Phone Hacking
Bob Stewart Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The point about the judge-led inquiry is that it must choose who it wants to speak to and it must then call them under oath and make sure that they answer questions accurately. Clearly, it is going to want to talk to editors, proprietors and those who are responsible right across the media. That is going to be the work it does.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we will never be able to stop criminals who are intent on phone-tapping but that whatever we do and whatever steps we take we have to try to minimise the possibility of that?
The Prime Minister
That is right; we will never stop all law-breaking through a regulatory system, just as we will never stop all law-breaking through a policing system. Clearly, with the media we want to have a free, independent media that do not feel the heavy hand of statutory regulation, so we need a change of law but we also need a change of culture.
Afghanistan
Bob Stewart Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. The more mechanical task of training the Afghan army and police is now going very well. There were errors and mistakes in the early days, but I think that they have been ironed out. I was very struck by what General Petraeus and Lieutenant-General Rodriguez said about the quality of the Afghan army. Clearly, the long pole in the tent—as they like to call it—is how strong, sustainable and vigorous is the quality of Afghan governance and democracy. The moment there is a stand-off between the Executive on the one hand and the Parliament in the other, we must settle those issues.
As I said, I do not think that we will achieve perfection—Afghanistan is a country without a long-standing democratic history—but we must help to put in place basic democratic institutions and functioning government. The British effort is hugely geared towards that task.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Given that for many years our Government negotiated with the Provisional IRA while we were still fighting, I suspect that at some level, we will be negotiating with the Taliban. Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister agree that one of the most important things that we must put forward in any negotiations with the Taliban is that al-Qaeda should never become part of Afghanistan if the Taliban were ever to form a Government, or part of a Government, in that country?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is right. Let me make two points. First, this must be an Afghan-led process. This is about the Afghans trying to bring together in their country all the elements that should form a part of its future. Clearly, if the Taliban separate themselves from al-Qaeda, and if they are prepared to give up violence and accept the basic tenets of the Afghan constitutions, those are end conditions. If they can do that, there is the potential for a political process that can speed the end of this conflict. Clearly, we must go ahead on the basis that we are building the Afghan army and continuing with very tough operations to take out Taliban insurgents, but that there is also the opportunity for a political integration process at the low level, and a reconciliation process at the high level, that can speed the end of the conflict, and we can end up with a more stable and peaceful Afghanistan.
European Council
Bob Stewart Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
On the extent of parliamentary debate, we have one of these statements every time there is a European Council, and we seem to be clocking up those at a rate of knots. We have also put in place the recommendations of the Wright Committee to ensure that Back Benchers have proper time for debate.
In terms of what happens next in the eurozone, I have set out the Government’s position. We do not want a disorderly breakdown in Europe. We are playing our full part in making sure that the eurozone sorts out its problems, and we are protecting Britain’s interests by ensuring that we are not contributing as a European country to a Greek bail-out. The Greeks have chosen their path and they will be voting in Parliament shortly. They have chosen the path where they want to put in place further measures so that they can stay inside the eurozone and find their way back to solvency in dealing with their debt problems. That is the choice they have made; it is the choice that is being supported by eurozone members. We are not in favour of disorder in the eurozone for the very good reasons that we have given.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend tell the House, in view of the increasing number of European summits, whether he managed to save any taxpayers’ money en route to the recent European Council summit?
The Prime Minister
As I am sure my hon. Friend knows, I use a variety of transport means. On this occasion, I flew by a scheduled plane to Prague for my meetings with the Czech Prime Minister and President and shared the Prime Minister’s aeroplane from Prague to Brussels, although I have to admit that the RAF kindly flew me home. I seem to remember in previous years different Ministers flying in different planes to the same summit. I think that sharing an aeroplane with another Prime Minister is a good way forward.
