Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Jeremy Lefroy

Monday 7th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s frustration in this regard; I really, really do. But it is a sad fact that the tools in our toolbox are limited. What we can do is continue to make it clear to our interlocutors that this is not acceptable, right or proper, and that if Iran wants to restore its reputation, the early release of Nazanin and other dual nationals will go a very long way. It is the right thing to do, and I urge Iran to get on and do it.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) for constantly raising this case, and pay tribute to Nazanin, Richard and the whole family for their enormous courage in this terrible ordeal. May I also thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for what he, his colleagues and his predecessors have been doing? I think he is right that there is a limit to what can be done. Nevertheless, persistence in raising this case day in, day out and week in, week out is so important to show that this House and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will never forget it.

[Dr Murrison]

I absolutely agree. Look, we want to make progress with Iran on a whole range of fronts, but it is difficult to do that when high-profile things of this nature remain to be dealt with. My constant message is: let us deal with this; let us get this done; let us do the right thing; and let us bring Nazanin and other dual nationals home.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Jeremy Lefroy

Tuesday 25th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to protect the rights and freedoms of journalists throughout the world.

[The Minister for the Middle East (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

This year, the UK is spearheading a global campaign on media freedoms, and our diplomatic missions around the world have stepped up their activity accordingly. We have announced the appointment of Special Envoy Amal Clooney, establishing a high-level panel to drive legislative reform throughout the world, and we will announce further practical steps with wide international support at next month’s UK and Canada-led conference.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s answer, but at least 94 journalists were killed in the course of their duties last year. Will he and his ministerial colleagues undertake, on every occasion when they travel overseas or meet foreign Heads of State, to raise this issue, which is so vital if we are to get real news, not fake news?

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As it happens, at the weekend I was in Tehran, and I made the points that he has made to my interlocutors. It is absolutely vital that journalists are able to do their work unhindered and certainly unthreatened, and the secret to peace and prosperity across our world—our troubled world—today is the ability to have the transparency that is the stock in trade of journalists.

Syria: Civilians in Idlib

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Jeremy Lefroy

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. He must know that what we are able to do depends very much on access and safety and whether or not we can get to those who are most in need. At the moment, that is extremely problematic. We would prevail upon all parties to this to allow humanitarian access and to allow those of us who wish to protect civilians to be able to access those civilians wherever they are, so that the necessary protection can be afforded. However, he has to understand the difficulty of assuring the safety and security of those now delivering aid, and I pay tribute to those who provide aid under extremely difficult circumstances. He will be aware that a number of those individuals in our troubled world today have paid with their lives for that. It is absolutely a duty that we in Government and our agencies have to ensure that they are not put at risk more than is absolutely necessary in trying to do their vital work.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I very much support what the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) said about taking on more refugees from the area, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration for her decision. What does the Minister think can be done to help to make the good Russian people aware of what is being done in their name by their Government? Surely they would be as horrified as the rest of us by the deliberate targeting of hospitals, schools and other humanitarian facilities.

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend is right to say that the Russian people would indeed think that, if they knew the full extent of the actions being taken in their name by President Putin’s Administration. This is a terrible calumny. It is a devastating thing for which Russia must ultimately assume responsibility. We have to hope that members of the Russian Administration are ultimately called to account for these atrocities. Knowing the Russian people as I do—I suspect that my hon. Friend knows them rather better than I do—I know they are good people and often misunderstood, since they are often seen through the prism of Moscow and the terrible acts, I am afraid, that President Putin and his people are too often associated with in our world today.

NHS and Social Care Commission

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Jeremy Lefroy

Thursday 28th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) and other Members who have spoken. Excellent points have been made in every single contribution to the debate. One reason why I support the motion is that in my first contribution during this Parliament I said:

“Let us use the five years of this Parliament to set up a cross-party commission to look at health and social care for the next 20 to 30 years.”—[Official Report, 2 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 524.]

I believed that then and I believe it now.

