Ukraine

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady raises a good point. What we are doing is a massive, positive strat comms campaign in Russian and in Ukrainian to make sure that people get the truth and hear the truth.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

As we have noticed this afternoon, virtually everyone in this House has supported the efforts towards resistance over the past few months and in these days. I imagine the House will also support the very different sort of warfare under occupation over the coming months and possibly years. But the House will also have noticed the marvellous way the Prime Minister has spoken directly to the Russian people today. I hope that he will bear in mind that at the moment public opinion in Russia is rather different, and that does underline the importance of accurate information.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is quite right. He is a distinguished former soldier and he knows that truth is the first casualty. We have to make sure that we are telling people exactly what is going on. To the best of my knowledge, at the moment the Ukrainians are resisting much more strongly than some people had thought that they would. Who knows how long they can keep going? Let us hope that they can and let us encourage them to do so, but let us get the message out as well. That is our job.

Army Reserve

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to have this Adjournment debate on the Army Reserve. I asked for this because I am concerned that a yawning gap is opening up between the laudable ambitions of Ministers in the Ministry of Defence and what is actually proposed for the reserve. Ironically, this debate takes place at a time when large numbers of reservists, on both sides, are central to the darkening military picture in Ukraine.

When I served in the Territorial Army Intelligence Corps in the 1980s, there was not necessarily an expectation of being deployed, because it would have meant that the third world war had started, but the situation has now been quite different for many years. Those joining the reserves now expect to be deployed, and for many reservists it is one of the attractions of joining. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has consistently made it clear that he sees the reserves as an important element of cost-effective armed forces. At the peak, they provided 23% of our forces in Iraq and 13% in Afghanistan. More recently, they have performed further crucial roles in the covid emergency and in dealing with cyber-threats.

Page 19 of the Ministry of Defence document “Future Soldier Guide”, in a section headed “Army Reserve Transformation”, states:

“Our nation’s Reservists will play a vital and pivotal role in delivering Future Soldier. We require a more capable, more ready and more usable Army Reserve, which is assured to deliver against mandated tasks across the UK or overseas. Every part of the Army Reserve will have a clear warfighting role and stand ready to fight as part of the Whole Force in time of war.”

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

On that point, as a former infantry officer, it strikes me that, if we remove support weapons, we obviously have a less capable unit, but we also lose the interest and the attraction to retain troops.

[Mr Bacon]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Part of the way in which the reserves used to be recruited made clear the importance of formed bodies. The building of comradeship and interest and the use of civilian skills in the reserve forces was an important part of attracting people. I will say more about that because we do not want to lose them.

The MOD document continues:

“Over the coming years the Army Reserve will increasingly take responsibility for Homeland Protect and Resilience operations, supported by the regular component.”

That should increase focus and clarity and it should be very exciting. Unfortunately, serious issues on structure and resourcing threaten to blow away those good intentions. My first concern is that, at a time when the Regular Army is being reduced—again—it seems extraordinary that we are cutting the Army Reserve, too. Could the Minister confirm that the MOD plans to cut the establishment of the Army Reserve from 30,100 trained, with a further 3,000 on phase 1 training, to 27,100 trained, with a further 3,000 on phase 1 training? That is a cut of about 10%.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bacon]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right, and I fear that, at times, we have acted as if we seem to be taking them for granted, which we absolutely must not do.

One of the best ways of making the slender resources available to the reserve estate go further would be reducing bureaucracy in the Defence Infrastructure Organisation so that the reserve forces and cadets associations can crack on with using their local knowledge and the business acumen of their volunteers, as they used to do so successfully. On that subject, when will the Ministry of Defence publish the 2021 report of the RFCA external scrutiny team?

I am sure the Minister will be familiar with section 47 of the Defence Reform Act 2014:

“On receiving a report…the Secretary of State must lay a copy of it before Parliament.”

Heaven forfend that the Secretary of State would inadvertently break the law, but I understand he has had a copy of this report since last July.

On the question of force generation, right across the English-speaking world, from the National Guard with its presence in every American population centre to the Australian army reserve, reserve forces are proud of their local ties and footprint. Earlier this decade, changes that paired reserve battalions with regular battalions wisely built on that here.

Earlier I stressed the importance of keeping the emphasis on formed bodies, which train, socialise and build comradeship to fight together. It is a shame that the Army’s reserve narrative lists, for conditions short of war, supply individuals to regular units ahead of using formed bodies. That points towards the slippery slope that we went down in the dying days of Operation Herrick, with the destruction of the reserve officer corps.

Returning once more to the reserve component narrative of “Future Soldier”:

“While Army Reserve will play an increased role, the management of the Army Reserve will change to ensure that employers are not adversely affected.”

The greatest barrier to employer support is last-minute changes in call-out plans and arrangements that wreck the plans that employers have generously made to allow their employees to engage in military service. That happened frequently in Operation Rescript at the peak of the covid crisis and continues to happen on other operations. When will steps be taken to ensure that such last-minute changes are identified and recorded, and to ensure that the officers concerned are called to account?

To summarise, I welcome much of the Army’s vision for the reserve, but I believe there is a real danger that the cuts to numbers and resources, and the structures emerging, will undermine them.

