Oral Answers to Questions
James Gray Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman’s lobbying for Manchester and will of course seriously consider what he says. May I also say how pleased I am that Manchester will host the parade for our Olympic athletes?
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
The Prime Minister
I absolutely agree with all my hon. Friend’s points. We must never forget the importance of NATO. It is the cornerstone of our defence and security, and that strength is based on the fact that all NATO partners have committed to article 5 and to operating on the basis of article 5. Anybody who rejects that is rejecting that security and that defence. They would be undermining not only our national security, but the national security of our allies. What we know from the Labour party is that far from delivering stronger defence, it would cut defence spending, undermine NATO and scrap the nuclear deterrent.
Record Copies of Acts
James Gray Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House disagrees with the conclusion of the House of Commons Administration Committee’s First Report of Session 2015-16; welcomes the view expressed by the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General that government funds would be available to pay for the continued use of vellum for printing Acts of Parliament; is unwilling to amend or resile from the terms of the Resolutions agreed by both Houses on 12 February 1849; and accordingly instructs the Clerk of the House to convey to the Clerk of the Parliaments that the House of Commons has withheld its consent to the use of archival paper rather than vellum for the printing of record copies of public Acts of Parliament.
The motion is in my name and those of 43 colleagues from both sides of the House. If it is passed, it will send a strong message to the other place—the House of Lords—that its unilateral decision to end the ancient practice of using vellum to record Acts of Parliament is not accepted by this House. If that occurs, I very much hope that the other House will listen carefully to the views of this place. We have moved from a matter of grave significance to the world and to humanity—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman. It is most discourteous of Members to gather at the end of the Chamber when someone is trying to make an important speech.
Mr Gray
I am most grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am not certain whether my speech can be described as important, but I am nevertheless grateful to you for your flattering remark.
This debate is of less importance than the previous one, and I make no complaint about losing some time to that debate, which was about something of very grave concern to the world. None the less, this matter is important in terms of symbolism and for a number of other reasons, which I will return to in a moment. I feel no shame in bringing forward this matter.
I intend to be reasonably brief, not least because the main arguments in favour of saving vellum for the future have been laid out this week in an outstandingly good article in that outstandingly good magazine, The House. Unfortunately, because that magazine is printed on paper, those arguments will disappear within a matter of a year or two. If it were printed on vellum, they would still be in existence some 5,000 years from now. It is therefore important that I advance the arguments in a way that future generations will be able to remember.
I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who has fought this battle for a very long time, and her Labour colleagues who, in 1999—the last time this matter was raised—were resolute in defeating the House of Lords. I also pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Mark Lancaster). As a member of the Government, he is probably unable to speak in the debate, but I know his support for William Cowley and sons in his constituency, the last remaining vellum manufacturer, is second to none. I believe that his neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), is hoping to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, to speak on the company’s behalf.
I would be the first to accept there are a great many more important matters that we should discuss in this place. I would not have wished to discuss the use of vellum were it not for the fact that the House of Lords unilaterally, without consulting us, decided to discontinue it. All I am seeking to do in the debate is to assert our right as the House of Commons to have at least a say in the matter. If we have a Division later and the motion is defeated—if the House of Commons decides to agree with their lordships to abolish the use of vellum—so be it. However, it is right that Members should have a say about how our laws are recorded for future generations, as we did in 1999, 1849 and throughout the generations.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
My hon. Friend might not be aware of this, but I, as a fellow member of the Administration Committee, have changed my view on this matter, and I now very much agree with him because I believe that this change would be a false economy. We must hang on to this tradition and cherish it.
Mr Gray
It takes a big politician to say that they have changed their mind, and my hon. Friend is indeed a big politician. I pay tribute to him for being ready to change his mind.
Three broad arguments are advanced by those who would abolish the use of vellum, each of which can be easily dealt with. The first and main argument is the cost of using vellum to record our Acts of Parliament. It is alleged that the cost of printing Acts on vellum comes to £103,000 per year, whereas doing so on paper would cost £30,000 per year. The House of Lords therefore says that the saving would be in the order of £70,000 per year. However, I have been thorough in my research, and I have been in touch with the Archives and Records Association of the UK and Ireland. Its chief executive, Mr John Chambers, who is the authority on these matters, tells me that the cost of printing on vellum is identical to that of printing on paper. The cost of printing the laws of this land is approximately £56,000 per annum and the cost of vellum is a relatively small amount on top of that. In other words, the saving by changing to paper would be, at best, perhaps £10,000 or £20,000 a year.
