Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Steve Baker(8 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Steve Baker)
Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker, I can so assure my hon. Friend. I am very grateful to him for bringing his professional expertise to bear within the working group. We have met twice and we intend to report at the end of June. We will then have a consistent and coherent position with which we can go forward to blend a combination of adaptation and, I hope, productive negotiations with the EU to deliver a long-lasting, permanent solution to safeguard both animal and human health on the island of Ireland. I am determined that we should do that in a coherent and professional manner, and I look forward to working with him to do so.
Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Steve Baker(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Baker
Indeed, she nods again.
When I sat here and listened to the Prime Minister’s words, I was deeply moved. For all that I have said that if he broke the law, acquiesced in breaking the law or lied at the Dispatch Box, he must go, I still felt moved to forgive. But I want to be honest to the House, and to my voters, and say that that spirit of earnest willingness to forgive lasted about 90 seconds of the 1922 Committee meeting, which I am sorry to say was its usual orgy of adulation. It was a great festival of bombast, and I am afraid that I cannot bear such things. This level of transgression and this level of demand for forgiveness requires more than an apology in order to draw a line under it and move on in the way that the Prime Minister sought to do overnight with his interviews.
I am sorry to be saying that on the record like this, but I am afraid that the Prime Minister and those who advise him need to understand that this is a permanent stone in his shoe. Those of us who want to forgive him have to see permanent contrition, a permanent change of attitude and permanent acknowledgement of people such as my constituent who did not get to see his wife in a care home on their 50th wedding anniversary. I think he saw her only through a window on her 75th birthday. I have been married for only 25 years, but I know what that would mean to me. What am I to say to that man, who did not see his wife before she died? I could say, “You and I are Christian men, and forgiveness is hard.”
I do not like forgiving the Prime Minister. My spirit is much more full of wrath and vengeance. I feel much more Ezekiel 7:3 about this issue, and I invite everybody to look that up. I do not want to forgive our Prime Minister. The trouble is that I like him and helped him to get where he is—I will come back to that in a moment—and the problem is that I am under a command to forgive.
I will talk about what the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) said. When I and others went out of our way not only to make my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, but to do our bit—in my case, systematically—to help get an 80-seat majority, of course we did not think that he would exhibit a meticulous grasp of tedious and boring minute rules. But we did know that he had two jobs: he had to get us out of the European Union, which he was fully committed to doing, and he had to defeat the radical leaders of the Labour party. He had to do so in an environment in which everyone was exhausted, we were testing our constitution to destruction, and the internal stability of the United Kingdom was at stake. That is the job we gave him to do, and by goodness he did it. For that I am thankful, and he will live with my thanks forever. He deserves to be lauded in the history books.
The problem that I now have, having watched what I would say was beautiful, marvellous contrition, is that the Prime Minister’s apology lasted only as long as it took to get out of the headmaster’s study. That is not good enough for me, and it is not good enough for my voters—I am sorry, but it is not. I am afraid that I now have to acknowledge that if the Prime Minister occupied any other office of senior responsibility—if he were a Secretary of State, a Minister of State, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary, a permanent secretary, a director general, a chief executive of a private company or a board director—he would be long gone. The reason that he is not long gone is that it is an extremely grave matter to remove a sitting Prime Minister, and goodness knows I have had something to do with that too. It is an extremely grave matter and an extremely big decision, and it tends to untether history. All of us should approach such things with reverence, awe and an awareness of the difficulty of doing it and the potential consequences.
That is why I have been tempted to forgive, but I have to say that the possibility of that has now gone. I am sorry, but for not obeying the letter and the spirit of the law—we have heard that the Prime Minister knew what the letter was—the Prime Minister should now be long gone. I will certainly vote for the motion but, really, the Prime Minister should just know that the gig is up.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
The House will be aware that a great many people wish to speak this afternoon. If we are to continue in the spirit of fairness to one another, I hope that we will manage without a time limit. I am testing the integrity of hon. Members: please stick to around five minutes. That way, everybody will have the chance to participate more or less equally. If it does not work, I will put on a time limit, as usual.
NHS Update
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Steve Baker(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I must just say to the House that the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) is not the only Member this week and in recent weeks who has addressed the Minister as “Minister”. I am sorry to pull up the hon. Lady. I am doing it to her because I know that she can take it and will not be upset by my criticising her. I am rather more gentle with the new Members, so I thank the hon. Lady for helping me in this by allowing me to use her as an example. When a Member asks a question, you do not say, “Minister, are you going to do this?” You say, “Madam Deputy Speaker, or Mr Speaker, does the Minister understand that she must do this?” We must not lose sight of that because it changes the way in which dialogue occurs in this place. Just because it is hot, the end of term and we have covid problems does not mean that we let our standards fall.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
On Monday, Sky News was among those who reported that frontline health workers in England are to be spared self-isolation rules in an emergency move to tackle the pingdemic that has triggered an NHS staffing crisis. I am very pleased, because, of course, the NHS has a special place in all our hearts and in all our constituents’ hearts, but so, too, does food in the supermarkets and on our tables, and the capacity of businesses to recover, particularly theatres, which have been in the news. What will my hon. Friend do to ensure that everyone is freed from this great curse of the pingdemic, which is keeping us from our recovery?
Public Health
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Steve Baker(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con) [V]
These rules are necessary and the Government made the right call when they put the country into lockdown in order to protect lives. Nothing that I am about to say should in any way be taken to diminish people’s obligation to obey the law.
