Oral Answers to Questions
Crispin Blunt Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman is simply wrong. In this year alone, 500,000 more people are in work. There have been cuts in unemployment and fewer people claiming benefit in his constituency. That is what is happening. I know that it is not convenient for the Labour narrative but the fact is that inequality is down; child poverty is down; the number of people in relative poverty is down. Those are the facts. Labour Members do not like them but they cannot hide from them.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker—I had not spotted the opportunity.
The Prime Minister will know that the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 was built on the twin pillars of equality and support for marriage. Will he now put a rocket under the Ministry of Justice to ensure that, under this Administration, we can deliver the same rights for those who want to celebrate their marriage as humanists?
The Prime Minister
We said at the time of the debate in the House of Lords that there would be consultation on this issue and that is exactly what is happening.
Recall of MPs Bill
Crispin Blunt Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
My hon. Friend alluded to the example of his undertakings on Heathrow. Members of the party that joined the coalition made undertakings at the election about student finance, and then, in the interests of good government, swallowed hard, and will almost certainly take the pain at the next election for the breach of their promise to the electorate. However, they made a decision in the interests of the sound administration of the country, and they should be commended for that. They should be free to make those decisions, as we all should, when sound administration requires it. The problem with the amendment is that it works against decent government, which, overall, our constituents should expect of us.
Zac Goldsmith
I would give two responses. First, if we existed in a world where recall was possible, I suspect that the promises made before the last election would not have been made. In the context of a recall regime, we would have to be much more careful about the promises we made because we would know that we could be held to account after making and then breaking them.
Secondly, if circumstances require a broken promise—an abandonment of a manifesto pledge—in a system of recall, or, frankly, without it, it is incumbent on Members to go back to their constituents and explain why that promise had to be broken. In the case of the Liberal Democrats, I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey) has spent a lot of time speaking to and engaging with students of all ages to explain why the U-turn was necessary. I can absolutely guarantee that whether or not he wins at the next election, he would not have been recalled on the back of what was a profoundly broken promise. My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) must have confidence and faith in his voters. Voters can see through these things.
Thomas Docherty
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby will touch on that point and on points made by the right hon. Member for Somerton and Frome and others.
Thomas Docherty
I want to make some progress. I have been on my feet for a significant period and perhaps longer than some of my colleagues would wish.
Without a clear definition or threshold to demonstrate wrongdoing, the amendments, however well intentioned, open the door to abuse. Furthermore, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park has admitted, he has provided no spending limits for his system, further raising the spectre, as we have heard, of US-style recall petitions. Those on the Labour Front Bench are clear. We support giving the public the right to recall their MP on the grounds of misconduct. We do not support recall on the grounds of how an MP votes. That would have a chilling effect on freedom of speech and limit the ability of MPs to represent their constituents effectively. We urge MPs to reject the amendments, because they do not provide robust safeguards. However, we recognise the diversity of opinion across the House and hope that our debate this afternoon might help us to find a way forward.
Sir James Paice
I note what my hon. Friend says, but I would not be prepared to say that, if I had a majority in the order of 100, I would not be very concerned about what people thought about me. I am concerned anyway, but at least, for the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough set out, I am able to stand here and say whatever I like in the knowledge that I am protected by privilege. I would not wish to abuse that privilege—I do not think that I have ever sought to do so—but if what a Member said could be held against them, as might be the case if the amendments are agreed to, we could jeopardise their opportunity to speak with the freedoms that we rightly pride in this place.
Like other Members, I have looked up a couple of statistics. Only 207 hon. Members—less than a third—received over 50% of the vote. Indeed, 100 Members received the votes of less than 25% of their electorate, which demonstrates just how tight things really are. We can imagine the opportunity for well organised and probably well funded pressure groups to exert influence on Members with a small proportion of the vote—just enough to have scraped home—through the threat of recall. It is easy for Members to say, as some have, “I am far too strong-minded and I will not be bought,” but I challenge that. It would be a brave individual who faced such pressure yet did not feel that they might have to bend to it.
