National Security Bill

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis]

My understanding of the legislation—someone from the Intelligence and Security Committee is due to speak after me who has a better perspective of the detail of this than I have—is that there are safeguards against anything that could possibly be used to justify or facilitate torture. This was debated in considerable detail in Committee, and I am concerned that the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a great deal of respect from our time together on the Select Committee on Defence, still feels that the safeguards may not be strong enough. Perhaps we will hear from him later.

We are pleased to see that the Government have incorporated various changes recommended by members of the Intelligence and Security Committee, including on strengthening the Bill’s independent oversight provisions and replacing the “exemption” under clause 21 with an improved “defence”, with stronger safeguards and accountability provisions.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) flagged a moment ago, there has been a missed opportunity, namely the failure to reform the 1989 Act. As the ISC has said since the Bill’s introduction, it does not go far enough, despite reforming the espionage regime under the OSA, because it fails to reform the 1989 Act, as both we and the Law Commission recommended. That is despite a previous Government commitment that reforming the 1989 Act would be a key part of the Bill. This means the problems with the 1989 Act, which the Government have already acknowledged, will persist. Among those problems is the requirement to prove that damage has been done by unauthorised disclosures, which acts as a barrier to prosecution because showing that disclosures have done damage risks increasing the damage.

The recommendations include increasing the two-year maximum sentence, which we feel is clearly insufficient to deter or to respond to the most serious unauthorised disclosures. Will the Minister commit to introducing legislation to reform the 1989 Act in this or the next parliamentary Session? I would like an answer either now or at the end.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

The problem is that classified information sometimes has to be used to prove something like this, and it is just not acceptable to use classified information in an open court.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

My right hon. and gallant Friend underlines my point, which is that, in proving damage has been done, the mere fact of displaying why something has been damaging can increase the damage and adverse impact by many multiples.

Both Front Benchers focused on Lords amendment 22, on foreign interference in elections, and Lords amendment 122, on the duty to update the MOU of the ISC. Like Admiral Lord West, who spoke in favour of Lords amendment 22 on the ISC’s behalf, I firmly support the introduction of the proposed new clause, which would help to increase the transparency and accountability of our political system. The ISC’s Russia report of 2020 recognised that the UK has clearly welcomed Russian money, including in the political sphere. It found that several members of the Russian elite with close links to Putin have been identified as being involved with political organisations in the UK, including by making large donations to political parties. That clause would require a UK-registered political party to create a policy statement, and to provide the Electoral Commission with an annual statement of risk management, identifying how risks relating to donations from a foreign power are being managed to ensure such donations are properly identified. This should not be controversial, and it is still not clear, despite the Minister’s best efforts, why the Government would wish to oppose that clause. Indeed, the Government said in the other place that the current electoral finance legislation is sufficient.

Several Lords also noted that, unlike companies or charities, political parties do not have to examine the source of the funds they receive. As those Lords explained, that means it is perfectly possible for companies to make significant donations to political parties despite clearly not making operating profits—so with limited explanation of how they can afford such donations or where the money comes from. That means that, unlike companies and charities, there is no enhanced due diligence even when a donor is operating from a high-risk country listed in terrorism-financing or money-laundering legislation.

As was also suggested in the other place, incorporating this modest amendment would mean that political parties develop a culture of knowing their donor, just as companies, particularly financial and legal entities, are required to know their customer. It is entirely appropriate for political parties to do more to determine the source of donations. The additional measures proposed would not be over-onerous. Lords amendment 22 is eminently reasonable, and it should not be controversial for political parties to want to ensure the transparency of their foreign political donations. We must protect against covert, foreign state-backed financial donations if we are to defend our democratic institutions from harmful interference and influence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Absolutely. My right hon. and learned Friend is far too modest to say that his input, as a former senior Law Officer of this country, to the changes that were made was of extreme importance and assistance to the Government.

[Bob Stewart]

In short, we have to revise the MOU because at the moment we on the ISC cannot do our job properly and it is a job that everybody in this Chamber wants us to do.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am grateful for that strong support. It should not have been necessary for people in the upper House to bring forward a legal requirement to update the MOU. For the benefit of people not buried in the intricacies of these arrangements, let me say that the MOU means that at any one time an exchange of letters between me, as the Chairman of the ISC, and the Prime Minister can modify the range of organisations that the ISC has the right to scrutinise. As we will be hearing in a few moments, that is because when that arrangement was initiated, it was recognised that from time to time changes in the structure of Departments mean that different parts involving classified intelligence-related activities would pop up here and there in different Ministries, so we would need an ability to adjust the MOU to approve our scrutinising the classified parts of those activities. That is precisely because ordinary—I know that my colleague on the Front Bench does not like my using that word—departmental Select Committees are not able effectively to scrutinise highly classified material in any systematic way. If they were, it would not have been necessary to set up the ISC in the first place.

Ukraine

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I begin by congratulating the three Front-Bench spokesmen on the eloquence and unanimity that has been displayed. In studying the depravity of dictators, one quickly understands that cynicism has no limits and hypocrisy no boundaries. Putin likes to draw parallels with the second world war, and there are indeed parallels to be drawn. For example, the false flag operations go back to the very outbreak of that war. On 31 August 1939, Hitler would have had it that the war began because Poles attacked a radio station at Gleiwitz, on the east German border. They were in fact Nazis dressed up in Polish uniforms, and they even left the dead bodies of concentration camp victims as props in that scheme. It is a sign that Putin’s comparisons are insufficiently accurate or insufficiently free of hypocrisy that he does not recognise that what started that war was Stalin’s pact with the Nazis to divide up Poland between them.

This is necessarily a short debate, which is just as well, because I side with those who do not think it is a very good idea for us to discuss military strategy in an ongoing campaign on the Floor of this House. What we can observe is that one complicating factor in a dictatorship such as Putin’s Russia is that there are no mechanisms whereby a leader who is unethical, irresponsible, incompetent and indeed murderous can constitutionally be removed. That has to be a factor in our considerations.

If it were not too flippant, I would be tempted to remark that it is truly a sign of desperation and indeed substandard propaganda that a cheerleader for Putin yesterday threatened a nuclear strike on London if we continue to help Ukraine defend territory that is being illegally annexed. Given the extent of the property portfolios of so many of Putin’s oligarchs in the centre of this great city, they would, I think, have a word or two of objection to a Russian strategy of that sort.

The beginning of the invasion left quite a few people thinking that resistance was unlikely to be successful. Indeed, it probably would not have been successful but for the supply of complex weapons systems that had taken place since the earlier invasion of Crimea. As a result, we have seen the Russians’ air arm neutralised, the Russian fleet’s major surface unit in the area sunk, tanks and other vehicles destroyed, and ground troops decimated. The only tactic that has been left to the Russian dictator has been the physical destruction—usually by long-range artillery—of territory that the Russians cannot take and hold.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I totally agree with the comments of my right hon. Friend. I am sure this is happening, but combat supplies and spare parts need to be reinforced, because complex weapon systems go wrong and need to be repaired. While we are at it, as we come into winter, it would be good to provide the Ukrainian armed forces with simple little things such as face masks so they can go through the winter, because they probably do not have them.

[Dr Lewis]

Not for the first time, my right hon. and gallant Friend anticipates my next but one point. I will make the next point first, which is that, because the only tactic left is destruction, the area of doubt is how far Putin will go. Will he simply think that by escalating destruction, the Ukrainians will suddenly say, “We can’t take any more of this and we’re going to surrender”? Surely the events of the past months have shown that any such approach would be completely counterproductive. The more he behaves atrociously, the stronger the resistance will be and rightly so.

