Outcome of the EU Referendum

Debate between Julian Lewis and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Monday 27th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

May I first praise the right hon. and learned Lady for her decision to cross party lines and to appear with others on platforms to make the argument? She made it very persuasively, and I think it is right that she did. She is absolutely right that we must be very clear about our commitment to tolerance and diversity, and about our complete intolerance of racism and the hateful hate crimes that we have seen in recent days. I know that that is the view of hon. Members in this House, whatever side of the debate they were on, but that message needs to go out loud and clear.

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

Does the Prime Minister recall that, when we held the vote in September last year on the European Union Referendum Bill, not a single Conservative, and only one Labour Member, voted against it, so is it not a bit late now for people to talk about blocking the implementation of the result just because they disagree with it? Finally—it is always good to end on a positive note—would the Prime Minister care to bring in the vote on the Trident successor submarines before he leaves office?

[The Prime Minister]

It is very clear: when it comes to numbers, my right hon. Friend wants four submarines and one referendum—I have got the message very clearly. He makes a good point, which is that when the House voted on the referendum, it voted by a margin of six to one to hold that referendum. We will obviously be coming forward with our plan for all the other decisions that can be made during the remainder of this parliamentary Session, and I would hope that it would include the one he mentions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Julian Lewis and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think we should listen to all the business voices, particularly those in manufacturing, so many of whom say that we are better off in a reformed European Union. We get an enormous amount of investment, particularly from Japanese motor industries. I will be welcoming the Japanese Prime Minister here to the UK tomorrow, when I am sure this will be on the agenda.

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

Q12. What recent assessment he has made of the extent of the contribution of the EU to the maintenance of peace in Europe.

[The Prime Minister]

NATO is the cornerstone of Britain’s defence, but our place in the EU is, in my view, a vital part of protecting our national security. I would argue that it helps in two ways: first, by ensuring that issues are settled by dialogue; and secondly, by helping to provide assistance in particular circumstances—for example, the Balkans.

[Dr Lewis]

I entirely agree with the Prime Minister’s remarks about NATO, but does he accept that although dictatorships often attack democracies or other dictatorships, democracies seldom, if ever, go to war with each other? If an aim of the EU is, as we are constantly told, to prevent conflict between its own members, as in world war one and world war two, is it not heading in precisely the wrong direction by trying to create an unelected, supranational Government of Europe that is accountable to nobody?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend has long-standing and passionate views on this issue. Let me make a couple of points in response. First, we should not forget that, until very recently, some countries now in the European Union were not democracies, but forms of dictatorship. Secondly, those countries that have worked towards membership of the EU have had to put in place all sorts of democratic and other norms to help them on their way. Finally, we have had an unparalleled period of peace and prosperity in Europe. My argument is that whether we attribute all of that to NATO or some of that to the EU, why would we want to put it at risk?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Julian Lewis and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Commons Chamber

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

Whatever the outcome of the EU referendum, does the Prime Minister agree that one thing that will never diminish is the mutual affection and admiration between Britain and our great ally, France? Given that connection, will he pay tribute to the people who fought and won the Normandy campaign, such as the late Captain Paul Cash, the father of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), who was killed fighting in Normandy at the age of 26 having won the Military Cross, and Sergeant Peter Carne, who, at 93, is at Westminster today, and who built the Bailey bridges that enabled the breakout from the Normandy beachhead and will receive the Légion d’honneur in a typically generous gesture from our French allies?

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to all those who served, particularly those who fell in that heroic campaign. One of the things I have been able to do as Prime Minister of which I am proudest was to go to the vigil on the 70th anniversary of our gliders preparing for the landings and to go to Gold beach to see the incredible work that was done. We should remember what they did and what it was that they gave their lives for, which was to achieve peace on our continent.

European Council

Debate between Julian Lewis and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, on what President Grybauskaite has said, we are very clear that this deal must be compliant with international law and with international norms. That is exactly what the European Commission, the European Council and all the countries that are helping Greece will make sure is going to happen. The key thing is that if Turkey is a safe country for Syrian refugees, it should be possible to return Syrian refugees to Turkey, because they should be applying for asylum there rather than going on with their journey.

On the second issue that the hon. Gentleman raises, as I explained in my statement, if the rest of the EU gives visa-free access to Schengen for Turks, that is a right to travel and it is a right to visit; it is not a right to work and it is not a right to settle, and it does not in any way change their rights to come to the UK. I think there is quite a lot of scaremongering going on about this issue, because we are not changing our borders or our visa proposals one bit.

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

Does the Prime Minister share my concern about the steady Islamisation of Turkish society by its Government? Does he share my surprise that Turkey is now so confident that it can stop the boats coming, when it has not been able to or has not wished to do so in the past? Finally, does he share my fear that mass migration to Europe will fuel the rise of far-right, neo-Nazi parties in EU countries that were foolish enough to get rid of their national borders?

