Cyber-security

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for her very warm words at the beginning of her response, which I enormously appreciate. Parting is indeed such sweet sorrow, but there is life beyond.

I am afraid it tailed off a little bit after that. The hon. Lady talked about cuts and the potential for continued funding for cyber-security in the next Parliament. She made the slightly odd suggestion that the trajectory of public spending would be at a level last seen in the 1930s. A little further research shows that the last time this level of spending was seen was in 1999-2000 under a Labour Government.

So far as funding for cyber-security is concerned, that will be dealt with in the context of the spending review that will take place after the election, but I do not know anybody who believes there is any possibility that there will not continue to be very significant funding for cyber-security. We are acknowledged across the world as being in the lead in this area. There is always a danger when one says that of being thought to be complacent. We are not remotely complacent. This is a very fast-moving set of threats and we have to move equally fast to keep up with it. We need to be on the case all the time.

The hon. Lady talked about the resources being devoted to tackling cybercrime. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) who has responsibility for tackling cybercrime is in her place on the Front Bench. She takes this matter immensely seriously. The national cyber crime unit is based in the National Crime Agency. A good proportion of the cyber-security programme is funding for the law enforcement agencies, which do fantastic work. I obviously echo her enthusiastic support for those who work to protect and preserve our national security, and I include in that those in our armed forces active in this field.

The hon. Lady talked about digital inclusion, which she knows the Government take extremely seriously. We support the huge amount of work being done by businesses, particularly Barclays and other companies, on digital activity to enable people currently excluded to be active online, and that will continue to be the case. She also asked about mobile security on mobile devices, which is obviously a serious matter. So far as the Government are concerned, CESG, part of GCHQ, provides good guidance and is reckoned to be world leading on smart devices.

So far as citizens and consumers are concerned, she will be aware of our Cyber Streetwise campaign and Get Safe Online, which are about making sure people know the risks. GCHQ estimates that 80% of successful cyber-attacks could be thwarted or mitigated by basic internet hygiene, and for that awareness is important. I am less concerned about whether SMEs are aware of what the Government are doing; I am more concerned that they are aware of what they need to do, which is to take basic steps on internet hygiene.

There is much more to do, and there will never be any scope for a Government or businesses to rest on their laurels. I found the hon. Lady’s objection that my statement was light on policy slightly startling. Quite rightly, the Government have elevated cyber-security to one of the four tier 1 national security threats, so we take it enormously seriously. At a time when we had to cut public spending, because of the appalling public deficit inherited from the last Government, this was one of the very few areas that we decided was sufficiently important to invest further money in, and we will continue to do that.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

A number of Governments are known to have invested heavily in what might be termed “offensive cyber”. Given that we must do everything we can to protect our own systems, are there any messages we can send to such Governments about the consequences that would follow for them if they were unwise enough to launch a cyber-attack against this country?

[Mr Maude]

I am well aware of what my right hon. Friend says, and he is right to raise the matter. Our task is to ensure that our efforts on national security are provided with all the tools necessary for us to protect ourselves and deter attacks.

European Council

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman says that he is in favour of reform, but I have not heard one single proposal from the Labour party about anything it wants to reform. He is presumably standing on his leader’s ticket, but I do not know whether he has his picture on his leaflets. When I met my Labour opponent in Chipping Norton market square this week, I had a look at his leaflet, and there was not a dicky-bird when it came to the Leader of the Opposition. It could have been from a totally different party. There are plenty of pictures of me. The Leader of the Opposition has said:

“I don’t think Brussels has got too much power”.

That is the official position of the Labour party: it is not for reform, but for the status quo.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

As the only major party leader to trust the British people with an in/out referendum on EU membership, my right hon. Friend has certainly reassured the patriotic British electorate. Will he now go the whole way by reassuring them that throughout the next Parliament, when he is Prime Minister, Britain will not fall below the NATO recommended minimum of 2% of GDP on defence?

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman not only on his service in this House but on winning a by-election. Any of us who have taken part in by-elections—I remember the Bradford South by-election, not entirely happily from my point of view—knows what daunting prospects they are. We all have plans for after 7 May, and people who we want to spend more time with, and less time with. I have a little list, and I suspect he has one too.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Members of the Scottish National party have been licking their lips in public at the prospect of blackmailing one of the two main parties into delaying or abandoning the replacement of the Trident submarines. Will the Prime Minister confirm that if he is still Prime Minister in 2016, as he should be, he will ensure that the maingate contracts for four successor submarines are signed that year?