My right hon. and gallant Friend referred to the supplies that we give. Of course it is greatly to the credit of the previous Government and, indeed, the previous Prime Minister, who spoke earlier in this debate, that we have given such substantial supplies, but in giving those supplies, we have seriously depleted our own stocks. What I need to hear from the Minister is that a full-scale effort is being made and will be increased to ensure that the more we give, the higher our rate of replacement will be, because an effort cannot be sustained if the people who are resisting run out of supplies.

Finally, it would be remiss of me to conclude any debate about defence without making a reference to the need to reach 3% of GDP. We have made progress: we now have a pledge to reach 3% of GDP by 2030, but the situation in 2030 is a long way away—it is longer than the second world war, with which I began. We need to reach it sooner than that.

Defence Supplementary Estimate 2021-22

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

Yes, and I am also aware that as a result of Ukraine’s decision to give up those nuclear weapons, Russia guaranteed the security and the borders of Ukraine. If the hon. Gentleman is going to throw international law at me, all I can say to him is that, if he thinks that those sorts of manoeuvres and unilateral renunciations are the way to stop someone being attacked and destroyed by a ruthless adversary, it should be a long time indeed before he and people who think like him have any influence on the way in which we choose to keep the peace—by deterrence—so that we do not end up in a situation like Ukraine.

Fourthly, this horrible situation should establish whether and to what extent economic sanctions can force an aggressor to desist. It is often said that the world has become more interdependent. We will never see a more extreme example of democratic countries seeking to use economic pressures to force an aggressor to desist. If that fails to work in this instance, it will be a further argument for increased investment in hard defence capability, because that particular aspect of hoping to be able to turn war into an outmoded concept will, sadly, have been disproved. I hope that it does play a part in stopping Russia from proceeding, but I am not holding my breath.

Fifthly, the conflict has exposed the folly of fuel dependence on hostile countries and raised questions about the wisdom of a policy of unilateral net zero targets by democracies regardless of what much larger countries, that are not democracies, do. I am not seeking to pick an argument with the environmentalists; I am merely saying that there is a parallel with the question of unilateral or one-sided nuclear disarmament, because if we achieve net zero at tremendous cost to ourselves while much larger hostile countries simply flout the commitments that they have given, we will have taken that pain for no benefit to anyone. Targets must be multilateral if they are going to do anything other than weaken our ability to protect ourselves.

The last of the six lessons is that the conflict has killed the idea that conventional aggression by one state against another is an outmoded 20th-century concept. Time and again, people such as the right hon. Member for Warley on the Opposition Benches and my right hon. and hon. Friends present on the Conservative Benches have raised the question of what an appropriate level of defence investment should be, only to be told from on high, “You’ve got to realise that there are new forms of warfare. The next war will not be fought much with conventional armed forces. It will be fought in cyber-space or even in space itself.” Of course, there are new and serious threats—potentially fatal threats—in those two newer areas of conflict, but they are additional threats. They are not substitutes for the threats that we have always faced and continue to face from conventional armed forces.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my right hon. Friend—who is a good friend and is gallant, because he was a midshipman once—for allowing me to intervene. One thing that the Russians are showing is that to take territory, people have to put boots on it. But, guess what? We are chucking our boots out. That is appalling and we must reverse that decision.

Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Thursday 15th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Ind)]

Thank you, Dame Rosie; I shall endeavour to be helpful. It is only by the good fortune, dare I say it, of there having been yet another statement on the covid crisis that many members of the Intelligence and Security Committee are able to take part in this debate at all. I have written to the Leader of the House about this, and I appeal to the Government’s business managers in future not to schedule legislation of this sort, which is directly relevant to the Intelligence and Security Committee, on the same day that it is known that the Committee has an immovable meeting. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) for being willing to leave our main meeting early, so as to be sure that new clause 3 could be covered, and I will now make some remarks about that new clause.

The Intelligence and Security Committee, as was stated on Second Reading, strongly supports the principle behind this legislation. CHIS play a vital role in identifying and disrupting terrorist plots. They save lives, often at great risk to themselves. Sometimes they must commit offences to maintain their cover, and their handlers must be able to authorise them to do so in certain circumstances and subject to specific safeguards. We welcome the Bill, which will place the state’s power to authorise that conduct on an explicit statutory footing.

However, concerns were raised on Second Reading that the Bill does not provide for sufficient safeguards and oversight measures. The ISC agrees. There is a clear role for the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, and it is absolutely right that the commissioner is able to use his judicial oversight powers to ensure that those powers are used only with due care and consideration by the agencies that authorise criminal conduct.

The Bill, as it stands, does not provide for any parliamentary scrutiny of the use of these authorisation powers, so the amendment that the ISC has tabled—new clause 3—proposes not to duplicate the role of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner in any way, but instead to require the Secretary of State to provide the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament with an annual report of information on the number of criminal conduct authorisations that have been authorised by the agencies that the Committee oversees as well as on the categories authorised. All we are looking for is a simple table saying that these are the categories of offences that have been authorised, those are the totals in each category and this is the grand total.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

It is only the number and the category; there is no detail, because that would be extremely dangerous.

[Dr Lewis]

That is absolutely right, and the whole point about the detail is that that is the job of the Investigatory Powers Commissioner. What we want to do is give an added layer of extra scrutiny on the scale and the categorisation, but nothing in terms of particularity of any individual case.

War Widows’ Pension Scheme

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

May I just say that it is typical of my right hon. Friend, a former Secretary of State for Defence, to make sure that she was present today, as she notified me she would be, to make that very point? Indeed, as I would have expected, she goes to the heart of the matter. As we will hear later, what really needs to be done is to stop looking at this award as the award of a pension or a benefit when in reality it is meant to be recognition of and compensation for a sacrifice, which should be untouchable under any circumstances.

In fact, however, that is not the case because, as Judith Thompson, the commissioner, spelled out at the time:

“If your spouse died or left Military or War Service before 31 March 1973 and you also receive the War Pension Scheme Supplementary Pension you keep your War Widow’s Pension for life.”

So if it is before 1973, they are okay. She went on:

“If you were widowed after 5 April 2005 and receive Survivors Guaranteed Income Payment from the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme you keep your War Widow’s Pension for life.”

In between, however, we have this cohort—now reduced to between 200 and 300—of war widows who lost the pension under a change in the rules and have not had it reinstated. I said in that earlier debate that that basically created a perverse incentive for people who, by definition, have already suffered the greatest trauma and tragedy, to part from the person with whom they have found renewed happiness, and go through a charade of this sort if they wish their pension to be permanently reinstated.

At that time, the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), who sat on the Defence Committee on behalf of the Democratic Unionist party, pointed out an additional perversity, which was that widows of members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who served and died alongside members of the Ulster Defence Regiment and other regiments, had had the issue resolved locally in Northern Ireland. Because members of the Ulster Defence Regiment were in the Army, which is covered by defence and not a devolved matter, their widows had not had that issue resolved, and were still being denied the reinstatement of their war widow’s pension.

I then read extracts from five of seven testimonies—that was all I had time for—from war widows who explained what this issue meant to them. I shall now abbreviate those testimonies, but I urge anyone who is interested in reading the full account of what those five widows had to say to look at the speech from, I believe, November 2018, which can easily be found in the appropriate section of my website—[Interruption.]