[The Prime Minister]

I am in the happy position of being able to agree with my right hon. Friend on all those things. As someone who spent time in Turkey as a student, I think its secularism and its belief in wanting to become more like a western democracy is one of its strengths, and we should encourage it. I also agree with him that countries that do not properly control their borders risk the rise of unsavoury elements, and that is why it is so important we maintain our borders. Obviously, when it comes to the issue of wanting to return migrants to Turkey, it is very important that Turkey is and remains a safe country, but that is what it is today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Julian Lewis and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will look very carefully at the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion because there is a problem whereby some clubs put up prices very rapidly every year, even though so much of the money for football comes through sponsorship, equipment and other sources. I will look carefully at what he says.

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

The vital debate and vote on the Trident successor submarine should have been held in the last Parliament, but was blocked by the Liberal Democrats. Given the fun that the Prime Minister had a few moments ago at the Labour party’s expense over Trident’s successor, it must be tempting for him to put off the vote until Labour’s conference in October. However, may I urge him to do the statesmanlike thing and hold that vote as soon as possible because everyone is ready for it and everyone is expecting it?

[The Prime Minister]

We should have the vote when we need to have the vote, and that is exactly what we will do. No one should be in any doubt that the Government are going to press ahead with all the decisions that are necessary to replace in full our Trident submarines. I think the Labour party should listen to Lord Hutton, who was Defence Secretary for many years. He says:

“If Labour wants to retain any credibility on defence whatsoever, it had better recognise the abject futility of what it’s leadership is currently proposing”.

I hope that when that vote comes, we will have support from right across the House of Commons.

EU Council

Debate between Julian Lewis and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

This referendum is the Government’s policy, and the country will decide whether we stay in the European Union or leave the European Union. What I am doing is giving the country the very best choice there can be—by a vital amendment to the status quo—but in the end it will be Britain’s choice.

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

Did the Council discuss how free societies with free media should react to terrorist propaganda? The latest Daesh atrocity video seems to feature a well-known British extremist and a brainwashed child. Does the Prime Minister agree that although the broadcast media seem to have handled this material with appropriate restraint, some of the press, in the pictorial coverage, has been playing into the hands of the terrorist propagandists?

[The Prime Minister]

First, on what my right hon. Friend says about what Britain is doing in the EU to counter terrorist propaganda, we have taken the expertise that we have built up here and are sharing that with other European countries as we set up some new organisations. It is very important to win this battle of ideas—in some ways it is a battle of ideas, as we faced in the cold war. I am not sure I go all the way with him on what he said about “either television or newspapers”. As he said, television media have been responsible. I do not think it would be right to have some sort of blanket ban on showing any parts of these videos. Indeed, showing a part of these videos and just how ghastly and brutal this organisation is, for instance in the way it is using children, reminds everybody, not least those who might be tempted by this radical organisation, of just what a sick organisation it is. On the whole, the media have been fairly responsible about this, and I think it is much better to have that form of self-restraint than anything else.

Syria

Debate between Julian Lewis and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Thursday 26th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the so-called caliphate. As I tried to set out in my statement, there are the military objectives of trying to break up the terrorist training camps and infrastructure, and the terrorists themselves, but there is a bigger picture, which is that while this so-called caliphate exists, I do not believe we are safe. We should therefore be part of its dismantling.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s question about the characteristics of transition, this is what is being discussed in Vienna, but it should start with ceasefires. It should then proceed to the political work of drawing up what a transitional Government and institutions would look like, and then be followed, probably, by elections and, at some stage, a transition away from the current leadership. As I said in reply to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), this will not be a perfect or scientific process, but to me it is essential, because in the end it is political transition that will help us to complete the final destruction of ISIL—military force cannot do it on its own. I am not coming to this Dispatch Box saying that there is a purely military solution—there is not; there is a political, diplomatic and military solution, and we need to do all of the bits of that.

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

Many hon. and right hon. Members, including me, entirely agree with the Prime Minister that ISIL/Daesh must be crushed militarily in Syria—the crushing will indeed have to be military—but, as he acknowledged at Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, airstrikes alone will not be effective; they have got to be in co-ordination with credible ground forces. I have to say that the suggestion that there are 70,000 non-Islamist, moderate, credible ground forces is a revelation to me and, I suspect, to most other Members in this House. Adequate ground forces, in my view, depend on the participation of the Syrian army, so if the dictator Assad refuses to resign, which is the greater danger to our national interest: Syria under him or the continued existence and expansion of ISIL/Daesh? We may have to choose between one and the other.

[The Prime Minister]

I have great respect for my right hon. Friend, who thinks about these things very carefully. There are a lot of grounds of agreement between us: we agree on the dangers of ISIL; we agree that it needs to be crushed; we agree that that will need the involvement of ground forces; and we also agree that, as I put in my response to the Foreign Affairs Committee, we need an ISIL-first strategy—ISIL is the greater threat to the United Kingdom. I think the only areas of disagreement between us are on a technical point and a slightly more profound but not unbridgeable one. The technical point is that what I have said about 70,000 moderate forces in Syria is not my figure; it is the considered opinion of the Joint Intelligence Committee, a Committee that was set up and given independence to avoid any of the mistakes we had in the past of the potential misuse of intelligence and other information. This is its considered view; that document has been entirely cleared by the Committee, as has my statement.