[The Prime Minister]

I can reassure my hon. Friend. For me, Trident and its replacement are non-negotiable. They are an absolutely vital part of this nation’s security. Let me just remind Labour Members of the leaflet going out across Scotland. It says this:

“At the General Election we need to stop the Tories being the largest party.”

They have given up trying to be the Government and trying to win a majority. They want to crawl into Downing street on the coat tails of the SNP and put our country at risk. The British people will never have it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Q12. What recent assessment he has made of the position of defence in the UK’s spending priorities.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Our defence budget is the biggest in the EU and the second largest in NATO. This Government are spending 2% of GDP on defence this Parliament—we are one of only four NATO countries to do so.

[Dr Lewis]

That was not exactly an answer to the question on the Order Paper. Given that this country for decades spent more than 4% on defence, does the Deputy Prime Minister not agree that it would be a disgraceful dereliction of duty if the British Government ever fell below the 2% minimum recommended by NATO?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As my hon. Friend will know, we are spending 2% of GDP on defence, and have consistently met and exceeded this NATO guideline. We are spending more than £160 billion on equipment and equipment support over the next 10 years, which will ensure that we have one of the best trained and best equipped armed forces in the world. Decisions on defence spending after 2015-16 will, of course, have to be determined in the next comprehensive spending round.

Murder of Lee Rigby

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Let me first guarantee to the right hon. Gentleman that there will be proper scrutiny of this legislation. It is fast-track legislation, we hope, rather than emergency legislation. It is not being rushed through in just a couple of days—in the other place, for instance. The time between the stages will be shortened, but the overall amount of time will not be.

Much of this legislation comes from ideas that I put forward back in September and some of it comes from the extremism taskforce, which I set up after the murder of Lee Rigby many months ago, so this is not emergency, knee-jerk legislation, but well thought through. It is not starting from scratch either, because we have very good counter-terrorism legislation in this country. This is about seeing where there are potential gaps and making sure they are filled in.

On the question about people returning from overseas, the power we are taking in the new legislation is to make sure that people can come back only if they do so on our terms. That is the key. We will make sure that if people are to be prosecuted, we are ready to prosecute them and that if they are going to be subject to a TPIM, they will be subject to a TPIM.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

One thing not mentioned in the Prime Minister’s statement—and for good reason—was communications data. Whatever one thinks about the Communications Data Bill, our report did not focus on this matter at all significantly because it played no relevant part. Nevertheless, there was a serious leak at an early stage from the unredacted draft of the report, which was reported in a Sunday paper, saying that the report was going to concentrate on this area. Does the Prime Minister agree with me that if MI5 is going to continue to share so much secret material with the Intelligence and Security Committee, leaks of our drafts are absolutely to be deplored and might imperil our ability to do this sort of work in the future?

[The Prime Minister]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. All leaks are to be deplored, but leaks of this particular sort of material, when we have trusted the Committee with such important and delicate work, are particularly reprehensible. Communications data are vital not just in respect of terrorism, but when we are trying to find abducted children or solve rapes and murders. They are used in almost all serious crimes. What we did in the Bill was simply to stop the situation from getting worse. What we need now is to go forward with more full-throated legislation. I think we need an honest and open debate about that across the House.

G20

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We first need to recognise that this year has seen the largest fall in unemployment in Britain since records began, and it is a complete fiction to say that all those jobs are low paid. That is not the case. A lot of those jobs are in more skilled professions where the pay levels are higher. On productivity, it is of course an important challenge for the UK, but I would say that one hopeful sign is that the increase in business investment—a key component of GDP—has rapidly increased this year and it can lead to an increase in productivity.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Would it not send a very bad signal to President Putin when he is eyeing up the Baltic states if Britain fell below the NATO recommended minimum of 2% of GDP going on defence? Will the Prime Minister give an undertaking not to do that as long as he is in office?

[The Prime Minister]

We have set out our plans for this Parliament, and we will have to set out our plans for the years ahead at the next election. As I said, we have maintained a £33 billion defence budget—one of the top five in the world. The most important message for the Baltic states is that they are full members of NATO. I think they are very grateful for that when they see the destabilisation that is taking place in other parts of the world. We need to guarantee to them that being full members of NATO means just that.

Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Let me give way to my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and then I will make some progress.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am glad that the Prime Minister seems to accept that air strikes alone cannot hope to be successful unless they are in close co-ordination with credible ground forces. The only ground forces he has mentioned so far are those of the Kurds and the Iraqis. What are the other Arab states proposing to do, because surely those ground forces have to be Sunni-Muslim ground forces and we need other Arab countries to supply them?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point but we should tread carefully here. We are proposing to act at the request of the legitimate Iraqi Government. That Government are supposed to represent all their country—Shi’a, Sunni and Kurd. That country should be doing that, rather than relying on other countries to provide Sunni forces in order to deliver that effect.



It is important that we keep up the pressure, because it is the Iraqi Government who should be representing all their people, rather than getting proxies to do it for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Just to illustrate some of the complications of the situation, if indeed we do bring Iran back in, is it not the case that Iran will make it absolutely certain that our other professed wish to bring down President Assad never happens? The relationships are very complex.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is right that the relationships are very complex, but that argument must not be an argument against trying. We are not trying to do this on any terms, but we must do everything that we can to achieve it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)]

We are here again to discuss the issue of stability and conflict in the middle east. It appears that we have not learned the lessons of a decade ago. I made one of my first speeches in this House, soon after my maiden speech, after 9/11. It is clear that we have not taken forward those lessons to provide stability for the region over the last 14 years or so.

Instead, what we and the US—using its influence in the Gulf countries—have done is to start to pump more money and weapons into Syria, which has further destabilised that region. Money has been given to people whom we may think would be our supporters and to those whom we thought were on our side. They were, we were told, moderate. We speak about the moderate Syrian people and about the freedom fighters, but the vast majority of them are affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation that the Prime Minister banned in this country. Yet we think that they will be our ally in resolving the issue in Syria.

A number of hon. Members today have said that the issue can be resolved only if we put more money and resources into the freedom fighters. Which of those freedom fighters will we support? The Muslim Brotherhood? Al Nusra? Will we support other extremist organisations that already exist? Will we support the unIslamic state in the region? I deliberately call it not ISIL, not ISIS nor IS; I call it, and Brummies predominantly tend to call it, the unIslamic state. That is what it is. It has no place in the religion of Islam of which I am a part. It has no place in any teachings of Islam. Those people who rape, murder and torture are carrying out things that are banned in Islam. They kill people because they might be Sunni; they kill people who are Shi’a, Christian, Yazidi and Kurds. They kill anybody who does not submit to their warped ideology. We have to be aware of what we are trying to do.

The previous Foreign Secretary went to Europe and said that we needed to lift the arms embargo against the Assad Government so we could supply those so-called moderate fighters. When he came back having made the great achievement of lifting the arms embargo, he sat down with the security people and they said, “Secretary of State ,who are you going to supply these weapons to?” Very soon he decided that there was no option of supplying weapons and decided that we would provide communication aid to those people. We create these types of vacuum. Senator McCain has been an advocate of a neo-Con policy in Syria, which is to make sure that we put in as much money and arms as we can. What we have not realised is that, as part of that effort over the past three years or so, we have created the vacuum that has allowed the unIslamic state to be formed in those regions, taking people from all the various extremist organisations there and making them even more extreme, more grotesque and more violent than any other organisation—

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I am anxious to give the hon. Gentleman an extra minute, because I want to hear what he thinks we should and should not do in the situation we face today. He is in danger of getting to the end of his speech without telling us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Among the many important comments made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) was her statement that ISIL likes to place itself at the head of the Sunni Muslim community. That is why it is so absolutely essential that the Sunni Muslim regional partners of this Government must be at the forefront of any military action against what can be interpreted as the Sunni Muslim states. A great deal of what organisations such as al-Qaeda and ISIL do is deliberately provocative. They wish to provoke actions that will enable them to represent the ensuing conflict as one of infidel crusaders invading Muslim lands, which is a trap that we must at all costs try to avoid.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) observed in her excellent speech, some of us are now about to vote for the fourth time on intervention in the middle east. The first time that I voted was in favour of war in Iraq, primarily because I believed what I was told about weapons of mass destruction. I must admit, however, that at the back of my mind was the thought that somewhere in Iraq were a great many moderate, democratic forces just waiting to be liberated from the oppressive rule of Saddam Hussein. I am afraid that experience taught me better, because, following the downfall of Saddam Hussein, the age-old enmity between Shi’a and Sunni Muslims came to the fore and we found ourselves in a strange triangular relationship with two forces, which in their most fundamentalist forms are highly unattractive and certainly no friends of democracy.