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I am intervening at an appropriate time so that my right hon. Friend can reshuffle his papers.

[Dr Lewis]

That is very helpful.

[Bob Stewart]

This situation is frankly iniquitous. It is unfair and wrong, but it could be put right very quickly if we just say that once someone receives a widow’s pension they keep it, end of.

[Dr Lewis]

That has been said. That is what David Cameron did, and that is now the situation. The argument arises because of the small cohort who between those years did not have their pension reinstated. Thanks to my gallant friend’s intervention, I now have the exact date of that previous debate. It was on 22 November 2018, and it is easily accessible in Hansard, or, even more easily, in the “Commons Speeches” section of my website.

I first quoted Linda, whose husband John was murdered by the IRA in May 1973 by a booby-trap bomb. She explained:

“In the early 70s War Widows were visited by inspectors to ensure they were not living with another man whilst in receipt of their compensation pension. I felt degraded by this. Life was lonely as a young women with a baby and over time I missed the family life I so tragically had taken from me. I missed my son having a father, I missed the closeness and friendship of a husband…As was stated in 2015 this was a choice—”

the fact that she had to give up her pension on remarriage—

“that should not have been forced on War Widows. I was personally heartbroken when I was told that pension changes in 2015 had left me behind. The utter disbelief that the Government didn’t really mean ALL War Widows would now have their pensions for life was unbearable. These changes made me feel like a second class War Widow and I have now been made to relive the pain and grief of 1973 every day. I cannot and will not accept that John’s sacrifice is less worthy than others.”

I read out four more testimonies on that occasion, but I do not have time to do that again. Instead, I shall refer to two testimonies that I did not previously have time to read out. One was from someone who was bereaved not during Operation Banner in Northern Ireland, but in Iraq in 2003.

Raqual lost her husband Matt there.

“If anything happens to me”,

he wrote immediately before deploying,

“I want you and our son and our baby to be happy. Meet someone else and give our children a loving home. You won’t need to worry about money as you will be financially independent”—

he thought—

“and able to give our children what they deserve!”

Eight weeks later, she was a widow. Eight years later, she remarried. Upon remarriage, she writes:

“I surrendered my War Widows’ Pension as I had to do and increased my hours of work to compensate for this loss of income.

Being able to support my children independently was and still is very important to me and to Matt’s memory. I would never expect my new husband to have to do this. And then came the decision to allow widows to retain their pensions on remarriage, but only if they remarried after April 2015.

I am so pleased for the widows who will benefit from this. But I hold the values of fairness and equality in high regard, and we are now in a situation which is neither fair nor equal. Even now, I simply can’t get my head around the fact that had I waited four more years to remarry I would have kept my pension for life. How can it be fair that someone who remarried on the 31 March 2015 lost their pension, and yet 24 hours later someone in the exact same position would keep theirs!!!???”

Continuous At-Sea Deterrent

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Wednesday 10th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

Absolutely. If we get into a situation where the United States and the NATO alliance are paralysed in the face of dictatorships armed even with a few mass-destruction weapons that cannot be neutralised by the threat of retaliation, there would be no prospect of our mounting a defence of any country under attack, anywhere in the world, no matter how deserving it might be of our military intervention.

The third argument is that the United Kingdom has traditionally played a more important and decisive role in preserving freedom than other medium-sized states have been able or willing to play. Democratic countries without nuclear weapons have little choice but to declare themselves neutral and hope for the best or, alternatively, to rely upon the nuclear umbrella of powerful allies. The United Kingdom is already a nuclear power and is also much harder to defeat by conventional means because of our physical separation from the continent.

The fourth argument is that our prominence as the principal ally of the United States, our strategic geographical position and the fact that we are obviously the junior partner might tempt an aggressor to think of attacking us separately. Given the difficulty of overrunning the United Kingdom with conventional forces, by contrast to our more vulnerable allies on the continent, an aggressor could be tempted to use one or more mass-destruction weapons against us on the assumption that the United States might not reply on our behalf. Even if that assumption were false, the attacker would find out his mistake when, and only when, it was too late for all concerned. An independently controlled British nuclear deterrent massively reduces the prospect of such a fatal miscalculation.

The final military argument is that no quantity of conventional forces can compensate for the military disadvantage that faces a non-nuclear country in a war against a nuclear-armed enemy. The atomic bombing of Japan is especially instructive not only because the Emperor was forced to surrender but because of the reverse scenario. Imagine if Japan had developed atomic bombs in the summer of 1945 and the allies had not. An invasion to end the war would then have been completely impossible.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Quite a few colleagues in the House have served in the British Army of the Rhine—I served there three times. When we, as conventional forces, practised deploying against an enemy, we were much sustained by the knowledge that there was a nuclear back-up in our armoury. That raised our morale. We thought that people would not dare attack us when we had a nuclear device in our hand. It would be mad to get rid of it.

Armed Forces Covenant

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Thursday 22nd November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In view of the unexpected extra performance by the Prime Minister this afternoon, I shall endeavour to confine my contribution to this debate to one specific area, but let me begin by putting on the record the delight of members of the Defence Committee at the success of one of our members, the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), in being elected president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. That is not only a feather in the United Kingdom’s cap, but a well-deserved recognition of the hon. Lady’s many years of dedicated support for the cause of defence in general and NATO in particular. We are absolutely delighted for her.

I wish also to record my thanks to another member of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), who is not here this afternoon but who was here last Thursday, deputising for me. He made an admirably comprehensive speech, in which he touched on the issue I will speak to today: the plight of 200 to 300 war widows who lost their war widow’s pension on remarriage or cohabitation and who have not had it restored. I had not imagined that, only seven days after having to miss that debate, I would have the opportunity in this debate on the armed forces covenant report to make amends. Clearly, there is a high degree of interest in the armed forces in the Government, or perhaps their attention is somewhat distracted by Brexit concerns; either way, we must make the most of the opportunities.

I mentioned how fortunate I am in the calibre of members of the Defence Committee; it is worth pointing out also that we as a country are fortunate in the calibre of our defence ministerial team. They are a strong team. We have a Secretary of State who, although new to the subject, has shown himself not only willing and ready to listen to those who have been acquainted with it for many years, but also determined—if one can persuade him of the rightness of an issue—to go out there and fight to put a new policy into practice. That is especially true in relation to the inadequate defence budget. I hope he will redouble his efforts to rectify that woeful situation.

We are also fortunate in our two Ministers in the Commons and our representation in the House of Lords, but I do not envy—I suspect no one would—the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), for the sheer range and complexity of the matters with which he has to deal, although there is no doubt that he has mastered his brief. When we compare the distribution of ministerial office in the Ministry of Defence with other Departments of similar prestige, I do not understand why we have only one Minister of State. Personally, I think it would be good if the Veterans Minister were to be redesignated to Minister of State level, not only because of the obvious ability of the present occupant, but because of the strong message it would send to the veterans community about the importance and the status of their concerns.

[Bob Stewart]

May I wholeheartedly endorse that comment? The Minister currently on the Treasury Bench, who opened the debate, would make a superb Minister of State.

[Dr Lewis]

And so say all of us. I hope the Whips are listening and act accordingly—[Interruption.] Even at this moment, I see messages being passed urgently. Could this be some good news? I would happily give way if it is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Lewis]

My excellent friend, for that is what he is—he is another pillar of strength to me on the Defence Committee—will be glad to know that among the examples I intend to quote are several widows who lost a husband serving in the Ulster Defence Regiment and who are in precisely that anomalous position.