[Adam Holloway]

Given the long list of cuts, does my hon. Friend agree that the time has come to restore a separate vote for the reserves so that Parliament can know where the money is going?

[Mr Bacon]

That is a very good idea. Having served on the Public Accounts Committee for 16 years, I always like things that make it clearer where the money is going.

--- Later in debate ---

[Leo Docherty]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s sincere interest in the issue. I will write to him, relaying some information about future establishment strength and current deployability judged on bounty. That will be interesting for me, and I look forward to sharing that information with him.

[Adam Holloway]

Does the Minister believe that the new structure, in which each infantry company has lost the critical mass for training—barely 80 men—will attract good-quality officers to improve their attendance?

[Leo Docherty]

I think good people will principally be encouraged to join by the prospect of serving in exciting overseas operations. Look at the opportunities that exist in Kenya, Oman and right across the middle east in a more sustained fashion. The offer that we make—“If you join, you will have the prospect of serving”—is very exciting and should not be underestimated.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk make a good point about officer training corps. Importantly, he talked about estates. I reaffirm our interest, concern and sincere belief that training needs to be proximate to the people who are enjoying those opportunities. The Minister for Defence Procurement, my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), takes that very seriously when he is making judgments about the estate. My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk asked when we would publish the RFCA 2021 report. That will be in due course, but we note his interest sincerely. I am grateful to have answered the debate tonight.

Question put and agreed to.

7.33 pm

House adjourned.

Government Contracts: Covid-19

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on securing this important debate. I wish to make a declaration that family members, friends and constituents are employed by or have an interest in companies that carry out work for Government contracts.

On this occasion, I wish to speak about my constituent Samir Jassal, who is also a local councillor in Gravesham. The hon. Lady referred to the company, whose name I cannot remember—pharma something—but there is an absurd narrative that he got more than £100 million-worth of business because of links to the Conservative party. I know him quite well, and it is utterly preposterous to say that because he stood twice in unwinnable parliamentary seats, because he twice managed to get himself a photograph with David Cameron, because he twice managed to get himself a picture with Boris, because he once gave four thousand quid to the Gravesham Conservative Association, and because he is the councillor for Westcourt ward, that somehow buys him calls from the Health Secretary, whose honour is also impugned in this. The idea that the Health Secretary rang him up because he had given four thousand quid and had a few photographs taken, with an, “Oi, mate—want to make a few hundred grand next week on PPE?” is utterly preposterous.

According to Trump, the CIA was scouring China at a time when this equipment was in globally short supply. There was global competition for this stuff. We all remember the hospitals and care homes in our constituencies screaming for this stuff. I remember getting a video from one of my friends, who is a nurse in the local hospital, showing a store cupboard and the sell-by dates of some of the PPE in there, which was a couple of years old—it did not actually matter, apparently. There was this awful tension. It was a ghastly situation. This was a national emergency and a time of huge global competition for the very same boxes of equipment sitting in Chinese warehouses or waiting to come off their production lines.

If we had just relied on the state sector or our existing suppliers, that equipment would have been shipped elsewhere in the world. Entrepreneurs such as Samir Jassal and the civil servants who worked with them are actually heroes, and the BBC, some hon. Members and the so-called Good Law Project should have the humility to accept that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Fovargue.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for leading this debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. Above all, I am thankful to all the people who signed the petition and to those who created it, because it means that, whether it is welcome or not, we must have this debate in the House, albeit on a Monday evening and in a small room. It should be happening on the Floor of the House of Commons, but the Government do not seem too keen to have it there, so we are having it here instead. Nevertheless, I thank all those who took the time to sign the petition, because this debate is not going away.

As my hon. Friend said, over 125,000 people have signed this e-petition, which shows the strength of feeling across the country about this issue. And those people signed it last year; if the petition had stayed open, we would have had a lot more signatures. That is because this situation did not stop when people were signing the petition; it has carried on and is carrying or now. There are questions to be answered.

Quite rightly, the British public do not like a cover-up. However, even the first response to this petition by the Government had to be sent back by the Petitions Committee —I thank the Committee for that—as the Government tried to dodge the question and did not really answer it. They had to resend in their homework; eventually, it was a bit better, but it is still not good enough.

Labour has been calling for months for this independent public inquiry into the Government’s handling of the covid pandemic, and the Government’s contracts must form a part of such an inquiry. That is what the public are asking for in this petition, and that is what we need to see. My hon. Friend eloquently outlined all the many different contracts about which there are questions to answer: contracts for PPE, contracts for free school meals and contracts for other things. We need to have an inquiry into all of them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) was right to say that the public want the Government to be careful with money, they want to know how that money is being spent and they want to see the details published. There are key questions about Government appointments and standards of ethics that we want answered. I am sure these questions would be key recommendations of any inquiry.

My hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) rightly went through the shocking costs of some of the contracts. They are not shocking in terms of their costs; this money needed to be spent urgently, to save lives. However, there was potential waste behind those contracts. There are also concerns that public confidence has been eroded because of the way that the contracting was carried out.

It is important to have an inquiry, because there are clearly questions to be answered, and lessons need to be learned rapidly. To be honest, I am concerned about leaving all those questions to the public inquiry. The questions about the contracting that is happening now need to be answered now. So a rapid-fire inquiry, which would also be part of the public inquiry, would be the best response to the questions being asked.