William Cowley and sons, the last vellum manufacturers and printers, tell me that the most they have ever been paid in a year was £47,000, and that was a year when we made far too many laws in this place, including too many long ones, so it cost more to print them. If we keep ourselves under control, pass fewer laws and keep them short, the amount that we pay to William Cowley and sons will be even less than that £47,000.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not just the laws of the land that are printed on vellum? Such things as the Torah scrolls that are used by members of the Jewish community are printed on vellum. If the sole provider of vellum in this country were forced to close because of the House of Lords stopping our use of vellum, that might inconvenience other people and force them to source their items from outside this country—assuming that they are not already doing so, which they might well be.
Mr Gray
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good and important point to which I will return in a moment.
We think that the figures produced by the House of Lords are pretty bogus and that the difference in cost, if there is one, will be marginal. In any event, I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General has announced that if there are any extra costs to be borne, Her Majesty’s Government, not this place, will bear them, which I welcome. I was also delighted that the shadow Chancellor indicated his support for the motion in discussions with me. He has authorised me to say that a Labour Government would also seek to fund the cost of vellum.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
In addition to the cost of vellum, there is the matter of the printing machinery, which is due to be replaced. Does the hon. Gentleman have an idea of the cost of the contract that would be required and the length of time the contract would need to be in existence to recoup that expenditure?
Mr Gray
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising an extremely important point. She is quite right that if some complicated piece of machinery were required at great cost, meaning that it would take us years and years to pay that off, it would be important to take that into consideration. However, the fact of the matter is that any corner shop—any printer in the land—can print on vellum. I have been informed by printers—there are two in my constituency who would be delighted to do it—that the £56,000 that is currently spent is a great deal too much, and that they would do it for significantly less.
Mr Gray
The hon. Lady will have a chance to make her points later. I am interested that she is apparently opposed to the motion.
The difference in cost will be pretty marginal, so let us move on to the substance of the matter. If we were to change to paper, I would be very surprised if the cost was as low as the House of Lords has indicated. The county of Hereford has announced this week that it has just opened a new archive centre at a cost of £11.5 million. Paper, of course, requires all sorts of special care over the years, whereas vellum, as can be demonstrated by a glance at the records in the Victoria Tower, survives for generations—hundreds of years—without any care whatsoever. It can be put in a cupboard and it will be as good as when it went in.
Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)
When I last had a proper job, I worked in local history publishing. We published John Morris’s translation of the Domesday Book and relied heavily on other archives, such as materials in the parish chest, that were written on vellum. I will not ask my hon. Friend to comment on whether I would be much the poorer had those things been written not on vellum but on paper, and it had disintegrated, but does he agree that we would be much poorer as a nation in our understanding of our history had such things been written on paper?
Mr Gray
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. Were I a nimble enough speaker, I would leap from the place where I am in my speech to the point to which she refers. However, I will talk in a moment about the things we have today because they were made of vellum but which we would not have if they had been made of paper.
Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)
My hon. Friend mentioned the debate in 1999, when Mr Brian White raised the issue, as a Milton Keynes Member, because the factory would have had to close. I made the point in that debate that down the other end of the building, there was an Act of Parliament dated 1497 that was on view to the public. It was not a facsimile or a replica; it was an Act of Parliament—it bore the sovereign’s signature and it was legible. We know that vellum lasts 500 years, but we do not know that any other material will last 500 years.
Mr Gray
My hon. Friend makes an extremely strong point.
The third argument that is sometimes advanced by those who are opposed to vellum is that this is some sort of animal rights or animal welfare matter because of the use of calfskins in making vellum. The answer to that point is that the calfskins are picked up from the abattoir. The calves are killed for the purpose of being eaten, so there is absolutely no animal welfare consideration of any kind at all. Indeed, we could argue that reusing the calfskins is a much more environmentally friendly approach.
In contrast to those three—rather weak, in my view—arguments in favour of abolishing vellum, there are three vastly stronger reasons for keeping it. First, vellum has for centuries been used for documents of significance and importance. University graduation certificates have always been on vellum, as have certificates of long service and military commissions. Every law in every Commonwealth Parliament throughout the world is on vellum. In America, West Point graduates get vellums. Knighthoods are on vellum, as are peerages. Any decent, important document that we have uses vellum. When we give a certificate to our Lord Mayor for his long service, it is always on vellum. Why should we be uniquely downgrading the laws of the land and saying that they are not important enough to be on vellum, despite the fact that our university graduation certificates are?
Secondly, vellum is hugely more durable than paper—there is no question about that at all. It cannot be crushed and it cannot be torn up. Of course, we are not allowed to use visual aids in this Chamber, Mr Speaker—I would not dream of doing such a thing—but I can show that it is true that vellum cannot be crushed or squashed, because it comes out just as it was before its crushing. It cannot be torn or burned, and it is not affected by water. It is durable in a very real sense.