This is what happened in the case of Linda, whose husband John was murdered by the IRA in May 1973:

“He died instantly as a boobytrap bomb exploded underneath him. We were stationed in Germany at the time of John’s deployment. Within two days of his death my three month old son and I were put on a flight back to England, leaving behind our life, home and friends to face an uncertain future. With my mum’s help and support I was eventually able to move into a small home of my own and begin to rebuild my life. This is where I received my first ‘inspection’.

In the early 70s War Widows were visited by inspectors to ensure they were not living with another man whilst in receipt of their compensation pension. I felt degraded by this. Life was lonely as a young women with a baby and over time I missed the family life I so tragically had taken from me. I missed my son having a father, I missed the closeness and friendship of a husband.

After years alone I was blessed with a second chance of happiness but felt saddened that my pension would be withdrawn on remarriage as this was a tangible link to John and our previous life together. I also felt this action demeaned John’s sacrifice and that somehow I was no longer a War Widow. However, I had a choice to make and I chose to be part of a loving family again with the security and warmth that it would bring my son and I.

When going through the process of having my pension revoked I spoke to many officials and was insulted when one of them told me ‘not to worry, another man will now look after you.’ Once more I felt let down as I would have to start my new relationship not as an equal but financially dependent on my new husband.

As was stated in 2015 this was a choice that should not have been forced on War Widows. I was personally heartbroken when I was told that pension changes in 2015 had left me behind. The utter disbelief that the government didn’t really mean ALL War Widows would now have their pensions for life was unbearable. These changes made me feel like a second class War Widow and I have now been made to relive the pain and grief of 1973 every day. I cannot and will not accept that John’s sacrifice is less worthy than others.”

[Bob Stewart]

My right hon. Friend has just read out a very touching story. John would expect his country to look after his widow for life. It is a very simple matter. Let us correct it now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart]

And backdated.

[Dr Lewis]

And backdated.

May Adjournment

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Thursday 3rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Bob Stewart]

Mr Speaker, as ever, you put me properly in my box and, as ever, I take a spanking without any problem.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Too much information.

[Bob Stewart]

Indeed. I think this is one of those debates.

Let me get back to the main point, which is that it is a bad omen if young men and young women trying to be criminal law barristers are finding it very difficult. I am making this speech because earlier this week, I met a young barrister from my constituency who has had to leave the criminal Bar because she simply could not afford to live while working within the system. She was originally from the midlands, from a family of farmers, and she and her siblings were the first generation of the family to go to university. Her parents were totally supportive of her wish to be a barrister, a dream she told me she had had since she was 12 years old. She loved lawyer dramas on television, and her mother told her that her urge to be a lawyer had probably come from watching too much of the American law drama “Ally McNeal”, because she had a superb mobile phone.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart]

I think there will be a debate on these issues next Tuesday, and I might take part. I entirely agree with my honourable and very good Friend, and I thank him for raising that point.

My second topic is something that struck me as I passed by the television monitors this morning. If there is a terrorist incident in our wonderful building, we are told to “run, hide and tell”. I was slightly shocked by that, and I asked a policeman whether that is also the advice they are given. The police officer said, “Yes, but don’t worry, sir, that is the last thing we would do. We would not run, hide and tell.” If that is the way we are telling security personnel to conduct themselves, I am extremely concerned about what the implications might be if someone did not run, hide and tell, but instead ran towards the incident, put themselves in danger and was hurt. Does it mean that the Government might say, “Your advice and instructions were ‘run, hide and tell’ and you did exactly the reverse. Therefore we will not give you compensation”?

This issue concerns me a great deal. I do not believe for a moment that the people responsible for our security would do such a thing as “run, hide and tell”. I spoke with the Chair of the Defence Committee a few minutes ago, and he said that he wanted to comment on that point, so I will sit down.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I am frankly surprised that common-sense advice from the point of view of an untrained civilian should be extended—if indeed it is—to those who are professionally engaged in maintaining the security of this place and those who work in it. Of course we expect people to rise to the occasion when they are on duty, and we expect those who are not charged with being on duty to keep out of the way of those who are. How concerned is my hon. Friend at the prospect that people who work in the security field are beginning to think that they might pay some sort of financial penalty if they do what most of us would admire, and tackle the danger rather than hide from it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) is one of the most decent and good-hearted Members in any part of this House. It is therefore a pleasure, as well as a privilege, to follow him in this short debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and I are acquaintances and friends probably going back longer in our political association with one another than either of us does with any other Member of the House. We began to work together politically in 1981 and, as he said in the somewhat reflective part of his contribution, the issue on which we were working was to counter the dangerous and widespread movement for one-sided nuclear disarmament that was in its heyday at that time at the height of the second phase of the cold war. He rightly paid tribute to the work of Lord Heseltine, as he now is, and others who fought and won that battle. They not only won the argument but won the election on the basis of the strength of the argument, because of the commitment of the British people never to leave this country wide open to aggression from undemocratic and, indeed, dictatorial states.

At the time when my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and I were waging that political campaign, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) was engaged in somewhat more dangerous activities, fighting to defend the integrity of the United Kingdom and the security of its citizens in Northern Ireland. Some time ago, he and my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) raised the question of the legal persecution of soldiers who had fought in Northern Ireland in an attempt to mount a successful security operation against enemies who were bound by no accepted rules, norms or laws of conflict. In that counter-terrorist campaign up to 40 years ago, they had to make sometimes life and death decisions in fractions of a second in a form of conflict for which, for the most part, they were entirely untrained. Now, up to 40 years later, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham and my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke have made clear, they find themselves in peril of being brought before the courts in relation to actions that have often been investigated over and over again without there being enough evidence available for any proper prosecution to be brought forward.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my right hon. Friend and you, Mr Deputy Speaker—a colonel of the Royal Army Medical Corps, of course—for allowing me to intervene.

I was involved in fatality shootings in Northern Ireland in my time, but every single time there was a fatality, it was investigated. If it was considered right by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, it would send in an investigation team to check that we had acted legally. I tell fellow Members this: we were so constrained by the yellow card—the rules for opening fire—that we almost thought about it as we went to sleep. It weighed heavily on us in those milliseconds before we opened fire. So it is very hard on us, all these years later, to face the prospect of revisiting these incidents when they were properly investigated at the time and we were told that there was no case to answer.

[Dr Lewis]

Everything I have heard about the conduct of my hon. and gallant Friend, not only in Northern Ireland but in Bosnia and in other dangerous parts of the world, testifies to one single unanimous assessment: that he was an inspiration to the troops he led and that they would follow him anywhere. It is quite right that he has done so much in his time in this House to repay that admiration and to honour the trust that they rightly put in him. What concerns me is that we are not repaying the debt that we owe to servicemen, who in those days were very young who were put in an invidious position in a counter-terrorist environment in circumstances for which they had received no special training.

The Select Committee on Defence has looked into this matter in some depth, and we had an extensive debate on the subject on 25 January in Westminster Hall. I do not propose to rehearse the arguments made there. I just wish to remind the House of something that I have pledged constantly to keep reminding it of—that there will be no end to this process until the Government have the determination to bring in a statute of limitations for all terrorist-related incidents up to and including the date of the Belfast agreement. I have had many conversations with many people about this, including Sinn Féin MPs, who had their own concerns that also have some power and force to them. For them, there is the issue of many unresolved deaths for which inquests have not yet been held.

