Coastal Erosion

Debate between Bob Stewart and Lord Walney

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir David. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair) on securing the debate.

I want briefly to talk about the serious issue of erosion on the island of Walney, which is just opposite Barrow-in-Furness. That strip of land is connected to the mainland by a bridge. We have wanted a second bridge for many generations, but Walney could need one in a way that we had never anticipated, because it is quite possible that unless action is taken, the island will be split in two by the serious erosion that is taking place—similarly to in other areas across the country—far faster than any study has predicted.

There are two main issues, one in the north of the island and one in the south. In the north, there is what is officially known as West Shore caravan park. The name might suggest that it is a transient part of the visitor economy, but people have bought static caravans there and live in a community. They have seen the erosion getting closer and closer to their homes, threatening several hundred properties. For many years, we have beseeched the Government and looked to the local authority, and potentially to private investment, but the issue remains critical. In the main, the park provides homes for low-income and often elderly, retired people. They are afraid of what nature is doing and fear for the homes they had always dreamed of having on the coast.

On the south of the island is South Walney nature reserve, which is home to Cumbria’s only grey seal colony and to the Walney geranium, which is unique to the island. There is a rare vegetated shingle patch, and the yellow horned poppy, which I am reliably told is hard to find, is grown there. The reserve is an invaluable resource for Barrow’s schoolchildren. Teachers in some of the schools tell me that many children have never seen the natural environment until they are taken to such places. The reserve is connected by a road that is in desperate need of rock armouring. Without such flood and coastal erosion protection, there is the potential for the island to be cut in two and for the nature reserve to be rendered impassable.

As if all that were not enough, it is not simply about saving the yellow horned poppy; the nation’s continuous at-sea deterrent may be at stake for the want of a single road that could be rock armoured for, the landowner tells me, only £200,000. We are in the process of spending about £30 billion on renewing the nation’s deterrent—I know everyone in this room will be thoroughly behind that; it is great value to protect the nation from the threat of nuclear destruction—but for the want of £200,000 and a few rocks, we could render the exit passage from Barrow shipyard impassable. At the moment, the boats come out of the dock and sail down Walney channel and away to start their sea trials. They then come back to Faslane. The amount of silt that flows into the channel from the erosion on Walney could make the narrow passage impassable. Often, submarines can pass through it only once a month.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

My back is hurting so it takes me a while to get up. Is that channel dredged to ensure that it works all the time?

UK's Nuclear Deterrent

Debate between Bob Stewart and Lord Walney

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow that imaginative speech by the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt). I only wish he had brought in his fag packet so that we could have better understood the figures he tried to explain, but to no avail.

I am proud, unlike the people who are acting for our Front Bench today, to speak for the Labour party in this debate. It is the party of Attlee and Bevin, Nye Bevan and Stafford Crips—the men who witnessed the terrible birth of nuclear destruction and understood, with heavy hearts, that they should protect the world by building the capacity to deter others from unleashing it again.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I thank my friend for giving way. A nuclear deterrent also protects our soldiers in the field. Many of us, including my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), were soldiers in Germany. We took great comfort from the fact that we had nuclear weapons, because the other side—the Warsaw pact—could well have blasted us to hell, but they were put off, we hope very much, by the fact that we possessed nuclear weapons. Protection of our soldiers matters and is good for morale.

[John Woodcock]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Those who wish to eradicate nuclear weapons from the United Kingdom cannot explain what would happen if, for example, Russia invaded a NATO state and there was no nuclear protection from our side and we were open to nuclear blackmail on a dreadful scale.

I am pleased to stand alongside members of Unite and GMB who have come down here to remind us of just how effective the workforce is and how important they are to so many parts of the United Kingdom. I am also proud that I will be in the same Lobby as the former Labour Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), who committed the United Kingdom—the first time any nuclear-capable nation had done so—to a global zero: a world free from nuclear weapons. But—the Leader of the Opposition did not seem to want to mention this—she knew that unilaterally disarming while others keep the bomb is not an act of global leadership. That would not show others the way; it would be destabilising and a futile abdication of responsibility.

I also speak for the Labour Members and trade unionists who engaged in our policy making in good faith. Those people are now being ignored by the party leader, who clings to an idea of Labour party democracy to save his own skin, and that is not right. The party leader’s Trident review has never quite materialised, so let me mention the report of the Back-Bench Labour defence committee, which I chair. After hearing from 23 expert witnesses in 10 sessions, which many MPs attended—although not the shadow Foreign Secretary, anyone from the office of the Leader of the Opposition or the shadow International Development Secretary, who seems to want to take part in the debate via Twitter but who does not, apparently, want to stand up for herself—we found that there had been no substantive change in the circumstances that led the Labour party firmly to support renewing the Vanguard class submarines that carry the deterrent.

