Ukraine

Debate between Boris Johnson and Lord Beamish

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend raises a very important issue. We are working on exactly those supplies right now.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement and very much welcome the sanctions that he has announced today, but can he give an assurance that the sanctions targeting individuals will also target relatives and connected parties? The right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) mentioned the economic crime Bill; there is also the review of the Official Secrets Act and a foreign registration Act. Why can we not bring them forward and do them now? They would get huge support and we have been waiting for some of them for nearly two years.

[The Prime Minister]

I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that we will certainly be making sure that we are able to sanction—and that we do sanction—relatives and other interested parties. There will be a rolling programme of intensifying sanctions.

Ukraine

Debate between Boris Johnson and Lord Beamish

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement and welcome the sanctions against the three individuals that he has named. However, the regulations that he referred to, which will be discussed later today, will be effective only if there is the political will to implement them. Proposed new regulation 6(4) of the Russia (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 defines an individual as being

“involved in obtaining a benefit from or supporting the Government of Russia”.

The right hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) said—and this is a fact—that oligarchs who are operating in this country with property are supporting the Russian Government financially and politically. Will we bring sanctions against those individuals? The Prime Minister named Abramovich, but he is one of many.

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. We will target any individual or company of strategic importance to Russia.

Ukraine

Debate between Boris Johnson and Lord Beamish

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is making a valuable point, because we have seen only recently how refugees from Belarus have been used as tools of political warfare. We have to be conscious of the potential for the Kremlin to trigger exactly the kind of refugee crisis he describes.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement, and agree with him that should Putin invade Ukraine, tough sanctions will be necessary. However, the Putin regime exists because it floats on, and relies on, an ocean of illegal and illicit finance, much of which flows through the City of London. The Prime Minister has just said that the UK has the strongest laws against illicit money; I am sorry, but that is just not true. He should look at what our allies in the United States are doing. It is now time to attack what is happening, because that is the way to cripple this regime. Can the Prime Minister tell me when he will implement the recommendations of the Russia report? As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has said, if that requires us to pass emergency legislation, let us do it.

[The Prime Minister]

Let me repeat what I said earlier. The right hon. Gentleman is right to suggest that it is vital to guard against Russian dirty moneys flowing through the world, and he is right in his analysis of the way the kleptocracy works. That is why we have the unexplained wealth orders, why we are introducing a register of beneficial interests, and why we have a new corporate offence of failure to prevent tax evasion. We will and we do come down very hard on all those who are exploiting the City of London, or anywhere else, to wash dirty money.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Lord Beamish

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We will continue to keep isolation timings under review. We do not want to release people back in to society or to their workplace so soon that they just infect all their colleagues; that would not be sensible. As I said in my earlier answers, we have a good chance of getting through this difficult wave and getting back to something like normality as fast as possible. It is important that omicron seems to provide some sort of immunity against delta, for instance, and that may be a positive augury for the future.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. He has announced that those testing positive with a lateral flow test will no longer have to go for a PCR test, but that it will be down to the individual to inform the Government of the result. May I ask what percentage he thinks will do that—and, more importantly, will not do that? As PCR tests are important for analysing the genome of the virus, what affect will that non-reporting have on our ability to look at new variants that develop?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful, but I must say that throughout the pandemic the public have continually surprised on the upside with their determination to take this seriously. Rather than undermining confidence in them, a very high proportion of them continue to do the right thing and I believe always will.

AUKUS

Debate between Boris Johnson and Lord Beamish

Thursday 16th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The United Kingdom remains determined to defend international law, and that is the strong advice we would give to our friends across the world and the strong advice we would give to the Government in Beijing.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I warmly welcome this agreement on nuclear technology co-operation with Australia, but what steps are being taken to develop defence partnership and technology agreements with other countries such as India, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, who have a lot to offer in terms of technology that we could gain from for our own defence?

Afghanistan

Debate between Boris Johnson and Lord Beamish

Thursday 8th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for her service in Afghanistan for the BBC World Service. I know that she knows and cares deeply about that that country. We will of course work with the Americans and all our NATO allies to achieve the objectives that she sets out, particularly protecting this country against terrorist threats, but also making sure that any settlement that we are able to encourage protects the rights and freedoms of women that have been won partly through the efforts and sacrifice of the British armed services.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement, and join him in thanking all those who have served in Afghanistan and those who have lost their lives.