I will not add to what we have heard about vexatious cases, but those of us who have been here for a number of years know that all Governments, of all complexions, become very unpopular at sometime during their mid-term—some are unpopular for the whole term—yet despite that, they quite often get re-elected. However, during that mid-term period of unpopularity, it would be possible to have a series of recalls in tight marginal seats simply to change incumbency, and that could end up changing the Government. I do not have a problem with a change of Government between general elections—that is democracy—but it would be wrong if that were to arise because of a concerted effort targeted at specific MPs on the basis of things that they had said or votes they had cast. That was why I tabled amendment (a) to new clause 2, which would protect Members by not allowing reasons relating to their freedom of expression from being cited in a statement of reason.
In response to the speech I had not then given, the Minister said that my suggestion would work only to a certain extent, because it would not stop such issues being raised as part of a general campaign. However, if those issues could not be cited as reasons for seeking a recall petition, that might be enough to stop a campaign from starting, as other reasons would need to be cited in the statement. It is perfectly true that there could be other mechanisms for publishing the real reason, which is how the Member had spoken or voted, but I think that preventing that being promulgated as the official reason that goes out with the petition would offer considerable protection.
If there is a better way of doing that, obviously I, like other Members who have proposed amendments, would be happy to listen to it. However, if the Committee is minded to support new clause 2—as I have said, I could not possibly support it unless my amendment (a) is accepted by its proposers—I would have to oppose the whole raft of amendments standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park and other hon. Members.
If we stopped people on the street and asked them about recall, most would say—if it registered at all—that it relates to misconduct and bad behaviour. Very few would relate it to votes, speeches or views. Nevertheless, I think that there is that risk, and I want to protect hon. Members from it. My amendment would prevent anybody giving as a reason for recall anything that fell under freedom of expression. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough has tabled a similar amendment, but I will not repeat what he has said.
Having been a Member for more years than I care to remember, I fear that the idealistic way in which the amendments have been cast means that they are just too broad. As I said at the outset of my comments, I fully accept the need to go further than the Government are going, and I think that there is a need for popular involvement, but it has to concentrate on the real issues that cause the public concern: unacceptable behaviour by their Member of Parliament that devalues their role. We all agree that that is necessary. The issue is whether we extend that to matters relating to freedom of speech, which I think would be a step too far.
Crispin Blunt
I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak at the end of the debate, presumably before my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) responds. It has been a really excellent debate. However, we need to remember where the Bill, and the amendments that have been tabled, come from. They arrived in all the parties’ manifestos in 2010 as a response to the expenses disaster. All of us who lived through that know how debilitating it was and understand the enormous damage it did to the reputation of this place.
We have here a collapse of institutional self-confidence. With regard to how we can regulate ourselves and prostrate ourselves in front of our electorate, almost nothing is good enough in addressing that lack of confidence and trying to regain some of our reputation with the electorate. I suggest that the proposition coming from the Government, in the form of the Bill, and the amendments proposed to it are a continuation of that. As an institution, we are like a whipped dog that is simply cowering ever lower.
Counter-intuitively, I think that it is about time we started making the case for this institution and for how it works, as political parties that are here to support an Administration that is able to put through a credible programme of government for four or five years—now five years, by statute—and to govern effectively in the interests of the country.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries) put the populist case absolutely wonderfully in her brilliant polemic, but I am afraid that a rather difficult practical case must be put in opposition to it. If we all took her principled view about our duties in this place, we would not have an Administration for four or five years who were capable of putting together a coherent programme of government and addressing the issues of the country over the lifetime of a Parliament. I know that she does not like the Whips Office—I served in the Opposition Whips Office for about five years, so in that sense I am guilty as charged—but, as Enoch Powell said, Whips are the sewers of the system; they are absolutely essential to the general health of the entire system. She criticises her colleagues for doing “grubby deals” on this and that, but that is what we have to do in order to build a coalition either within a political party or between political parties to deliver coherent government.
Nadine Dorries
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, because not giving way is the maxim by which I live my life. I totally understand his point about the coalition. However, it has been reported tonight that the Prime Minister and the Chief Whip will not be voting for these amendments because the Liberal Democrats have asked them not to. How does that benefit government? How is that principled?
