Tunisia, and European Council

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The Prime Minister will want to extend his condolences to the family of young Carly Lovett, my constituent, a 24-year-old girl who was brutally shot down in front of her fiancé. She travelled from the small, quiet Lincolnshire town of Gainsborough, and she did not deserve this—nobody deserved this. The question is what do we do now. What worries the British people is the fact that the threat is not just there; it is everywhere, and it is here. Will my right hon. Friend resist the principled siren voices trying to prevent him from giving the security services all the powers they need over the internet? Also, if he will allow me to make one further point, many British people view mass illegal migration as a kind of dangerous Trojan horse, so I will support him in his efforts to enforce the Dublin convention so that we return illegal migrants from where they enter the EU and we deal with this problem?

[The Prime Minister]

First, may I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to Carly Lovett? We have all heard the heartbreaking story about that young woman gunned down in the prime of life. He is right to say that the threat is everywhere. The difference between this type of threat and the al-Qaeda threat that we faced for many years, and which we still face, is that in the latter case we were often dealing with centrally co-ordinated plots, so if we could get on to them we could try to work out how to mitigate them. Here we are dealing with a lot of self-radicalised so-called Jihadis who have been radicalised through the internet, often by people in Syria or Iraq. Hopefully in many cases we will get advance warning and be able to stop them, but in some cases we will not. That can happen in Britain, as it can around the world. That underlines the social responsibility of social media companies, as I said earlier, but also the need for us to have the most modern capabilities to deal with the treat. As for migration, we are signatories to the Dublin convention and we want to ensure that it continues to work.

Tributes to Charles Kennedy

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

If I may, I would like just to say a few words. I walked into this House for the first time as a Member with Charles almost 32 years ago to the day, and among our new intake he was already quite a celebrity. We were just another large Tory intake—you know, Mr Speaker, they come and they go—but he had fought and won his highland seat. For all the 32 years that I served with him in this House and on the Council of Europe, although I was always a political opponent, in a way I always felt we were soulmates. Sometimes he had to go against the groove and I had to, but there was something powerful there. I think his faith was very powerful, and I like to think that in some previous life he and I might have marched together in some hopeless highland cause, perhaps as Jacobites—I do not know.

Charles’s causes were never hopeless, and his legacy will live on. Let me talk for a brief moment about that. For instance, it has been said on the Iraq war that he wanted to place his party as a radical alternative to Labour, but I think it went much deeper than that and was more powerful. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and I would not have listened to his arguments and followed him into the Lobby if we had not been convinced by what he was saying—that there were limits to liberal imperialism, and that he was a true Liberal and understood those limits and understood what a difficult part of the world that is. He understood the difficulties that we have met ever since, and so he has been proved right on that.

If Charles was still here, or if he was in the other place shortly, he would have been a powerful advocate for our Union, because his was a gentle patriotism, not some narrow-minded nationalism. He would also have been generous in terms of the participation of the Scottish National party in this place, which is important. We must welcome that participation and recognise that those Members must take part in all our debates. He would have been a powerful voice in that, too. He would also have been a powerful voice and influence in other areas, for instance his opposition to the coalition—I rather agreed with him on that. I thought it would be disastrous for our party, but I was proved wrong—it was disastrous for his own. But his opposition was principled. It was not just that he recognised that it is difficult for a party of protest to become a party of power; as on Iraq, there was something much more principled than that. I think he instinctively believed that politics is not just about the pursuit of power; it is also about the pursuit of truth. He was always a powerful advocate for that.

Lastly, when I saw him operate in the Council of Europe, I felt that was Charles’s true métier. Let us not be too serious: Strasbourg is a convivial place. But there was more to it than that. He was determined to extend freedom and democracy to eastern Europe, and he played a powerful part in that body. All those years I admired him and it is truly said that when we die, we can only take with us what we have given away. This man gave everything to our House. There never was a braver and a truer spirit.

