National Insurance Contributions Holiday

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

That is absolutely right, and the noble Lord has done more than probably anyone else to improve the chances of people in those circumstances. That is one reason why we announced the rough sleepers initiative and why we have this new education network, which is being trialled with governors. But we cannot get away from the stark statistic that although care leavers represent only 1% of 19 to 21 year-olds, they represent 24% of the prison population. That has to be an area that we all focus on, on a cross-party basis.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept that there are perils in store for parties that do not honour their manifesto obligations? He himself is probably far too young to remember “solemn and binding”; we all remember the terrible fate that awaited that particular pledge. But would he accept that, if both the Labour and Conservative parties failed to honour their commitments given in the last manifesto to respect and implement the will of the people—noble Lords knew I was going to get around to that—they would then run the severe danger of ending up in total parliamentary irrelevance, just like the Liberal Democrats?

[Lord Bates]

I was going to finish on a harmonious cross-party basis with the noble Lord, Lord Bird. However, manifesto commitments need to be honoured. The Prime Minister has been very clear about our manifesto commitment in relation to leaving the European Union. She was also incredibly clear that she wanted to create a country where everyone had the opportunity of work—that worked for everyone. That is a pledge that we all have to work towards.

Westminster: Security

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord raises a really important point about the right to protest. I think I am known by name by some of our friends standing across the road, voicing their support for—or against—Brexit. There are updates every day about the threat to this estate and the vicinity, and I am certainly happy to update noble Lords about any emerging threats.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend accept that we all have a duty and responsibility to help the security staff as much as we can? One of the first pieces of information we are given on entering the building is that we should make sure we are wearing our ID passes. Looking along the Labour Front Bench, I am not sure I can find many that are actually visible—they may be very well hidden. Do we not all have a duty to help the staff protect us?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I have got mine too. There should be none of this, “Do you not know who I am?”; I have never heard people say that in this House. The only reason we are ever asked is in order to protect us.

Brexit: Economic Analysis of Various Scenarios

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I can confirm that the economic analysis being undertaken is for the economy as a whole—goods and services—and that is reflected in the regional pages. Further analysis by the Bank of England, which we believe will be released in about 40 minutes’ time, will give another view that will be helpful to Parliament and to others who wish to see what the impact would be. But we are absolutely confident that the deal as presented represents the best opportunity for this country, and that is backed up by the analysis.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

I wonder whether my noble friend could help me understand this. He said, in his own words, that there is a clear choice between this deal and no deal, but the Statement finished off with a third alternative: no Brexit at all. Could he elaborate: in what circumstances could there be no Brexit at all?

[Lord Bates]

We have the EU (Withdrawal) Act which, of course, commits us to a course of action. The choice I mentioned was clearly the preference that we would have a deal as negotiated by the Prime Minister, but that is subject to the will of Parliament as expressed in a meaningful vote on 11 December, and we are seeking to inform that debate.

Syria-Jordan Border: Rukban Camp

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I agree with the noble Viscount. The international community has done something extremely good in building a first-class A&E department where we provide humanitarian access to patch up the wounded and the sick from conflicts around the world. At some point, we need to start devoting more energy, effort and cash to preventive work to stop conflicts breaking out in the first place. Once they break out, of course, it is incredibly difficult to do anything to meet the humanitarian needs of the people.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

Following up on the points made by my noble friend Lord Cormack and the noble Lord, Lord West, we can be proud in this country of the humanitarian effort that we put into the Middle East. However, is it not a fact that we got the fundamentals of the policies we pursued in Syria—indeed, ever since Iraq, in Afghanistan and Libya too—wrong? To avoid these catastrophes in future, is it not time to go back, reflect on where we got things wrong in our foreign policy over the past 20 years and see if there is a better way of pursuing things?

[Lord Bates]

That would be a worthy topic for a short debate, or even a long one, in your Lordships’ House. These are major issues. The ultimate urgency at present is to stop the fighting and conflict and have a pause, a ceasefire, to allow humanitarian access and a breathing space so that the nascent process beginning in Geneva can take root in Syria and work towards a lasting political solution.

Police: Independent Inquiries

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I shall certainly take that suggestion forward, to stop myself getting beaten over the head every day over this matter. But more seriously, the noble Lord has very kindly brought to my attention the correspondence received and I have written to the PCC. I have also written to noble Lords, as I said the other day, to make the position quite clear: that he can initiate such an inquiry.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I am a Salisbury boy and proud to be the descendant of four generations of policemen. May I let my noble friend into a little secret? I did not have much time for Ted, either personally or politically, but this is not natural justice. Will she not accept that, if we cannot get to grips with these serial cases of misrepresentation and allegations, it will serve only to undermine genuine attempts to deal with the really serious cases that must be dealt with?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I totally appreciate my noble friend’s point, but when he talks about this not being natural justice, Ted Heath has not been convicted of anything. Of course he has not; he is deceased. But there is a mechanism to go forward, if an inquiry wishes to take this forward, through the PCC and he is within his powers to do so.