A substantial reason why I believe that comes from my experience representing Stafford since 2010 and my involvement in the community in the years before that. In the previous Parliament, there was a tremendous coming together of people from all parties in Stafford so that we could protect our health services and respond to the serious problems that we faced. We made proposals to the Government, as well as arguing with them and opposing some of their ideas, but we wanted to support our area’s health services. It was a privilege to be part of a process in which people from all the main political parties and none were putting aside their differences and working together. I know that a similar thing happened in other constituencies, but I was especially grateful that that happened in Stafford, given what we had been through.

Another reason why I strongly support a commission—or a commitment, or a way of bringing us together—is that there are incredibly important issues to decide. My hon. Friends the Members for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and for Bracknell (Dr Lee) made important points about the issue of specialism and generalism. There is a danger of going too far down the specialist route and thinking that everything must be in a specialty. According to the Royal College of Physicians, this country has something like 62 specialties, yet some of the royal colleges want to go even further. Indeed, I understand that there is a desire further to split up cardiology into interventional and non-interventional cardiology, although I hope that that is not the case.

By contrast, the RCP pointed out that in Norway there were just over 20 specialties—it is a more generalised system. Whereas I agree that specialties need to be concentrated in the way that my hon. Friends have suggested, we must not cast out general medicine. We must not cast out those who would like to work in a more general way in a more localised setting. For many people that can be a more satisfying route, seeing the broad range of health, rather than one increasingly narrow part of healthcare.

[Dr Murrison]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one solution might be to develop further the GPs with specialist interest model, which was started some years ago but, if we are honest, has never really found its place in our NHS?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

That is an excellent point. I declare an interest, being married to a GP. Many GPs are already doing that—many have specialist interests. Perhaps there could be a specialism of generalism, if that is not a contradiction in terms—the idea that it is possible for someone to say, “I want to practise my medical career in a smaller place where I do a wider variety of tasks, but I have the knowledge to recognise the limits of my competence and when to refer onwards.”

I welcome the motion and the commission, although I will suggest some boundaries to it. The points that have been made about not going over old ground and not making the commission’s remit so broad that it is of no earthly use are valid. The Barker report has done some tremendous work in that respect and I will come on to that. There are other reviews going on, which I am sure have not escaped Members’ notice. The maternity review under Baroness Cumberlege, to which I have made a submission, is extremely important.

Here again, we see the contrast. On the one hand, we want the best possible care for mothers, pregnant women and their children when they are born; on the other hand, women want to be as close to home as possible. In some cases, and with midwife-led units, which we have just got in Stafford to replace our consultant-led unit, that can work for a limited number of women, but probably only about 30% of women will be able to go into such units; 70% will have to go further afield. We need to think about whether that is the right model. In the UK the largest unit, I believe, is in Liverpool, with more than 8,000 births a year. In Germany the largest is the Humboldt in Berlin, with about 4,500 births a year. Is there something to learn from that model, from the French model, from the Dutch model? I am hoping that Baroness Cumberlege’s report will show us that and give us a clear path for maternity and newborn care in the NHS.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to fund the five-year plan. That was not an easy step to take, but it was extremely important. As far as I can see, funding has been increased even since the election, but as others have said, it is a very challenging plan. Nobody has ever managed to achieve £20 billion or £22 billion of savings and we are already seeing some potential problems with that. I was lobbied yesterday by community pharmacists, who are seeing potential cuts in the sums allocated, which may result in the closure of pharmacies in the future. Of course, reform is needed, but the Government need to look carefully at that area.

I welcome, too, the additional money for child and adolescent mental health services. I chaired a roundtable of mental health providers in my constituency a couple of weeks ago. The additional money, the first part of which is just coming through, was welcomed and should plug some of the gaps in that service, although there remains an awful lot to do, as the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam so eloquently pointed out.

I shall focus on two areas—integration and financing. At present the two main acute hospitals serving my constituents, the Royal Stoke and the County hospital in Stafford, are full. As other Members have pointed out, this is at a time when we have not had a major flu epidemic or abnormal winter pressures. We have something like 170 beds at the Royal Stoke with patients who should really be out of hospital but cannot leave, and in the County hospital we have around 30 beds. Of course, that means it becomes more difficult for their A&E departments to meet their targets.