Debate on the Address

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 27th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

I begin by adding my voice to those of the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and the Prime Minister in paying tribute to members of the armed forces who have died on operations, not least in Afghanistan. The biggest single loss of life from the UK was my constituents aboard Nimrod XV230 who died in the skies above Afghanistan. Regardless of the right hon. and learned Lady’s views of the conflicts in which our servicemen and women take part, we pay tribute to all of them and our thoughts are with their families, especially those who have lost loved ones.

It is a real pleasure to join in the praise for the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns). Before considering what I should say about him, I decided to review the back copies of the Essex Chronicle—a very well-read newspaper in the north of Scotland. It highlighted his praiseworthy record as being in the top 10 of most responsive MPs in dealing with the queries that are brought to his office. That is a reminder to all of us that our first responsibility is to represent and assist our constituents, and I praise him for the example that he has set.

I also congratulate the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray), who is a doughty representative of her constituency with a very strong maritime interest. She has shown the way that a Back-Bench MP can effect change in successfully piloting two private Members’ Bills through this House—most notably, I believe, a marine navigation Bill.

The example that both Members have shown neatly complements the next role of parliamentarians, which is to hold the Government to account. It is an honour to reply to the Queen’s Speech on behalf of the third party in the House of Commons—the Scottish National party. [Applause.] It is our intention to be the effective opposition to this Government, who seek to govern Scotland with only one out of 59 seats. I will spare the Prime Minister further panda jokes, but he knows that he has a democratic legitimacy problem in Scotland—and if he does not, he should by now. Having said that, I congratulate the Prime Minister on his election success—in England.

I extend genuine commiserations to colleagues in all corners of the House who wished for better, or different, results. I also pay compliments, as the Speaker did at the beginning, to all those Members who were not re-elected, and to those who are often not mentioned—their staff. I think that many people do not understand that when Members of this House, on both sides, lose, their staff also lose their jobs. We all rely on our staff, who do a remarkable job on behalf of all our constituents. With your indulgence, Mr Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to wish our very talented chief of staff, Luke Skipper, well as he moves on to pastures new.

In the general election the SNP won half the vote—something not achieved by any party in Scotland for 60 years. The SNP won more votes than all three UK parties combined, and 56 out of 59 seats. It was a remarkable result and an amazing achievement for our leader and First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, for all SNP candidates, almost all of whom are here, our volunteers and our dedicated headquarters staff. We will do our best to stand up for Scotland, but let me be absolutely clear: we did not win the votes of all voters in Scotland, and we are mindful of that. We still remain supporters of electoral reform and proportional representation.

It is no secret that we in the Scottish National party wish Scotland to become an independent country again, but the referendum last year determined that we remain governed by Westminster in many areas. The Queen’s Speech, drafted by the Prime Minister, talks of a one nation approach, without acknowledging that the UK is a multinational state, or that the four nations of the UK elected different parties to lead in England, in Scotland, in Wales and in Northern Ireland. I genuinely hope that Government Members understand what that actually means.

At the start of a new Parliament, it is right to reflect on the challenges and opportunities we all face over this term, and then ask ourselves whether the proposals in the Queen’s Speech match those challenges and opportunities. I am sure that we all acknowledge the scale and challenge of sustaining economic recovery while managing public spending. Balancing the finances is hugely important, and no party should underestimate the importance of not beggaring the next generation. The UK already has unsustainable debt and unsustainable deficits, and all of us are paying a price for an era of debt-fuelled expansion. However, I respectfully suggest that too few alternative views are heard about how we go about fixing the problem. It is not a zero-sum game, or simply cuts versus tax-raising. Already built into the forecasts of the Office for Budget Responsibility are some very big assumptions about what happens to productivity levels. We would like the Government to take a more active role in channelling spending to areas where it can boost growth and competitiveness.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

In the last Parliament, the Scottish National party Members took a principled stand—that they would not vote on English-only business. Are they going to stick to that?

[Angus Robertson]

The SNP has had a consistent position in this House—that we will review every single piece of legislation brought forward and, on the basis of an evaluation of whether it directly or indirectly has a significant impact on Scotland, then decide on the measures on which we vote and those on which we do not vote—and that position has not changed.