Budget Statement

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Palumbo of Southwark. I follow him for the very first time. I hope he will forgive me if I do not always follow his argument, however.

This has been a good Budget—no pasty tax or caravan crash in sight. There are some of course, and we have heard plenty of them today, who claim that a thousand kinds of carnage are about to engulf us from across the water. We wait patiently on the beaches for the arrival of that disaster, along with the ice cream sellers and those who rent out deck-chairs. Meanwhile, the country is getting on with the job. It is a strange sort of disaster that produces a record number of people in work, expanding manufacturing, rising car exports and foreign students pouring into the country at a record level along with new investment and entrepreneurs.

I am far from complacent about things—there is so much to do—but I am optimistic. I want to judge the Budget by how it brings the country together: what steps it takes to bridge the gaps between the young and the old, between the super-rich and the super-poor, and between regions, classes and cultures.

I do not dismiss the concerns that we have heard from all sides. There is clearly more to be done. So I cheered the additional billions for the NHS, the encouragement of driverless cars and better transport links, the long overdue refinement of universal credit, and the commitment to housebuilding and to raising apprenticeship levels. My noble friend Lord Horam, who I think is no longer with us, emphasised the measures to help to tackle homelessness. These are all excellent building blocks, although by comparison I have to agree with my noble friend Lord Ryder that the cut in stamp duty looks a little like a chicken that has wandered into a Chinese kitchen. It is surely supply rather than demand that we need to focus on. Meanwhile, though, my son is suitably grateful.

However, despite the thousands of pages available from the Printed Paper Office about the Budget, this Budget really boils down to one word: Brexit. One of the worst mistakes made by any recent Government was not to allow any preparation for that eventuality. We are playing catch-up, so the additional money for preparation is long overdue. Even so, I wonder whether any amount of money is enough to bring those who represent the EU in these negotiations to their senses. We are their friends, their neighbours, their loyal allies. So why the threats? Why the constant stream of abuse? Why does Mr Juncker call the British electorate stupid? What possesses Mr Barnier to suggest that Britain has deserted Europe in the fight against terrorism? It is insulting, outrageous, undignified and totally incorrect. Then there is Mr Tusk. How many more non-negotiable demands will he discover lurking under his mattress? There are so many bumps under his bed that I wonder how the poor chap manages to get any sleep at night.

Even the Taoiseach of Ireland is at it. He says we want to build a wall. We do not. I hope he does not, either. In which case, what is the problem? Unless of course there is another agenda that has nothing to do with trade. I fear that this is not a real negotiation. It seems to me more like an exercise in exacting revenge. Perhaps they do not want an agreement. What they really want is to humiliate Britain, just as they have wrecked and ruined Greece. That is why no deal is better than a deal that is deliberately destructive.

I hope I am wrong—I really do—but just in case I am not, I would like to ask my noble friend for two things. First, I would like him to restate the position that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. I know he has said it before, but they are like those little words of love: the more you hear them, the better you feel the following morning. Perhaps there is progress. We seem to have reached some sort of agreement about the Brexit bill—£40 billion, maybe £50 billion, I do not know, but not the £100 billion that was originally demanded. Still, it is many, many billions. There are more than a few lunches in that, I guess, but let us not complain. They are our friends. Spendthrift friends, of course, who desperately need our money, but friends none the less.

In Florence the Prime Minister vowed to meet all our obligations, and quite right, but—secondly—I would appreciate my noble friend’s advice on whether the figure that we appear to have agreed is what the British Government believe is our legal obligation. Is that what we are offering, our legal obligation? If it is, that means we would be obliged to pay that amount whether or not we get an agreement. That would give Messrs Juncker and Barnier even less incentive to be reasonable. I hope my noble friend can reassure me that it is an offer, not an obligation.

The Budget has done many good things and Brexit will do many more: increase productivity, raise wages, reduce food prices, improve skills, increase competitiveness, open British business up to the wider world and new markets, encourage innovation and embrace the technological revolution that is about to sweep away those who hide in bureaucracy. If it enables Mr McDonnell to afford a new iPad to update his current kit, which appears to be about 50 years out of date, I believe that is a risk we should be willing to take.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—I would follow him almost anywhere—but not on this day his logic and his argument.

I wish to say a few words about Syria and the tragedy that is being played out there. More than 80,000 have already been killed and there will be many more to come. It is only right that we want to help and, as my noble friend Lady Northover indicated earlier, we are doing so. Yet, there is always the law of unintended consequences that dogs our every step in the Middle East. Syria is not a country or a crisis in isolation. It comes with the context of so much that has gone before. Let us take Iraq, for instance. It is almost exactly 10 years since we invaded, and yet all those years and all those lives later, Iraq is a country still beset by religious and ethnic division and consumed by corruption. We invaded the country genuinely committed to supporting democracy, human rights and western values. We left that country with the images of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay burnt into our reputation, and into the imaginations of a generation of young Arabs. Those tiny, irritating, unintended consequences have bitten us hard.

