Leaving the EU: Customs

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I think the right hon. and learned Gentleman was indulging in a bit of medieval scholasticism there. That was not persuasive. I do not know whether he is now fearful of the Trots in his constituency who are working to deselect him. I do not know what has caused him to abandon the principles that he once stood by. The principles that he stood by in 2016 are the ones that Labour Governments of the past have followed, and I just wish that the Labour party would live up to those principles today.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

On that point, is there not an issue of consistency involved? Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which was passed by a Labour Government, there is a deliberate and necessary exemption for confidential information. It would create complete confusion and inconsistency if that principle were to be breached now.

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend is right. The Freedom of Information Act 2000—brought in, let us not forget, by a Labour Government—specifically provides exceptions from the freedom of information rules for Cabinet and Cabinet Committee papers, for advice from officials to Ministers and for information that might harm our diplomatic relationships and negotiations. The wording of the ministerial code expresses the balance between the different duties of Government of accountability to Parliament and of confidentiality in developing Government policy. That is why the code explicitly provides that Ministers should be as open as possible with Parliament and the public, notes that we should refuse to provide information only when disclosure would not be in the public interest, and says that that judgment should be made in accordance with the relevant statutes and the Freedom of Information Act 2000—so including the exceptions I mentioned.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We are making progress on plastic, but we need to work with the manufacturers on its production, which is why we are doing exactly that. The Business and Environment Secretaries and others are talking to manufacturers about how to ensure that plastic is recyclable and does not end up in our oceans, with all the problems that causes.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Afghan interpreters who served alongside British troops did so with skill and courage. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that those who have made their homes in our country can remain and that the ordinary fees will be waived as a small sign of our gratitude?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises an important point about Afghan interpreters, who served bravely alongside our armed forces, as he says. The Home Secretary has been looking at this issue, particularly in relation to the fees for those individuals. Some have wished and been able to return to Afghanistan and have been given opportunities by the Government to retrain and re-establish their lives there, but it is important that we recognise the debt that we owe them.

Syria

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Committing British forces is a grave responsibility; no right-thinking Prime Minister takes any pleasure in doing so, but no responsible Prime Minister should shrink from taking action where basic humanity and the national interest demand that.

On basic humanity, I fear we might as a world collectively have forgotten the peculiar horror of chemical weapons. They are particularly appalling, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) did us a service by invoking the poetry of 100 years ago. No one who heard it can fail to have been struck by some of what he quoted, and I remember as a child being appalled by the description of “white eyes writhing” in the face of a British soldier who had been affected and blood coming “gargling” from “froth-corrupted lungs”. There can be no doubt that President Assad would, if left unchecked, use this means as an easy, cheap and ruthless weapon to mop up any lingering resistance, so this must never be normalised.

The second point is that the credibility of the rules-based order is at stake. Over 190 nations are signatories to the chemical weapons convention, including Russia and Syria. To turn a blind eye is in effect to give a green light.

It is important that the rules-based order is not purely focused on chemical weapons; there are so many other aspects to this. The 1951 refugee convention sets out the rights and responsibilities of nations to grant asylum, and there is the Paris climate accord and the Geneva conventions with the restrictions on the use of mines and cluster munitions. If one pillar of the rules-based order is corroded, the whole structure is weakened, and rogue nations could become a rogue world.

It is also important to make clear the limits of this action that are in place. The UK is not in the business of regime-change. We know from history that large-scale intervention of that nature is very difficult and the middle east presents boundless opportunities to make a bad situation worse. That is not what this was about; it was targeted, limited and proportionate, and focused on protecting civilians and upholding international law. It was manifestly the right thing to do.

National Security and Russia

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I have very clearly condemned what happened and those who perpetrated this attack.

On 14 March, the Prime Minister said:

“there are other measures we stand ready to deploy at any time should we face further Russian provocation.”—[Official Report, 14 March 2018; Vol. 637, c. 857.]

Does she consider the expulsion of 23 British diplomats and the closure of the British Council a further provocation?

In the light of the poisoning of the Skripals and the murder of Nikolai Glushkov, what advice and support are the police and security services giving to high-profile Russians living in Britain, or indeed any other Russian national living and working in this country?

