Cyber-security

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

We obviously co-ordinate as much as possible with the Scottish Government—my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for cybercrime could comment separately on any discussions the Home Office has with Police Scotland. The hon. Gentleman is right to imply that these matters require close co-ordination between Governments and law-enforcement agencies not just within the UK but much more widely, because cyber and the internet know no national boundaries.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Following on from my right hon. Gentleman’s comments about GCHQ staff, what did he make of the Business Secretary’s comments that The Guardian Snowden publication was entirely correct and courageous, and will he outline his assessment of the effect that has had on the morale of our public servants at GCHQ?

[Mr Maude]

I happened to be visiting GCHQ shortly after my right hon. Friend made those remarks. The people who work at GCHQ do fantastic work—it is a centre of brilliant expertise and knowledge; they do difficult work away from the public gaze, and any comments that seem to undermine what they do in the service of national security have to be strongly deprecated.

Ukraine (Flight MH17) and Gaza

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The pressure we bring to bear, as a friend of Israel, is to be very clear in our interactions with it about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. The hon. Lady has got to consider—the figure she cites is actually now out of date; 1,850 rockets have been fired into Israel—that if we want a ceasefire, we have to ask ourselves this question: why has Hamas not accepted a ceasefire, when Israel repeatedly has?

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on leading the world’s response to these terrible murders? During the Easter recess, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) and I visited Ukraine as part of a cross-party delegation. We spent part of the visit in the town of Odessa. It was made very clear to us that the Russian media, which are controlled by Putin, are putting across an image of the people in eastern Ukraine being under attack from the people in Kiev. I urge the Prime Minister to say to the French Government that it only adds to Putin’s strength if he can say to the people that people in Europe are willing to deal with him, especially over the supply of new warships.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is important that people in Russia hear about what is happening in their name. One Russian newspaper has reported—I think this is a quote—that it seems likely that it was a separatist missile that was fired at the plane. It is very important that we get that information through. What he says about working together in Europe is absolutely right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Commons Chamber

The Minister for the Cabinet Office was asked—

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

1. What recent progress he has made on reform of trades union facility time in Government Departments.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)]

Mr Speaker, with permission I will take questions 1 and 10 together.

At the time of the last general election, there was no monitoring of taxpayer-funded trade union facility time in the civil service. We now have controls in place that saved £19 million last year, and we have already reduced the number of taxpayer-funded full-time union officials from 200 in May 2010 down to around a dozen this month.

[Mr Speaker]

I allowed the right hon. Gentleman to continue his answer, but my office advises me that it has not been notified of the grouping to which he refers. It might have been the intention, but my office indicates that it has not been notified of it, which obviously it should have been.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

In the past, Departments gave paid time off for union conferences. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that this Government will not be spending taxpayers’ money packing civil servants off to the seaside?

[Mr Maude]

Under the rules that operated under the last Government, it was absolutely the case that thousands of union officials, paid for by the taxpayer as civil servants, were given paid time off—sometimes, extraordinarily, with paid travel and expenses—to attend union conferences at the seaside. We have stopped this. They can take unpaid time off to attend conferences, and any decision to award paid time off is entirely at the discretion of the Minister in charge of that civil servant’s Department.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. The fact is that we need to correct—and we will correct, in the Immigration Bill—the fact that it has been so difficult to deport people who do not have a right to be here, and who should be facing trial overseas or deported overseas, but advance spurious arguments about the right to a family life. It is right that we are changing that. There is nothing anti-European about it. It is a very sensible step that the Government are taking, and we should pass the Immigration Bill with all speed.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Last year, the Government successfully deported the radical cleric Abu Qatada. The new Immigration Bill will crack down on illegal immigrants and will make it easier to deport foreign criminals. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that immigration law also applies to political parties and their gurus?

[The Prime Minister]

I can, but I am sure that I should not comment on a case that is, I believe, currently being investigated. [Hon. Members: “Go on!”] No, don’t tempt me.

It is an important piece of law that we will be discussing on Thursday. We do not just need to have control at our borders; we need to ensure that people cannot come to Britain and abuse our health service, or get rights to council or other housing, or bank accounts or driving licences, if they have no right to be here. The Immigration Bill makes all those important changes and many more besides, including making it possible for us to deport people before they have appealed if they do not face a risk back in their own countries. They can then appeal from overseas. Those are all very good changes, and I hope that we will not delay too much before passing this important Bill.

