Israel and Gaza

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Let me just say exactly what I have been trying to do over the past week: ensure that we can diplomatically engage with partners in the region—as, indeed, the Foreign Secretary has been doing. That has resulted in humanitarian aid coming into Gaza. More needs to come, but that is a sign of progress. In all our conversations, particularly with the Emir of Qatar, we are focused on releasing hostages of all nationalities, but we are particularly concerned about the British hostages. We will continue to have that engagement with our partners to do everything in our power to secure the release of the hostages.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend knows that I am one of the Members of this House who takes the most satisfaction in the fact that it is he who is Prime Minister of this great democratic country, with all the powers of analysis that he brings to his role. We are all in this nation accountable before the law—perhaps the only one who is not has to act on my right hon. Friend’s advice anyway, and he is accountable before the law like everyone else. I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement, but we do not quite get to the conclusion. This is a watershed moment: we are either going to build a future that is based on a killing field in Gaza, or we are going to have a ceasefire and the opportunity to bring the necessary aid there for all the people who are suffering now so appallingly. My right hon. Friend knows that we must operate within the law. The law is clear and it requires a ceasefire to be implemented now.

[The Prime Minister]

It is difficult to tell Israel to have a ceasefire when it is still facing rocket fire on an almost daily basis and when its citizens are still being held hostage. It has suffered an appalling terrorist attack and has a right to defend itself, but, as I have said, it is important that that is done in accordance with international law and it is important that Israel takes every possible precaution to avoid harming civilians. Based on all my conversations, that is something we will continue to expect and continue to impress on the Israeli Government.

Israel and Gaza

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. I welcome in particular his urging of the state of Israel to act in line with international humanitarian law and his call for Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians. May I ask him to press upon our Israeli friends the principles of distinction and proportionality in their action to avoid any sense in which it looks like a collective punishment is being meted out on the Palestinians in Gaza, as well as ensuring that we do nothing that will leave the democracies worse off at the end of this, which is not in line with the principles all of us would wish to hold?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said, we support Israel’s right to defend itself, but, as a friend, we will continue to call on Israel to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians. That is something that I specifically discussed with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and we will continue to do so.

G7 Summit

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 22nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I could not disagree with the right hon. Gentleman more. A ceasefire is not a just and lasting peace for Ukraine. Russia has conducted an illegal and unprovoked invasion of another country. It has committed heinous war crimes. The right, and only, response to that is for Russia to withdraw its forces from Ukraine. All plans, masquerading as peace plans, that are in fact attempts just to freeze the conflict where it is, are absolutely wrong and they should be called out for exactly what they are.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the substantive and central role he played at the G7 summit and the important progress made in advancing the G7 agenda, which is of growing importance to our security and our economy? What is his assessment of how far India is now moving to share this agenda, not least in its relations with Russia?

[The Prime Minister]

As I said, the session with partner countries, including India and others, was positive in its conversation on Ukraine and on the principles of what a just and lasting peace would look like. Such a peace should be based on the principles of the UN charter and respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of countries. Those are principles that we believe in, and on which the United Nations was founded and peace in Ukraine should be brought about.

Afghan Resettlement Update

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer]

My presence here today indicates that we have clearly not given up on these people. It is incredibly difficult to get people out of Afghanistan: nobody is happy with what has happened in that country. We have opened up ACRS and ARAP applications to third countries, and I encourage people to apply to that and to get themselves on the scheme. We will do everything we can to see through our duty to them.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Mr Deputy Speaker, given your recommendation for short questions, I have a number of questions that I will table as written parliamentary questions. Can I just say how much I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, and the candour with which he has approached it and with which he is answering the questions?

I want to ask about one element. I have been involved in supporting someone who trained with me at Sandhurst a very long time ago, and in assisting that family. No doubt, there will be endless examples of others who are in the same position. I was slightly concerned about a scheme I offered to the Defence Minister, my right hon. Friend’s successor as Veterans Minister, to mobilise wider support for this particular community, not least engagement in creating the social housing referred to by the Opposition spokesman, the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey). I wonder why it was that people who could support that scheme were told that they could not do so in Army time.

[Johnny Mercer]

If my hon. Friend wants to write to me, I am more than happy to address what has happened there, but I have to be honest with him: I am not overly interested in how we got to where we are. There are a number of reasons—it has been an incredibly difficult situation. The collapse of Afghanistan has been unprecedented in our generation, and seeing through our duties to these people has been incredibly difficult. I am not going to consistently go over and reheat that argument. Now, we have a clear set of commitments: we have a significant financial commitment to these people, and a duty to get them out of hotels and open up that pipeline, allowing people to come into this country. That is what we are going to do.

