Oral Answers to Questions
Leo Docherty Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I say to the right hon. Gentleman that we see debt down, the deficit down, jobs up, taxes down—oh, taxes down not in Scotland of course, where the SNP is putting taxes up. He says it is not good enough, but I will tell him what is not good enough: it is an SNP that wants to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom, knowing full well that being a member of the United Kingdom is worth £1,400 every year for each person in Scotland. He talks about damaging the economy; the only people who are going to damage the economy in Scotland are sitting on the SNP Benches.
Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)
The Prime Minister
It is an important message for us to give that we are very clear that we will take action against those who are involved in terrorism. Obviously, each Home Secretary deals with the question of deprivation on a number of occasions; I dealt with deprivation cases myself, and there is a very clear set of criteria on which the Home Secretary considers that matter. But the overall point my hon. Friend makes is absolutely right: how important it is for this Government and this country to make it very clear that we will take action against those who are involved in terrorism.
Oral Answers to Questions
Leo Docherty Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
It is important that we deliver on Brexit for the people of this country. I believe that we should do that with a good deal with the European Union, and I believe that that is what we have negotiated. I also believe, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) said from a sedentary position, that the worst thing for this country would be a Labour Government.
Oral Answers to Questions
Leo Docherty Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Lidington
That issue is certainly one that I know Sir Brian and the inquiry team want to examine and call evidence on. People who have been directly affected have had opportunities at the preliminary hearings to express their views. More than 1,200 of them have now been appointed as core participants and the forthcoming public meetings will give them a further chance to make sure that their views are indeed heard. Sir Brian is determined that that will be the case.
Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office (Mr David Lidington)
Our world-leading national cyber-security strategy, supported by £1.9 billion of investment, sets out measures to defend our people, businesses and assets, to deter our adversaries and to develop the skills and capabilities that we need.
Leo Docherty
I am grateful for that response. Does my right hon. Friend agree that a sovereign capability is very important when it comes to cyber-security and that, when Government contracts are awarded, British companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, should be given preference?
Mr Lidington
Where national security interests are at stake, exceptions can be made to the normal rules on public procurement, as my hon. Friend knows. The other thing that we need to do is drive up standards among all Government suppliers, large and small, and that is something where we have an active programme of work.
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman stands up and says that the SNP will not gamble with Scotland’s future. I say to him that the SNP gambles with Scotland’s future every time it stands up and talks about independence.
Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)
The Prime Minister
First of all, it is very good news to see more disabled people getting into the workplace, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the Disability Confident scheme. I praise the work of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who created and has personally championed the scheme since it started back in 2013. As my hon. Friend obviously knows, it works directly with employers and aims to challenge the perceptions of what it means to employ a disabled person. We will continue to ensure that we are making every possible effort to make sure that more disabled people who want to be in the workplace are able to take their place in it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Leo Docherty Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The former Home Secretary was absolutely clear about the offer that has been made to those people who were covered by the legislation—the Immigration Act 1971—who came to the United Kingdom before 1973. I am sure that the Home Secretary will ensure that the case the hon. Lady has raised is looked into carefully. Often, cases are raised in this House and there is sometimes a complexity to the cases that needs to be looked into very carefully, but I am sure the Home Secretary will ensure that that case is properly considered.
Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)
My constituency of Aldershot is the home of the British Army and it has a very fine tradition of military service. I am delighted that the commander of the Aldershot garrison, Colonel Mac MacGregor, and his wife Deborah have joined us in the Gallery today. Next month, Colonel Mac will leave the Army after nearly 40 years’ service, so will the Prime Minister join me in thanking Colonel Mac for his service and the tremendous good works he does in the wider community of Rushmoor borough?
The Prime Minister
I am very happy not only to welcome the colonel and his wife to the Gallery to watch our proceedings today, but to thank him for the significant service he has shown our country in his time in our armed forces and for all the work he has done as commander of the garrison at Aldershot. We wish him all the very best in his retirement from the Army.