Volunteering Bill
Bob Stewart Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. My Bill is designed to find such a simple solution. Clause 1 would establish a fit and proper person certificate. If an organisation or individual wanted to take on a volunteer, instead of having to get a criminal record check, they would be able to accept a declaration from the volunteer that they do not have a criminal record or any convictions. In the case of somebody under the age of 18, such a statement would have to be countersigned by a parent or guardian. Such a statement would, by definition, be up to date. A person could provide one this week to volunteer for reading in London and another next week to work with a diving company or the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Criminal record checks do not necessarily identify someone who is weird at all, but just whether someone has a criminal record. Most of the people who wish to do harm are well under the radar because no one knows about them until suddenly they do something. I absolutely agree that criminal record checks are totally inappropriate in volunteering. We must get rid of this red tape so that people who want to help young people, for example, can do so almost instantly.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I remind hon. Members that when addressing the House, they are supposed to turn to address the Chair and not face backwards. That may seem odd, but it helps with the proceedings of the House.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point. People want to be able to get on with volunteering very quickly and with the minimum bureaucracy. Even if there are criminal record checks, what does that prove?
In the last week, there was the most horrific account in one of the national newspapers of a worker at a nursery who filmed the rape of a toddler and was involved in countless other ghastly offences. The nursery had been inspected by Ofsted some five weeks before the individual was arrested. The inspection concluded that the nursery offered a “safe and secure” environment for children, with
“appropriate recruiting and vetting procedures”
for staff. When challenged about what had happened, the spokesman for Ofsted said, I thought rather wisely:
“Inspection can only ever provide a snapshot of a nursery on the day of inspection.”
It can provide only a snapshot of what the inspector is shown or sees. The spokesman emphasised:
“It is the nursery’s responsibility to ensure it takes the necessary action to keep children safe and well looked after.”
My Bill would give that responsibility fairly and squarely to the people who recruit and supervise the volunteers.
Bob Stewart
I am very much looking at the Chair, and I am not going to look behind me, Madam Deputy Speaker. In fact, I am going to keep my eyes permanently on you.
Bob Stewart
And I will get on with it. I am a 61-year-old father of young children, and I want to take my children from school to sports matches, but I am told by the school that I have to have a CRB check to take two or three people in my car. I am hoping that this sort of red tape can be done away with. I think that I am a fit and proper person.
Bob Stewart
I resent that remark from the hon. Gentleman. I hope that this sort of red tape will stop.
Mr Chope
I am grateful once again for my hon. Friend’s support.
The Bill would reduce bureaucracy and costs, and promote volunteering. If for some reason—I am sure there may be all sorts of technical reasons—my hon. Friend the Minister cannot accept the Bill, perhaps because it is inadequately drafted, it would be possible to introduce new clauses on Report of the Protection of Freedoms Bill to deal adequately with these concerns. The Government have—this is the substance of my remarks—made some welcome statements pointing in the right direction of reducing the burden of bureaucracy, and have said on a number of occasions that they do not want people who volunteer to be viewed as suspects until proved otherwise, and that they want to encourage as much volunteering as possible.
Clause 2 makes some technical changes to ensure that those under 21 would not have to get criminal records checks in any circumstances and that the Police Act 1997 would not apply to volunteers, but only to paid employees.
Having said all that, and being grateful to all my hon. Friends who have shown support for the Bill, I move that it receive its Second Reading.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bob Stewart Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
When the Minister talks to the Ministry of Defence about voting, will he try to ensure that not just the way our servicemen and women vote but the way they are required to register is as simple as possible?.
Mr Harper
I agree, and we are doing two things. We are going to make registering as a service voter more straightforward, and we are going to undertake some data-matching pilots with a number of local authorities, working with the Ministry of Defence, so that we can look at improving the way service personnel are registered so they all have the chance to register and vote in elections.
House of Lords Reform (Draft Bill)
Bob Stewart Excerpts(13 years ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I sought to answer those concerns earlier. What we are trying to do—it is not an easy balance to strike—is to introduce reform while maintaining a certain degree of continuity with where we have come from. That is why we arrived at the decision—I stress again that it was arrived at on a cross-party basis in the Committee that I chaired—that it was best to leave things broadly as they are but, as I have said, on a much smaller scale: 12 representatives in future, rather than 26.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
How can those elected to the other place remain, to quote the Deputy Prime Minister, “one step removed from…day to day party politics”, when every third election Members of the second Chamber will compete for votes with all of us in our constituencies?
The Deputy Prime Minister
That is a rather good argument for the case, which was criticised earlier, of non-renewable terms: such Members will not stand again or, of course, in the same constituencies. We will have constituencies—certainly, after the boundaries are changed—where each of us represents just over 70,000-odd; they will seek to represent half a million-odd. It will be a completely different contest, held on a different mandate, under a different system, for a different term, and I believe that millions of British voters will be easily able to distinguish between one and the other and to keep the two separate in their own minds.