For the official Opposition to have a free vote on a matter of such strategic national importance is a terrible indictment of how far this once great party has fallen. There has long been a principled tradition of unilateralism in the Labour party. I was born into it, as the son of a Labour party member who protested at Greenham common. But what Labour’s current Front Benchers are doing is not principled. It shows contempt for the public and for party members. In what they say, Labour’s Front Benchers often show contempt for the truth. The situation would have been abhorrent even to Labour’s last great unilateralist, Michael Foot—a man who, for all his shortcomings as a leader, would never have allowed our party to stand directionless in the face of such an important question.

We do not know what is going to happen to the Labour party; this is an uncertain time. Whatever happens, I am proud to stand here today and speak for Barrow. I am proud to speak for the town that is steeped in the great British tradition of shipbuilding, and to speak for the men and women who give great service to their country with the incredible work that they do. So I will walk through the Aye Lobby tonight to vote in favour of a project that the last Labour Government began, in a vote that Labour itself promised when we sat on the Government Benches.

Failing to endorse a submarine programme that will support up to 30,000 jobs across the UK would not only do great damage to our manufacturing base; it would be a clear act of unilateral disarmament. It would tell the public that we are prepared to give more credence to improbable theories and wild logic than to the solid weight of evidence that points to renewing Trident. It is our enduring duty to do what we can to protect the nation for decades ahead, so I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting established Labour policy in the Aye Lobby tonight.

Rural Phone and Broadband Connectivity

Debate between Bob Stewart and Lord Walney

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock]

The hon. Member makes a great point—the situation is a nightmare. As I have just set out, often when someone receives assurances, they prove not to hold water. BT is a company that we would think would be good at communicating, but it turns out that for too many of our constituents, who are really tearing their hair out about this issue, BT has proved to be the exact opposite.

That has got to change, and either BT changes its ways itself—in response to the threat of other companies coming in—or, if I might offer the Minister some advice, the Government embrace the idea that they need to be more active in this sector. They had a tremendous example of a lean, active state, which was provided by the later years of the last Labour Government, and this is an excellent opportunity for them to learn from those years and adopt the same approach in their own dealings.

I turn to mobile connectivity. In the Duddon valley, if someone gets one bar of reception, they count themselves lucky. Again, this situation makes running a business tricky, or completely impossible, because it cuts off communities and in a remote area it also has serious safety implications. It is perhaps odd to think of mobile coverage as the next frontier after superfast broadband, but there has been little apparent interest from commercial companies in improving coverage for much of my constituency, and I am sure that the same is true of many other Members’ constituencies.

Any movement on this issue is welcome, but with the greatest of respect to Shropshire, Dorset and Norfolk, pilot schemes in those areas do not mean much to my constituents in Cumbria or impress them very much, if at all. Many of my constituents also look askance at the Government plans to improve rural mobile coverage based on A roads and B roads. My constituents in Seathwaite, for example, are 3 miles from the nearest such road, hidden behind a 2,000 foot hill, so such plans are not likely to help them much. We need more ambition, not a brief flurry of activity because the Prime Minister could not get any mobile reception on his way to Cornwall.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

My constituency is an outer London one. It is not rural, but it is nearly rural. We have A roads going through, and there are huge problems, not just in Keston in my constituency, but throughout Bromley, particularly as one goes towards Orpington.

[John Woodcock]

May I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that perhaps the way to get a quick solution would be to get a visit from the Prime Minister, a big fan of his, to his patch. It seemed to trigger the promise of action, if not the reality of it, when the Prime Minister was on his way to Cornwall. One never knows what could happen.

For too many of my constituents, no mobile reception and super-slow broadband are not just a holiday inconvenience; they are a fact of everyday life that impoverishes them and holds them back from reaching the enormous economic potential that my region has. Let me make one final request of the Minister, as he was so kind in agreeing immediately to my first one. Will he come to the beautiful Duddon valley—he had better come quick, given the election on 7 May—in my constituency? When he has finished admiring the scenery, will he try to do some work there for 24 hours, without meaningful broadband and with no mobile reception? Perhaps then—if he can properly appreciate how difficult it is to get anything done there—we will see some quicker action to tackle the mobile and broadband deserts afflicting too many in my patch.