Military Action Overseas: Parliamentary Approval
Leo Docherty Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Jeremy Corbyn
My hon. Friend is right that all kinds of debates could have taken place and a consensus reached, or not. Either way, there could have been that opportunity. That is what Parliament exists for. Parliamentary approval can be crucial to ensure the democratic legitimacy of any planned military operation or warlike act, just as it can establish public consent for a Government’s wider strategy.
Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman mentions a vote; had there been a vote in this place last week to protect innocent civilians in Syria, how would he have voted?
Jeremy Corbyn
This is a debate about process. [Interruption.] Could the hon. Gentleman contain his aggression for a moment? I made very clear my concerns about the strike, its legitimacy and the legality behind it, so I should have thought it was pretty obvious what my view on it was. That is not to say, as I pointed out last night—[Interruption.]
Gavin Robinson
That is the point the hon. Gentleman has made, and there are people who genuinely believe that: there are people who genuinely take a principled position and on each and every occasion will take a decision on the basis—
Gavin Robinson
I apologise to my good and hon. Friend, but I have taken a number of interventions and have little time left and think I should conclude now.
People have the ability to take a principled decision and stand on each and every occasion that we consider military action internationally. I highlight the Leader of the Opposition’s record because he introduced this motion. He suggests that the Government should be frustrated from taking decisions that are in our national interest or in defence of our nation, or that stand up for international standards and norms. He suggests there is some noble principle behind the position he puts forward; I suggest there is not. It is a cover for impotence and inertia.
Syria
Leo Docherty Excerpts(6 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
We will be pressing for humanitarian access. The exact form in which that humanitarian access might occur, of course, might vary, but we will continue to press with our international allies for humanitarian access.
Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)
I am very grateful for the Prime Minister’s robust action over the weekend. Given that this action has been legal, precise and timely, would she agree that those who seek to play politics around this issue by raising spurious legal questions do a great disservice to their office and a grave disservice to the innocent civilians in Syria who have faced the horror of chemical attack?
The Prime Minister
I agree with my hon. Friend. From the contributions that have already been made, it is clear that, across the House, there is support for action being taken against the use of chemical weapons and in support of those who have been suffering so abominably from the action of the Syrian regime.
National Security and Russia
Leo Docherty Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Jeremy Corbyn
To that end, we applaud the Government’s decision to ask the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to conduct its own independent analysis of the nerve agent used in the attack, to verify the tests conducted here in Britain, as we proposed two weeks ago. We are certain that those results—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. The right hon. Gentleman will give way when he decides to do so.
Jeremy Corbyn
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The second issue I want to raise is the nuclear deal with Iran, of which Russia is a signatory and, indeed, a strong supporter. At a time when it is more under threat than ever from those now in charge of Donald Trump’s foreign and security policy, we will need a united front to defend that very important deal with Iran, which was promoted by President Obama and others. Whether we like it or not, Russia must be part of that process.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Madam Deputy Speaker, what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, particularly when we have had such a demonstration of moral relativism—such an apologia, in many ways, for a regime that has really done nothing to justify the explanations that have been permitted it.
May I welcome the clarity that you have brought to this debate, when all that we have had from some parties is very much the opposite? We have had obfuscation, deception and dissimulation. We have had all the tricks and all the terms that we are used to when we talk about a regime that has institutionalised lies, deception and dishonesty not, as Churchill put it, as vanguards for the truth, but instead of the truth. These are attempts not to build a better world, but to destroy one that is trying to serve the people of these islands and our allies and friends.
I am privileged to be speaking today about security. We have heard—and no doubt we will hear more—about how security is built on military hardware, and Members will not, quite understandably, hear me resile from that point. However, security is, of course, not built just on military hardware. It is not built just on the training teams that, even now, are helping the Ukrainians to defend themselves against the Russian tanks that are in Donetsk and in the Donbass, and that care about the overflights over Ukraine. It is not just about the British battalion that is, even now, in Estonia, demonstrating to the Russians that the NATO commitment is real. Those British troops are not there just because they are capable, but to demonstrate that an attack on one is an attack on all.
Leo Docherty
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to consider the fact that the Leader of the Opposition is on record publicly as stating his belief that NATO should be closed down? Does my hon. Friend agree that that sends a deep signal of alarm across these Benches?