Crispin Blunt
I have absolutely no idea. The Prime Minister is trying to run a coalition. He has to keep within this coalition our colleagues who are helping us to govern and delivering a majority in voting for taxes that make for some form of fiscally sensible arrangement. Of course there are going to be grubby deals—they have to be done. My hon. Friend has possibly given an example, although I have no idea of whether what she says is accurate.
The proposals by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park open us up to the possibility of being subject to recall all the time. That would make it immensely more difficult to support a Government in maintaining a coherent programme. There is a reason why Governments do the difficult things in the first few years of the Parliament: it is because they know they are going to be unpopular.
Part of my hon. Friend’s argument was to say, “The key thing here is about public confidence.” I accept that there is a lack of public confidence in this institution; that is why the Government have finally got round to proposing this measure. However, we must ask ourselves whether that will be addressed by our cowering yet lower in the face of it, or whether we should get off our knees, have some institutional self-confidence, and make the case that we are, in fact, regulated to an enormous extent as Members of Parliament. We have the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the criminal law—which, if we are convicted, will result in our being thrown out—the Standards and Privileges Committee, the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and all the rest. An enormous number of bodies now oversee this place and our behaviour.
The question is whether this Bill is trying to address a real, practical problem about our behaviour, individually or collectively. The answer, I suggest, is no. Is there a reputational issue? Of course there is, and we have to work out the right solution to that. The Government’s proposals, which try to find a limited way of doing something to create the principle of recall, are not right and do not address the issue practically, while the proposals by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park are frankly dangerous. I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) about the dangers that they open up. Those arguments were also made by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones).
Mr Lansley
I put it to my hon. Friend that there is a gap in the regulation, which the Bill is intended to fill. When the public see instances of gross misconduct that result in either a court sentence or a substantial period of suspension from this House, they say that in any other normal profession people would lose their jobs under such circumstances. This Bill puts Members in that position when it might not have happened otherwise.
Crispin Blunt
Do we have an actual problem or a perception of a problem that does not actually exist? In practice, we do not have a problem. If a Member is sentenced to imprisonment for a period of less than a year, it is highly likely that they will choose to stand down, as has happened. Equally, the same thing is likely if Members receive a sentence from the Standards and Privileges Committee, as happened with our former colleague Patrick Mercer, who decided to stand down. There is not a practical issue that we are trying to address. I accept there is a perception issue, but we have to work out the right way to address it.
The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) made a further practical argument against the measures proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park. When I lost the executive vote on my reselection, the issue was put to a simple vote of the members of the Conservative party in Reigate, but take it from me: that occupied most of my attention for the two months it took to complete the ballot. I won by a margin of five to one, but the process was something of a modest distraction from my other work representing my constituents. The hon. Member for Swansea West made an absolutely valid point: the suggested process would be the most enormous distraction from the duties we are actually here to do.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough has said, are we not already subject to recall? Every five years we have to face the electorate in a general election.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman has raised a number of points, but his speech is dominated by the idea that there is a battle between parliamentarians and the voters. He has questioned whether there are problems, but of course there must be problems if standards bodies such as the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority have been set up. Perhaps those sticking plasters have been set up because adequate mechanisms have not been available to the electorate to get a hold of Members of Parliament and bring them to account in good time. That is all hidden under the blanket of the general election. That is why we are having this debate. This is revolutionary democracy. The cat is out of the bag. If this does not happen now, proper recall will come at some point. It always happens. The elites, the powerful and the parliamentarians of Westminster will always rail against it, but in the end they will have to yield.
Crispin Blunt
I say in all candour that we need to pay attention to how we are going to stand up for Parliament as an institution, because things are changing out there. There are now very strong single-issue lobbies that were not there before, and new electronic media give them a way to come together quickly and run very strong campaigns.
The problem we face is the collapse of interest in political parties. All the political parties are suffering from a diminution in membership.