As some of my hon. Friends have mentioned, we have good examples of how vellum has survived without any maintenance at all. It lasts for up to 5,000 years; by comparison, the maximum that can be achieved for the highest quality archival paper is 200 or 300 years.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Perhaps my hon. Friend will be interested to hear the opinion of a former colleague of mine, Mrs Meg Ford, who is the head of books and manuscripts at Christie’s and one of the world’s foremost experts in this field. She advises the great collectors who spend millions of pounds purchasing books and manuscripts. She emailed me to say:
“Vellum surely is the strongest, most durable writing material. Maybe there is some newly invented material lined with graphene, but if the choice is between even the best paper and vellum, vellum will win.”
Mr Gray
My hon. Friend speaks with passion from a position of great expertise, and he is absolutely right. When I was going through my personal archives recently, I was interested to come across my grandfather’s certificate as a graduate of Edinburgh University. I have it here—this is not an aide-mémoire, Mr Speaker. He graduated in engineering in 1903, and his certificate is absolutely as it was when it was first printed. It has simply been sat in a cupboard in my family’s house for 120 years, and it is as good as new.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the great campaign he has run on this issue. Is it not slightly ironic that the year after we celebrated the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta—a document that is essential to our constitution and was written on vellum—their lordships are considering doing away with vellum? Is he aware that while the laws in the Republic of Ireland are written on vellum, I am not aware of any plans to scrap that tradition there?
Mr Gray
They have plenty of cows in Ireland, as we do in this country, and my hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Had Magna Carta been written on paper, it would have been lost by around 1465, before the birth of Henry VIII—it would not have survived to his times. Let us think of other great documents such as the Dead Sea scrolls, the Lindisfarne gospels and the Domesday Book—all were written on vellum. The Codex Sinaiticus in the British Library was commissioned by the Emperor Constantine in 350 AD. We can look at it today and turn its pages; it is exactly as it was when it was written, and it is as clear as anything. Can one imagine a piece of paper from 350 AD surviving? The oldest complete bound book in Europe, the St John’s Gospel, was put into the coffin of St Cuthbert in the year 687 in Durham cathedral, and it can still be read today as clearly as when it was written because it is on vellum. The use of vellum guarantees that no matter what happens in the future—war, floods, riots or anything else—Acts of Parliament will be preserved for all time.
The third reason why I think it vital to maintain vellum is that William Cowley and sons in Milton Keynes, the last remaining manufacturers of vellum, supply services to the British Library, the Bodleian and records offices up and down the land. If the parliamentary contract is withdrawn, there is at least a chance that the firm’s six employees would no longer be there, meaning that everyone who requires vellum services would have to go to America, because there are no other vellum manufacturers in Europe.
Why on earth, for the sake of some £20,000 a year, if that, should we be considering doing away with a craft of this kind? Why would we want to close down an ancient business? Why should we be considering changing a 1,000-year tradition of this place? Why should we downgrade Acts in the way that is suggested? To me, it is beyond understanding. If Members care for the traditions of this place, if they care for crafts and if they care for Acts of Parliament, they will join me in the Aye Lobby today.
Several hon. Members rose—
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) on initiating the debate. It has forced me to do an awful lot of homework and get hold of some real facts and figures, so that I can pass them on to the House as they have been presented to me.
Vellum has been used to record Acts of Parliament for only about 170 years. The oldest surviving parliamentary records are on parchment, which is a very similar material. The oldest surviving archival paper records date back to 1510, which is just 13 years short of the date of the oldest parchment record. Those paper records are the manuscript journals of the House of Lords. It appears to me, on the basis of viewing and research, that records kept on vellum and those kept on archival paper in the same environment last equally well.
Mr James Gray
My hon. Friend is trying to make a distinction between vellum and parchment, but they are, of course, the same thing. The “Oxford English Dictionary” defines vellum as fine parchment.
Sir Paul Beresford
I am obviously talking too quickly, because, in effect, that is what I said: they are much the same.
Sir Paul Beresford
Before 1849, all Acts were written out by hand on rolls of parchment, in exquisite handwriting; it is really worth seeing. The motion refers to a resolution of both Houses dated 12 February 1849. At the core of that resolution was a proposed move from beautiful handwritten copies to the then cutting-edge innovation of printing. Perhaps my hon. Friend wishes that we could return to handwritten copies on vellum, as they do look beautiful. In 1999, the House of Lords announced that it wished to cease printing public Acts on vellum, having ceased to print private Acts on it in 1956. Two copies of each Act of Parliament are printed on vellum. One is kept in the Parliamentary Archives, and the other is sent to the National Archives.
The amount of money that would be saved by a move from vellum to archival paper has been disputed, but in the grand picture of public expenditure, it is not enormously significant. It is worth observing that we expect the saving to be more than the salary of a single Member of Parliament, which many of us probably consider not to be that great anyway. The National Archives has helpfully informed Parliament that it does not require vellum, and as it is part of the Minister’s departmental portfolio, I must take notice of that.