What plans does the Prime Minister have to publish and table the Government’s version of Labour’s Magnitsky amendment to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill which was blocked in February? We have been assured that that will deliver all the powers that we were demanding—including by my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor in his response to the Budget and the Finance Bill—even before the Salisbury attack, to punish Russian abusers of human rights, but we are still waiting to see it published.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

The people of the United Kingdom will want to know: does the right hon. Gentleman hold the Russian Government responsible for this—yes or no?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I have already made that very clear.

I am asking for a clear commitment from the Government that the Magnitsky powers will be introduced and will be supported by Conservative Members. In that spirit, I also urge the Government to look again at Labour’s proposal to target the laundering of money through secret tax havens and undisclosed assets, as practised by many of the London-based Russian oligarchs, on whom so much of Putin’s power depends.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I warmly commend everything that the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon) has just said, not least his final point that Russia only respects strength. In all honesty, I think that that could be made a bit more personal: I think that President Putin only respects strength. Indeed, when President Obama tried to press the reset button with Russia, he got absolutely nothing out of it, because President Putin simply took everything that he had and gave nothing back. Now we see that President Putin seems to be committed to some kind of arms race with the west as well. Indeed, he announced that just before what he calls a general election, although it is not really a general election in the sense that any of us would understand.

I think that we need to set this whole debate in the context of everything else that is true about Putin’s Russia now. The human rights abuses are endless. I find the murder of so many journalists in particular deeply offensive, especially when there have been absolutely no attempts to pursue those responsible. The most famous name is Anna Politkovskaya, but there are many others as well. There is also the repeated use of excessive force, whether it is in response to the Beslan siege in the school or the Moscow theatre siege, or in response to other abuses and political dissidents in Chechnya. Putin’s immediate response is excessive violence, and I think that that is what we saw on the streets of Salisbury as well. There are also the rigged elections.

[Alex Chalk]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is not just excessive violence, but excessive dishonesty? The instinctive response of the Russian regime was to lie about the invasion of Ukraine, just as it lied about MH17, and that is of particular concern.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

The barbaric attack in Salisbury marks a new low in relations between our nations. That is sad, but right. Chemical weapons are vile because of the appalling suffering they cause and their indiscriminate nature. Whoever planted the nerve agent knew fine well that whoever came to the aid of those suffering was likely to be seriously injured. Completely innocent people—children going about their business—could have been affected.

The point has already been made, but we should make it crystal clear that our dispute is not with the Russian people. We mourn with them those who lost their lives in the shopping centre fire in Kemerovo. We acknowledge the courage and fortitude of the Russian people, particularly during what they call the great patriotic war, in which more than 20 million died. We pay tribute to what I believe can be described fairly as the genius of the Russian people. Russia produced Pushkin, Solzhenitsyn, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Chekhov and so many others. We do not besmirch their reputation.

Our quarrel is with the Russian regime, which has shown itself to be unwilling or incapable of complying with the international rule of law and furthermore has demonstrated a worrying escalation in its behaviour. We know about Alexander Litvinenko and the downing of MH17, which caused appalling loss of life, especially among Dutch nationals. We know about the invasion of Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea and plenty more. We have heard a little about cyber-attacks in Estonia, and now we know that it is highly likely that Russia is responsible for the attack in Salisbury.

So much of that is characterised by what the Russians call “maskirovka”, or deception—political and military deception. In plain English, it is a worrying instinct to lie, dissemble, deceive and disguise. The Russian Defence Minister described information as “another type of armed forces”. Moscow TV said that a three-year-old boy had been crucified in eastern Ukraine for speaking Russian. It soon emerged that that was completely untrue, but it is an eloquent example of the weaponisation of information. When several soldiers without insignia, referred to in the west as “little green men”, marched into Crimea, Vladimir Putin called them “local self-defence units”. That was plainly false, not least because he afterwards gave medals to Russian journalists who had clearly misrepresented the evidence in Crimea.

Then, to make matters worse, we have heard that the statements on this case that have come from the Russian embassy have been laced with sarcasm, scorn and contempt; most bizarrely of all, it has suggested that somehow the British could be involved. It is that instinctive recourse to dishonesty that is so concerning.

We should respond with cool heads and firm resolve. I respectfully commend the Prime Minister for her sure-footed and calibrated response; the expulsion of 23 diplomats was absolutely right. But let me say that in responding to Russia, which shows this instinctive willingness to go beyond the international rule of law, we should not abandon our commitment to integrity in the rule of law, but instead redouble it.