This is so important. Today could have been the day that has been termed “freedom day”. Who knows? With a correct track and trace contract, properly administered so that we could have confidence in it, we might not have had to rely only on the vaccine roll-out, which is impressive. Good test and trace could even have enabled us to have completed the opening-up today. That is how important this issue is.

The Government’s reply to the petition referred to the Boardman review, but that is not an independent and unbiased review, and just adds to the lack of transparency. It looks more and more as if the Conservatives are set on glossing over the cronyism in their ranks so that they can carry on as if nothing has happened. The Government have promised a covid inquiry “at the appropriate time”, but the appropriate time to look into these contracts is now. The next pandemic could arrive tomorrow: it is an ever-present threat, and the next one could be bigger and more deadly than covid. The Government cannot kick this inquiry down the road, because a moment of crisis is when our contracting should be better than normal, with higher standards than normal and more reliable than normal, not with more questions and more concerning, “given out to my mates” contracting.

The questions that I, many colleagues here and the public need answers to today are these. How did the urgent scramble to procure resources we needed to get us through the pandemic descend into corruption, waste, cronyism and secrecy? Why is this emergency contracting still going on? What has changed? Is anything better? It did not have to be this way; it should not have to be this way; and it cannot be this way when the next pandemic hits.

In the past 12 months, the Government have ordered £280 million of masks that did not meet the required standards. They have spent over £100 million on gowns without carrying out technical checks, and they could not be used. These were purchased by PestFix, a company that specialises in pest control products and that, by the Government’s own admission, was dormant in 2018 before being referred by the VIP channel. As the Good Law Project uncovered last month, officials at the Department of Health and Social Care were aware that PestFix’s agent may have been bribing officials in China. Most concerning of all, the Government have awarded almost £2 billion in covid contracts to friends and donors of the Conservative party.

The hon. Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) raised those points, and he said that there is nothing to see here, but I think he made a good argument for an inquiry.

[Adam Holloway]

I have no objection at all to an inquiry. I was just trying to point out how absolutely preposterous it is that one of the key pillars of this whole argument that there has somehow been corruption is that a bloke in Gravesend gives four grand to the Tory party, as well as the other things I listed, and suddenly has the Government giving multi-million-pound contracts.

[Fleur Anderson]

I say in response to the hon. Member that there is too much here to be answered. It is not just the odd small company here and there; there has been a real pattern of corruption.

[Adam Holloway]

But this is one of the main planks, and it just does not stack up. Do you really think Matt Hancock is going to give a £103 million contract to somebody because they were once a parliamentary candidate and they edged in in a picture with Boris? It is absurd, and it is one of your main planks.

[Yvonne Fovargue (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind hon. Members to refer to other hon. Members not as “you”, but by constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Adam Holloway]

On Samir Jassal, the supposedly important pillar of corruption, I remember running into him and him telling me that he had offered some PPE, when we were screaming for it. I think he had spent over a month being triaged to see whether it was suitable stuff. This is really preposterous.

[Julia Lopez]

It is interesting to know that. The hon. Member for Gower mentioned the company Arco, and I appreciate her for raising that. It was raised by the MP for Arco’s constituency, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), in a Westminster Hall debate to which I referred earlier. If the hon. Member for Gower and I swapped seats, I wonder whether I would be suggesting that it was improper to put that forward. People were in very difficult circumstances; if she had been told that there was a company that could support the national effort, would she not have put it forward for review? We have to ask ourselves that question.

The focus on those early procurement challenges secured some tremendous successes under pressure. We have established one of the largest and most diversified vaccine portfolios in the world. We have ordered 32 billion items of PPE and provided more than 15,000 ventilators to the NHS. It is important that we do not obscure those achievements with some of the understandable concerns that have been raised about transparency. None of us wants to sit here answering questions about cronyism. The challenges I cited about the recording-keeping across Departments are real ones that we are trying very hard to address. I understand why people ask questions; I have asked many of them myself, and I have been reassured by the answers that I have received from officials.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I will take it from the top. I thank all my colleagues for their contributions and the Minister for her response. The sheer number of examples of deals that have been raised go some way to explaining the depth of the issues that worry many of my constituents and, obviously, the constituents of many colleagues.

The hon. Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) made a doughty defence of his constituent, who I am sure is very grateful for it. Unfortunately, if someone benefits from public contracts that are granted without a robust tendering process, and they have a photo gallery containing pictures of the Prime Minister and former Prime Minister, they have to expect people to examine their contract.

[Adam Holloway]

By that narrative, civil servants must have been leant on by Ministers to give contracts to Samir Jassal. Does the hon. Lady think that those civil servants have also been caught up in this web of corruption, all for £4,000 and a few photographs?

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point, and we might think to ourselves, yes, perhaps. However, it happens once, twice, then three times—it is not just the odd case. He talks about £4,000 not being a large sum of money compared with what he made. The Government have to be transparent and say, “Okay. We’ll take it on the chin. Let’s have an inquiry and look at it properly.” That is what the people who signed the petition want.