Vellum is an extremely expensive material, requiring an expensive and specialised form of printing. The cost of printing the Acts of 2014-15 on vellum—I asked about this specifically, in order to try to get it right—was approximately £107,000. The cost of using even the most expensive parchment-style paper would have been £8,000, a reduction of 92%. Unfortunately, however, the challenges associated with printing on vellum do not stop there.
As was pointed out by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), there are precisely two surviving printing machines that print double-sided on vellum to the standard that is required—note: to the standard that is required. One is in a museum, and the other is owned or utilised by the contract printer, but to put it colloquially, it is on its last legs and is probably being held together by Sellotape. Therefore, if the decision were made to continue to print public Acts on vellum, my opposite number in the House of Lords would have to provide a business case for a contract with the firm that was prepared to construct a new printer. The cost of that would leave Parliament contracted to a single supplier, which would negate the normal practice of competitive tendering.
Sir Paul Beresford
I have not had words with the Chief Rabbi, but I can assure my hon. Friend that we have made inquiries and we are just one of the contracts for this particular contractor. If we stopped using him, his profits would go down but he would not close.
During these complex discussions, the Minister for the Cabinet Office came along with his chequebook. I was surprised, as someone who has enthusiastically endorsed his admirable policies on cutting out waste, reducing red tape and improving Government efficiency. His Department believes that we should be “digital by default”, but that is a little different from what he is now talking about. A similar approach has been taken by the House; we also have everything digitised.
However, it is a legal requirement that quality prints of the original Acts be certified by the Clerk of the Parliaments in the House of Lords—the legal authority. Moreover, most modern Acts of Parliament are brought into force by statutory instruments at some point after receiving Royal Assent, and no statutory instruments are printed on vellum. The relevant information is available digitally.
I have huge respect for the Minister’s campaign, as he is aware. I must point out that we digitally store the Acts, and that he has ensured that if anything were to happen to the paper or vellum archive, the Acts could be reprinted.
Mr James Gray
My hon. Friend talks about the cloud. How confident is he that the cloud will be here in 5,000 years, when vellum most certainly will be?
Sir Paul Beresford
I will not be here in 5,000 years; my teeth will have gone long before that. However, my hon. Friend’s question ignores the fact that there will be progress. I doubt that we will be storing anything in the form that we do now, be it on vellum, on paper or digitally. There will be another way.
I was encouraged by the Minister’s offer to cover the cost of printing on vellum. For a moment, I thought he was offering a blank cheque to pay for all the printing in the House of Commons, because it would be logical to extend the offer in that way. I am not particularly well educated on the constitution, however, and it was pointed out to me forcefully that it would be inappropriate for the Government to play that kind of role in the business of Parliament. Of course, the Minister and the Cabinet Office could choose to fund the purchase of the material, the equipment and the managing of the contract, as well as the long-term storage, if they wished to produce their own copies on vellum from the digital records. Unfortunately, the record of Acts produced by Parliament, on whatever medium is chosen, are the legal authority. The Minister has been gracious in his benevolent offer, but it is not appropriate.
The printing of Acts over many years has changed as time and technology have progressed. We have moved from parchment to vellum to paper, and from handwriting to printing, all of which now have a digital back-up. The only recent backward step that I can think of has been the Ed stone, but that was just an unfortunate incident. I conclude simply by noting that, of the two Houses, it is the one that we would expect to make a stand purely on tradition that is suggesting to the House of Commons that we should progress.
Mr James Gray
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Lady indicates from the Dispatch Box that the time for the previous debate, which was a grave and important debate about Daesh, was curtailed to accommodate this debate. That is not correct. I went to great lengths to say that the previous debate could continue for as long as was desired, because this debate was much less important.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
That was not a point of order, but the hon. Gentleman has put it on the record. The problem is that I am struggling to hear because of the shouting.
Melanie Onn
I am delighted that the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) takes such a close interest in Great Grimsby’s fantastic history. However, we are talking about today, not the 1200s.
The Minister has said that the process is surprisingly cost-effective, and the hon. Member for North Wiltshire has said that keeping vellum costs little or nothing. However, the cost to Parliament of producing vellum in 2014-15 was £107,000. As the hon. Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) mentioned, using the most expensive parchment paper would cost just £8,000. You know what they say, Mr Deputy Speaker: “£100,000 here, £100,000 there—it soon starts to add up to real money.”
The Lords Committee cited a more conservative estimate of a saving of £80,000 a year from scrapping vellum. However, that does not take into account the renewal of the printing contract, under which the cost is likely to be greater than under the current arrangements, and nor does that take account of the cost of producing and printing the mammoth HS2 hybrid Bill, should that ever pass into law. At 49,000 pages long, I hate to think how many goats it will take to produce two copies.
