Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Julian Lewis(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Thank you for calling a state-educated Conservative Member, Madam Deputy Speaker.
May I, through the Secretary of State, thank Baroness Barran, who reached out immediately to me, together with a highly competent senior official, when this problem arose in one of my local schools this March? Not only did they do that, but they seized the opportunity to encourage a resending of the questionnaire to the network of schools, through the contact that I had with one of my local headteachers. I have rarely, in 26 years in this House, seen a Department so proactive on an issue as this Department has been on this one, and I thank it for that.
National Security
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Julian Lewis(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I call the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Dr Julian Lewis.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
May I start by apologising to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the House for the fact that I will not be able to stay for the remainder of the statement, as I would normally wish to do?
I congratulate my right hon. Friend again on his new responsibilities. I remind him that, in 2013, extensive new legislation gave considerably greater powers to the intelligence and security agencies. In return for that, an understanding was reached—and there was a memorandum of understanding—between the Prime Minister and the Intelligence and Security Committee that we would have oversight of the various agencies that had improved and increased powers; and that, as the situation changes, we would continue to have oversight of new organisations of the sort that he is announcing today. Will he confirm that the elements of the taskforce’s activities that involve, for scrutiny, access to classified information will fall under the purview of the Intelligence and Security Committee; and that he will break the bad practice that was brought in by the last but one Prime Minister of farming such matters out to ordinary parliamentary Select Committees, which, with the best will in the world, cannot conduct the scrutiny properly because they lack the secure facilities and suitably cleared staff?
Tom Tugendhat
I thank the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, who knows well the importance that I place on Committees. I merely challenge him on one small aspect: there is no such thing as an ordinary Committee in this House. All of them are select and are selected by the House for the purposes that they have been asked to investigate. I make absolutely clear my commitment to work with his Committee and the Committees of others, as relevant, to ensure that the necessary democratic oversight of Government is complete.
Britain in the World
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Julian Lewis(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Dr Lewis
I do, and in this there is an important rebuttal of a point often made by those who think we can afford to cut out certain capabilities because we are members of an alliance and we can rely on other allies to supply capabilities that we ourselves do not have. That leaves out of account what happens if, heaven forbid, we are involved in a major conflict and one of our allies is knocked out and no longer able to supply us with the missing capabilities. So while we cannot do everything, we have to be able to do as many things as are possible within a reasonable financial envelope. My point about the percentages is that they give us a rough idea of what is reasonable at any given time in a country’s circumstances.
The spectrum of threats ranges from, at the most extreme end, nuclear obliteration, through conventional defeat and subjugation, to what is generally regarded in the terminology as 21st-century threats—terrorism, subversion, infiltration, disinformation, cyber and space. In the short time remaining, I want to focus on the point about which I had an exchange with the Foreign Secretary during his speech, and that is the question of the defence review.
My concern goes back to 2017, when, as I referred to in my intervention, we had something called the national security capability review. That was meant to look at defence and security altogether, but it was also meant to be fiscally neutral, which meant that if we decided that we wanted to spend more on dealing with so-called 21st-century threats—I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) nodding in recollection of and, I hope, agreement with my analysis—such as subversion or disinformation or especially cyber, we had to start cutting core conventional capabilities.
I draw the House’s attention, not for the first time, to a very revealing article in The Guardian, no less, on 26 June 2018, in which it was reported that there had been an “increasingly bitter stand-off” between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence. It read:
“The row has its origins in July last year, when the Cabinet Office announced the national security adviser, Sir Mark Sedwill, would conduct a review of the threats facing the UK and the capabilities needed to meet them. His brief was to look at the UK security needs in the round, taking in the intelligence agencies as well as the MoD. He was also to evaluate the risks posed by terrorists and cyber-attacks as well as from conventional forces.”
That sounds rather similar to what we heard today. The article continues:
“By the autumn, it was clear the intelligence agencies had come out on top and the MoD was looking at being forced to make cuts, with options ranging from reducing the size of the army from 77,000 to 70,000, cutting 1,000 Royal Marines and decommissioning two specialist amphibious-landing ships, HMS Bulwark and HMS Albion.
There was a consensus among mandarins involved in the negotiations the UK was less likely to need two specialist amphibious landing ships than the ability to defend against a cyber-attack on its infrastructure or financial networks.
But there was a backlash from an informal coalition led by Williamson,”—
my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson)—
“appointed in November, and the chairman of the defence select committee… as well as a score or more Conservative MPs (and Labour ones with defence jobs in their constituencies)...
