Members seeking to undermine the Government’s negotiating position have not emerged from the trenches they dug themselves in the last Parliament, have they?”
“Recycling plastics is energy and emission-intensive, so would we not be better to end the use of plastic bottles and concentrate on the deposit and return of glass ones?”
“If it is not too indelicate to raise this today, Mr Speaker, may I ask the Leader of the House whether it would be possible to have a debate on the radical proposals to change the Accession Council? I am sure that we in this House can come up with less radical proposals, touching on the venue rather than the admission.”
“Notwithstanding the earlier exchange, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will want to acknowledge my gratitude and satisfaction at the excellent job that he is making of his second job as a Minister of the Crown, will he not?”
“It is quicker than getting a driving licence—I will give the Minister that. The service provided in Portcullis House is excellent. I took a case down there this morning. The person called up the record. It was received on 19 March. All the information is there and correct. It is simply awaiting a decision. Now that is disappointing, is it not?”
“Teacher training has often been part of the problem. By what mechanism will my right hon. Friend prevent any return to the half-baked theories that proved to be a disaster in the classroom?”
“The Leader of the House knows my woke credentials, so will he make a statement next week on the need for certain contextual information to be provided under portraits in Speaker’s House?”
“He was warning for months precisely what was coming. Why did we not use the time that he gave us to forward deploy resources to deal with the inevitable flow of applications from refugees?”
“When we sanction Russia, we also sanction ourselves. We need to be clear with the British people, do we not, that this is a sacrifice we are expecting them to make, when the Ukrainians are making so much greater sacrifice.”
“UK aid promoted trade in Africa by making borders seamless through digitising all the administrative processes. Is that on our agenda for trade with the EU at all? It is monstrous that we are filling in forms.”
“I am always cautious about what I read in the papers, but if the Government have reached a conclusion on extending the covid regulation on the receipt of pills for abortion at home, can I gently remind the Leader of the House that in a parliamentary democracy it is better to have the debate before the decision?”
“We are expecting a written ministerial statement today on the one piece of covid legislation that we do not yet know a date for revocation—namely, the provision of early abortion pills through the post without face-to-face consultation. Depending on what that statement says, will the Leader of the House consider making time available in the forthcoming business for an oral statement, so that those of us who are appalled by the practice can make the case for a swift return to the status quo ante?”
“To what extent does my hon. Friend believe that, following our withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Government of China are watching very closely our resolve in the face of threats to Ukraine, as they assess what they might do with regard to their ambitions in the South China sea?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On 14 December, in the debate on the covid regulations, I said that more people were dying in the carnage on the roads than of covid-19. I have now seen the statistics and that was incorrect. I thought it appropriate to correct the record.”