Crispin Blunt
I enjoyed the hon. Gentleman’s intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). He told her that the thing that would stop endless petitions against individuals who were then targeted by particular lobbies was failure. I look forward to hearing about the dissolution of the Scottish National party after its failure in the referendum on independence. The party has failed, so is that it? Is the SNP going away and packing up its tents? I rather suspect not, and we can expect the same of single-issue campaigns, which will target Members—particularly those who are brave enough to stand up for unpopular causes—and continue to be on their tail, if we agree to the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park.
Money is also an issue, as the hon. Member for North Durham has said. My campaign to get reselected was targeted at about 500 Conservatives in Reigate. That campaign had minimal costs, but I then had to say thank you to all the people who campaigned for me and so on, and the cost of that non-campaign headed into four figures. Hon. Members should imagine having to campaign in their constituency. If they were standing up for an unpopular cause and their party did not roll in behind them—the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) gently predicted that his party might not be too keen to rally to his aid—they would be very exposed by recall. Some of us do not have the resources to fight such campaigns.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I feel that my hon. Friend is creating an Aunt Sally that does not exist. As I understand it, the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) require 20,000 people to go to a town hall to vote for a recall. That is very unlikely, even with outside organisations trying to stir things up.
Crispin Blunt
That was the superficial attraction of the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park. I thought that I might even vote for them because they at least to some extent made the public relations purpose of the Bill more effective by meeting the challenge of involving the public in this exercise. The superficial attraction of his argument was the one expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), which is that recall will not happen away, because no one will be able to clear this hurdle. It has hardly ever happened in the United States, and we have made it so difficult to achieve that recall will not do anything in practice. We therefore need not worry because this is simply about public relations, and the public relations tricks are dealt with better by the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park than by the Government’s Bill.
Institutionally, we now need to make the case for this institution. It is wrong to address an issue of perception through legislation. We should make a case—the kind of case brilliantly made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough—about what a representative democracy is about in principle. That is changing in this environment of much greater popular engagement. The problem we face is that we must, at the same time, produce coherent administration. We have to support a Government who have a programme and will vote the taxes and do the unpopular things required to administer this country effectively. If we give in to the kind of populist pressure coming from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire or my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park, who spoke in a very principled way, we will create for ourselves a practical problem about what we are here to do, which is to ensure the sound administration of the United Kingdom.
Zac Goldsmith
Does my hon. Friend not agree that more or less every 30 or so years since the first Reform Act of 1832, the franchise has been expanded and democracy has been updated to adjust to social changes. That happened right up to 1969, but since then the world has changed beyond recognition for the reasons he has eloquently described, not least the internet, social media and so on. Does he not accept that there is a need for democracy to be updated again, or have we reached ground zero in the political history of democracy in this country?
Crispin Blunt
We have a practical problem about how we adapt as an institution—both the Government, and Parliament in holding the Government to account—and about how we as elected representatives manage it. Of course the temptation is to begin to go down the road of constant referendums or opinion polls by e-mail, but that does not put together a coherent programme for Government. That is the issue we must address, and I do not think that the Bill or my hon. Friend’s amendments will do the job.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) spoke to set out our case for our amendments and to respond to those tabled by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) and others. In my speech, I will focus on the cross-party amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) and others.
I want to restate the fact that Labour supports the principle of recall. It was in our manifesto, which the Minister quoted:
“MPs who are found responsible for financial misconduct will be subject to a right of recall if Parliament itself has failed to act against them.”
Against that test, our view is that the Bill is not strong enough. That is why we tabled the amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife set out on lowering the suspension limits that might trigger recall and adding additional conditions, including on conviction for financial misconduct.
Mr Gyimah
It would be very difficult for certain Members, especially those with relatively small majorities, either to serve in the Executive or to take the unpopular decisions that Governments must take. As my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) said, to govern is to choose.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) came up with an interesting mechanism to deal with wrongdoing and giving the public a say. As my right hon. Friend the Minister said, we will consider that interesting idea on Report.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) demonstrated why is he is such a valued Member of the House. He expounded on why our history is important, but why we cannot dismiss what the House stands for, and the privilege of an MP to speak and take unpopular positions. At the same time, we must deal with the needs of our electorates and respond to their concern about wrongdoing.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) made an empathetic speech about Members who have very small majorities. He was very honest in saying that, with the size of his majority, he could afford to take some unpopular positions without worrying about going back to his constituency one weekend to find a notice of a petition against him on a 5% threshold, and that his constituents had begun proceedings to get rid of him.