Review of Parliamentary Standards Act 2009
Bob Stewart Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Adam Afriyie
That is the observation of many Members, I think. I have to say—I hope I will not get a hiss for this—that the media and those who really understand how this place works are beginning to recognise just how difficult it is becoming for Members of Parliament on both sides of the House who want to go about their duties of holding the Executive to account, representing their constituents and picking up issues, but they are constantly being harangued over issues regarding which, one might argue, they should not necessarily be under pressure.
I shall not go through the litany of the crimes of the current system, much as I would love to. Anybody reasonable and anybody who knows how this place operates—the people who voted us into this place last May clearly recognised that the people being elected here were people who wanted to serve—will know that the overwhelming majority of Members are desperate just to get on with their job and to perform the duties for which they were elected. I hope that this motion is carried today so that we can have a calm look at whether the 2009 Act is performing the function that, with all the good intentions and good motivation in the world, it was intended to achieve.
My heart goes out to the new Members who came in in 2005. Many were elected on a ticket saying that they abhorred the expenses crisis, and they were right to campaign on that ticket—
Adam Afriyie
That is right; I meant the 2010 intake. My heart goes out to them, because they have been as meticulous and careful as they can not to overclaim and not to make erroneous claims; I know this because I know many of them personally. In fact, 92% of people here are not claiming what they are entitled to claim, just so they can be as careful as possible, yet every eight weeks their names are run through the press, which presents any claim at all as being in some way illegitimate. I do not entirely blame the press for that. In some ways, it might be the workings of the 2009 Act that are perpetuating that perception, which in the majority of cases is not a reality.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
As one of the youngest Members of the 2010 intake, I remember sitting in the Members’ centre a few days after my election and listening to a young lady—much younger than me, surprisingly—who was speaking on the telephone and trying very hard to arrange accommodation for herself in London. She happened to be a member of the Opposition. Each time she spoke with an estate agent, it was clear that she could not do it, and after two hours she gave up. I quickly soused that—
Bob Stewart
Souse a herring—are we not moving on to that debate in a moment?
I quickly sussed that the expenses system was not working very well. I have spent most of my adult life in public service, but I have also been in business in the private sector. In those jobs, there was a very clear principle that if one spent money doing one’s job, one should be properly recompensed. It was simple and effective. It seems to me that IPSA makes difficulties when it should not do so. I am lucky, because my constituency is close to Westminster and I can travel home each night—22 minutes from Victoria station to Shortlands—except when we have an absurdly lengthy, late-night sitting, when I am told I am allowed to go to a hotel. Members should rest assured that on such occasions I do not cost the taxpayer any money, because I get out my army camp bed and kip in my office, illegally. It is a damn sight easier that trying to check into a hotel at 12.30 at night.
Bob Stewart
Exactly.
It is clear that IPSA puts colleagues off claiming a lot. My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) noted that 92% of Members do not claim what they are entitled to, which I think is pretty dreadful. If they do not claim it, that means they are paying for it from their salaries, and we are not that well paid, considering some of the commitments that we are not allowed to claim for.
I understood the intricacies of Balkan politics when I was the British commander of forces there much better than I understand the intricacies of trying to get a claim from IPSA. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who is a parliamentary hero for what he is trying to do. His determination is in the highest traditions of this House. We need a simple, fair and honest system that is cheaper for the taxpayer—if that is possible—and allows us to do our jobs properly. I fully support the need to review the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. I am not sure that IPSA should go, but I am sure that the system should be reviewed as soon as possible.
Counter-terrorism
Bob Stewart Excerpts(13 years ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend has put it extremely well. The fact is that there is no place in Islam for this sort of murderous ideology. It is against what Islam is meant to be all about. I hope that the argument that we can get across to people now is that that was an entirely blind alley for so many young people to go down, and that there is an alternative to the repression and frustration that they felt about regimes in north Africa and elsewhere: the democratic awakening that is taking place, which—as I said earlier—is one of the ways in which we will defeat al-Qaeda in the long run.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree that, having suffered such a grievous loss—that of his wife—the President of Pakistan is totally on side in the battle against international terrorism, and that somehow or other we must help him to rid his governmental structure of people who are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, or indeed the Taliban? I do not know how we can do that, but perhaps the Prime Minister does.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973
Bob Stewart Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Colonel Gaddafi does not do peaceful. Benghazi may be relatively safe for the moment, but what about elsewhere in Libya? That really worries me.