Melanie Onn
This expense is simply to continue a tradition because that is the way it has always been—that seems to be the only genuine argument that has been presented for continuing to print Acts of Parliament on vellum. A much more important tradition is the 800-year-old one that all Members of this House are equal, which the Government ended when they introduced English votes for English laws in such a shoddy way. Conservative Members were willing to let go of that tradition, and I see no reason why the tradition we are debating today is more worthy of retention.
The Minister and other hon. Members have said that vellum should be kept as it is the only way to maintain physical copies of Acts of Parliament for the long term, but the Parliamentary Archives contains paper records that date back just as long as vellum ones. The manuscript journals of the House of Lords, which date back to 1510, have been printed on paper, but the oldest vellum record is an Act of Parliament from 1497, which is a difference of only 13 years.
I know that the hon. Member for North Wiltshire likes to remind everyone that if Magna Carta had been printed on paper, it would have been lost in about 1465, sometime before the birth of Henry VIII, but we are not talking about Magna Carta. As the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) pointed out, we are talking about the Coinage (Measurement) Act 2011, the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013, the Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 and every other Bill that is passed in this place. I might also point out that there was a greater need to print on vellum at the time when Magna Carta was drafted, given the surprise emergence of computers and the internet since the 13th century.
Several hon. Members raised concerns about the future of William Cowley, which is a serious point because that company currently provides the vellum for Acts of Parliament.
Mr James Gray
What a fine debate this has been. It has been well informed and impassioned on all sides. I believe that 13 of the 15 speakers supported the motion, while the two or three who did not were very helpful to my case, so I was grateful to them. The fact of the matter is that children up and down the land are told that the laws of the land are important, and one symbol of that importance is that they are printed on vellum. The durability and traditional quality of vellum, the traditions of this House and the way in which vellum symbolises the importance of the laws of the land all make it crucial that, for a marginal cost, if any, we continue with this long tradition.
In 1999, we told the House of Lords that we in the House of Commons were the people who must decide these matters. I therefore call on Members once again to assert our House’s right to say how we wish the laws of the land to be recorded.
Question put.
Oral Answers to Questions
James Gray Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Robert Halfon
The northern powerhouse is about devolution, not about jobs in London. The Government have a passion for Newport, and for Wales in general. Not only did the NATO summit encourage investment, but, as the hon. Lady knows, the Friars Walk regeneration project means more jobs and finance. When my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General visited the ONS office recently, he expressed huge admiration for the work of its staff, and committed himself to its long-term future. Only this week, it was announced that the ONS was recruiting 30 economic researchers to graduate posts. It is developing a skills base that will enable it to become a centre of expertise for data handling, and the hon. Lady should be celebrating that in her constituency.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
When Labour lost power in 2010, there were 181 Government-owned buildings in central London. The equivalent number today is 54, because the present Government have got rid of 130. How much further will this go, given that it indicates a wish to move jobs out to the regions?
Robert Halfon
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and the figure should be about 20 by the end of the decade. It is worth noting that the number of civil servants based in London has fallen by more than 7,500. As my hon. Friend says, the number of buildings in London has fallen from 181 to 54, which has meant savings of more than £2.8 billion for the taxpayer.
ISIL in Syria
James Gray Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
There is a group of us on the Labour Benches who are caught between two points: we are not opposed to taking action—indeed, we want to take action—but we do not feel that the strategy is in place.
We are making a decision today based not just on airstrikes, but on an overall strategy. Let me say from the outset that I am under no illusion that there is a perfect strategy, given the complex circumstances of the civil war and insurgency in Syria. There is no certainty in the middle east. We all want to protect our citizens and reduce the threat of Daesh, but I am afraid that a few more airstrikes will not do that. Some of its actions may not even be planned from Syria. We lack an overall strategy to confront ISIS/Daesh, which is established in other countries such as Libya. I want to make it clear again that I am not opposed to military action, but I will support it only if I believe that there is a reasonable chance of success.
I do not believe the argument that bombing Daesh in Syria will somehow greatly increase the chances of a terrorist attack in the UK, nor the argument that the Government are proposing the indiscriminate bombing of Syrians. Those arguments are both wrong.
I understand the argument that we are currently restricted to Iraq, but we were clearly invited into that country by an elected Government and we have forces on the ground. That is not the situation in Syria, which is much more uncertain and complex. We do not have the ground forces in Syria that I believe we should have.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman and I visited Iraq together last year. The fact of the matter is that the Iraqi army is totally destroyed. There were no ground forces in Iraq, leaving aside the peshmerga, any more than there are ground forces in Syria.