I must say that the people in those departments are doing a great job. I urge Members to watch the little online video recorded in the Royal Stoke by The Guardian and see just how hard they are working in a hospital that this time last year was going through a very difficult time. It shows exactly what we are talking about, with people working long shifts and putting patients first, as they are in the County hospital and, indeed, in hospitals up and down the country.

We clearly have a problem in getting people out of hospital. As Members have said, that was raised 10 years ago, but we have still not fixed it. That is a real reason for integration. It is something the commission needs to look at, not to reinvent the wheel, but to look at where things are working and say, “Let’s get this right across the country.”

I think that the supported housing review, which was discussed in yesterday’s Opposition day debate, is critical. If a lot of the funding for supported housing goes as a result of changes to housing benefit, we will see a greater problem, with more pressure on A&E departments and in-patient services.

I very much endorse what Members have said about community matrons and district nurses, who perform a vital role. Only this week my wife was talking about the work of the district nurses in Stoke-on-Trent and how valuable and appreciated it is. However, not many of them are available at any one time, particularly over the weekend, which means a lot of juggling to see when they can go out to see her patients. Members have talked a lot about integration, and they have far greater knowledge than I have. I will just make the point that the commission needs to look at best practice.

I want to spend some time focusing on financing. It is absolutely right that the commission should examine all the options, but I have to say that, having looked at this quite carefully over a number of years, I do not think that we have too many options. I tend to agree with the Barker commission on that. Its report states that there should be a ring-fenced budget for NHS and social care, and it rejects new NHS charges, at least on a broad scale, and private insurance options in favour of public funding.

I have come to that view because I do not think that there is any other way in which the volume of extra resources needed will be raised. At the moment—I stand to be corrected on this—we probably spend between 2% and 3% less of our GDP on health than France or Germany does, which could amount to an additional £35 billion to £45 billion a year that we need to raise and spend.

I have to say that the NHS is a very efficient system. Given that efficiency, just think what would be possible if we came up with that extra 2% to 3% of national income, as our neighbours in France and Germany do. I am not talking about the 18% that the US spends, which in my view is far too much. A huge amount is wasted in the US system, and it does not necessarily achieve the right outcomes, particularly for people who are uninsured—thankfully that is changing as a result of recent reforms—or in lower income groups.

That is where we will run into political problems, which is why it is so important to put it into a cross-party, non-party political commission. In our fiscal system we lump together many different things and call them public expenditure, but what is called public expenditure is, in fact, made up of very different categories of spending. There is spending on state functions, such as defence, policing and education, and then there is spending on individuals, of which the biggest categories are pensions, welfare and, of course, the national health service, yet we are coming to a situation in which we talk about it all as if it is tax. So often in politics tax is bad, yet a lot of this spending is good; the two things do not make sense. In countries such as Germany, the latter forms of expenditure—the more personal ones—are often provided more through income-based social insurance. In the UK we started with that system more than 100 years ago, with national insurance, but over the past 50 years we have allowed national insurance to become less relevant, except in relation to eligibility for the state pension and certain benefits.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Debate between Andrew Murrison and Jeremy Lefroy

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

Well, the rate will decline—of course it will.

We gained some insight into how the disconnect between programmes and the ability to pay for them arose last summer when Lord Levene delivered his verdict on the MOD. His revelations dovetailed disquietingly well with Gray’s. He found a “bloated top-level defence board” supervising a

“department with overly bureaucratic management structures, dominated by committees leading to indecisiveness and a lack of responsibility.”

Last year, the armed forces covenant was written into law for the first time, as the Prime Minister said it would be. The covenant is not just about the compact between troops and the public. It also concerns the deal between troops and the high command. Those in charge betray the covenant if they allow the kind of shoddy, top-level management evidenced by both Gray and Levene. However, we still have nearly 500 one-star officers and above—a whole battalion of senior officers on packages well in excess of £100,000. Defence Medical Services is a good case in point. To oversee the care of a patient population less than half the size of Wiltshire we require one three-star, five two-star and 15 one-star officers who serve not as doctors, dentists or nurses but as administrators. Our top medic in Afghanistan is not among them—he is just a colonel. I commend the Government for the remedial measures announced before Christmas to reduce the number of starred appointments, both uniformed and civilian.