I believe that there is a basis for a comprehensive solution to that problem. People would be best able to get to the root of what happened to their loved ones if other people, on any side of this multifaceted and horrible conflict, could come forward to explain to the best of their ability what they remember of those circumstances so long ago, without fear of finding themselves in a state of self-incrimination. We have the example of what happened in South Africa and the lesson taught to us by Nelson Mandela.

In the course of the Defence Committee’s inquiry into these matters, we took evidence from eminent professors of law. They said that we could not have a statute of limitations that favours only one side in a conflict, because that could be interpreted as the state legislating for its own impunity, but they emphasised that if we were to combine a statute of limitations with what they call a “truth recovery process” for everybody, that could indeed be entirely legitimate in the face of any form of international legal regime.

The reason for my raising this issue yet again today is my concern about one particular point. The previous Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), whom we all welcome back into the Cabinet in another capacity following his successful surgery, initiated a consultation exercise that is supposed to be going ahead. He specifically said that the option of introducing a statute of limitations on the basis I have described would be included in that consultation exercise. I do not expect the Deputy Leader of the House to be able to respond today, but I do expect him to take away my concern about the suggestions that that option may not now be included in the consultation when it eventually happens. That would be a retrograde step.

As we have seen with Brexit, we cannot always have our cake and eat it. Sometimes we have to decide whether we are going to have—in other words, keep—our cake or eat it, and we cannot put off the point of making that direct choice forever. If that is true of Brexit, it is also true of the ongoing problem of the vulnerability of our armed forces to one-sided prosecution. The Government need to grip this matter. They have an opportunity to, and I hope that they will.

Légion d’Honneur (UK Normandy Veterans)

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the administration of the award of the Légion d’Honneur to UK Normandy veterans.

It is a great pleasure to bring this subject before the House. It did not come as a complete surprise to me that this admirable scheme, in which the French Government have offered to award surviving veterans—not only from D-day, but from the subsequent campaigns to free France from Nazi occupation—has run into a little administrative difficulty. I hope that the Minister will give us a hopeful sign that the glitches and delays that have temporarily marred a brilliant scheme and a wonderfully generous gesture by the French Government can soon be overcome.

It was some years ago that some Normandy veterans had the opportunity to be awarded the Légion d’Honneur. I have in mind a remarkable gentleman, Bill Price, who will be 101 this Friday. He joined the Territorial Army in 1938 and served throughout world war two. On D-day, he was manning an anti-aircraft gun aboard a ship at Sword beach. He was given his award under a different scheme a few years ago, but it was in 2014, on the 70th anniversary of the D-day landings, that the Government of France made it clear that all surviving veterans of the landings, and of the subsequent campaigns to give France back her freedom, would be honoured in this way.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Does that apply to people in the Office of Strategic Services and to American forces? Does it apply to Canadian forces?

[Dr Lewis]

My understanding is that it does indeed apply to nationals of other countries, too. I suspect that there has been a bit of underestimation on the part of the French authorities, bearing in mind that most of the people involved would be in their 90s—the authorities probably underestimated the strength and resilience of the sort of people who stormed ashore on D-day and battled their way through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. The fact that we are dealing with some particularly formidable individuals means that there may be rather more nonagenarians left to claim the award than had originally been anticipated.

To its credit, when the Ministry of Defence prepared the application form for these awards, it did so in a straightforward, simple way: it is a single sheet of paper that asks for certain basic details and for a short paragraph justifying the reason for the award. However, some 3,000 applications have been submitted from the United Kingdom alone, and that is where problems have arisen.

The indication that all might not be well came in a letter from the Defence Minister in the upper House, Lord Astor of Hever, who stated in The Times on 19 November 2014:

“The MoD is undertaking administrative work on each application before forwarding it to the French embassy. Extra staff have been allocated in order to process most applications by the end of the year. We would have preferred to have completed this work more quickly but we must respect the terms under which the French confer this award.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Lewis]

The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I definitely think that it is up to the individual to make the application, wherever they may now be residing. The Normandy Veterans Association, which was recently formally wound up, had membership lists, where records existed. However, there is no way of getting a comprehensive list because tens of thousands of people would qualify if they were still with us today. What has happened, therefore, is that the authorities—particularly the Ministry of Defence—have been doing a very good job of making the application process perfectly straightforward and the scheme well known, so that people know how to apply. There are no complaints about that.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my very good friend for giving way. There is a problem with the special forces, with which I have quite a lot of dealings. It is that the Jedburgh teams of the Special Operations Executive, and 1 SAS, in particular—I have met a couple of them—are quite under the cover and remain under the cover. I have been encouraging them to come forward and get their names in, but there are still problems and people are still coming out of the woodwork. The Jedburgh teams, the SOE, 1 SAS and other special forces must be encouraged as well.

[Dr Lewis]

These people, who went behind the lines in advance of everyone else, are the bravest of the brave. They also take their obligations of confidentiality most seriously.

[Bob Stewart]

Very seriously.

[Dr Lewis]

I am glad that my hon. and gallant Friend agrees. Those special forces members should really put this aside now; they are in their 90s, after all. We can say to them, “It’s okay, fellas! Come forward and get the public acclamation that you deserve.” Of course, I am sure that privately they know how much their brilliant, courageous activities are appreciated.

A spate of reports over the intervening months has suggested that there have been hold-ups and delays. A report in The Times in November 2014 stated:

“The MoD and French Embassy in London said there had been ceremonies held in London for the award. Both said the level of interest had been higher than anticipated.”

The same report quoted Margaret Dickinson, a lady of 92:

“I was all ready to go to London…Then I got a letter saying that the weather was too bad. They said they thought it would be too bad for a lot of people. I was taken aback. The weather was not that bad.”

All I can say is that it is just as well that the people organising that ceremony, who were put off by a minor inconvenience such as a rainy day, were not in charge of organising the Normandy landings. Before anyone intervenes, I should say that I know that the invasion was postponed by 24 hours because of bad weather, but I do not think the problem in London was quite on the same scale—and it did not justify postponing that ceremony.

I know that colleagues wish to contribute, so in the time remaining I shall mention a few individuals, to give the House a sense of the people we are dealing with and why it is so important that the French authorities, having made this wonderful gesture with the support of the British authorities, do not now turn a good news story into a catalogue of disappointment.

From my family’s own circle of friends, I know of Sergeant Peter Carne, Royal Engineers, who landed on Juno beach on 8 June 1944. He was primarily tasked with constructing Bailey bridges to enable vehicles to break out of the beachhead. Peter will be 93 in two days’ time. As it happens, he is in very good health; indeed, he often gives talks about the landings and would relish coming to London or even going to France for an investiture. He sent his form electronically to the MOD on 9 February this year. So far, he has had no receipt and the MOD apparently cannot confirm whether it has passed the form on to the French.

Britain and International Security

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who anticipates the very next point I was going to make. If we use the term Daesh, eventually, with luck, the BBC will be the only organisation left not doing so. At that point, even the BBC might see sense.

I wish to paint a brief picture of the sort of problems we face that lead to the strange paradox that I alluded to when I intervened briefly on the Secretary of State. As I said, two years ago we were proposing to intervene on behalf of one side in a civil war and against the other. Now, it is being proposed that we do exactly the opposite. There are people in the House who are far more expert in these matters than I—

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I seem to recall that the vote was actually not to intervene, but to keep the option of intervention on the menu in negotiations. It was not an option for us to intervene.