Derek Twigg
I do not think we can leave aside the peshmerga. The hon. Gentleman may also recall that the Sunnis need arming in Iraq. The Prime Minister keeps agreeing to do that and saying that it is the right thing to do, but we never hear what happens about it. There is therefore a lot more that we could be doing in Iraq. The fact is that there are armed forces that we support, whether the peshmerga or the Iraqi army, on the ground in Iraq when we carry out airstrikes. That is the difference with Syria.
The Prime Minister says that it is important that we stand by our allies. That argument has been stressed to me by some of my colleagues who support the Government’s position. It is a strong point. My response is that doing the right thing must be the primary reason for our decision. Does the strategy proposed by the Government add up? After all, the French, who are an important ally, did not support our decision to go into Iraq. That was a perfectly reasonable position for them to take because they did not think it was the right thing to do. That comes back to my point that we must do the right thing. It is also said that we should not rely on our allies to bomb Syria, but it is not as if we are doing nothing. As I have said, we are doing a lot in Iraq.
On the issue of whether there are 70,000 Syrian opposition fighters on the ground, we know that a large number of those groups are less than moderate and more Islamic, as the Foreign Secretary said yesterday. There remains considerable uncertainty about how reliable they will be in the fight and what they might bring to any peace negotiations or future Government. Many of the moderates are simply fleeing Syria.
The Prime Minister, in his speech last week, set out the progress of the coalition’s actions in Syria. I welcome the fact that there has been progress. There was also progress at the International Syria Support Group meeting in Vienna. The pathway leading to elections, which the Prime Minister set out, is not tied down. It still leaves the question of what to do about Assad.
The Prime Minister’s memorandum to the Foreign Affairs Committee stated that there were “differences to resolve”. Yesterday, I asked the Foreign Secretary what those differences were. By way of example, he said that the Russians want to shore up the Assad regime to take on Daesh. That is a pretty big difference from where we are.
Finally, I come to the issue of ground troops, which some opponents of military action will use as cover for not doing anything. That is certainly not my position. I have been consistent on this matter from the start. It is a major stumbling block to my support for the motion. We should look at the example of Iraq, where a concerted campaign against al-Qaeda using drones and US and UK special forces had considerable success. However, that also involved a surge of tens of thousands of American troops on the ground.
The Government have said that ground troops will be needed, but they do not say when and have ruled out the use of British ground troops. It appears wrong to embark on this strategy without having any ground troops or a coherent explanation of when there will be some, who they will be or how many there will be. What assessment have the Government made of the number of ground troops that will be needed and what other military assets will be needed?
It gets more complicated, because the Government say that there is no military solution and that only a political solution will stop the civil war in Syria. What if Assad refuses to go? Is that realistic? I do not believe that we can have one without the other. I am clear that the UN needs to agree to put a huge coalition force in the hundreds of thousands into Syria to stop the civil war and maintain safe areas, while at the same time putting in place a political strategy that is achievable. Preferably, as many Muslim countries as possible should send in their soldiers. A firm deal with Russia and Iran will be needed.
The Government have not convinced me that there is a wider strategy or that this action has a reasonable chance of success. Instead, I think we will have to gradually up our involvement in a piecemeal way and that we will find ourselves in a much more complex situation even than Iraq. I disagree with those in the Government who argue that we would somehow make ourselves less secure by not taking such action. I would support action if I felt that it was feasible and deliverable. At the same time, the Government have cut our armed forces and our police force, which are important in maintaining our security.
I believe that ISIL/Daesh needs to be confronted. It must be defeated ideologically and militarily. It is therefore essential to our security and that of the middle east that the Prime Minister comes forward with a strategy that has a reasonable chance of success. He has not done so today and he must come back with a better plan.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I have a great deal of sympathy for the way in which the hon. Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) advanced his argument, although I disagree with the conclusion at which he arrived. As he and many in the debate have said, there can be no certainty that the motion we are being asked to vote for will necessarily lead to the result the Government are seeking to achieve. Of course we cannot say that. There are a great many very difficult questions to be asked and they need to be answered.
I am very glad the Defence Committee will address shortly some of the practical questions about how military force will be used. Will our modest eight Tornadoes, even with their magnificent Brimstone missiles, make much difference? We do not know. Who will carry out the ground operations necessary to secure the ultimate destruction of Daesh? There is also the central question: how can we prevent the deaths of innocent civilians? What effect will it all have on security here at home? Will it make it better or worse? There are then the geopolitical questions we have not really addressed very much this afternoon. By fighting in Syria against Daesh, will we be on the same side as President Putin or even Mr Assad? Is our enemy’s enemy our friend? No one has really addressed that question.