My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate made the passionate case that the House of Commons suffers from a collapse of institutional self-confidence—it was the kind of case that Sir Humphrey might describe as “very brave”. He said that MPs must make the case for the status quo without responding to the public’s desire for a mechanism to bring MPs to account when there is serious wrongdoing, which the Government and all the main parties recognise.
Crispin Blunt
I can see from my Twitter feed that my courage is already a matter of comment, but my question to the Minister is this: are MPs not already held to account? He implies that we are not, but we are massively held to account by any number of different bodies.
Mr Gyimah
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that oversight is exercised over MPs and that MPs are held to account in a number of ways, but there is a gap within the existing framework, namely the opportunity for constituents to get rid of an MP in a case of serious wrongdoing. Currently, the Representation of the People Act 1981 allows an MP to be automatically disqualified if they are convicted and sentenced to a period of more than a year. However, if the period is less than a year, the MP can decide to stay in post. The Bill gives the public a route at that point to get rid of the MP. The Act does not allow an MP who is given a suspended custodial sentence for any period to be disqualified from the House. The Bill fills that gap. The Mental Health Act 1983 provides for disqualification if an MP is imprisoned or sentenced under the mental health provisions for more than a year, but if the term is under a year the MP remains in post.
NATO Summit
Crispin Blunt Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
First, let me agree with the hon. Gentleman that NATO is a defensive alliance. That is at the heart of its success. Of course, it now has to think more about the threats from outside Europe, such as terrorism and cyber-attacks, which might require more activism. On his remarks about boots on the ground, in order to squeeze ISIL out of existence, as I have put it, there will have to be boots on the ground, but those boots should be Iraqi boots. It is their country and they should be leading the process. The question for us is what we can do to help those boots on the ground, rather than put our own there.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
The absence of any of Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran from a commitment to or the formation of an international strategy to destroy the Islamic State, will probably fatally compromise such a strategy. What efforts are being made to include them?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and the Turkish President, with whom I had quite extensive talks at the NATO conference, is, like everyone else, extremely worried about the creation of that state on his doorstep, not least because of the appalling kidnaps that have taken place of such a large number of Turkish personnel. My hon. Friend is right that discussions must be held with all those regional partners and players to ensure that the strongest possible squeeze can be put on that organisation.
EU Council, Security and Middle East
Crispin Blunt Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I very much agree with the right hon. Gentleman that we of course need to learn the lessons of the past but must not be imprisoned by decisions that were taken in the past. I think the whole tone of the debate today is that, yes, it is for those in the region—principally the Iraqi Government and the Kurds and neighbours—to lead the charge against squeezing this appalling organisation ISIL, but Britain, America, France and others should use all the tools in our toolkit to help them to do that. We have to make a judgment about how we best help those on the ground, and to date that judgment has been to provide aid and political support and to help with certain military aspects. The Americans have gone further and provided air strikes. I think that is the right way to approach this problem.
On the issue of control orders, let me quote again what the independent reviewer of terrorist legislation said:
“There is no need to put the clock back. The majority of changes introduced by the TPIMs Act have civilised the control order system without making it less effective.”
We have to understand that control orders were permanently being run ragged in the courts. We needed a new system and now we can improve it.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister share Henry Kissinger’s analysis that to address the utterly appalling consequences of the collapse of central state authority in much of the middle east and north Africa, we are going to have to get competing nation states to co-operate? That means that Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Russia are going to have to be got in a place where they can co-operate with the United States and the European Union. It will involve ugly ethical compromises, which we have already made over Egypt. Will the Prime Minister set his Government the policy objective of getting those nations in the same place to have a policy that can begin to address this disaster?