[Dr Lewis]

I am afraid I have to disagree with my hon. and gallant Friend. If the vote had been carried, intervention would have taken place the very next weekend. The vote was defeated in this House and the Americans, as a result of that defeat, wisely followed suit, and we did not go down that dangerous road.

As I was starting to say, my interpretation of the situation we face in the world—it may be over-simple, but here it is for what it is worth—is that the western world is being caught up in a terrible recrudescence of the age-old battle between the Shi’as and the Sunnis, a point made by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) in an earlier intervention. The complexity is that the Shi’a and the Sunni militants have a selection of powerful allies. On the Shi’a side, the Syrian Government two years ago posed the threat of chemical weapons, and the Iranian regime has the potential to acquire nuclear weapons. As part of that particular little gang, we also see our old friend President Putin, who has been flexing his muscles, in a way that we all strongly condemn, by taking unilateral action in Ukraine.

On the Sunni side, we see al-Qaeda and the Daesh militants. Behind them, we see strong elements at least of ideological support in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Qatar, who are supposed to be our friends and allies. The problem we face is that there are no good outcomes to be had, whatever course of action we take. What we therefore have to do is to choose between, at any one time, and adopt a policy that is the lesser of two evils. What we have to decide at any one time is: which is the greater danger posed by one element or another in those two unlovely collections of hostile regimes and terrorist organisations?

I wish today simply to sow the seed of the idea that, where we cannot get a wonderfully satisfactory outcome, and we know the only outcome we will get is to try to minimise the damage and that that will have to be done over an extended period, we should adopt a policy that stood us in good stead for half a century in relation to Soviet Communist Russia and its empire: the policy of containment. We cannot force countries that are not ready yet for democracy to become democracies at the point of a gun barrel, unless one goes to the same extent as at the end of the second world war when there was the total defeat and occupation of countries at the cost of millions of lives.

The idea of containment is not passive; it is an active containment. I spoke earlier today with Lord West, whom I greatly respect. He combines much knowledge with a great deal of practical common sense, and I consulted him two years ago before going ahead and deciding to vote against the proposed intervention then. I said to him today that I was minded to think that if we intervened on this occasion, we would be intervening in a very different way from the one that was proposed two years ago. We would not be intervening to bring down another dreadful Arab dictator and replace him with another failed state run by Islamist extremist terrorists. His response was interesting. He said it is a policy of deciding, at any one time, which of the crocodiles is swimming nearest to the boat. Of course, there is no way of permanently taking the crocodiles out of the scene and sailing blissfully out of danger. When dangerous organisations and deadly regimes wield their weapons in ways that are most threatening to us, we must constantly, over a period of time, try to contain the threat by active measures.

What we are seeing with Daesh and its activity is new. It requires containment, but it requires active containment. Daesh is seizing large areas of territory. By doing so, it is giving up the one great advantage that insurgencies and terrorist groups generally have: the advantage of invisibility. A policy of active containment will, from time to time, certainly require the step of military intervention to prevent the enemy on that particular side of the two-sided threat that I have been trying to describe from becoming over-dominant.

We must not fool ourselves into believing that any steps we take will result in a decisive solution. As the Secretary of State said, we are in this for the long haul. At any given time, we will have to intervene to keep whichever particular set of enemies is becoming too dominant, under control. In a way, that is nothing different from what was traditionally the role of the balance of power, when Britain looked after its national interests by ensuring that no one potential enemy power became overwhelmingly strong on the continent.

That leads me, very briefly, to the question of NATO and European defence. We have seen the concept of article 5—the guarantee whereby NATO ensures that none of its members is attacked without the potential aggressor knowing in advance that, if it does that, it will immediately be at war with all other NATO members—stretched to its limit. We have a long and honourable tradition of supporting the independence of the Baltic states. It goes back at least to the time of our intervention in the Russian civil war in 1919-20. I must say to the House, however, that the decision NATO took to extend its protection to the Baltic states is, realistically, as far as we can go. It is simply not fair to countries further east to hold out the false hope of NATO membership, which, if granted, would be totally incredible. If a potential enemy believes that it is not credible that all NATO members would, in fact, declare war upon the aggressor if there were an attack on one of these eastern states, we will have destroyed the whole foundation and the whole reason for having NATO in the first place. That does not do anyone any favours. It just takes us back to the scenarios of the 1930s, when an aggressor thought that it could pick off one state after another without larger states coming to their rescue.

Finally, I want to say this. The Government keep saying that defence is the first duty of Government. I agree: it is the first duty of Government. It is more important than any other duty of Government. If that is the case, there can be no coherent or rational case for safeguarding and ring-fencing the budgets of other Government Departments, thus increasing the pressure on the unprotected Departments, which include Defence. Something has gone awry with the Government’s sense of defence as the top national priority. We constantly hear talk about Britain punching above its weight, but in reality, the weight of the punch depends on the resources allocated to the armed forces. The stronger the armed forces in peacetime, the more likely it is that we will not have to engage in warfare, because anyone who is likely to attack us will be forced to think again.

Britain in the World

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It is with real pleasure that I note that becoming Father of the House has done nothing to dampen, soften or ameliorate the rigour with which the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) pursues his causes. Indeed, I recall that, many years before I entered the House, in the period of 1988 to 1991, when the right hon. Gentleman was shadow Foreign Secretary, I greatly admired the skill with which he manoeuvred to try to extricate the Labour party from some difficult defence positions in which it had managed to entangle itself. I am sure he will feel some satisfaction at that achievement, even though—sadly from his point of view—he still has to address the Government from the Opposition Benches.

I want to say a few words of appreciation for the electors of New Forest East, who did me the honour of electing me for the fifth time since the seat was created—[Hon. Members: “Hear, Hear”.] I am pleased to get such ringing endorsement from my colleagues. As well as thanking the electors, I would like to pay tribute to the candidates of the four other parties that competed in the election, who, without exception, conducted themselves with good humour and integrity. It was pleasant to take part in a general election on that basis.

It was notable that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) repeatedly asked “Who would have thought this would have arisen?”, “Who would have thought that would have arisen?”, and “Who would have thought the other would have arisen?” In making those rhetorical observations, the right hon. Gentleman arrived at the heart of the problem that affects defence policy in times of peace. In times of peace, those who try to predict the way in which peaceful times will be disrupted will almost invariably fail. Invariably, when conflict arises, there is little or no warning. That is why, in peacetime, it is always a struggle to persuade the Government of the day that they ought to invest as much in defence as defence-minded Members of Parliament would like.

In my brief remarks, I shall touch on just three topics: decision making in defence, the nature of defence reviews, and the issue of NATO and deterrence. Decision making in defence has suffered in recent times. It is no exaggeration to say that the chiefs of staff have become the chief executives rather than the heads of their services, and that is not good for defence and strategic planning.

In a report published just before the election, which therefore was not given the attention it might otherwise have received, the Defence Committee said that

“the…Chiefs of Staff Committee is too detached from the central policy-making process in the MoD and also, crucially, from the NSC”

—that is, the National Security Council. We recommended

“that the roles of the Chief of Staff should be redefined to give greater weight to their function as strategy advisors. We recommend that the Chiefs of Staff…should become the official military sub-committee of the NSC, in order to tender to it joint military advice”.