Anyone who claims to have straightforward, clear answers to these questions is probably fooling himself. I do not believe that there are straightforward, clear answers. I do not believe that the motion can be supported simply on dogmatic or straightforward grounds. No one can be certain that what we are asking our armed forces to do will necessarily have the right outcome.
By the same token, if we cannot say with any certainty that the motion will achieve the result we seek, nor can we say that doing nothing will have a better outcome. We cannot say that at all. Who, after all, can really ignore Paris? Can we ignore Tunisia and Sharm el-Sheikh? Can we turn a blind eye to women sold into slavery, crucifixions, beheadings and gay people being thrown off buildings? Are we really too timid to react with force to mass rape, genocide and thousands of people being murdered? How will we look our constituents in the eye if doing nothing means an outrage of some kind in the UK? Can we really sit back and let the US, France, Russia and Hezbollah do our job for us?
Doing nothing is a safe option—there is no question about that at all—but action demands much tougher arguments. The fact is that the middle east is a cauldron, a viper’s nest, a maelstrom, and there can be no dogmatic certainty as to what is the best thing to do there. That leads me to three conclusions. First, our vote today cannot be based on certainty or on dogma, and it certainly cannot be based on party allegiance or on some claimed superior knowledge over other hon. Members. It is truly a conscience vote—a vote based on our instincts, on the balance of probabilities, on our feeling for things, on what our constituents said to us and, above all, our hopes for peace in the future.
Secondly, I have a real feeling that the importance of today’s vote is being somewhat over-egged. We are not “going to war with Syria”; we are not going to blast Syria to pieces, as some of my constituents have written to me to suggest. All we are doing is extending the existing campaign. We are going across an invisible line in the desert sand––the Sykes-Picot line invented by the French at some stage in the past, a line that means nothing at all. If we are committed to destroying Daesh, we must do so whether it is in Syria or Iraq.
I have been reasonably consensual up to this moment, but I am now going to jump to an area in which I am confident that I will be the only Member who agrees with me. Given the complexity of the matter and its insignificance in a sort of way, is it really right that all this debate and argument is committed to the outcome we seek this evening? The only war in the history of Great Britain on which we voted was Mr Blair’s illegal war in 2003. I do not think that that vote by the House of Commons provides a very good precedent.
There is a moral argument for saying that the generals, the intelligence chiefs and the Prime Minister should be the people who take these difficult decisions, giving us the opportunity to scrutinise and criticise what they have done. In asking to vote on the motion, we are in fact removing the right to disagree with our leaders subsequently. Surely there is an argument in favour of setting up some kind of structure—perhaps like the War Powers Act in the United States—and returning the royal prerogative. We need some structure by which the Prime Minister and the generals can take these decisions and it is then our right thereafter to criticise them, rather than emasculating ourselves by voting for them.
Syria
James Gray Excerpts(8 years, 12 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady asks a very important question, which is whether taking action against ISIL in Syria makes a political agreement more likely or less likely. In my view, it makes it more likely, first of all because we need to have a Syria with territorial integrity, and unless we deal with ISIL and the caliphate we will not have a Syria to have a transition in. Secondly, while she and I may disagree about many things, surely moderate Sunni forces in Syria need to play a part in the future of that country, so we should be helping them, including through what we do with ISIL, rather than seeing them being wasted away.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
The comprehensive yet, if I may say so, moderate, cautious and wise way in which the Prime Minister has answered many of the concerns this morning will, I think, have led opinion in the House and throughout the country to favour taking the right move, which is striking against ISIS wherever it may be. Does he not agree that the big decision we took was in the House last September, when by 548 votes to 43 we decided to attack ISIS? That decision remains today. Does he not agree that surely some of these current decisions must be taken by him, by the generals and by the intelligence chiefs, and not necessarily taking account of the twists and turns of political fortune in this House?
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for his support. The point he makes about looking back at the decision we made with respect to ISIL in Iraq and reaching a judgment is an important one, because the judgment was the right one and ISIL has been pushed back in quite a large way since that decision. As for coming in front of this House, I have been very clear that I reserve the right to take action in Britain’s national interest, when I need to, immediately, as I did over the terrorists in Syria, but we now have the convention, which I am happy to apply, that there should be a vote in the House before premeditated action.