The other issue we have to come to is that of course my right hon. Friend and I agree that in time the best ground troops should be the Syrian army, but my view is that that will be more likely to happen after a political transition has taken place in Syria. My contention is that the problem of believing it can be done with Assad is that we will never get the ceasefire and we will never get the participation of the Sunni majority in Syria while Assad is still there. I think the area of disagreement between us is narrowing, as is the area of disagreement between Britain, America and France, and the Russians; we all now see the need for there to be both a military and a political solution.

National Security and Defence

Debate between Julian Lewis and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Monday 23rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The thinking here is that just as in France it was necessary to surge the number of uniformed personnel on the streets—perhaps to provide a security cordon or keep people safe—so we should get rid of the divide that has existed for many years about the deployment of military personnel on the streets of Britain. The right hon. Lady asks when these people will be trained. The first 5,000 are already able to fulfil that function should it be necessary, and we will get to the figure of 10,000 that I announced. This is not about members of the armed forces supplanting or taking over from the police; it is about them being at the disposal of the police, perhaps to provide a security cordon or a certain amount of safety. In the past we had a rather artificial divide between those two functions, and it is time to get rid of that.

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

The Defence Select Committee will be assessing the SDSR against a checklist of the threats and vulnerabilities that were published in our report at the weekend, but I am sure that most Members will find at least some relief in the plugging of gaps such as naval aviation and maritime patrol aircraft, and especially in the emphasis on flexible and versatile armed forces to deal with our inability to predict crises before they are upon us. Will the Prime Minister say a little about press reports concerning the pay of armed forces, and will he indicate when the maingate contracts for the successor to the Trident submarines will be brought before the House for debate and decision?

[The Prime Minister]

I am sure that members of the Defence Committee have a checklist and will scrutinise that document thoroughly, and I look forward to their conclusions. We are keeping the annual pay upgrade and the increments that our armed forces have. A package has been set out for new joiners, and I am sure the Committee will consider that carefully. My right hon. Friend welcomed the maritime patrol. On the maingate decision, we will be moving ahead with the four submarines and at the appropriate moment we will hold a vote in this House.

Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism

Debate between Julian Lewis and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We do not believe it is right to take part in the European relocation quota because we think that a better answer for Britain, which is such a major investor in the refugee camps, is to take people directly from the camps. In that way we will not encourage more people to make this perilous journey. By taking a long-term view, and looking at the asylum seekers we have taken and the people we have resettled from around the world, I would say Britain is absolutely fulfilling our moral responsibility, and we absolutely play our part.

In terms of the hon. Gentleman’s question about Iran, of course there is an opportunity for greater dialogue with Iran now that this nuclear deal, which I think is a good deal, has been done, but Britain should enter into that in a cautious and sceptical way. We ought to remember that Iran is still a supporter of terrorist organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah, which I know he describes as friends but which I see very much as enemies. We also need to make sure that Iran is playing a positive role in Syria, rather than the role it plays now of propping up the hated Assad regime.

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

My right hon. Friends the Members for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and for North Somerset (Dr Fox) have both raised the possibility of safe havens in Syria itself to stem the flow of refugees at source. If this is to work, it would require a United Nations mandate, which would require the support of Russia. Do the Government recognise that remaining fixated on removing Assad puts a bar on any solution of this sort? Will the Government make up their mind that the main threat to our interest is Daesh? If so, we can then proceed to have a genuinely international coalition and agreement against that main threat.

[The Prime Minister]

I very much respect my right hon. Friend’s views, but on this occasion I do not agree with him on two grounds. I do not think it is right to look at Syria and say that we have to choose between ISIL or Assad. It would be a great mistake to think that because Assad is perhaps the lesser of two evils we should back him. Assad is one of the chief recruiting sergeants for ISIL because of the butchery of his own people. I do not think there is a workable proposal for safe havens as things stand today, but it has been possible in past times to intervene in that way to try to keep people safe. If you were acting to try to alleviate a humanitarian emergency, you could act in that way, but the problem is that safe havens would require a large military intervention, and a large military intervention that I do not currently believe is the right answer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Julian Lewis and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 8th July 2015 Commons Chamber

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

Q1. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the NATO recommended minimum of 2% of GDP as the basis for future UK defence expenditure.

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

We assess our defence spending constantly as to whether it meets our obligations and keeps our country safe. As figures published last month show, we are meeting the 2% NATO target this year.

[Dr Lewis]

As the Prime Minister and, indeed, the Chancellor know, quality is not the issue with our armed forces, but quantity is. Given that we used to spend regularly between 4% and 5% of GDP on defence when we last faced a threat on the continent and a major terrorist campaign, should we not be aiming at a 3% target, rather than the bare NATO minimum figure?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is right: we do face very severe threats in our world. The point I would make to him is that the only way to have strong defence is to have a strong economy. That is absolutely key. We made some very clear commitments about the size of our armed forces, about the successor to the Trident submarine and also about the vital equipment programme, where we have the aircraft carriers and the other equipment vital to our armed services that are coming through. Those things are only possible because we closed the deficit in our MOD and the mess that we found when we became the Government and we have a strong economy.