EU Council and Woolwich

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 3rd June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

That is the intention of this move. Having all countries sign up to an action plan for putting together registers of beneficial ownership by companies and the rest of it will help tax authorities to make sure that people are paying tax appropriately. That is a debate that we are leading at the G8 and in the European Union, and that should apply—we hope—to every country.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Some of the comments that I received after the Woolwich attack could perhaps be most generously described as reactionary. Does my right hon. Friend agree that those who pick on a religion and the people of that religion would do better by visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau and understanding where intolerance may lead? Above all, it should be recognised that these people are no more than cold-blooded psychopathic murderers.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend puts it very well. The point is that there is nothing in Islam that can justify that appalling level of violence. Islam is a religion of peace and we should show respect to Muslim communities and people of the Muslim faith by recognising that and repeating it. As we do that, we also need to recognise that there is a problem with a perversion of Islam that is being used to poison young minds, and we will not defeat that ideology unless we take it on, argue against it and clear it out of universities, Islamic centres and other parts of our country. That is the battle we need to be engaged in, but we will not win the battle unless we take Muslim communities and British Muslims with us. I believe that we can.

Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Two people in the political world had the biggest influence on me. The one who made me a centre-right politician was Ronald Reagan—I will talk about that another time—but Margaret Thatcher did three important things to me and formed who I am, as a child of the ’80s. First, she did not just abolish the glass ceiling that had been there from time immemorial—she smashed it to smithereens. That is why I, like a great number of my hon. Friends, stand here as a child of a comprehensive school; our parents had very normal jobs and we did not go to a fee-paying school. I ended up with an engineering degree and I am now a Conservative Member of Parliament, and my sister is an orthopaedic surgeon. We went through that comprehensive school system, and Margaret Thatcher said to us, “If you work hard, there is no limit to what you can achieve.” We took that on. It was about a work ethic.

There are five comprehensive schools in my constituency, and when I visit them I tell the children, “I went to a comprehensive school, too, and nothing can stop you achieving whatever you want.” Margaret Thatcher did for me what the tabloid press have done for children these days, who think that if they go on “The X Factor” they will become a pop star. She made us realise that if we worked hard we would achieve our dreams and that it was not just about fame and fortune.

Conviction was very important. It is about standing up for what we believe in, rather than taking the path of least resistance. Political history around the world is littered with leaders who took the path of least resistance. Conviction politics is vital. I want to give a live example for people out there today: the privatisation of British Telecom, which my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) mentioned earlier. It is not just that before privatisation people had to wait six months to get a telephone line, or that they needed permission from British Telecom to put an extension in their house. We look today, after the death of Margaret Thatcher, at how advanced telecommunications have become in our society.

She did not privatise British Telecom in the 1980s because she foresaw that we would all be using Twitter, Facebook, the internet and e-mail and have constant access to news; she did it because she knew that the state could never do for those industries what commerce and people with experience of running businesses could do for them. All those people who have used Twitter and Facebook to make the most vile comments in recent days should remember that they can do so because they have easy access. They should try to imagine what it would be like if they had to wait six months to get a mobile phone before doing so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), in an excellent speech, said that he did not disagree with a single one of Margaret Thatcher’s policies, except her decision not to stand in the second round. I agree. I do not think that I disagree with anything she did, but there is a lesson that I think we could learn on something that was not done. I passionately believe that she was absolutely right to tackle the union menace that had crippled this country and made us the laughing stock of Europe. When we look at the growth factors in western Europe and what was happening in this country, we see that we were doomed. That culminated in the miners’ strike. There were rights and wrongs, but that is not a debate for today. However, I will say that it was wrong that more was not done after those communities lost their mines.

I think that a lesson has been learnt. Our current Prime Minister has picked up on the idea of the big society and, by looking at what happened in the 1980s as a whole, what it means to help whole communities. Yes, they were the right decisions to make and the convictions were right, but there are always consequences that must be dealt with. He rightly describes himself as a one-nation Conservative, and I agree. It is about managing for the whole country. However, I believe that Margaret Thatcher’s intention was to do that. It cannot be said that she was there only for the rich, because she empowered the poorest people in society and, as has been said, she knew that education is the great leveller.

Conviction is the hardest form of governance. It will never be popular, but it is the only honourable way to govern. As the Prime Minister said recently, he is here not to be popular, but to do what is right. We owe Margaret Thatcher so much. She literally saved this country from becoming, in the current context, probably worse than Greece, Spain and Portugal are today. May she rest in peace; she certainly deserves it.

Hillsborough

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The Leveson inquiry is separately looking at the whole issue of how the press is regulated and how mistakes that are made are properly corrected. I think that everybody, including those in the press, recognises that the current system is not working and needs to be strengthened. There is then the whole question of whether that happens through strengthened self-regulation, independent regulation or statutory regulation, but that is what Leveson is there to look at.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I am a very large football fan from a family of football fans, and a number of Members in the Chamber also go to football matches and other sporting events. The hurt and the tragedy of waving loved ones off to a football match, only never to see them again, was compounded by the defamation of their characters afterwards. Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister ask the Attorney-General to seek to bring a defamation charge against anybody who was found to have spread these vicious lies? Does he agree that an appropriate starting point to help heal the wounds of Hillsborough would be for tomorrow’s front page of The Sun to feature a picture of the Liverpool football club crest with one word, “Sorry”, written across it in bold?