National Security and Defence
James Gray Excerpts(8 years, 12 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I will consider what the right hon. Lady says, but obviously we have a statement on Thursday, when I will be publishing our response to the Foreign Affairs Committee, and then, depending on the reaction of the House and the sense that right hon. and hon. Members have about whether we should move ahead with this, my intention would be to have a full day’s debate and a vote subsequent to that in the coming days and weeks. I think there is also a debate, I understand on Monday, in Back-Bench time for people who want to make further points about this issue, but I would put it like this. I do not think we are going to be under-spoken or under-considered before we take this step. We had the statement last week, we have had the statement today, which obviously has links to Syria, and we will have the statement on Thursday and then a debate in Government time, with plenty of time for people to air their views and then, I would hope, have a vote.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
As one of the most outspoken and robust critics of the Government over the last five years for the very unfortunate defence cuts they have had to make for economic reasons, may I now be among the absolute first strongly and warmly to welcome the tone of the Prime Minister’s announcement this afternoon, in respect both of the general direction and the 2% of GDP and also quite a number of the other detailed announcements, such as the nine maritime patrol aircraft? Does he agree that, in a fast-changing world, the last SDSR was out of date more or less by the time it was printed and that this one, too, will change rapidly? Will he commit to ensure that the SDSR and the national security strategy, on which it is based, should not be set in stone and unchangeable, but should be reviewed regularly?
The Prime Minister
First, may I thank my hon. Friend for his warm support for this approach? We did have to take difficult decisions in the last Parliament. I think it was right to freeze our defence spending in cash terms, at around £35 billion, but now we can see it increase. That is a choice we are making. We do not have to make this choice; it is an active choice we are making in order to deliver greater security.
My hon. Friend is right that these documents are not set in stone: they are living and breathing documents. However, I think it is sensible every five years to hold a defence review, but then to get on and implement it. If we endlessly re-examine and re-cook it, we will find that we have lots of people doing analysis and not enough people actually delivering the strategy, which in the end is what this is about.
Tunisia, and European Council
James Gray Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I am very grateful for what the right hon. Gentleman says. What more we can do is make sure that the new Prevent duty is carried out and that institutions work with us to put that in place to combat radicalisation. There is more we can do to discuss with British Muslims how we confront the poisonous ideology. That means making sure that we are talking to people directly and not always going through some self-appointed leaders, who do not always represent British mainstream Muslim opinion. Sometimes that will mean that we will be criticised for not engaging. I do not accept that criticism. I will engage with anyone who buys into the basic standards of British tolerance and decency, but it is important that we have some ground rules.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
There can be no greater agony than that being experienced by the people whose friends and relations have been missing and unaccounted for since Friday, such as my constituents John Welch and Eileen Swannack. Despite what the Prime Minister said about the difficulty of identifying the victims, which I quite understand, is there no more consular activity that could be undertaken to try to finalise the list of those who have tragically been killed so that we can set their families and friends’ minds at rest?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend asks an entirely fair question. I can assure him that at the Cobra meetings that is one of the most important issues we focus on: what more can be done; are more resources needed; are more people needed? My understanding is that we have police officers, victim identification experts and consular officials on the ground, working hand in glove with the Tunisians. We are going as fast as we can to get that vital work done.
Tributes to Charles Kennedy
James Gray Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Many colleagues have spoken today of Charles’s great talents in this place and his great ability as a parliamentarian, but I rise to speak very briefly because, in common with the new hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), I had the good fortune to spend a year in Ross, Cromarty and Skye, as the constituency was then known, as did Mary Macleod, our much lamented colleague, the former Member for Brentford and Isleworth, on whose behalf I also speak.
My experience of campaigning against Charles during the 1982 general election resounds well with the warm speech that his successor made a few moments ago. Charles could easily have very much resented this English-looking and English-sounding Scot that I am, turning up in his beloved highlands, trampling all over them and turning up at every single event. I remember taking part in a sponsored walk. A very good photograph appeared in the Aberdeen Press and Journal, with the magnificent headline: “The Tory is miles ahead”. I saw Charles that evening. I said, “I’m awfully sorry, Charles.” He said, “Don’t worry, James. The Aberdeen Press and Journal gets everything wrong.” I am extremely glad that, on that occasion, the Aberdeen Press and Journal did get that wrong.
Charles was warm and magnanimous in every single dealing I had with him. During the election campaign itself, we met at church hustings and public meetings. He was always kindness personified. He used to turn to me and say, “I can’t remember what the Liberal Democrat policy is on this, James. Can you just remind me?” and I would fill him in on a few details.
Five years later, when I arrived in the House to represent what is perhaps my more natural home of North Wiltshire, Charles was the first to welcome me with open arms. He remained a close and good parliamentary friend ever since. His warmth and magnanimity of personality spoke for him. He was a highlander through and through: he had a highland warmth and a highland welcome; a highland lack of interest in party politics; and a highland friendship for people of every kind.
Every time he spoke, he spoke for ordinary people. Ordinary people understood and sympathised with him. Even the true blue Tories, of whom at that time there were still a few in the north of Scotland, none the less liked Charles enormously. The people of Ross, Cromarty and Skye absolutely loved their Charlie. He will be greatly missed in this place. He was a fine parliamentarian and a true friend.