As predicted, we heard from the Minister a lot of excuses that we were expecting about the emergency. We know that it did not have to be that way, and I want to shine a light on it. According to the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University, the costs of PPE and Test and Trace in Wales were around half of that spent in England. We know why that is: the Welsh Labour Government did not divvy up contracts with their mates; they gave them to local authorities and those with public health expertise who were responsible for the test-and-trace system. What happened in Wales was transparent, and I am proud that a Welsh Labour Government delivered that. They did not have call handlers sitting around with nothing to do despite the contracts for them costing hundreds of millions of pounds.

A failing track-and-trace system, unusable PPE, and the millions spent on communications will undoubtedly come out in an inquiry. The SNP spokesperson, the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) uttered one of my favourite phrases that the Government use when they do not want us to find out the true scale of an issue: “the disproportionate cost”. What is disproportionate is spending huge amounts of money on equipment that cannot be used. What is also disproportionate are the deaths of 130,000 people who have left behind loved ones and who will never see the answers that they truly deserve.

My hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) raised an important question that the Minister should have addressed: how much money have the Government spent on defending themselves in court on the unlawful decisions that have been made? How much, Minister? It is important that we know. Transparency is important, and we have not seen it with this Government. Nurses are offered very little in pay rises, but entrepreneurs who have made a lot of money are seen as heroes. That is not right—it does not sit well with us—and many other people believe that, too.

[Adam Holloway]

I absolutely think that nurses and everybody are heroes, but at a time of global emergency, entrepreneurs were heroes because the public sector and the usual suppliers were not getting that equipment, but the entrepreneurs were.

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

I believe that if we had planned for this better, we might not have had to been in this situation.

I will finish with the fact that 128,000 people have lost their lives. This has been mishandled and there must be an inquiry. I send my love to all those who have lost someone during covid-19. It has been a terrible and horrific time. We need that transparency—it has got to be done—and we will continue to fight for the truth for everyone.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 328408, relating to Government contracts during the covid-19 outbreak.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. While it is an absolute honour to follow the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), it is also a tough gig in defence debates, but I will do my absolute best in the time that I have.

I will speak to Lords amendments 4 and 5 and the new clauses they would insert into part 2 of the Bill. Many of our witnesses in the Public Bill Committee called for this section of the Bill to be scrapped altogether. Before I turn to the amendments, I also want to add my welcome to the Minister, who is no longer in his place. He will know the frustrations felt by many of us who sat on the Public Bill Committee at his predecessor’s obstinance in the face of expert evidence and personal testimonies. Like others, I sincerely hope for a change in approach, because our forces and veterans would have been better served by well considered and evidenced legislative changes, not this confused hash of a Bill. The Government have rightly identified that there is a problem and a need to provide greater legal protections to armed forces personnel and veterans serving overseas, but they have drafted legislation that makes the problem worse, all in a hurried effort to match the sweeping rhetoric of their 2019 general election campaign.

Lords amendment 4 inserts a new clause that would ensure that our armed forces retain the same rights as civilians in bringing civil claims against the Ministry of Defence. As drafted, the Bill, whose central aim we are told is to provide greater legal protections to armed forces personnel, includes provisions to do the exact opposite and disadvantage our personnel and veterans by introducing a hard six-year cut-off for any compensation claims, including for personal injury and death, all by amending the Limitation Act 1980. The Government claim that this will stop any baseless claims, yet there are already provisions in the Limitation Act to strike out any such baseless claims.

Worse still, the Bill allows the MOD to strike out not just baseless claims, but rightful ones, too. When it comes to dates of diagnosis and knowledge, such as with PTSD or hearing loss, or when it is difficult to establish facts in the context of armed conflict, claims cannot always be made within six years. The Government’s own impact assessment from last year shows that at a minimum, 19 injured or bereaved members of the forces community who made claims from operations in Afghanistan and Iraq would have been blocked from doing so had this legislation been in place. One member of our brave forces being blocked from a claim is completely out of order, never mind 19.

Crucially, we do not know what will happen in the future, but it is likely that there will be drastic unintended consequences, and we do know that with this Bill, our forces will have less protection than civilians. There is simply no justification for introducing this time limit when such a measure currently does not exist.

Unamended, this part of the Bill will only benefit the Ministry of Defence, yet the Ministry of Defence will be the defendant in all these claims. That is a clear conflict. The Government have shamefully created legislation that protects them from legitimate legal claims while preventing forces personnel from access to justice.

The new clause under Lords amendment 5 would introduce a duty of care for service personnel. I am completely at a loss as to why the Government would reject and oppose care standards for service personnel involved in investigations or litigation arising from overseas operations. Anyone who has experience of being under prolonged or repeated investigation, especially when they are innocent, will know how utterly career-ruining, life-ruining and crushing it can be to be in that position. The defence that the Armed Forces Bill is the best place to address the issue simply does not cut it, because that legislation is not yet in place. This Bill will be soon. It is a dereliction of duty for MPs to accept glaring gaps in legislation on the promise that the issue may or may not be rectified in future legislation.

As we have heard from other Members, there remains nothing in the Bill that will solve the problem of repeated investigations. Without the Lords amendment, there is nothing in the Bill that will afford our forces and veterans a duty of care when undergoing such investigations. I would appreciate it if the Minister fully explained why the Government feel that, after our forces personnel and veterans have put themselves in harm’s way for all our sakes, they do not deserve legal, pastoral or mental health support at a time of heightened stress and worry.