One of the arguments from Tory backbenchers was the military were disproportionately represented”—
they mean under-represented—
“in negotiations dominated by politicians with no military background and by the intelligence agencies.
The counter-arguments were little aired in the media: that the UK should abandon its adherence to tradition and instead build a modern force, a pared-down one, with lower spending levels closer to comparable Europeans neighbours. Compared with the UK’s 2.1% of GDP spent on defence, France spends 1.79%, Germany 1.2%... Italy 1.1% and Spain 0.9%.”
The cat was out of the bag—the establishment and the Treasury wanted us to reduce our spending on what is conventionally understood as defence in favour of new capabilities. I entirely agree that we need to spend more on new capabilities, but why does that mean that we have to spend less on conventional capabilities when, as I set out at the beginning, we have no idea what the nature of a future conflict will be? As the threats are augmented and the dangers multiply, we should be spending more, not less.
I return to that rough yardstick of the percentage terms. The Defence Committee spent a lot of time trying to work out what really had happened to defence, because, as we know, the criteria were changed for calculating our GDP percentage expenditure on defence. We were able to establish objectively that
“calculated on a historically consistent basis”,
in the last four years for which figures are available, although officially we spent 2.2%, 2.1%, 2.1% and 2.1%, in reality—on the basis on which it used to be calculated —we spent 1.9%, 1.8%, 1.8% and, again, 1.8%.
I conclude by saying that it used to be the case that in the 1980s we spent roughly the same on defence, on education and on health. We now spend two and a half times on education and four times on health what we spend on defence. No one is asking to go back to the levels of expenditure, comparatively speaking, of the 1980s, but even in the mid-1990s we felt ourselves able to invest 3% of GDP on keeping ourselves safe, not the 4% to 5% that we spent in the 1980s. That is a worthwhile target, an acceptable target and a target to which the Government need to aspire.
NATO
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Julian Lewis(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I believe that I am right in saying that this is the third defence debate this year to be held in the main Chamber and if the opening speeches—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman just as he is starting. I had omitted to tell him and the House that there has to be an initial time limit of seven minutes, which will begin not from when the right hon. Gentleman started, but from now.
Dr Lewis
That is very generous of you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
If the opening speeches in this debate are anything to go by, I think that the temperature will be very similar to that of the first two debates and show a welcome unanimity on both sides of the House about the importance of defence investment in peacetime to ensure that we minimise the chances of conflict breaking out.
The shadow Secretary of State referred to the importance of investing in the whole range of conventional capabilities. As far as I can see, that is common ground among all the main parties in this House, even though there are differences of opinion about the nuclear dimension. The difficulty that we face is that defence investment costs a lot of money, and defence inflation has been running ahead of defence investment. As a result, we repeatedly hear phrases such as “hollowing out” and “black holes in the budget”. It was useful that she said that she felt that defence investment, in real terms, had fallen by about £10 billion.
I do not think I am giving away anything more than I should by saying that in a few days’ time the Defence Committee will publish a new report entitled, “Indispensable Allies?”, referring to the defence relationship between the United States, the United Kingdom and NATO. In that report, we do some calculations and projections about defence investment. We can see that at every level at which we estimate gross domestic product to grow over the next few years, an extra 0.5% of GDP equates, roughly speaking, to £10 billion. That is why when my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) referred to the need to move towards 2.5% or 3% of GDP, we understood the sorts of figures that we are aiming to achieve.
It was slightly unfortunate that when we published our most recent report, “Beyond 2 per cent”, a few days ago, it coincided with the welcome announcement that £20 billion will be found for investment in the national health service. As I said in an intervention, while we obviously welcome the investment that is made in other high-spending Departments, it is important to remember how defence used to compare with those other calls on our Exchequer. At the time of the cold war in the 1980s, which is in the memory of most of us sitting in this House today, we spent roughly the same on health, on education and on defence. Now we spend multiples more on activities other than defence. Indeed, welfare—on which we used to spend 6% in the 1960s, just as we spent 6% on defence at that time—now takes up six times as much of our national wealth as does defence. So it is fairly easy to see that, by any standard of comparison, defence has fallen down the scale of our national priorities.
We have been very focused on Europe today because of the debate that took place immediately prior to this debate. It is worth reminding ourselves of the steps that led to the foundation of NATO. This may come as a slight surprise to some Members, but it actually goes back to the end of 1941, when three small European countries, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands—who had all been overrun by Nazi Germany and whose Foreign Ministers were taking shelter in London—made an approach to the British Foreign Office. They said, “We’ve tried being neutral. We’ve tried keeping out of power politics. It has failed. Our countries have been occupied by brutal aggressors. When this terrible war is over, we want Britain to have permanent military bases on our territory so that we can never be caught out like this again.” It was from that invitation given to the United Kingdom to base military forces in countries that had put their trust in pacifism and neutralism, and had that trust betrayed, that NATO ultimately came into existence.