When we have in our sights individuals who may—it is suggested—have been involved in money laundering, it is for an independent Serious Fraud Office or an independent Crown Prosecution Service to weigh the evidence and consider fairly whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute and whether it is in the public interest to do so. When such charges come before a court, it is for independent courts and independent juries to decide, without political interference, whether the charge has been made out. Decisions about whether things should be on our media—on our radio and on our television—should be the independent decisions of Ofcom, taken without political interference. By restating those principles, we mark ourselves out and apart from the brutal and very often dishonest Russian regime.

We should also calibrate our response on the basis of facts and not perception. Russia is of course a huge country, spanning 11 time zones, but it has always leveraged that geographical size to mask an underlying frailty. We should not forget that its economy is only about 60% of the size of the UK’s; that average life expectancy in Russia is a full 10 years less than that in the UK; that its economy has stagnated for a considerable time; and that it is only by spending more than 5% of its GDP on defence, at a great cost to health, education and social care in that country, that it can project the image of strength.

We in the UK must respond with sanctions, as we have heard, and by redoubling our efforts to go against the dirty money. We should also consider strong defence, and I invite the Government to listen carefully to suggestions that we need to increase our defence expenditure. However, in the time available, I just invite the Government to think carefully about cyber-warfare, and I say that as the Member for Cheltenham. It seems likely, does it not, that if there is to be an escalation in the future—let us hope that there will not be—it could be in the world of cyber-warfare? We need to ensure that we have the best individuals in places such as GCHQ ready to defend our country and, if necessary, to exercise our sovereign offensive capability. That does mean resourcing it and ensuring that we have the resources to attract the brightest and the best. In short, let me say that in the face of this threat, and with apologies to Theodore Roosevelt, we should speak softly, speak wisely and carry a big stick.

Salisbury Incident

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I would just caution the hon. Gentleman when he describes all those deaths as suspicious. I believe that one of the families involved have made it very clear that they do not consider there to have been any suspicion around the death of their loved one. If the police believe that it is right to reopen cases, they will do so. It is up to them to make that operational decision.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

I thank the Prime Minister for her calibrated, proportionate and robust response. Will she join me in paying tribute to the brave British intelligence agents who serve our country? In the light of the increasingly violent and erratic approach of the Russian state, does she agree that if there needs to be a reassessment of their personal security here in the UK, that should take place without delay?

[The Prime Minister]

I am happy to join my hon. Friend in welcoming, congratulating and thanking all those who work for our security and intelligence agencies for the valuable work that they do for us on a day-to-day basis. Each of those agencies will consistently ensure that they are considering the safety of their staff. They recognise the important work that those people do and how important it is to ensure that they are safe.

Salisbury Incident

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to say that I am sure lessons will be coming out of this for local communities, the NHS and the police as they look into this matter. We will ensure that those are available to all across the country.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

In considering Russia, we should never forget that, for all its geographical size, Russia’s economy is little more than half that of the UK. In those circumstances, does my right hon. Friend agree that British economic levers are far more potent than some might realise and that we should not hesitate, if the circumstances demand it, to pull them hard?

[The Prime Minister]

As I have said, we will be looking at the full range of measures once we have considered the response that comes from the Russian state. The United Kingdom has in fact been one of the leaders in ensuring that, within the European Union, sanctions against Russia are in place as a result of the action that they took in Crimea and Ukraine.

Carillion and Public Sector Outsourcing

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

In the time available to me, I want to say a few words about a business in my constituency—a subcontractor that has been dealt a hammer blow by Carillion’s collapse—and to make three points. First, I will identify the human impact, which is perhaps taken as read but bears repetition. Secondly, I want to shine a light on the fact that the collapse has exposed market abuse by the big players against small businesses, which we need to look at. Thirdly, there is the potential to recover the situation, so I want this to be a constructive contribution.

My constituent Josh Lee is the director of Larc Construction and his business partner is James Crisp. Both of them are former soldiers and saw action in Afghanistan—in the Parachute Regiment and the Royal Anglian Regiment respectively. One of them was blown up for his troubles but, happily, he recovered. Larc Construction, which is a small contractor, won a contract with Carillion in July 2017 to provide service trenching and ducting at the Midland Metropolitan hospital in Birmingham. As one of the smallest contractors—here is the rub—making its way in the construction world and seeking to establish its reputation with a new client, it did everything that could reasonably be expected of it. It completed its work on time and to a high standard and helped out with additional jobs on site and so on. What is more, to establish its credentials further, it agreed to Carillion’s request to delay the drawdown of its monthly invoice payments for 120 days, because Carillion wanted it to do that to prove that it was creditworthy. The irony is overwhelming.