The Prime Minister
I agree with what my hon. Friend says about the importance of getting nations that have not previously co-operated to co-operate with each other. I agree that we should get them to step up to the plate and do more to deal with the problems in their own area. However, as the former Labour Cabinet Minister, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), has just said, there are also times when we have to look to our responsibilities, and we should do that at the same time.
Ukraine (Flight MH17) and Gaza
Crispin Blunt Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I agree with the sentiment behind what the right hon. Gentleman said absolutely. It is true that Britain is war weary after Iraq and Afghanistan. I still believe that if the challenge came along where we were asked to serve alongside others to protect our national interests, this House and the country would answer the call. But in this case we are not talking about military intervention; we are talking about, with our partners and with like-minded countries, using our economic and financial muscle in the world to demonstrate what I have said, which is that Russia needs European markets far more than we need Russian markets, and we need to make that strength show. But we will only do it, as he says, with an exercise of political will.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
Last week, when the then Foreign Secretary made a statement on Gaza, the death toll of Palestinian children in the conflict since 2000 stood at 1,430. Today it is reported at 1,472. When democracies depart from the rule of law, they give legal and moral authority to our enemies. Israel is in consistent and, today, grievous breach of the Geneva conventions. What is my right hon. Friend doing to bring Israel back within the rule of law?
The Prime Minister
As I said earlier, I spoke to the Israeli Prime Minister last night, and while I said that we believe in Israel’s right to defend itself, we believe that it needs to exercise restraint, to avoid civilian casualties and to find ways of bringing this to a close. But the best way to bring this to a close is the fastest way, and that is for the rocket attacks to stop.
European Council
Crispin Blunt Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
As I have explained, I will send the hon. Gentleman a copy of the Bloomberg speech and The Daily Telegraph article, so he can immerse himself in the detail. We need to make changes to ever closer union, benefit tourism, and the free movement directive, and we need to make changes to embed the single market and save those countries that do not want to be part of the eurozone. This all begs a question—the Government have a clear plan and set of demands that we want to make, but what have we got from the Labour party? It is opposed to a referendum and it caves in on every important European issue; it gave away the rebate and never stood up for Britain on the budget; and it signed up to eurozone bail-outs and it was weak, weak, weak.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
Socialist France is rapidly emerging as the principal barrier to the renegotiation objectives of my right hon. Friend, and he is unlikely to get much useful help from its allies on the Opposition Benches. Happily, just in time in 2017 there will be a French general election that should see the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire return to office. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that he and all his colleagues do their best to improve our relations with the UMP?
The Prime Minister
We must work with all elected Prime Ministers and Presidents in Europe, and I work very closely with Francois Hollande. There is an understanding in France that it has always believed in “L’Europe des patries”—the Europe of nation states—and we must make sure that that is followed through.
European Council and Nuclear Security Summit
Crispin Blunt Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
We agree with President Obama about the importance of this issue. Indeed, when he set up the first nuclear security summit, British diplomats did an enormous amount to help to realise the progress that there has been over recent years. We have seen 12 countries worldwide removing all highly enriched uranium from their territory, and 15 metric tonnes of highly enriched uranium have been down-blended to low-enriched uranium since 2012, which is the equivalent to approximately 500 nuclear weapons, so good progress has been made. The test for what we do at Sellafield should be whether what we do will lead to a safer world in terms of nuclear resources, and we should not do things unless we have such assurances.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
I welcome the Prime Minister’s support for travel bans and asset seizures as a symbolic statement, and as a vehicle for inflicting personal pain on those responsible for policy who depart from international norms. As he has referenced his work in relation to gay people in Russia, would it not also be an appropriate response by the United Kingdom and European Union to impose travel bans on the dozen or so people responsible for the promotion of the Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda?
The Prime Minister
We should take a robust approach in defending and promoting the values we care about wherever we engage in the world. We should not hold back from making our views clear, whether about the law on homosexuality in Uganda or the issues in Russia. On the issue of travel bans and asset freezes, they are focused on Russia and Crimea, and that is the right way to do it.