Northern Ireland Protocol

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

This agreement is a remarkable negotiating success, with the EU agreeing to hitherto unique terms in an international treaty. While all associated with this negotiation deserve congratulation, its tone, its courtesy, and its calm and conscientious command of detail were set by the Prime Minister, and he gave our negotiating partners every reason to agree. This deal is a huge tribute to the finest qualities of his leadership.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for those warm and, I fear, over-generous words. I thank him none the less. It would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to colleagues sitting behind me, who have worked in private, in confidence, behind the scenes for some months to bring us to this place, supported by the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe. They deserve enormous credit. It is a collective achievement of minds; many Members of the House in their various ways have contributed to getting to this point. I hope that everyone around the House can now support the agreement as a basis for providing a better future for the people of Northern Ireland.

Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I completely disagree with that. The whole objective of the Northern Ireland (Protocol) Bill that we have passed is to support the balance and symmetry of the Belfast/Good Friday arrangements. I was very pleased that the Bill advanced to the House of Lords with no amendments.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

In recalling the situation that the Prime Minister inherited in July 2019, of a Parliament with a majority determined to frustrate the result of the 2016 referendum, led by a Speaker who was just slightly partial—the seemingly impossible situation he found—does my right hon. Friend understand that he has the gratitude of my constituents, who can identify the wood from the trees, and of myself, for his leadership over the last three years?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. There is a fair amount of wood on the Opposition Benches and I think that is why we will prevail at the next general election.

CHOGM, G7 and NATO Summits

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

If the hon. Gentleman looked at the G7 communiqué, he would see that there was an explicit reference to making sure that anything we did was within our COP26 commitments to keeping 1.5° alive and to the commitments made in Paris.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I strongly welcome the Prime Minister’s statement. In my time in the House, I cannot recall a foreign affairs statement in which the serving Prime Minister could take more personal satisfaction than the one that he has just delivered to the House. His leadership of NATO and the welcome conclusions of the NATO summit only reinforce the fact that, as the Leader of the Opposition said, what Mr Putin wants is for us to lose focus. Will the Prime Minister sustain his focus; get the grain out of Ukraine to meet the desperate need of the rest of the world; and ensure Ukraine’s survival as a sovereign state?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend. That certainly remains the Government’s objective. I stress that what we are doing to support the Ukrainians is not just right in itself, as everyone accepts, but right for the world. That is why it continues to be supported around the world.

Ukraine

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that we will certainly be making sure that we are able to sanction—and that we do sanction—relatives and other interested parties. There will be a rolling programme of intensifying sanctions.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Having been one of the officials who accompanied the then Defence Secretary to both Moscow and Kyiv in 1993, I am in no doubt that the signatures of the United States and the United Kingdom on the Budapest memorandum gave Ukraine the confidence to give up its nuclear deterrent. Will my right hon. Friend support the United States to whatever extent it is prepared to go, and stand alongside the United States in giving whatever military support it is prepared to give to Ukraine?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to remind the House of the 1994 Budapest memorandum, which had exactly that effect and created exactly that obligation on us as one of the signatories.

Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am delighted to join the right hon. and learned Gentleman in committing to tackle online harms and violent extremism together, and that is what the Government are doing. That is why we brought forward the online harms Bill, and that is why we are investing record sums in counter-terrorism. In addition, I think what the whole country and the whole House would certainly want to see—and I say this to the right hon. and learned Gentleman in a collegiate spirit—is a commitment by the Labour party in future to support measures, and not to allow the early release of terrorists and those convicted of such offences from prison. If we hear that from the Labour party, I think it would be a fine thing.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Q4. Knowing my right hon. Friend’s commitment to UK bioscience, and his understanding of the exciting potential for improving mental health treatments for conditions such as depression, trauma and addiction, will he cut through the current barriers to research into psilocybin and similar compounds, so that the British public can receive, and British science research and British pharmaceutical companies can enable, potential treatments for those most debilitating conditions to be delivered at the earliest possible opportunity?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend, who I know has a very active interest in this area. We will consider recent advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs on reducing barriers to research with controlled drugs, such as the one he describes, and we will be getting back to him as soon as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point. We have looked at seeking to change the rules about neonatal leave. Any grieving situation is incredibly difficult, but as we work towards the employment Bill, we will make sure that we can come up with a rounded view for anybody that is grieving.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con) [V]]

Yesterday my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said to the Select Committee that she ended the role of her LGBT advisory panel because there were basic disagreements over the rights of trans people to self-ID. Argentina, our co-chair of the Equal Rights Coalition, whose conference we host next June, has legally accommodated self-ID for trans people since 2012 without a problem, and now more members of the coalition are following Argentina’s example without a problem. How is she going to find a new panel that both has authority and agrees with her in the continuing refusal to accept the right of trans people to self-ID? Can she explain how Britain can host a conference entitled “Safe To Be Me” without supporting the right to be “me”?