Finally, as I did on Report, I urge all Government Members to look beyond the rhetoric and political spin, read the legislation and consider the noble Lords’ amendments and new clauses carefully, before they vote with their Whip and put our armed forces and our veterans at a gross disadvantage.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty) on what must have been a massive overnight essay crisis or the worst sort of Sandhurst show parade. I will be amazed if he can keep his eyes open for the next couple of minutes, but my contribution will be short.

I welcome the Government’s sincere efforts, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), to deal with these vexatious legal actions. Having listened to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), it strikes me that there is now an opportunity to listen to the bishops, the former Secretary-General of NATO, the admirals, the air marshals, the generals, the right hon. Opposition Members, the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and a former Attorney General. We must renew our efforts in support of Northern Ireland veterans, including some soldiers with whom I served elsewhere.

More generally, on these crimes—about which, I regret to say, I very, very nearly know rather a lot—no British soldier should ever be any doubt whatever that if they commit these crimes, they will be liable for prosecution by our courts for the rest of their lives.

[Jamie Stone]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway). I wish to take this opportunity—I try do this from time to time, Mr Deputy Speaker—to remind the House that one of my children is serving in the armed forces, as is my son-in-law.

I offer my personal congratulations to the new Minister, the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty). We do not know each other well, but I am somewhat biased as my late brother-in-law served with the Scots Guards and I would not dream of calling them the woodentops; they are a very fine regiment indeed.

It would be churlish of me not to give credit where it is due: as so many others have said, the Government’s move on Lords amendment 1 is most welcome. My party and others in all parts of the Chamber will welcome this change of heart. We feel we have been vindicated for our efforts to press the Government.

I could say many different things in this debate, but I wish to dwell on just one point—it is interesting how sometimes a speech will come into one’s head as the debate proceeds. I would not describe myself as coming from a military family, but my grandfather served in the first world war, as did his four brothers, two of whom died, and my father served in the Fourteenth Army in the second world war. Although, as the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) pointed out, bad things have been done by our soldiers, I was brought up in the belief—one to which I still hold dearly—that the British armed forces had the very highest standards and a well-deserved reputation for fairness and decency in the way that they conducted themselves. That reputation won us friends at that time and for the future and gave and gives us a position of moral strength that has served this country incredibly well for a very long time. To throw that away by not absolutely outlawing torture would have been a a reprehensible backward step, especially as torture has been illegal in this country for more than 300 years.

The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) quoted Lord Stirrup, and I would like to add a quotation with reference to Lords amendment 1. Lord Stirrup said:

“Our Armed Forces personnel in general exercise incredible judgment and restraint in the most dangerous and trying circumstances, but it would be unreasonable to expect that they should be entirely free of the faults and frailties that are part of the wider society from which they spring. When such crimes are suspected, they should be investigated thoroughly—and the investigation process itself would certainly bear improvement—and, if the evidence is sufficient, the perpetrators should be prosecuted.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 January 2021; Vol. 809, c. 1199.]

Indeed, I would argue that in more recent times, this country’s agreement to and participation in the torture inquiry on the Iraq war continues to underpin this high moral position. It is as simple as this: whatever the results of the inquiry, and even in the event of an accusing finger being pointed at British personnel and action being taken accordingly, the fact is that our armed forces will be better for it, and we will still be on that moral high ground.

In the other place, my party, led by my colleague Lord Thomas of Gresford, voted for an amendment that would require the investigations process to be timely and comprehensive, to avoid repeated investigations against service personnel without compelling new evidence or information. The Government were defeated on that amendment, and that is because, as other Members have said, the drawing out of this process is incredibly bad for not just the person involved but their families.

That takes me neatly to the duty of care. Anyone involved in investigations must have access to the legal, pastoral and mental health support that they need. I am glad to see that Lords amendment 5 extends national standards of care and safeguarding to the families of those under investigation. As I said in my earlier intervention, if we do not get recruitment right for the armed forces, we are in danger of eventually having no armed forces at all. We have to staff our armed forces. If potential recruits are discouraged by what they see as their terms and conditions of employment, they will stay away. If people in the armed forces take a look at what might happen to them and the lack of support they might get, they will walk—it is as simple as that.

It is almost certain that the other place will return the Bill to us with amendments. I give credit where it is due. I think the Minister is a breath of fresh air, and I welcome him to his place. I hope that he and all the reasonable Members on both sides of the House will look at what the other place sends back to us very seriously indeed and act accordingly, because at the end of the day, it is about the good of our armed forces and the defence of the realm, and we live in an unsafe world.

His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), and indeed the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).

