Oral Answers to Questions
George Galloway Excerpts(7 months ago)
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Oliver Dowden
As the hon. Gentleman will know, shortly before taking office the Foreign Secretary not only had all his interests properly reviewed by the propriety and ethics team in my Department, but went through them with the independent adviser on ministers’ interests. The independent adviser set out all relevant interests, and those have been published, so the information is transparently out there for people to be able to judge for themselves.
George Galloway (Rochdale) (WPB)
Oliver Dowden
As the hon. Gentleman will know, any criminal allegations are properly a matter for the courts, and he would not expect a Minister to comment on them from this Dispatch Box. If he wishes to write to me in respect of the further allegations he makes, I will be happy to take them up myself or with ministerial colleagues.
George Galloway (Rochdale) (WPB)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I appreciate that standards may have changed since I was last in this place, but in answer to the question asked by the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), rose to the Dispatch Box and said, “We have answered this question on a number of occasions.” Can that possibly be a legitimate ministerial answer? After all, that could be the answer to virtually every question that is ever asked in this House.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I cannot help agreeing with his final point, having sat in the Chair for thousands of hours and heard the same question answered again and again. He makes a very good point: Ministers are responsible, and have a duty to answer the question again and again. However, if the Minister thought—today or at any other time—that the appropriate answer in the circumstances was the one that the hon. Gentleman just quoted, that is not something that I can criticise, or a matter on which I can take action. As Mr Speaker has said many times, and as I am very pleased to repeat, what Ministers say at the Dispatch Box is not a matter for the Chair.
The hon. Gentleman’s point of order has brought us perfectly to just after 10.30 am. We can therefore proceed to the business question.
Oral Answers to Questions
George Galloway Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
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The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the potential of this innovative technology for patient care. I am delighted that more generally Cornwall is benefiting from our new hospital programme, providing a new women and children’s hospital at the Royal Cornwall Hospital, in the centre of Cornwall, which he and I discussed when I was last with him. NHS England is actively exploring opportunities to expand robotic-assisted surgery. Any decisions on funding new allocations will factor in health inequalities, such as areas with less access to robots to date. I will ensure that the current access to robotic surgery in my hon. Friend’s local community is appropriately considered by the relevant health Minister.
George Galloway (Rochdale) (WPB)
The Prime Minister told us on Monday that he was off to make a telephone call to Mr Netanyahu, to urge restraint on a Government that have killed and maimed well over 100,000 people in six months, 72% of them women and children. Will he tell us how the telephone call went? What will he do if his advice is not taken and an unrestrained war begins?
Iran-Israel Update
George Galloway Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
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The Prime Minister
I have personally repeatedly raised with Prime Minister Netanyahu the issue of settler violence in the west bank, as have my colleagues including the deputy Foreign Secretary. We have joined with allies in sanctioning the activity of particular individuals where it has been brought to our attention and we will continue to ensure that the Israeli Government do everything they can to reduce tension in the west bank. It is not conducive to long-term peace in the region, and that is why we have taken action where we can, as well as being explicit with the Israeli Government about our concerns.
George Galloway (Rochdale) (WPB)
Mr Speaker, I knew your father well for a very long time. He was a fine man, and I am sincerely sorry for your loss.
There was not one single word in the Prime Minister’s statement of condemnation of the Israeli destruction of the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which is the proximate reason for the event everyone is here in concert condemning. He was not even asked to do so by the Opposition Front Bench. Kay Burley is the only person so far to demand that of a Government Minister. We have no treaty with Israel—at least not one that Parliament has been shown. The Iranians are not likely to listen to the Prime Minister when Britain occupied Iran, looted its wealth and overthrew its one democratic socialist Government in my lifetime.
The Prime Minister
Whatever may have happened a few weeks ago, it is absolutely no justification for launching more than 300 drones and missiles from one sovereign state towards Israel—it is as simple as that. In the hon. Gentleman’s question, not once did he condemn that action or, indeed, the actions of Hamas in the region. There is no equivalence between these things whatever, and to suggest otherwise is simply wrong.
Scrutiny of Secretaries of State in the House of Lords
George Galloway Excerpts(8 months, 1 week ago)
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George Galloway (Rochdale) (WPB)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), my successor as the Member of Parliament for the most educated place in Britain. It was once said that the Glasgow Hillhead constituency had the highest pro rata subscription rate to the New Statesman of any constituency in the land. He showed it in the erudition, albeit on a rather Ruritanian state of affairs, of his contribution. I am grateful to him for securing this debate and for giving me time that might otherwise have been appropriated by him to make this contribution.