[The Prime Minister]

I am sure that the Attorney-General will listen carefully to what my hon. Friend says. As I have said, a number of apologies have been made over the 23 years by police, newspapers and others. I think that what matters is that you have to properly think through what has happened, what went wrong, what was got wrong, what it is necessary to apologise for, and then really mean it when you do so. I feel that it is very important the Government apologise as clearly and frankly as I have today because there is proper new evidence showing that the families were right, that an injustice was done, and that that injustice was compounded by the false narrative that, if we are frank, I think lots of people went along with: we all thought there was some sort of grey area and asked why all this was going on. That is why it is necessary to pay tribute to those MPs, newspapers and family groups who kept the faith and kept campaigning because they knew an injustice had been done, they knew it was wrong and they suffered in the way they did. It is for newspapers to decide what to do themselves, and I think it is important that they really think it through and feel it before they do it.

G20 Summit

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman asks an important question. It will be a decision for the Greeks to make in collaboration with the members of the European Union that have extended that money to Greece, of which we are not one, and of course the International Monetary Fund. The problem is that any delay in the terms of the memorandum effectively means more money going from those predominantly eurozone members to Greece, so those discussions have to be had; but other countries that are on track with the programmes that have been put in place will, I think, feel very uneasy about one country getting special terms. In the end, it will be a matter for the eurozone members and Greece to hammer this out between them.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on facing down the Argentine President and pointing out that we will not be bullied or have any silly stunts. Does that not contrast starkly with either giving away huge European rebates or cosying up to African dictators, and show once again that if we want someone to stand up for sovereignty and British interests, we need a Conservative Prime Minister?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. It seemed to me important to try to make that point, not just to Argentina but—almost more to the point—to other countries, which sometimes go along with motions proposed at various international gatherings that are against the interests of the Falkland islanders because they have not heard their voice. People are now going to hear that voice, and I hope the world will listen.

G8 and NATO Summits

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

This is where I part company with the hon. Gentleman. In this country, we have consistently said “You need to have deficit reduction, which delivers low interest rates and enables your central bank to pursue an active and expansionary monetary policy”—which is what we have had in this country—“and at the same time you need the structural reforms to ensure that your businesses are competitive and can take on more people and grow.” That is what we are seeing in Britain, with 600,000 more private sector jobs. It is a world away from what is happening in Greece or in many other parts of the eurozone, which do not have the monetary policy accompanying the fiscal policy and which have not undertaken the structural reforms we are undertaking.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that the biggest threat to our country at present is indeed the crisis in the eurozone, but almost parallel with that is the possible pending crisis in the middle east. Given that a very important conference begins today in Baghdad, did my right hon. Friend manage to find time at the weekend to emphasise to the Russian and Chinese leaders the importance of their role in trying to ensure a peaceful outcome of the Iranian situation?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that issue. A good portion of the G8 was spent discussing the situation in Iran, and specifically discussing the talks that are under way in Baghdad today. It was heartening that the Russians signed up to a pretty tough text on Iran, and I think that the path is very clear. Europe has rightly adopted the oil sanctions, and the pressure is beginning to tell on the Iranian economy. This is the moment at which to maximise the pressure, to encourage other countries around the world to join in with the sanctions, and to say to the Iranians “There is a different pathway. You can have civil nuclear power; you can have a more decent relationship with other countries of the world; but you must give up the ambition of enriching uranium to such an extent that it could deliver a nuclear weapon to you.”

Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

While we are on the subject of people who say things before they should, I would have thought that when the hon. Gentleman stands up in the House, he should make an apology. He stood up last week and claimed a whole series of facts about meetings that I had had with Rupert Murdoch based on privileged access that he had had—and he is not denying it—to this inquiry, and the facts turned out to be wrong. A man of honour would stand up and apologise.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

The press have a proud and historic role in British politics and it is right that political parties communicate their policy to the nation, but does my right hon. Friend agree that that is in stark contrast to a political party that thinks that national politics should be directed by the highest union bidder?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Most questions have focused on the terms of the urgent question. I have sadly to tell the hon. Gentleman that that was a million miles away from it and does not require an answer. It was completely out of order. We will take another Member who, I am sure, will be in order—[Interruption.] Order. I do not require any sedentary chuntering in the background.