That is important, because in recent decades too much responsibility for the tendering of strategic advice has fallen on the shoulders of the Chief of the Defence staff, his vice-chief, and the Chief of Joint Operations. A more effective vehicle is one in which the heads of the armed services sit in committees and tender joint strategic advice to the politicians. I believe that that partly explains why some of the decisions made by those politicians have been rather shallower, and certainly more reactive to events, than they ought to have been.

The second aspect of decision-making difficulty arises from what has happened in the higher reaches of the civil service. There is a parallel with the arrangement whereby someone can become head of the Royal Navy, the Army or the Royal Air Force, but end up with no major role in the tendering of strategic advice. People are no longer required to be domain-competent to hold the highest jobs in individual Departments. In other words, someone can rise to very near the top of one Department, and if a vacancy arises for a permanent under-secretary in, for example, the Ministry of Defence, the person’s next promotion can be to that post, although he or she may have absolutely no defence background.

[Bob Stewart]

Just like Ministers.

[Dr Lewis]

We, however, rely on the combination that involves lay people who become Ministers being guided by the expertise of the professional civil service. Now, the civil service has adopted a policy of opening up the possibility of more top jobs to its most high-flying people, but if they are not to be the experts, who is?

I shall now say something about my second topic—the nature of defence reviews—which may not make me entirely popular with those my own side. I have said it before, and I intend to go on saying it: the 1997-98 Labour strategic defence review went about things in a better fashion than our review did in 2010. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) was good enough to acknowledge that ours was Treasury-driven. By gum, yes, it was.

Intelligence and Security Committee

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Monday 16th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

The question was often asked why it was that the intelligence services knew certain people had been radicalised and held extremist views yet were able to go on to commit attacks. The answer is that until people break the law they cannot be locked up. We really would be living in a police state if everybody with extreme views was followed 24 hours a day, which is the only way in which low-level and uncomplicated attacks can be prevented. There has to be evidence of attack planning. If not, some such things will inevitably slip through the net.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

My only point on this matter is to say that, having tried to follow people, it takes 24 people to follow just one person. Just think of all the people in this country who we suspect of harbouring evil thoughts against us and imagine how big our security services would need to be.

[Dr Lewis]

That is exactly the case. It would take only a few hundred people with extreme views to exhaust the resources of any reasonably sized security service in a modern democratic state, and that must never be the case. Instead, we should look at how many complex attacks have been carried out successfully and how many have been thwarted. As far as I am aware, no complex attacks have been successfully carried out on British soil since the 7/7 atrocities.

Moving on to the inquiry on privacy and security, this leads one to the question of where to draw the boundary between the wish to preserve the people’s privacy so their innocent communications are not examined and the need to develop leads that can be investigated further. I was a little surprised—I hope you will indulge me for a moment or two, Mr Speaker—to see a short item in The Times on Saturday about a protest by some of the privacy groups that had given evidence to the ISC on this question. It reads as follows:

“Civil liberties groups demanded last night that a parliamentary committee correct its report on the surveillance state, saying they had been deliberately misrepresented. The intelligence and security committee criticised the pressure groups over their opposition to GCHQ’s collection of bulk data on communications”—

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Monday 9th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I will do my best, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I always like to start on a point of agreement with the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) where I can, and I can certainly agree with him that whenever there is a major conference of this sort coming up, it is only fit and proper that it should be debated in advance on the Floor of the House of Commons. Therefore, he can always count on me to assist him from my very different point on the disarmament versus deterrence spectrum, and the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) can count on me to assist her, as I did on this occasion, to obtain the debate. I shall always approach the Backbench Business Committee for these debates, just as the hon. Gentleman has always assisted me when I wanted to have a debate about the importance of Britain’s strategic minimum nuclear deterrent. That, I am afraid, is as far as the points of agreement go.

In the brief time available I will take up a number of the differing suggestions and arguments that we have heard so far. “Who are we to criticise this, that or the other country for obtaining nuclear weapons if we persist in renewing ours?” I’ve got news for people who use that sort of argument: countries that are on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons are not going to take a blind bit of notice of exhortations or criticisms from the likes of us. When countries acquire nuclear weapons, it is the result of a hard-headed reading of their own strategic interests. They do not do it by reference to whether a peaceful democracy that has a minimum nuclear deterrent, as we do, decides to keep hold of it.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

What seriously worries me is the fact that Russia has declared that we are an enemy and also suggested that, if necessary, it will use nuclear weapons to pursue the problems it faces abroad. That worries all of us.

[Dr Lewis]

It certainly does, and to show the ecumenical nature of that concern, let me quote from a recent article in The Herald of Glasgow by a former Labour Defence Secretary, later the Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Robertson:

“Those people seduced by the SNP’s obsession with abolishing Britain’s nuclear deterrent should perhaps Google the Budapest Memorandum of December 1994. They would see there a document representing the deal struck when Ukraine, holding the world’s third largest nuclear weapons stockpile, agreed to give them up in return for solemn security assurances from Russia, the US and the UK.

These countries, with France and China as well, promised to a) respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in its existing borders, b) to refrain from the threat or the use of force against Ukraine, and c) to refrain from using economic pressure on Ukraine in order to influence its politics. Don’t these promises look good in the light of the carnage we see on our TVs every night?

Yet that is what Ukraine got in return for unilaterally disarming. Some bargain. And it is legitimate to ask this; would Crimea have been grabbed and Eastern Ukraine occupied if the Ukrainians had kept some of their nukes?”

Trident Renewal

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

It does indeed, and what really worries me is that because the intensity of the fighting has been so great, it is easy to imagine that it could spill over into a nearby country that is a member of NATO. If that happens, we would be at war with Russia. It is frightening to think what our summer would have been like if we had previously gone down the route of admitting Ukraine to NATO membership, sympathetic though we are. I remember that we stood by during the uprisings in central and eastern Europe that occurred when half the continent was under Russian control. We were very sympathetic to the Hungarians, and I remember with total clarity that we were terribly sympathetic to the Czechoslovakians, but nobody seriously suggested that we could go to war for those countries because of the geopolitical realities at that time.

[Bob Stewart]

I seem to recall in December 1994 that four nations—three nations and Ukraine—guaranteed the sovereign integrity of Ukraine in return for it getting rid of its nuclear weapons. It has got rid of its nuclear weapons, but we have not guaranteed its security.

[Dr Lewis]

Yes, and that should serve as a warning to us not to enter lightly into agreements that we have no intention of defending—I mean defending in the military sense.

It is just over 100 years since the outbreak of the first world war. I remember looking back in the archives of the inter-war period when a great debate was raging over whether or not it was safe to continue with the 10-year rule. I have mentioned it in the House before. It is highly relevant, so I will mention it again. The idea of the 10-year rule was that the Government would look ahead for a decade and see whether they thought there was any danger of a major war breaking out. If they did not see any such danger, they would cut the defence budget. That was rolled forward from 1919 right through to the early 1930s when it was eventually scrapped when Hitler came to power. It had a very damaging effect on our level of preparedness.

Lord Hankey, as he later became, was the Military Secretary of the Cabinet. In 1931, as an argument for scrapping the 10-year rule, he looked back to that summer of 1914 and said that far from having 10 years’ warning of the outbreak of the first world war, we had barely 10 days because of the rapidity with which the various alliances triggered each other into action. Suddenly, from nowhere, we have found ourselves drawn into a conflict with practically no notice whatever.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

Absolutely, and by using concepts such as “the war on terror” as part of our counter-propaganda campaign we may indeed be scoring an own goal. But in discussing techniques for what we are doing in this place, believe me, there are not a host of radicals hanging on every word we use in this debate about the machinery that we should set up. Once we have set up the machinery, we can then go into the niceties of which expressions we use and which we do not. But let us be frank; this is a battle of ideas. It is a battle between barbarism and civilisation. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire and others can shake their heads as much as they like but were I to make, for example, a similar argument against racist and Nazi exterminatory ideology, they would not blame me for couching the argument in the terms of a battle of ideas. It is a battle of ideas; the people who subscribe to this extreme doctrine have declared war on our civilised standards of democracy and tolerance.