More generally, I note that although there here have been and will continue to be compulsory redundancies, the package is so reasonable that there has been disappointment among many of those not selected, as there was during previous rounds. From experience, I bear testament to that.

It is of course reasonable to flex personnel from one trade to another—a contention, I think, of paragraphs 67 to 70 of this week’s Defence Committee report—but the majority of pinch-point trades are so specific by rank or extent of retraining necessary that it would actually be quite difficult to do so. Flexible though our young people are, we simply cannot ask an infantryman to become an Intelligence Corps linguist, a pharmacist at the rank of captain or a Cat. A nuclear watchkeeper.

In our collective defence, NATO remains paramount. However, I share widespread concern that we are moving towards a two-tier alliance, with some players benefiting from the cover but not paying the premium. At next week’s meeting of Defence Ministers in Brussels, will the Defence Secretary continue to press our allies to meet their proper financial responsibilities? Present at the meeting will be those who press for an increasing EU defence identity as part of the security and defence policy. Naturally, that has nothing to do with defence, which only the UK and France come close to funding properly.

The latest turn of the screw comes from a European Parliament resolution of 19 February 2009, which proposes something called synchronised armed forces Europe. SAFE is a beguiling but deeply ironic acronym. Under SAFE, alarmingly, British servicemen would owe allegiance to the supranational European Union. One of its cheerleaders, the German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, told the Munich security conference in February 2010:

“The long-term goal is the establishment of a European army under full parliamentary control.”

Of course, that has nothing to do with improving our collective security; instead, it draws from a hubristic, maladroit pan-European political project that has brought us to the brink of economic catastrophe. The immediate concern about SAFE is that it would quite deliberately remove the capability of the two European nation states still able to act independently to project force worldwide on their own, or with partners of their choosing, in pursuit of the national interest.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is somewhat ironic that those calling for a European army and united European defence are the very people who refuse to pay up for it in their own country?

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. It may not be by chance that the Germans are chief among those who wish to shelter under a European defence force, because Germany, of all our allies and friends, is the country one can most easily identify as a major economy that does not pay its way in terms of our collective security, which it so obviously enjoys. When the Minister is in Brussels, I very much hope that he will do everything he can to put pressure on the Germans in particular to make a fuller contribution to our collective defence; but it has to be through NATO, not through the European Union. The lesson of the past few years and the difficulty with the European Union in respect of our economic position—the greatest existential threat the UK faces at the moment—is that we cannot rely on Europe for our security. Our cornerstone has always been NATO and it will continue to be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), to whom I listened with great interest because he has such vast experience in these matters.

Before I had the honour to be elected to this House, I was involved with others in setting up a business in Sierra Leone. We were able to do that only because the British Army had been involved in bringing stability and peace to that country, and I give credit to those in the previous Government who made the decision to get involved, and to all those who took part in the operation. It is clear that the conditions prevailing in Sierra Leone today were made possible only by British action.

In setting up a business in that country, it was great to be able to offer jobs to former child soldiers, who could then, instead of terrorising their neighbourhoods, earn a living. Is not one of the great benefits that the British armed forces are able to bring, as a result of the intervention in Sierra Leone, that experience of training that enables a country to live at peace, and enables people who were involved in murder to start to earn a living and look after their families?

I want to concentrate my remarks on the connection of our armed forces with their local communities—with the towns, cities and counties in which they are based. Despite the major changes that the SDSR has brought about, and will continue to bring about, these connections must be maintained and strengthened. Never was that brought home to me more clearly than in two recent homecoming parades through my town of Stafford by the Queen’s Royal Lancers and the 3rd Mercians, the Staffords, on their return from their tours of Afghanistan in the last 12 months or so. Both those regiments have strong connections with Staffordshire, and many people from the county and the city of Stoke-on-Trent serve in them. They paraded through many other towns in the area—I see my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) nodding in agreement. The people of Stafford turned out in great numbers for those parades, and showed just how much they respect the service and sacrifice of the men and women of our armed forces.