Nuclear Deterrent

Debate between Bob Stewart and Lord Walney

Thursday 17th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey). I am glad that he did not repeat his assertion that the world would be a better place if my constituents were sacked and sent to the Bahamas with the money from the deterrent in their back pockets. It is also good to be back speaking here again for the first time since I banged my head. All will be fine, but if at any point, Mr Speaker, I look confused and ask what all these people are doing in my bedroom, please intervene and reassure me—no, I am not that bad.

The devastation of nuclear war would be an affront to nature itself, which is why I have said on many occasions that, if we could genuinely be confident that the UK disarming would make this horror less likely, that should come ahead of even the many thousands of jobs that the industry supports in my constituency and across the country. I am proud that the last Labour Government shifted Britain’s nuclear policy for the first time towards the aim of a global zero, but we should advance non-proliferation in a way that will maintain the security of the UK and, most of all, in a way that will make a nuclear catastrophe less likely, not more so.

That is one reason why I am wary of a party that up until now has been grossly irresponsible on the question of nuclear weapons and has suddenly be given access to the levers of power. It is one thing to be a fringe concern, making up positions that sound good on the doorstep. “When money is tight”, say the Liberal Democrats”, “Let’s have a mini-deterrent”—the nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on the Astute class submarines already being built in my constituency. “They would cost less”, they say, “providing more money for schools and hospitals, and they would be much less destructive than those awful Trident missiles to which the main parties are wedded. Vote for us!”

If that policy becomes a genuine possibility that could be enacted by a party of government, it will be put under scrutiny in the run-up to an election and its fundamental weaknesses exposed. The apparent savings evaporate when considered against the enormous cost of procuring new missiles—probably without a cost subsidy from the Americans this time—building new warheads from scratch, making considerable adaptations to the Astutes and writing off the £3 billion that will already have been spent on the successor by then. When the operational capacity of this “mini-deterrent” is scrutinised, we will come up against the points that the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) made so adeptly in opening this debate. All in all, this option is not a winner.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

It is really delightful to see the hon. Gentleman back in his place. The problem with using cruise missiles is precisely that they are vulnerable. The whole point of deterrence is that there should be an invulnerable system. Cruise missiles are vulnerable, which destroys the concept.

[John Woodcock]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Most of all, such cruise missiles are indistinguishable on an enemy radar from conventional cruise missiles, raising the chilling prospect that in the confusion of battle, a conventional attack by the UK could trigger nuclear retaliation against British cities.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Debate between Bob Stewart and Lord Walney

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock]

That is a very important point with which I shall deal at some length in a moment. Suffice it to say for the moment that it is not simply the Liberal Democrats’ review; it is the Government’s review. They have commissioned it. The Conservative Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), looks like he is in two minds about it, but his own party’s former Defence Secretary sanctioned and announced it. The right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), was clearly not booted out because of that particular misdemeanour.

We have to ask whether it is right for the UK to maintain its independent deterrent. It strikes me as strange that it is often the very people who rail against the hegemony of the United States of America in world affairs who are prepared to sit quietly under its nuclear umbrella and suggest that the UK should not take responsibility for its own defence. I do not include my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) in that comment. I am glad to see him back in his place for my speech—I think.

We should redouble our efforts to tackle the proliferation of nuclear weapons. I am proud that the previous Labour Government were explicit in setting the ultimate target of zero nuclear weapons—of a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons—but we should not accept the argument that renewal is an act of proliferation. It is not. In fact, non-renewal would be an act of unilateral disarmament. It is right that our party has left those days behind.

Given the magnitude of destruction that the use of nuclear weapons would inflict, nuclear weapons are rightly an uncomfortable issue for all hon. Members and the country, but they are a deterrent. Our holding of nuclear capability is designed to make a nuclear war less not more likely. So far, that has been successful.

[Bob Stewart]

To slightly corrupt the saying, if we wish to avoid war, we should prepare for it and have the means to stop it. I fully support what the hon. Gentleman says about deterrence.

[John Woodcock]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right—he put it far more succinctly than I did and I am grateful to him for doing so.

I want to stress in the concluding part of my speech that the current Administration are creating a level of risk around the deterrent. That should be a matter of concern to Members on both sides of the House. As an aside, I hope the Minister who winds up could address the matter that was raised this week—