Indefinite Leave to Remain: Healthcare Workers

Debate between Edward Leigh and Jamie Stone

Monday 18th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I rise to speak for a slightly different reason, which is that I have the honour to be the Chair of the current Petitions Committee and this is its first debate. I thank the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for an excellent contribution. He described a worrying, if not harrowing, situation. I also place on the record my thanks, at this early stage in the life of the Committee, to the Members who have joined it. Their enthusiasm is most encouraging. I cannot continue without saying that we have been hugely impressed by the work put in by the Clerks and all the team who give us the presentations and so on. I will keep my remarks very short, because we want to hear the proper detail about this particularly harrowing issue, but I want to end by saying that to my mind the work of the Petitions Committee is very important, and it has a very high hit rate from members of the public who watch the proceedings and go into Hansard to see what we said. It strikes me that that is an important part of the way we do democracy in this country. I will conclude my remarks with that.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

If Members wish to speak, they have to rise in their place.

Foreign Affairs and Defence

Debate between Edward Leigh and Jamie Stone

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have sat through this important debate and it has been an absolute pleasure. What a galaxy of maiden speeches we have heard all around us—and that, of course, is democracy. Everyone can take great encouragement from what they have seen today.

The only problem is that I do not know all these new faces, so can I issue a blanket apology in advance to all those on the Labour Benches if I come up to them and say, “I’m so pleased you are a new Lib Dem MP”? I do not mean anything by it. If I say to Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches, “Well done on getting elected on a Labour ticket”, I am terribly sorry about that. You can take comfort, Mr Deputy Speaker, in the fact that I visited an old folks’ home recently and a lovely old lady thought I was Jeremy Thorpe. At least it was the right party.

I am on my feet today because my party’s defence spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), is ill with covid. I am sure we all wish him a speedy recovery. However, I did five years as my party’s defence spokesperson. That leads me to my main theme, which I will touch on by simply saying that we will build relationships with those on the Government Front Bench and the shadow Front Bench—that is how we work.

I will always remember Ben Wallace arranging for me and the present Secretary of State to be helicoptered to Belvoir castle for a meeting of the joint expeditionary force Foreign Ministers. I have never forgotten that, because it was just two days before Putin’s tanks rolled across the border. I remember going in the car from the MOD to board our military helicopter, and the civil servant asking me and the present Secretary of State, “What do you think will happen?” I think we both said, “He’ll probably invade.”

I also remember Ben Wallace saying, during the dinner with the Foreign Secretaries, “I am doing this because Governments change and it’s as well you are prepared, although you may belong to other parties, and that you know as much as you can about the defence brief.” I want to go on the record as thanking Ben Wallace for his very generous attitude to keeping me briefed on intelligence, and I thank the present Secretary of State for his generous offer to see that my colleague, my party’s defence spokesperson, is similarly briefed. That is very good news indeed.

I want to congratulate, through reasons of friendship, those on the Government Front Bench on their appointments; it is very good to see them in their places—and indeed, I am bound to say, it is good to see those on the Opposition Front Bench in their places. The shadow Foreign Secretary was quite correct to remind us of what is going on in Sudan. It is not just about Russia and Ukraine or the middle east; there are all sorts of terrible things happening in the world. I liked too the Secretary of State’s saying that Britain is “democracy’s most reliable ally”. We ought to remember that on a day like today, when all these new faces exemplify democracy in its good, healthy, working form.

I do not have much time, but I want to touch on two points, one of which I think those on both Front Benches know I care passionately about. I served for a short spell of time as a private soldier in the Territorial Army, and one of my children served in the forces until recently. The size of our forces matters an enormous amount to my party, and I think we all understand that we are very far stretched at the moment—hence my intervention earlier in the debate about the present size of the British Army being not exactly helpful to recruitment.

One other thing that I think is desperately important, based on when we met with the joint expeditionary force Foreign Ministers, is that—as all hon. Members have said—we must work across borders, we must work with the European community, and we must work with friends. Only by co-operation, by standing together, can we take on the Russian bear and see it off. As has quite correctly been said, if Ukraine falls, what is next?

Finally, in defence debates during my years in this place, I have always thought the atmosphere of consensus across party boundaries very important. I know from my own family that it was encouraging to our servicewomen and servicemen to know that politicians were speaking as one. From what I have heard this afternoon, I have no reason to worry that that will not go on in future. I think that we can work together for the defence of our nation, which we love so well.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Edward Leigh)]

I call the Opposition spokesperson.