The Secretary of State began by paying tribute to the people who made the ultimate sacrifice in a time of war. It is certainly the case that when a war breaks out, there is no shortage of people willing to make that sacrifice, and what is more, there is no shortage of money to be invested in fighting and winning that conflict. The question that always faces us is what to do in peacetime. There is a paradox of peacetime preparedness, if Members will excuse the alliteration, which is that we prepare by investing in armed forces that we hope will never be used. That is what we have to do, and it is a difficult battle to fight to persuade people in peacetime to invest money in things that we hope we will not have to send into action.
Points of Order
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Julian Lewis
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Further to the previous points of order—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Further to the previous almost points of order, I give the right hon. Gentleman the benefit of the doubt that this might be a point of order.
Dr Lewis
I think that this one might actually be a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Although the Defence Committee has not withdrawn from the Committees on Arms Export Controls, I am aware of the serious concern that was caused by the leak of a draft report that those Committees had drawn up. Do you agree that it is of absolute importance that if Select Committees, or quadripartite composite Committees like this, are to function, there must be no question of draft reports being leaked for political purposes, as happened in this case?
Madam Deputy Speaker
That may or may not be a point of order in relation to order in the Chamber, but it is a point about which Mr Speaker will be extremely concerned, and we should all be extremely concerned, because the leaking of reports undermines the work of the Committees who are working hard on them. It is not honourable behaviour becoming of hon. Members of this House to leak reports.
Points of Order
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Julian Lewis
Madam Deputy Speaker
I wish I could correct the hon. Lady, but her observation that it is often the case that the male kind of person does not listen when the female is speaking is, indeed, correct. With persistence, we will overcome that. I assure the hon. Lady that the Chair has heard what she has said, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that the matter that he has raised has been properly listened to in this House.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I, within the rules of order, express the hope that 23 June will go down as independence day for the United Kingdom as a whole?
Madam Deputy Speaker
The right hon. Gentleman knows that that is not a matter for the Chair, and that I would not dream of encouraging him to express, or of forbidding him from expressing, that hope over and over again.
Intelligence and Security Committee
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Julian Lewis
Dr Lewis
I am delighted to know that. I have to admit to the hon. Gentleman that one of the reasons I put myself forward for a place on the Committee was to test the water and see if any of my past nefarious activities, as he would regard them, would result in my being black-balled. I came to the conclusion that I was appointed for one of two reasons: either it was thought that I was so discreet—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I fully appreciate the points that the hon. Gentleman is making, but however exceedingly interesting they may be, they do not entirely relate to the very narrow motion before us.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Julian Lewis(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Mrs Laing
I assume that the hon. Gentleman is referring to the acts of the last-but-one Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who packed more members of the Labour party into the House of Lords than any previous Prime Minister had done. And no, I do not think it is fair, but that is not relevant. I am sure that his party will be pleased to hear his criticism of its hero, Mr Blair.
I have had more difficulty in supporting the first part of the Bill, although it is obvious that we have to have a referendum because it is part of the deal done between the two parties in order to form the coalition agreement. We need a coalition Government in order to give the country the stability that we require to deal with the horrific economic circumstances left behind by the last Labour Government.
Dr Julian Lewis
I am sorry to make an unhelpful intervention on my hon. Friend, whom I greatly admire, but my understanding of a deal for a coalition Government is that when a bargain is made, both sides stick to it. That is why I voted for this Bill on Second Reading, despite my objections to it. Subsequently, however, the part of the bargain that induced me to endorse the deal—namely, the fact that we were told that the Liberals would accept the renewal of the Trident strategic nuclear deterrent—was dishonoured. That is why I shall be voting against the Bill on Third Reading.
Mrs Laing
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, but it does not change my arguments about the Bill. I appreciate his point, but I still say that we should have a coalition in order to provide the stability that the country needs in the aftermath of Labour’s economic disasters. It is therefore necessary to have this Bill and to have a referendum.
It is a great pity that the referendum is to be held on the same day as other elections. We have heard many very well put arguments, particularly from Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, about why the referendum should not take place on the same day as their national elections. Nor should a referendum go ahead without a threshold. That could result in a vote on a derisory turnout of some 15% changing our constitution. That is quite simply wrong, but I realise that the Government are not going to accept that argument because, once again, these provisions are in the coalition agreement, by which we are bound.