European Council
Crispin Blunt Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
We will hold a meeting tomorrow that will include representatives from the European Commission and from Britain, to go through and look in detail at which individuals could potentially be named. There should be maximum co-operation between the various European countries and European organisations about this.
Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
Europe is littered with potential conflicts like that now afflicting Crimea. Is my right hon. Friend clear that the security of the whole of Europe depends on countries obeying the rules in this area, and while Russia remains outside those rules, she must be made to pay a very serious economic price?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is right. As I have said, we have these frozen conflicts that we still struggle with across Europe. We are making a concerted effort to ensure that this does not turn into another one. We have to accept that there will be real and quite painful consequences for European countries if we have to go ahead with sanctions, but we should do so because it would be a greater evil to allow this situation to continue.
Oral Answers to Questions
Crispin Blunt Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
Good ideas have many parents, and I am sitting alongside two of them in the case of the prison in Wrexham. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to make sure that, as a new large prison, it contains units that can deal with all the different types of offenders who will need to be addressed to produce the best rehabilitative effect, and that there are proper work facilities for prisoners under that regime.
Stephen Crabb
I thank my hon. Friend. Last week, I saw a great example of a large and diverse prison—Parc prison in Bridgend—which shows just how effectively different categories of prisoners can be brought together and offending behaviour can be tackled. We have exactly the same aspiration for the new prison in north Wales.
Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons
Crispin Blunt Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Edward Miliband
Yes I can, because the amendment goes on to say,
“designed to deter the future use of prohibited chemical weapons in Syria”.
Paragraph (e) also states that
“such action must have regard to the potential consequences in the region”,
so any proposed action to deter the use of chemical weapons must be judged against the consequences that will follow. Further work by the Government is necessary to set out what those consequences would be.
Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
On consequences, I am listening carefully to the Leader of the Opposition and he is effectively making a strong case against military action. The consequences of the military action envisaged are very unquantifiable, because the objectives are, frankly, pretty soft in terms of degrading and deterring and of the link between military effect and the actual effect on the ground. He has also linked this to the consequences for the Geneva II process, which can only be negative.
Edward Miliband
I am saying to the hon. Gentleman and the House that over the coming period, we have to assess in a calm and measured way—not in a knee-jerk way, and not on a political timetable—the advantages of potential action, whether such action can be taken on the basis of legitimacy and international law, and what the consequences would be.
Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
We should reflect first on the awful responsibility of our leaders who find themselves as chief executives in these circumstances. The witnessing of an appalling crime on television, played out endlessly on YouTube and other internet sites, showed that something utterly dreadful had happened. The President of the United States, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom or the President of France, who all command armed forces that could do something about it, then faced many pressures. The shadow Health Secretary spoke emotionally about wanting to address this appalling crime when he appeared on television last Sunday, but I think the shadow Foreign Secretary was probably not wildly enthusiastic about the implications of what his right hon. Friend said when he gave vent to his feelings. It then falls to this Parliament coldly to consider the effect of taking action when it is felt that something must done, yet the evidence shows that the action might makes things worse rather than better.
On the issue of attribution, there was an intriguing piece of information, perhaps a leak, placed in The Times about what was apparently a SIGINT—signals intelligence—report of a conversation between the Assad defence ministry and the field commander of the chemical weapons unit. It was described as a rather panicked conversation. I can see no conceivable reason why Assad would have directed this particular use of weapons on this occasion, although I can see that such weapons could be used where the responsibility has been delegated to field commanders to help them out when they are in desperate situations. The Joint Intelligence Committee information seems to suggest that that might have happened on this occasion. As the JIC suggests, there has been low-level use, and I would agree that the responsibility almost certainly sits with the Assad Administration, although whether it sits with President Assad personally is another issue.
Mr Graham Stuart
If our aim is to deter further use of chemical weapons and protect people, is my hon. Friend aware of any ultimatum previously given by the west to Assad on the use of chemical weapons? If not, would not the more logical response be to lay down a credible threat, rather than one artificially limited by some time frame, stating, “If you fail to undertake not to use chemical weapons, we will degrade and deter you by military strike and bring you to the table”? Might that not have more effect than a short-term military strike now?