As my—dare I say, with some trepidation?—hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) suggests, I have had experience in this respect. I remember very well that when I was the military commander in Bosnia in 1993, a little girl of six was brought to my house by a delegate from the International Committee of the Red Cross. She had been in a prison camp for 10 days. The Red Cross delegate said to me, “This girl needs shelter.” I said, “I’m the military commander.” She said, “You’ve got plenty of room in your house, and you’ve got two soldiers who look after you.” The soldiers turned to me and said, “We’ll look after her, sir.” They took her away, put her in a bath and washed her, and cared for her. They put a bed for her between their two cots. Three days later, that girl did not want to leave. I am worried that what had happened to her might be happening to people in Tripoli tonight. She was dragged out of her bed at 5 o’clock in the morning, with her mother, father and brother, told to get downstairs and made to lie on the grass by brutes with rifles. As she told it, her mother, father and brother lay down and did not get up again. This weekend, I spoke to members of the opposition in Tripoli, and you can bet your bottom dollar that Mr Gaddafi will be sending his thugs searching around there tonight.
What can we do to help? We cannot invade, we cannot assassinate—it is up to the Libyans to decide what we do. I have seen people with pitchforks try to take out tanks. How are those people going to be protected? They need help. Perhaps the Arab League could help a little more in that respect. Perhaps it could go forward. We cannot do it.
Nobody knows the endgame—we all realise that. If we were God, perhaps we would, but we do not. We live in hope. We do not have the endgame plotted out carefully.
We acted morally on the highest authority in the world—the Security Council of the United Nations. Thank goodness we did, because last Friday Colonel Gaddafi suggested he was going to go through houses in Benghazi and butcher everyone who opposed him. That did not happen. We have, by our actions, saved life. Politics can sort things out hereafter, but one thing is quite clear: there will be a lot more people around to watch what happens from now on than there would have been if we had done nothing last Friday. Thank you very much, Prime Minister. Thank you very much, Foreign Secretary. Thank you very much, the Opposition, for your full support. It is deeply appreciated by all of us.
Let us hope that someone has the brains of Methuselah and that we find out what the endgame is in due course. Perhaps the Foreign Secretary has the brains of Methuselah.
UN Security Council Resolution (Libya)
Bob Stewart Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Obviously, we want the widest alliance possible. I do not think it would be right for me to name at the Dispatch Box those countries that are considering participation, but there is a wide number. Clearly, at the heart of this are the Americans, the French and the British, but other European countries are coming forward, and there are also some in the Arab League, including a number I have spoken to, who have talked about active participation—about playing a part in this. One of the purposes of the meeting tomorrow in Paris will be to bring together the widest possible coalition of those who want to support it, and I believe, particularly as this has such strong UN backing, that it will be a very wide coalition indeed.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Speaking as someone who has watched well-armed Bosnian Serb units smash through civilian populations, may I ask my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister whether Security Council resolution 1973 allows us, under its provision on “all necessary measures”, to avoid the arms embargo and directly arm the people who are fighting against Gaddafi in Benghazi and elsewhere?
The Prime Minister
The first point I would make to my hon. Friend is how welcome it was that Bosnia was sitting on the Security Council and able to vote in favour of this resolution—for good historical reasons. The resolution helps to enforce the arms embargo, and our legal understanding is that that arms embargo applies to the whole of Libya. Paragraph 4 authorises member states
“to take all necessary measures…to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack”
in Libya, including Benghazi. That is very strong language, which allows states to take a number of military steps to protect people and harm those who are intending to damage civilians. It could not be clearer, and the legal advice is clear.
Let me make this point as well: while I think we should maintain the convention that the Government are entitled to have legal advice and to receive that legal advice privately, I also think it is right on these sorts of occasions that a summary of legal advice should be published so the House of Commons can see and debate it, and we will make sure that is done well in advance of the debate on Monday.