This amazing man was the Colonel of my old regiment, the Grenadier Guards, for 42 years, and I spent this morning on the phone to many people who knew him throughout that time. The overwhelming message was, “He was simply one of us in the regiment, and everyone knew that from the guardsmen up.” There are also a number of stories that, unlike the Prime Minister, I unfortunately do not have the social confidence to retell here. I first met the Duke of Edinburgh when I was a nervous young Sandhurst cadet, and he invited the officers who were joining the regiment up for a drink in a little sitting room in Buckingham Palace. He visited the regiment when it was on operational tours in Northern Ireland, and before and after deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bosnia. Indeed, one friend of mine told of how, at a patrol base in Northern Ireland, this young officer had a room next to the Duke, who stayed for the night. My friend lent Prince Philip a towel, and he could not help noticing when Prince Philip had gone, that he had folded up my friend’s towel and put it back in his room.

As someone who had been at the sharp end in world war two—we will hear more about that in a few minutes from my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart)—the Duke of Edinburgh understood the ghastliness of war and the suffering that tends to follow it. After one particularly unpleasant incident in Northern Ireland when three soldiers were seriously hurt, he gave them all jobs in his household. Two decades later, seeing the need for additional support for the large numbers of grenadiers being killed and injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, he started the Colonel’s Fund to support injured soldiers and bereaved families.

As we all know, MPs and peers occasionally get invited to meet the royal family, and I remember one time that I was talking to Prince Philip, and showing off my huge knowledge—not—of Afghan tribal politics. I could not believe it when he said, “No, Adam, you are completely forgetting the significance of the northern Pashtuns in the Afghan national army.” Those who know about Afghanistan, including hon. Members here, will appreciate that that is a nuanced point, and it is amazing that the Duke of Edinburgh was across Afghan tribal politics in quite such detail.

Along with General Webb-Carter, Prince Philip was the driving force in getting more soldiers from ethnic minorities into the Household division. He came from good stock. This morning, I learned from a Jewish friend of mine that in the second world war, when the Nazis started shipping Jews out from Athens in 1942, his mother hid the Cohen family for nearly a year, despite the fact that her small flat was pretty much next door to the Gestapo headquarters. Her body now rests on the Mount of Olives, and she is honoured as Righteous Among the Nations.

Prince Philip honoured and served this nation with a stunning contribution for more than eight decades. Generations of grenadiers and the people of my constituency salute and thank him, and we send our good wishes and sympathy to his family, and to Her Majesty the Queen.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Adam Holloway Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I will give way in a minute. I am going to make some progress.

It is, of course, completely unacceptable that this debate is happening now—one day before the end of the transition period. The Prime Minister said he had a deal that was oven-ready.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Keir Starmer]

That was about a year ago. Then it was supposed to be ready in July, then September, then November and finally it arrived on Christmas eve. That matters, because businesses have had no chance to prepare for the new regulations. Talk to businesses about their concerns. They have real difficulties now. Many of them have already taken decisions about jobs and investment because of the uncertainty, and of course that is made worse by the pandemic.

Let me now go to the deal itself and analyse some of the flaws in it. Let us start with the Prime Minister and what he said on Christmas eve in his press conference. He said:

“there will be no non-tariff barriers to trade.”

His words. He was not being straight with the British public. That is plain wrong. It is worse than that. It was not an aside, or an interview or an off-the-record remark. It was a scripted speech. He said that there would be no non-tariff barriers to trade. The Prime Minister knows that it is not true. Every Member of this House knows it is not true. I will give way to the Prime Minister to correct the record. Either stand up and say that what he said was true, or take this opportunity to correct the record. I give way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keir Starmer]

Typical deflection. The Prime Minister, at a press conference, told the British public that there will be

“no non-tariff barriers to trade”.

The answer he gave just now is not an answer to that point. It is not true, and the Prime Minister knows what he said was not true. He simply will not stand up and acknowledge it today. That speaks volumes about the sort of Prime Minister we have.

[Adam Holloway]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Keir Starmer]

I will in just a minute. The truth is this: there will be an avalanche of checks, bureaucracy and red tape for British businesses. Every business I have spoken to knows this; every business any Member has spoken to knows this. That is what they are talking about. It is there in black and white in the treaty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keir Starmer]

These are examples of the Prime Minister making promises that he does not keep. That is the hallmark of this Prime Minister.

[Adam Holloway]

Can the Leader of the Opposition not in some way join the millions of people in this country, including many millions of patriotic Labour voters, on the remarkable achievement of the Prime Minister?

Public Health

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

First, I pay tribute to the continued amazing performance of NHS staff and, indeed, to the Government and Kate Bingham’s team for the incredible developments in respect of the vaccines.

I do not underplay the difficult and complex decisions being made by people in the Government and, of course, the terrible toll on families affected, but it seems to me that with every difficulty and milestone reached the Government are acting on largely uncontested information. It feels like there has been a serious lack of diversity of opinion, analysis and evidence when it comes to many of these restrictions. The Covid Recovery Group does not want to “let it rip”; they just ask for proper economic impact assessments.

Let us take, for example, the hospitality industry. We are talking about using an enormous amount of taxpayers’ money to pay the industry not to open or to pay people not to go to work, but the payments will go nowhere near the losses that the businesses will make, and many of them will still go to the wall, despite that money. Why are we looking at not keeping them open, given the very limited evidence for closing them?