The upshot is that Larc Construction has been paid for its work to the end of October, but is now owed £200,000. That is not profit; it needs that money to settle its own invoices. If it does not receive a significant proportion of the money by the end of the month, there is every chance it will have to fold, putting colleagues, some of whom are former comrades, out of work. To make matters worse, Larc is in a Kafkaesque situation whereby its plant and machinery, which is costing £1,500 a week to rent, is currently impounded on the site. It cannot get it back so is unable to return it to the hirer to at least defray some of the ongoing costs.

If Mr Lee and Mr Crisp can somehow get through this month and pay their bills, they will survive. It may be that they will have to forgo every last penny of profit from the first half of their contract, but if they can get into a position to be able to continue with the second half—I am delighted that the Government have indicated that they want people to be able to do that—they will at least remain in business. They may end up doing the whole project at cost, but at least they will be able leave the site this year in charge of a going concern and with an enhanced reputation as a contractor that has completed a professional job in difficult circumstances.

Mr Lee and Mr Crisp are not the moaning type, and they are not interested in retribution. They just want a bit of help to be able to carry on trading. I will be grateful if the Minister indicates what support could be provided, and I am grateful to those Ministers who have taken calls on Saturdays to help me with this problem.

European Council

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

There are many occasions in this House when Members on the hon. Lady’s Benches, and indeed sometimes on my Benches, stand up and promote the primacy of this House and of Parliament. As Members of Parliament, obviously, we have a responsibility to be here in this House, although my hon. Friend the Minister balanced the requirements of being able both to represent the United Kingdom and to be present in this House.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

This weekend, I met representatives of the Romanian community in Cheltenham. On their behalf, may I thank the Prime Minister for her determination to secure an agreement on the rights of EU and British nationals, which has provided enormous reassurance? Does she agree that this shows, first, what can be done and, secondly, that whatever deal is struck, our values of respect and tolerance for foreign nationals in our country will endure?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to agree with my hon. Friend, particularly on that final point. What we have seen over the phase 1 negotiations is that, with commitment and perseverance on both sides, we can achieve agreement. That should give reassurance to EU citizens living here and indeed to UK citizens in the EU 27. As we move forward, we will indeed continue to abide by our values, particularly our values of tolerance and respect.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I just politely observe that the Front-Bench exchanges have absorbed a disproportionately large share of the time, but I am determined to accommodate Back Benchers who are waiting to ask their questions.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Q9. The bottle- neck on the A417 continues to cause dreadful accidents, as well as traffic misery in Gloucestershire. Following the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport and with the support of Members from Gloucestershire, the vital consultation stage on the shortlisted improvement proposals will begin shortly. Does my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister back the scheme, and does she agree that by committing hundreds of millions of pounds to this crucial project, the Government are backing the Gloucestershire economy?

[The Prime Minister]

I know that my hon. Friend has been working tirelessly on this issue. I understand the concerns and frustrations of drivers in his constituency and elsewhere about this vital strategic road, which is vital for not only Gloucestershire but the wider region. I am happy to assure him that we are backing the development of the multimillion-pound Air Balloon roundabout scheme, which was announced in 2014. A consultation will begin shortly, so that we can develop the right solution to tackle this pinch-point and continue our support, which, as my hon. Friend said, is good for the whole of Gloucestershire’s economy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I see the right hon. Lady has recovered her voice. I will tell her what we are doing. Last year we delivered more homes than were delivered in all but one of the last 30 years—217,000, which takes us to 1.1 million since 2010. Over the next five years we will invest £44 billion in home building, boosting the funding for council, social and low-cost housing to over £9 billion. We are building more social housing than the Labour Government did in their 13 years in office. We will build even more in the future. This is a Government who are addressing the problems of the constituents of the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting); previous Labour Governments signally failed to do so.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

At the recent extremely successful Cheltenham literature festival, Hillary Clinton talked about the importance of ensuring that the Russians are not allowed to meddle in British or, indeed, American elections. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should be building an offensive cyber capability so that our opponents know we have the will and the wherewithal to strike back?

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend is exactly right, as we would expect, given that he is the Member of Parliament who represents GCHQ; he is absolutely right about the offensive capacity we may well need in the cyber area, and I am happy to assure him and the House that we are indeed developing that.