Mr Blunt
The difficulty is legality, which is why the Government have been dancing on the head of a pin, making the case that this is absolutely and only about the use of chemical weapons—because nothing else in international law would justify the sort of intervention that is being proposed if agreement at the UN Security Council cannot be reached. If we get to that grave position, I think we have to be pretty certain about the effectiveness of the military action before we take it. Are we going actively to degrade chemical weapons? There are hideous practical problems in attempting that, with the potential of awful collateral damage. If we go after the command and control structure in a way that is sufficiently active to degrade it, that plainly means going after Assad himself, thus actively intervening on one side in the conduct of the war.
The critical point about the consequences was put by the Leader of the Opposition in his speech, and it is implicit in the motion. I rather wish that the Opposition had been more direct about the implications of what the right hon. Gentleman was saying. He was saying that if the consequences of our military action were to threaten the Geneva II process, which should mean Assad and his Government on the one side and the rebels on the other sitting down, engaging in politics and reaching a deal to escape from the current position, the action would not be worth engaging in. I think that case is overwhelmingly strong. It is the Russians, supported by the Chinese, who have put themselves in this position by vetoing any attempt to bring about wider international action, so the responsibility is theirs to get their client to the negotiating table.
The responsibility to act is not ours, particularly on much more doubtful legal ground around the use of international humanitarian law, which could get us into a potentially hideous situation with unforeseen consequences. If we are lucky, what we are debating here and perhaps again next week is a very limited British involvement in quite a small international operation of firing off some scores of cruise missiles to make a point about deterring action. We might be firing one cruise missile so that our hand is, as it were, on the dagger of international action.
I suppose that if Prime Minister Blair did nothing else, he at least so sensitised the body politic that we are here having this debate in recess, and we are yet to be in a position where we are even authorising a very limited use of military action. However, we are intervening in a situation where, in the analysis of Eugene Rogan, this is not about winner takes all in Syria; it is about loser must die. So the idea that we will send an effective deterrence message with a limited use of military action does not stand up.
We need to consider other responsibilities. This month, the Egyptian Government have, with malice aforethought, murdered well over 1,000 of their own citizens to suppress people who were supporting what had been previously an elected Government. What are they to think about the fact that we are getting ourselves into a position to intervene over Syria, and yet we have said precious little about a crime that is on the scale of five or 10 times what we are debating here? It has not been part of an insurgency yet, but the Egyptian Government have almost certainly kicked an insurgency off as a result of what they are doing.
We need to examine what we are doing and whether it will work. I do not think it will; I cannot support it.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I would like to make some progress.
Before I conclude, I think that it is important that we remind ourselves of the events that brought us here tonight; the murder of Syrian civilians, including innocent children, with chemical weapons outlawed by the world nearly a century ago. Those haunting images of human suffering will stay with all of us who saw them for a very long time. There is a danger in this debate that we lose sight of the historical gravity of those events. Chemical weapons are uniquely indiscriminate and heinous and we must not forget that. It is right that we proceed with care; openly, consensually and multilaterally. It is right that we restrict our commitment in principle to action that is limited, proportionate and in keeping with international law. It is right that we ask ourselves all the detailed questions that have been voiced here today.
But there is another question facing us tonight, which is what kind of nation are we? Are we open or closed? Are we engaged in shaping the world around us, or shunning the difficult dilemmas we all face?
Mr Blunt
The difficulty with this part of the Deputy Prime Minister’s argument is that we have seen in the last month an atrocity carried out by the Egyptian Government against their own people with something like five to 10 times the number of people killed than in the incident in Syria. My right hon. Friend has a problem if he is to advance the argument in this way, as was done by the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
The Deputy Prime Minister
As we have been explicit throughout and as the Prime Minister said at the outset earlier this afternoon, this is solely about the deterrence and discouragement of the further use of chemical weapons. Chemical weapons have been banned worldwide, and we as a nation have played an instrumental role in installing that ban since the 1920s, because of the atrocities of the first world war. That is what we are trying to uphold on humanitarian grounds.