Prior to this latest lockdown, I joked with the proprietor of the Compass Alehouse in Gravesend that going into his place was like being put under his control: “Stand there, scan here, anti-bac your hands, walk along that path, sit down there” and so on—Members get the picture. The point is that the hospitality industry has spent an absolute fortune and thought long and hard about how to run establishments safely. We should be reopening well-run pubs and restaurants such as the Reliance fish bar and Bartellas in Meopham, and the authorities should be merciless in closing and fining pubs that risk NHS capacity.

I would much rather my constituents socialise in well-run venues than squeeze on to the sofa back at home with their friends. I would have thought that mixing in venues was much better than mixing at home in tiers 2 and 3. I would have thought that encouraging personal responsibility was rather better than the nuances of how much people have to eat with their beer. As others have said, we must make sure that restrictions make sense, or we will drive down compliance.

We have to have a bit more diversity in the advice—perhaps there should be a few people with private sector experience, and perhaps even some more diverse scientific voices. I do not understand why we are using infection rates and not intensive care unit occupancy to guide policy. Why can we not move people around the country? I do not understand why we are preventing millions of people from working when we have not even made a dent in the surge capacity of the Nightingale hospitals—

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

There are no staff!

[Adam Holloway]

Intervene if you like.

[Maria Eagle]

I will. The hon. Gentleman talks about Nightingale hospitals, but there are not enough staff to staff the Nightingale hospitals. We would have to take them out of the hospitals that they are trying to give some relief to. That is why they are not being used.

[Adam Holloway]

I thank the hon. Lady for intervening and giving me a bit more time, and that is where I would like to see money spent. I would like to see money spent on surge capacity in the NHS, rather than on paying people not to work.

You know what, like it or not, my constituents are going to be thrown into more weeks of extraordinary lockdown, and there is no possibility of this not now happening given the Opposition’s decision to abstain. Well, I am going to support the Government’s decision and message to comply and, indeed, our remarkable Prime Minister in particular, but I will be hard pushed to support the Government in future if there is a realistic possibility of the Government being forced to seek a different path. Churchill himself had a wide mix of generals and advisers.

UK Special Forces: Iraq and Afghanistan

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

My hon. Friend tempts me down another path entirely, and he knows I agree with him on that, but his broader point is entirely spot on. I know he has spent a lot of time looking at these matters over the past two and a half years that he has been a member of the Defence Committee, so he speaks with some degree of knowledge of them.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

I have sympathy with much of what the hon. Gentleman is saying—and, indeed, with what the former Chairman of the Defence Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), said—but my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) made the point that this could be crippling, and one needs to balance it quite carefully. Let us not kid ourselves: our top soldiers do not go out wanting to commit war crimes. They go out in very confused, dynamic, frightening situations, operating with imperfect information, to take on people who would otherwise hurt our constituents. We need to keep that firmly in mind and not imagine that we have some great problem of crazy guys with unseasonal suntans running around killing people. That is clearly not the case.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman identifies an allegation that I have not made. That is important to remember, because I agree with what he just said. Of course members of the armed forces do not go out wishing to commit crimes and atrocities—of course they do not, and I do not allege that.

In response to what the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said, I should say that the allegations—and they are just allegations—do not come from reporters. They are exposed by reporters but they come from members of the armed forces. The problem with what has happened, especially in the Afghan case—the shooting of three children and one young man—is that video evidence is available of what that soldier went into, in an extremely tough situation, as the hon. Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) mentioned, but that video evidence has been concealed from top members of the armed forces. It has been concealed from people for whom security clearance exists. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has watched the BBC “Panorama” programme but I strongly suggest that he does so. It has around 90 days left on the iPlayer, so there is plenty of time to do so.

We are clearly not going to resolve this issue and get into all the details tonight, but tonight has to be the start of a proper, judicious and sober parliamentary discussion to ensure that those on the Government Front Bench act appropriately. As I was saying, the assaults on the international rules-based system, which can change depending on who uses the phrase, are coming at us from all angles, so let us be the ones who say, “No more.” Let the Government come forward and do the right thing. Let the Government come forward and say, “This will be uncomfortable, but it is entirely right that we are held to the standards that we are supposed to be held to under international law; that we do have high standards for serving members of the armed forces; and that we will not put up with any concerted effort to cover this up.” Let us shine a light on this stuff.

Where there is a problem politically is that clearly vexatious claims have been made. I do not want to see that any more than the Minister does; in fact, I want to see it dealt with, but I want to see it dealt with properly. It cannot be used as an excuse to shut down any discussion or to close off any avenue of investigation into the deep, deep seriousness of what has been uncovered by the joint investigation.

Televised Election Debates

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bone]

I will come to that specific point, because it is a very good example.

I am very grateful to Sky News, because it has done something really useful: it has got the wider public thinking about these debates. We cannot arrange them two or three months before a general election; we have to have an independent commission, because the problem is that the party with the advantage does not want to have a TV debate. The only time we get a debate is, for example, if the Prime Minister thinks that the Government are behind and the Leader of the Opposition wants publicity. That is exactly what happened with Gordon Brown. I would suggest that he thought it right to have a debate because he was behind.