Tom Tugendhat
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but he is slightly limited in what he said. He should have said, quite accurately, that it sends a deep signal of alarm across this House, and I look here even at friends in the Scottish National party and at many on the Labour Benches, who will remember, of course, who it was who built NATO: Clement Attlee. Who was it who built the independent nuclear deterrent? It was the Attlee Government, who recognised that the United Kingdom had a role to play as a force for good in the world. That was an era when socialism loved Britain and did not hate it. That was an era when socialism respected the west and did not hate it. That was an era when socialism stood for something and did not stand for nothing.
Boris Johnson
I am aware of Iceland’s action. If we think about this action in the round, there has never been a collective diplomatic expulsion or action like it across the world. I therefore hope that this episode will mark a turning point. We do not want this to be a bilateral confrontation between Britain and Russia, as many hon. Members have said.
Like many on both sides of the House, I have been very careful to make the distinction between our quarrel with the Russian state and our position with the Russian people. I echo the heartfelt sympathy voiced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister about the horrific fire in the shopping centre in Kemerovo in Siberia, which claimed the lives of scores of people, including children. It is vital to state that our differences have never been with the Russian people, whose artistic, cultural, literary and musical achievements are matchless. Our quarrel, as I say, is with the Kremlin, whose approach is to conjure up the spectre—the turnip ghost, if you like—of foreign enemies to cement domestic support. The idea that Russia or the Russian people are ringed by enemies is totally implausible and untrue. Far from being surrounded by foes, the Russian people are surrounded by friends and admirers such as ourselves who want nothing more than to live in peace with them on the basis of the very international rules that, tragically, their leaders have made it their project to subvert or overthrow.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) said, the Kremlin has tried to respond to its actions in Salisbury with the usual tactic of concealing the needle of truth in a haystack of lies and obfuscation. The Russian state media have pumped out no fewer than 21 separate theories so far, including some of almost sublime absurdity. They have claimed variously that Britain launched a nerve agent attack on its own soil in order to sabotage the World cup, that America did it to destabilise the world and, most sickeningly and cynically of all, that Sergei Skripal attempted suicide and apparently tried to take the life of his own daughter with him.
Leo Docherty
Conservative Members will welcome the Opposition’s somewhat tardy acceptance of Russian culpability for the crimes in Salisbury. What, in the Foreign Secretary’s judgment, has brought about that change of heart?
Boris Johnson
At this stage of the debate, all of us on both sides of the House will welcome as much unanimity and accord on this matter as we can find. We do not seek to make windows into men’s souls and to try to establish exactly how or why the Opposition decided to change their mind, but we welcome it. I listened very carefully not only to what the Leader of the Opposition had to say, but also to the explanation from the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw). I welcome what the Leader of the Opposition said.
Oral Answers to Questions
Leo Docherty Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman has raised a very specific issue and a very specific point. I will be happy to look at the question he has raised and respond to him in writing.
Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)
The Prime Minister
I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in wishing all the very best to the Zephyr team in the attempt that they are making. He is right that his constituency plays a crucial role in the aerospace industry. I am pleased to say that we are continuing to work with that industry through the aerospace growth partnership to ensure that we can further enhance the industry. We wish the Zephyr team well.
Oral Answers to Questions
Leo Docherty Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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The Prime Minister
The point the Foreign Secretary was making yesterday was that, depending on what comes out of the investigation into the attack on the two individuals in Salisbury, it might be appropriate for the Government to look at whether Ministers and other dignitaries should attend the World cup in Russia.
Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)
In advance of the Prime Minister’s meeting this afternoon with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, does she agree that the kingdom is in fact a force for tremendous stability in a very turbulent region? Will she offer reassurance to the Crown Prince that this country will stand with him in his efforts to bring modernity, development and reform to our very important middle eastern ally?
The Prime Minister
I agree with my hon. Friend. We have had a long-standing and historic relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and that will continue. It has been important in our security and defence, and in the stability of the region. Moreover, under the Crown Prince and his Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia is reforming and changing and giving greater rights to women. We should encourage that and stand alongside and work with Saudi Arabia to help the Crown Prince deliver on his Vision 2030.