There are many ways to strengthen the bonds with communities, and I want to touch on just three. The first is to integrate local bases more into the community—while respecting, of course, security considerations. In Stafford, we are fortunate to be the home of 22 Signal Regiment and part of the tactical supply wing of the Royal Air Force, and we eagerly anticipate the coming of two more signal regiments from Germany from 2015. The people of Stafford recognise the great benefits that that will bring to our town: first, the coming of more servicemen and women and their families, who will receive a very warm welcome; secondly, the expansion of schools to meet the needs of their children; and thirdly, the prospect that those skilled men and women will wish to stay in the area when they retire from the armed forces and contribute to our emerging ICT industry and others. There are other opportunities for joint working too: shared sports facilities, advanced skills training, housing and health. We must never forget that the prime duty of our armed forces is the security of the United Kingdom, but no small part of the stability of the UK is the fact that our armed forces are seen as part of the communities that they serve.

Secondly, there is the role of our reserve forces, and I pay tribute to the number of right hon. and hon. Members of this House who serve, many of whom are here today. I also pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) and his team for the vital work that they have done in the Future Reserves 2020 study. He deserves great credit for that.

The increase in the proportion of our reserve strength to 30% of the total is a significant change, but as the review recognises, it will simply not be possible without both modernisation and funding. That is why I welcome the Government’s commitment to better integration with the regular force and increased funding, which I had understood was £1.5 billion, but I was delighted to hear the Secretary of State mention a figure of £1.8 billion in his speech.

[Dr Murrison]

Does my hon. Friend agree that not only are our reserve forces head to head cheaper than members of the regular armed forces, which is important in the current environment, but that other countries have far more reserves as a proportion of their total defence capacity?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, as always. I believe that in the United States it is at least 30%, if not 35%, yet here it is less than 20%, so we are well under the average, even compared with fine armed forces such as those of our NATO allies in the United States and elsewhere.

As the review points out, however, we must use the specialist skills that our reserve forces have. In the proposed rationalisation of the defence estate, we must ensure that we do not lose the close connection between the reserves and the communities from which they come. The Government’s response to the review points out that connection as one of the benefits of increasing the size of the reserves. One way to do that is for the Ministry of Defence to work closely with local councils and councillors throughout the changes that are being made, so that they are kept fully informed.

Finally, I wish to say a few words about the cadets. I have been fortunate enough since my election to spend some time with the Army and RAF cadets in my constituency and my county. Last month I joined the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) at the winter camp of the Staffordshire and West Midlands North Army Cadet Force at Swynnerton in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash). What impressed me most was the commitment of the 500 or so adult volunteers, the full-time staff and the young people. It was a bitterly cold and icy weekend, but the full programme went ahead when other organisations might well have cancelled. When I spoke with the young people from Wolverhampton, Walsall, Stoke-on-Trent, Cannock—as I am sure the Minister knows—and Stafford, they said that the ACF gave them purpose and opportunities that they would not otherwise have considered or had the chance to take up.

We must never underestimate the value of the cadets. Last year they jointly celebrated their 150th anniversary, and their popularity is as great as it has ever been, with some 130,000 cadets in 3,200 units across the UK—no doubt in every constituency—and 25,000 adult volunteers giving up many hours of precious free time each week to help young people develop skills and make the most of their lives. I ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to do everything possible to support the cadet forces. Their work is very much part of the big society, and shares the values of the national citizenship service by bringing together young people from all walks of life and all backgrounds.

Whether it is through the regular forces or the reserves, the bonds between our armed forces and the communities from which they come or in which they are based must not be underestimated. These bonds, along with the courage and commitment of our armed forces, are the cornerstones of the respect in which they are held. Our cadet forces have a different but equally valuable role: offering our young people opportunities to learn and work together that they would not otherwise have.