Indeed, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) made the point well when he compared the situation to what happened in 1941, when the choice was made for us that the menace of Soviet communism, which frightened the west during the inter-war years, ended up being our ally because of the Nazis’ invasion of Russia. The trouble with a triangular relationship with two types of force, neither of which is friendly to democracy, is that there are no good outcomes. One can only try to arrange for the least worst outcome. We know what happened with the second world war and that it was the least worst outcome, but it still meant that half of Europe was enslaved under communism for decades.

[Rory Stewart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I am happy to give way.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman took seven minutes in speaking. If he wants to intervene, he should remember that other Members have not yet spoken.

[Rory Stewart]

I apologise.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I shall proceed.

Where are we with the current situation? When I was asked before this debate whether I would support the motion, I said that I would do so provided that the Government came forward with an integrated strategy in support of credible forces on the ground. I intervened on the Prime Minister earlier and I am glad that he is here to hear me make a point now. I asked him which Sunni forces would be on the ground for us to support. At the moment, he has only been able to come back to us with Iraqi and Kurdish forces. I must say to him that if our strategy is to get anywhere in the long term, the Arab League and the regional powers must step up and make their contribution. We cannot do it, because that would play into the hands of the Islamists.

I will be supporting the motion, with reluctance and a heavy heart, because I know that there are no good outcomes. It is a mistake to think that we can get rid of this organisation from places such as Syria and cosy up to Iran while thinking that we can pull down Assad. Those things are not compatible with each other. It is a bit of a George Orwell situation with three powers constantly shifting. The only answer to dealing with such things is the practical answer of the balance of power. We have to ensure that Sunnis cannot dominate Shi’as and that Shi’as cannot dominate Sunnis to excess.

NATO Summit

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The short answer to that is yes, I will. As the hon. Gentleman knows, a lot of the detail of how the force will be constructed, who will contribute to it and how exactly it will work is still to be determined. The main thing is that the readiness of it is decided. May I take the moment, though, to thank him for his contribution to the NATO summit? He spoke as head of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly with great clarity and great support for what NATO is doing.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In support of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) has just asked, may I draw the Prime Minister’s attention to a very important article by General Jonathan Shaw, a former director of special forces, in the Evening Standard on 5 September, in which he wrote:

“Deploying the Western military without a Muslim political plan would be folly”?

What approach will we be taking to Saudi Arabia, which has a habit of looking both ways on these questions, and where the Government appear to be friendly but sources inside Saudi Arabia supply funds to organisations like IS?

[The Prime Minister]

I shall certainly look at the article my hon. Friend mentions. It is sometimes hard to keep up with all the contributions and advice that retired military figures are given to offer, but I do my best. The point my hon. Friend makes is absolutely right: were there to be a military element to the strategy, it would work only if it was in conjunction with all the other parts of the strategy. As I put it, we cannot intervene over the heads of local people and leave them to pick up the pieces; it has to be part of a strategy and a plan.

EU Council, Security and Middle East

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We are operating the legislation that in part was put forward by the Government of whom he was a member.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that one of the main reasons why NATO successfully deterred and contained the then Soviet Union from 1949 to 1989 was that the rulers in the Kremlin were in no doubt at all that an attack on one NATO country would inevitably mean war with all the rest? For that reason, at the NATO summit will he bear in mind the fact that NATO membership, however hard-hearted this may seem, must never be offered to a country unless we are prepared to go to war to defend that country?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend speaks very good sense about this. Article 5 obligations are deadly serious and we would have to meet them if a NATO member was invaded by another country, so the point he makes is a good one.

European Council

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am keen to accommodate more colleagues on this extremely important matter, but in order to do so I require exemplary brevity. I know that the tutorial will be provided by Dr Julian Lewis.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Trying, as always, to see the bright side of life—I am not going to sing it—is there not something to be said for having an obvious and overt federalist as Commission president rather than a covert and rather cleverer alternative?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is ingenious in seeing a silver lining in every cloud. I had not got him down as one of nature’s out-and-out optimists, but I will have to reassess that judgment. We will now have to deal openly and frankly with the new Commission president if he is endorsed by the European Parliament. He did say in his manifesto—although he was not standing specifically in Britain, as it were—that we have to address the issues of reform that Britain has put on the table, and we now need to make sure that we hold him to that.