“Some chicken, some neck,” Mr Churchill famously said. To paraphrase Mr Churchill, some Secretary of State, some time. This is not comparable to Peter Mandelson being the Business Secretary in the House of Lords; this is a time of great international peril, where foreign affairs is undoubtedly the biggest single item in our inboxes. It must be true: there are millions on the streets. Well, it is certainly true of my inbox. There are millions on the streets about Britain’s foreign policy. There are demonstrations daily and weekly all over the country. People are seized of our role in international affairs. I have never known a time like it—and there cannot be many Members in the House who have participated in more foreign policy issues, from the 1980s until now—when our people are so occupied, and many are preoccupied, by our role in the world.
What I am about to say is in no sense disrespect for the current occupant of the Foreign Secretaryship. Quite the contrary: he is a big improvement on his predecessor, and he is a cut above his likely successor. I do not demur at all from the idea that Lord Cameron is a skilled international diplomat. Our problem, as a country which is forever lecturing other people on the quality of their democracy, is that we now have an unelected head of state, an unelected Prime Minister and an unelected Foreign Secretary, the second most important piece on the Treasury Bench. That is Ruritanian. It is actually rather absurd if you start to consider it.
The hon. Member for Glasgow North was adumbrating the possible outcomes of a lectern being erected just at that white line there. The microphones would need to be adjusted and faced that way instead of towards you, Madam Deputy Speaker. That is ridiculous. If there was a will, there would be a way. The silence from the Government in response to the Procedure Committee’s beseeching of them to find a solution to this situation is eloquent, as such lengthy silences always are.
We have a situation where daily, if not hourly, new and dramatic foreign policy developments are occurring. Just this day, for example, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that the port being built in Gaza with the rubble of the homes destroyed in the bombing, including the skulls and the bones of the people destroyed with the houses and lying unburied under the rubble, is being built for the deportation of millions of Palestinians from the territory—an act of ethnic cleansing of the foulest kind. We would have expected a statement from the Foreign Secretary in the light of such a dramatic development, but statement came there none, and good has come there none. His able deputy—and I share the hon. Gentleman’s feelings for the Minister of State; he is a fine man, and I have known him for a very long time—cannot possibly cope with all this workload as, effectively, Lord Cameron’s deputy in this place, his vicar on earth; but even if he could, he would still not be the Foreign Secretary. We cannot continue to be a democratic country—
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Chris Stephens
Thank you for that strict reminder, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if he or I were to secure an urgent question, the same principle would apply and the Foreign Secretary would not be here?
George Galloway
Indeed, could not be here—for reasons which are what? Are they about architecture? Kindly guide me with your eyebrows as you normally do, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I am going on for too long; I am not entirely sure about the timing of all this.
As a matter of architecture, for a democratic Chamber to be bereft of the presence of its principal diplomat and the country’s principal diplomat, at a time of massive international tension, is completely absurd. On this day in 2003, our country went off to fight the most disastrous war that we have fought for well over 100 years. It was a disastrous decision, but at least it was a decision that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary of the day were ready to, and had to, defend each and every single day. The debates—not many of us who are here now were involved in them, except thee and me, Madam Deputy Speaker—were of the fiercest and most urgent kind. But we may now be on the brink of world war three. Little Macron may be about to march his legionnaires into Odesa, creating the gravest international crisis since the second world war, and we will not be able to question our Foreign Secretary about it. We will have to wait for the morning editions to learn what the Government intend to do.
War in Ukraine, war in Gaza, maybe war against Iran, war in the Red sea, war everywhere; Foreign Secretary, nowhere—nowhere, at least, where he can be questioned by the people in this country who are elected to question him. That is the point, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is our duty to hold Ministers to account, but by definition, in this situation we cannot hold the occupant of this office to account. We talk about great offices of state. At such a time of high tension, there can be no doubt that the second most important office of state in Britain today is that of the Foreign Secretary, but he is outwith our reach. We cannot, as we once did, rub shoulders with him in the Division Lobby; we cannot even see him in the Members’ Tea Room. We cannot bump into him in the Corridor. We cannot in any way impress on him that millions upon millions of our fellow citizens and our constituents have this or that concern or point of view on the great issues of the day. This is untenable, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am seeking to inject some note of urgency and passion into this because it is an untenable situation.
I wish that it had been possible to find one Conservative Member who was capable of being Foreign Secretary. It would have been much easier, and this debate would not be happening, but none of them was up to the job. It is therefore immediately incumbent on the Government to bring forward a solution whereby we are able to look in the eyes of the second most important politician in the state and press upon him the political preoccupations that occupy the concerns of millions of us.