My first point is that we see that these regulations were made on 26 March at 1 pm. The Prime Minister announced these rules on 23 March and police officers quickly set about enforcing them, stopping people on trains and, in one case, overturning a barbecue. People very quickly found themselves subject to what seemed to be enforcement action. On 24 March, the Government sent a text message, saying that new rules were “in force now” and that people “must stay at home”. The problem is that those rules were not in force at that time; they were not in force until 26 March. I press on the Minister the fact that we must not again have a situation where the Prime Minister makes an announcement at a press conference and police officers start enforcing rules before they are made. We must in future make the law and then tell the public that it is enforced. I press on him the fact that that must not happen again.
Secondly, there is a good case that these regulations are ultra vires, and I recommend that the Government have a contingency plan in place in case a court case— a judicial review—succeeds in demonstrating that. I will try to sketch out the position very quickly—if I have understood it correctly. This is from an opinion from Blackstone, and I have tweeted the original article if people have an interest in the detail. It says:
“The regulations purport to authorise conduct which would otherwise constitute the torts of false imprisonment and trespass to the person”—
that is the physical restraint and forcible removal to one’s home. It goes on to say that for primary legislation to sanction such tortious conduct there must be
“express words or necessary implication”
to that effect. But section 45G(2)(j) of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984, under which these rules are made, does not expressly, or by necessary implication, authorise physical confinement.
It is also the case that the Act expressly prohibits the Secretary of State from imposing certain of the special restrictions on people; they can only be imposed by a magistrate. It suggests that, under the 1984 Act, the Secretary of State was not meant to be able to put on people restrictions that would otherwise be tortious—false imprisonment or physical restraint, for example. Therefore, we may be in a position where these draconian rules—these necessary rules—are not well founded in law, and I would like to know today the Government’s position on that. I would like to be assured that, if the lockdown needs to continue, the Government will have a contingency plan in place to ensure that it is well founded in law.
The third point was very well made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders). He called for harmony between the guidance and the law. There have been very severe, absurd problems arising because the police have sought to enforce rules that were not actually in law. For example, the law in England does not specify that people may not drive to exercise. I know of people who have stayed at home because they need to drive a short distance from a place where they cannot exercise to one where they can. People have been accused, for example, of not sweating adequately when cycling. When doing yoga, they have been accused of not exercising. These things are absurd and wrong and worrying for law-abiding people. The Government may not in future be able to close this difficult area by harmonising the guidance with the rules, so what I suggest is for them to have a look at the Highway Code, where there is already a precedent for rules given with a “should”, which means that they are, in a sense, guidance and not enforceable, and for things that people must or must not do. Given that we have that precedent, can we please close this gap, so that police officers are not put in the invidious position of trying to enforce what are really no more than Ministers’ opinions of what should be done—in other words, things that are not in law.
I want to finish by saying that I am very grateful to the Prime Minister for his liberalism. I am extremely thankful for the exceptionally high-quality policing in Wycombe, where I have had no complaints. None the less, the people of the United Kingdom should not have to rely on the goodwill of the Prime Minister and the Government or the good sense of police officers in order to go about their lawful business. I implore my friends on the Front Bench to ensure that we uphold the rule of law and the freedoms on which they depend.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. The Opposition Member who was due to speak next is not now taking part in the debate, so we go to another Government Member, Selaine Saxby.
Early Parliamentary General Election Bill
Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Steve BakerTuesday 29th October 2019
(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Baker
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who reminds me that he is one of the most powerful champions of the voice of Scotland. Though I wish to pay tribute to him for a little longer, I should move on to amendments 2 and 3, which seek to change the date of the election. Why anyone would wish to move the date from the traditional day of a Thursday to a Monday, I cannot imagine. I am rather concerned that it is based on some perceived advantage of holding the poll on a Monday, which obviously would not be appropriate.
Dame Eleanor, I hope you will forgive me if I dilate a little on some of the other amendments. I received some constituency correspondence today asking me to back amendment 1, which relates to citizens of the European Union. Whatever our love for the citizens of the European Union who are in the UK, and however willing and delighted we are to embrace their work and welcome them to stay in the UK, it would be quite wrong to expand the franchise—
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I understand why the hon. Gentleman is taking this opportunity to speak to amendment 1, but as that amendment has not been selected, it is out of order for him to speak to it. However, if he were to make his remarks in the context of amendments 2 or 3, he would be in order.
Mr Baker
Thank you, Dame Eleanor. I will just say, in the context of amendments 2 or 3, that any attempt to gerrymander the poll to try to produce a particular result would be wrong and outrageous. Some of the other amendments tabled, which went beyond amendments 2 and 3, were quite blatant attempts to produce a particular result. That is wrong, and I am grateful that they have not been selected.
Mr Baker
I think Conservative Members are quite comfortable with the notion that Scotland is a nation, but the United Kingdom is the basis for the electorate for this House, and it is quite right that the franchise should therefore be in citizens, or perhaps subjects, of the United Kingdom.
I do feel, Dame Eleanor, that I should now draw my opening remarks to a conclusion. I will simply say, on a serious note, that this Bill of course has to go through the other place. If the other place were to insert amendments in this simple and straightforward Bill that sought to produce a particular outcome, we would have to say that it has no right whatever to do that and that it would be quite unconstitutional. I think its Members would be playing with fire and, indeed, they would be playing with their own futures in that House were they to seek to amend the Bill to produce a particular outcome.
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Thank you—perfect timing.
Question put, That the amendment be made.