I always mention—it so appropriate and someone always forces me, or perhaps I should say, incentivises me to do so—what the late great Sir Karl Popper described as the paradox of tolerance in a free society. He defined it in the following terms: you should tolerate all but the intolerant because if you tolerate the intolerant, the conditions for toleration disappear and the tolerant go with them. I make absolutely no concession to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire or indeed to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). My right hon. Friend was talking about something slightly different—what we do when we are engaged in a battle of ideas—so I will give my right hon. Friend that get-out. But I make no concession to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire about using the phrase “a counter-propaganda battle.” That is exactly what it is. We used to wage it against fascism and Nazism and against communist ideology and extremism. This is the latest incarnation, albeit one that goes back to a time hundreds of years before those terrible and extreme ideologies came on the scene to terrorise mankind.

It is fully understandable that a Government’s first concern has to be with the end of the conveyor belt at which fully formed terrorists spring into action, either on what they call a “spectacular” scale by killing hundreds or even thousands of people, or what we on the Intelligence and Security Committee prefer to call the self-starter end of the spectrum. We use that rather than the “lone wolf” appellation for reasons similar to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden. But whichever it is, by the time we reach that end of the conveyor belt nothing can be done. I venture to say that even the best counter-radicalisation and counter-extremism programme will not prevent some individuals from getting on that conveyor belt and travelling all the way to the end. The question is how we isolate them from the majority and prevent them from infecting the majority.

In the amendment, my opposite number—and friend—the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles and I are trying to get something stronger in the Bill. For example, we are trying to add to clause 21 words about developing

“capacity to combat and reject the messages of extremism”.

I am terribly sorry but the word “combat” is in there; I make no apology for it. The clause says that a

“specified authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.”

I think having “due regard” is a pretty weak obligation and, as the right hon. Lady said, much of the focus here is on the obligations of various organisations and authorities covered by the Bill towards individuals who have already been identified as being vulnerable, at risk or on the path towards radicalisation. But we need to do something else. We need to try to create an atmosphere and a climate that is totally hostile to the propagation of the basic extreme ideology so that it becomes increasingly difficult to find anyone who is on that path to radicalisation because the whole concept of the ideology is anathema to society as a whole, or will be by the time we have finished.

[Bob Stewart]

I have been listening to my hon. Friend talk on the subject of ideology. One thing that crosses my mind is that some of these gentlemen may well have no ideology whatever, beyond the fact that they think that it is a good cause and they are a jihadi and are suddenly big men in their community. They can swank around and say “I’m a jihadi and I’m going off to fight.” After all, did not one of them have “Islam For Dummies” in his bag when he left?

[Dr Lewis]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and the insincerity of some of those who do these sort of things is an important issue. It is important because if we succeed in making adhesion to the ideology something that nobody in the community would want to touch with a bargepole, it makes it much more difficult for anyone motivated by the desire to say “Look at me: I’m this glamorous figure and I’m going on jihad”, particularly if they know that the rest of the community would respond with “What are you saying? Are you mad? Why do you think we should admire you for saying that you are signing up to this ideology?”

A related point common to all these totalitarianisms is this: it is interesting to note how often everybody else gets wrapped up with the historic inevitability of whatever extreme cause it is or the God-given duty to follow it, but funnily enough, it is the people at the top who always seem to end up having supreme power over everyone else. Is it not convenient if someone is an megalomaniac to have to hand an ideology that justifies doing whatever the person wants to do in a society in which civilisation has broken down? As the famous philosopher Thomas Hobbes said, life would be “nasty, brutish and short” in such circumstances.

In reality, these extreme ideologies allow psychopaths and megalomaniacs to get to the top and exercise untrammelled power—but not, of course, for themselves. No, they are doing it because God has laid down that society should be run this way. I feel that, over many hundreds of years, our civilisation has torn down this edifice of extremism, and most of us feel that we will be damned—I use the word almost literally—if we do not stand up to prevent it from being re-erected in the heart of our own society or other societies.

Ukraine (UK Relations with Russia)

Debate between Bob Stewart and Julian Lewis

Thursday 11th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I did not intend to speak in the debate, but I was listening to it from afar and was stirred to come, hot foot, to the Chamber by the opening speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale). I therefore apologise if my speech, which will be short, is a bit disjointed.

I am clear on Russia’s strategic military aim. My good and hon. Friends have alluded to it already and we are all talking along the same lines. In military terms, it is at the very least to secure a land corridor to Crimea. Some Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth), have suggested that the aim is to go as far as Odessa, but I think that the immediate strategic aim is to get to Crimea. The Black sea is crucial as it is a warm water entry and exit point. In the 1950s, as everyone in the Chamber knows, Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders never believed for a moment that Ukraine would not be a part of the Soviet Union or Russia. Khrushchev gave it away because of that assumption.

As I mentioned in an intervention, 20 years ago, when I was chief of policy at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, I argued that we have to be very careful as we move eastwards. I was concerned at that time about the idea that the Baltic republics would become part of NATO, because militarily I find it very difficult to think of how to defend that situation, particularly when there is a Russian enclave to the west. That is a scenario we have already rehearsed in this debate.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I know time is limited, but I wanted to point out that the only way we can defend NATO countries that are out on a limb is by having tripwire forces. That would show a potential aggressor that, while they might occupy those countries, they would let themselves in for a very long war with other countries that would be able, eventually, to liberate them.

[Bob Stewart]

I totally agree with my hon. and very good Friend. That was exactly my role as a young officer in West Berlin—a British tripwire—in case the then Soviet Union decided to take over.

[Bob Stewart]

I am afraid I totally agree—some tripwire indeed. A big stumbling block, although I was not quite as big then.

[Dr Lewis]

You were in spirit.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my hon. Friend.

I slightly disagree with those who say that Putin alone is the problem. Putin is Russian, and he represents a Russian point of view, and the Russian attitude towards Ukraine comes from history. I totally take the point about how Stalin dealt with Ukraine, but fundamentally Ukraine is a sort of glacis plate—to use the old term—to protect mother Russia. I also understand that a lot of Russians feel antagonism towards NATO, because sometimes, looking at it from their point of view, it appears to have been quite aggressive.

Over the past few years, Russian anxieties have been well stoked by western actions. As we have discussed, there has been talk of Ukraine joining NATO. I remember reading carefully through the EU negotiations with Ukraine, and there, in one of the sub-paragraphs, I saw a couple of lines about the EU sending troops to start exercises in that country. Nothing could have been a bigger red rag to the Russians. I got it from the House of Commons Library, and I am sure it was publicly obtainable.

I totally support our policy of trying to stop Russian expansion, but despite the sanctions, which, as we have demonstrated, are biting, I suspect that de facto Russia will gain its land corridor, either by negotiation or by agreement, to Sevastopol. That link from Russia to Sevastopol and the Black sea fleet will be on dry land at some point. We will have to recognise that as a fact of life.