I thought that the debate between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg was very good. When we go out campaigning during a general election, we have a campaign session in the morning and in the afternoon, and between 5 pm and 7 pm in the evening. I remember getting back one evening after campaigning, going to the gym, putting on a headset and listening to the debates. The only thing that I remember really is the phrase, “I agree with Nick”, but the debates were very useful in helping electors to make up their minds on how to vote.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend mentioned Nick Clegg’s participation in that debate, but that was part of the problem raised by both the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) and my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). Should not the debate be for those with a credible possibility of becoming Prime Minister? What we ended up with then was Cleggmania and a disastrous coalition Government.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend might say that, but I couldn’t possibly do so. However, I certainly agree with the first bit. When I promote my private Member’s Bill, I will explain why the debate should be between only the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition: in a leaders’ debate, we look at who is going to be Prime Minister.

Those of us in this Chamber get some spin-off advantages from leaders’ debates. For us constituency candidates, there is nothing worse than to be told that we are to get a visit from the leader of our party, because we know that we will lose days of campaigning as a result. First, we will be asked to find a suitable venue that ties into everything the leader wants to promote. Desperately, we find somewhere, talk to people and they agree, but then the party officials say, “No, we don’t want that”, and ask for something else. Eventually, they decide on somewhere else and they send down an advance team of young people who boss us around and tell us how to run things in our own constituency—that is another day lost. In time, the leader turns up and we get a PR event—they used to be called “Cameron Direct”—where people ask difficult questions of the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition.

But that was not the case: all those questions were planted. There was no real debate at all and we lost three or four days of campaigning. If we had leaders’ debates, that would at least give us a few days on which they would not be able to visit us in our constituencies.

Where I disagree slightly is with the idea that leaders’ debates dominate the decision making of the British public. I do not think that that is the case, nor that there is a national swing any more. Voters are much more savvy now, voting on what is in their interests. The last general election had all sorts of strange results, but if votes had been determined purely by the party leaders and what they said, the results would have been much more uniform. The debates do not make that sort of difference, but they are an important part of the democratic process.

Those who argue against televised debates say they are all about performance, not substance. Is that not what people used say before the Houses of Parliament were televised? There were exactly the same arguments, and we now know that they were completely wrong.

I really wanted to talk about my private Member’s Bill on the televised leaders’ debates commission, which was given its First Reading in 2017 and is scheduled to be debated on 15 March. It is the second Bill on that day, the first being the Prime Minister (Accountability to House of Commons) Bill, which also stands in my name. I assure the House that if that Bill is not moved, the first Bill will be on the leaders’ debate. We have an opportunity in March to move the whole process forward. The Government have little legislative time because of Brexit, but this is a private Member’s Bill. On 15 March, if nobody objects, we can move forward and make the Bill an Act of Parliament. I hope that the Opposition and the Government will allow the House to make its own decision on this matter and not try to block the Bill with some parliamentary procedure.

Much of what Sky News says is already proposed in my Bill: to set up an independent commission responsible for holding a number of leaders’ debates during the regulated period. My Bill calls for three debates: one with the leaders of all the parties represented in the House of Commons at the time of the general election, and the second and third between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Adam Holloway) mentioned, we want a debate between people who are likely to be Prime Minister, although I do not want to leave out the smaller parties.

There is a problem that I accept: by having a debate between the leaders of the parties in the House of Commons, not every party will be included. But would we really want a communist party or the British National party in the debate? I think not. There was a serious problem with the UK Independence party, when at the height of its power it had no MPs but clearly had very large support. I would leave it to the commission to decide whether to bring any other party leaders into the debate, but the leader of any party represented in the House would have to attend. By the way, attendance would not be optional; the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition could not offload it to someone. No; they would have to attend.

People say the debates would take up lots of the party leaders’ time, but if they had to prep for weeks on end they could not be much good as a leader. They should know what they think, and be able to go out and debate. Under my Bill, there would be proper debates. The moderator would ask a question, but the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition could debate with each other, back and forth. There would be an actual debate, not rehearsed lines delivered before they moved on.

We can argue that we do not have a presidential system, but we have moved a very long way towards a presidential system since Tony Blair. I remember in the last election, Conservative MPs were all there, standing with Theresa. That was the message—it went down well—because the leader is so associated with local politics.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

I will park other electoral reform, but the public want this particular reform; the broadcasters want it, I argue most MPs want it and it is an opportunity for the Government to do the right thing. We need a bit of good will at the moment, so it would be a nice thing to do.

I thank Members who will come to support my Bill and those who will oppose it.

[Adam Holloway]

Will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to the extraordinary and supremely able editor of Sky News, my friend from ITN John Ryley? He has been the driving force behind this.

[Mr Bone]

I was supposed to say that earlier. I mentioned Sky News, but it is John Ryley and he has done really well. I also thank Adam Boulton for what he has been doing at Sky News. He is always fair and balanced when it comes to Brexit.

Thank you for listening to me, Mr Sharma. I am interested to hear what other Members have to say; hopefully, I can incorporate some of their comments into the Bill.

EU Exit Negotiations

Adam Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 15th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

No.

[Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister feel that she has listened to her officials while sidelining her Brexit Secretaries, and is she now disobeying the instruction of my constituents in Gravesham?

[The Prime Minister]

I say to my hon. Friend that the answer to both of his questions is no. I have worked with my Brexit Secretaries and with officials and the negotiating team throughout this process, and the deal that we are proposing does deliver on the instruction of the British people.