Much the same might be said of our involvement in Afghanistan. Earlier, the Minister said that we are “on track”, but we shall see. We have troops on the ground, so I want to be extremely cautious about what I say, and as the president of the Langford and Wylye branch of the Royal British Legion, I want very much to pay tribute to the servicemen of our Armed Forces and the sacrifices that so many of them have made. But there is one question above all others that must be asked when we consider these issues. After all these years and the expenditure of lives and treasure in our war on terror, have we succeeded in making Britain a safer place? Unless we can say that that is clearly the case, that Britain is more secure, we must at least consider the possibility that the policy we have been pursuing has been wrong.

I want to put this into a little more context before I get to Syria by talking about Libya. We overthrew Gaddafi, a man who we had once armed, just as we had once armed Saddam Hussein, and even Osama bin Laden when he was fighting the Soviets. The law of unintended consequences had a field day with that one. It is still too early to measure the success in Libya. There is still widespread violence and lawlessness, and despite all the support we have given to the new Libyan Government, we seem to be no closer to discovering the truth behind the Lockerbie bombing or bringing to justice the killer of PC Yvonne Fletcher. It is not just truth or justice that have disappeared into the sands, so has Gaddafi’s enormous arsenal of weapons. Some 20,000 surface-to-air missiles, artillery pieces, mortar rounds and much more have flown away and found new homes. Those weapons are now turning up in new hotspots in north Africa and the Middle East—Algeria, Niger, Mali, Somalia and, of course, Gaza, although that is scarcely a new hotspot. These are more unintended consequences.

Some of those weapons have turned up in Syria as well, contributing to the bloodbath and the inhumanity. As a result, it is being argued with increasing passion in some quarters that we must do something, go further, arm the good guys. I understand the deep humanitarian concern that lies behind such suggestions. The Minister herself as good as said something earlier today about amending the EU arms embargo and facilitating a negotiated solution, but putting more weapons into that area might also facilitate an even greater catastrophe. The war in Syria, as we have heard from many speakers in the debate, is not simply a civil war, it is part of a war of sectarianism that is burning across so much of the Middle East. It is a war of opposing ideologies, tribes, cultures and religions; a kaleidoscope of confusion.

That raises a question: if we intervene, just who are we supporting? Simply being an enemy of Assad does not make any group a friend of this country. The Middle East is not a pick-and-mix sweet shop. It is a cauldron of subtle and shifting loyalties that in the past we have had little success in understanding, let alone exploiting. It is being argued in some quarters, possibly even implied in what the Minister said in her remarks earlier, that because Assad’s arsenal is huge, we must give the rebels more and thus level up the playing field—or level up the killing field. It is suggested, for instance, that we supply items such as body armour, which does not kill. No, it does not, but the weapons in the hands of those wearing the body armour will most certainly kill.

I believe that, so far, the Government have got our policy in Syria right. They have provided humanitarian aid and there must be more—much more—of that. We have supported our great ally Turkey, whose interests and frontiers are so directly threatened. The Prime Minister has emphasised the need for an international solution. He has gone to Russia and talked with others in the Middle East in the attempt to find some common ground and to isolate the conflict. We should also talk to the Iranians, if we can, after their elections in a few weeks.

Talking may not find any easy solution, but there may be no solution of any sort in Syria, not for a few years. We lack the ability to make it otherwise. Sometimes it is braver and far wiser to resist the siren call to arms and to do less rather than to promise more. We should be providing no military equipment of any sort to the conflict in Syria. We should instead remember that there is no tragedy in Syria that cannot be made far worse by misguided western intervention and by allowing ourselves to be caught, yet again, by that unavoidable law of unintended consequence.

Middle East Peace Process

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for introducing this very important debate. I remind the House that peace is a puzzle of many parts, and in the Middle East one of the important parts is Pakistan. It is a country in great crisis. It also has an arsenal of nuclear weapons. The price we would pay for the failure of Pakistan would be devastating. It would destroy the prospects for peace in Afghanistan and infect the entire Middle East. That failure would almost certainly be lived out also on the streets of this country. It could put in the hands of extremists like bin Laden the most terrible weapons of destruction.

It is very easy to lay blame. Did Pakistanis know that bin Laden was hiding there? Of course some of them did, but it would be folly to kick over the entire barrel simply because some of the apples are rotten. Perhaps it is scarcely surprising to see the media sneering, but I was desperately disappointed to hear the CIA director, Leon Panetta, publicly proclaiming that Pakistan could not be trusted over bin Laden. In one broad, sweeping, trite statement, he humiliated them all. It is precisely that sort of insensitivity that could push Pakistan into the abyss.

The country needs help, not humiliation. A stable Pakistan is a precondition for a wider peace. We in Britain have a unique role to play. Our ties are abundant. We have educated their politicians, trained their officers—and one day we might even beat them at cricket. Britain needs to be the sort of good and patient friend to Pakistan that only we can be. Restoring stability will not be easy. It will not be completed in one year, or probably even in 10; but the prize is worth every effort, because if we fail, the alternative is not just a subcontinent but an entire Middle East in nuclear chaos.