The Prime Minister was very clear that the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan does not mean that we are not committed to the future of Afghanistan, but, like the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), I just want to be clear about what that commitment is. The Prime Minister says that he wants to negotiate a settlement. I agree with him; everyone does—but over the next few days and months, Afghan security forces are going to come under attack, so will they get access to the logistic, intelligence and air support that they are going to need? I accept that that will not just be delivered by the United Kingdom—it will be a coalition agreement—but we need to have some clarity on that, if we are not going to see the collapse of some of those forces very quickly.

[The Prime Minister]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman understands the situation very well. It is not open, I do not think, to the Taliban to enforce a military solution, but neither is it open to us—to NATO—to have a military solution. I am sure that he will accept that. What we want is a negotiated settlement; I think that is in the best interests of all parties.

G7 and NATO Summits

Debate between Boris Johnson and Lord Beamish

Wednesday 16th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We will manage to get everybody who is on the list in. I thank people for being succinct and the Prime Minister for also being brief. It is wonderful.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister delivered his statement on the Australian trade deal in his usual sunny, optimistic manner. Like all his statements, however, once we look at the detail, it comes with a nasty after-smell, the source of which will be familiar to many British farmers. May I ask him in detail how this deal will affect the livelihoods of farmers in my constituency of North Durham and across County Durham—particularly hill farmers, who not only produce good-quality British food, but are the custodians of some of the most beautiful land in this country?

[The Prime Minister]

Farmers in County Durham will have the opportunity to export their wonderful produce tariff-free to a market that is growing the whole time, and that includes the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership. It is a huge opportunity for British produce—beef, dairy, the lot—and I hope that he will champion it.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Lord Beamish

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We are rolling out testing of all NHS staff as fast as we possibly can, and we are all too aware of the risk of nosocomial infection of the kind that we saw last time. One of the things that we are doing this time is greatly expanding the use of novel mass testing devices such as the LAMP technology, with which I am sure my right hon. Friend is familiar, in NHS settings. As I told the House earlier, we want to get to a world in which we are testing these particularly vulnerable institutions—hospitals, care homes, schools and universities—with regular mass lateral flow testing of the kind that I have described.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Participation in sport is vital for our nation’s physical and mental health. The Prime Minister triumphantly announced at his press conference on Saturday night that the premier league would continue, but his announcement today means that local amateur football will not be able to continue. Golf clubs and gyms will be closed despite their valiant efforts to ensure that they are covid safe. Will the Prime Minister publish the scientific data behind this set of decisions?

[The Prime Minister]

I am happy to provide all the scientific data on which these decisions have been made, but I think that the House will appreciate that for any particular human activity, one can always find an arguable exemption from these measures—or from many of them. The difficulty is that to be consistent and have a package that works, we need a thoroughgoing series of measures of the kind that we have described. I bitterly regret that we have to curtail for 28 days football clubs and sporting activities in the way that we are—I bitterly, bitterly regret it—but I believe that that is necessary to get the R down.

Covid-19 Update

Debate between Boris Johnson and Lord Beamish

Monday 12th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I thank my hon. Friend, and everybody in Devon, and the local authorities, for their efforts to keep the virus down. This is a giant collective effort, and alas, even in the south-west we are seeing the virus going up, although by nothing like as much as in other parts of the country. It is going up across the whole country, and we must work together to get it down.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister says that he is listening and working with local authorities, but that simply is not true. Since the beginning of the crisis, local authorities and directors of public health have argued for a locally based test and trace system. When will he admit that his national approach and national system has failed? Will he hand over to local authorities and directors of public health the responsibility and resources to ensure an effective local test and trace system? That is the only way we will get on top of this crisis.

[The Prime Minister]

I think I have answered that point about four times already. We need a combination of both national and local.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Boris Johnson and Lord Beamish

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can indeed confirm that that is exactly why we have cut business rates. We are making very considerable sums available for small and very small businesses precisely to protect the high street and the enterprise environment on which so many jobs depend.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I am sure that the Prime Minister will agree that protecting our NHS staff at this crucial time is of maximum importance. At least one GP surgery in County Durham this week received surgical masks from the NHS with expiry dates of 2016 on the box. In other cases, labels had been stuck over the top, extending the expiry dates on the boxes. What assurances can the Prime Minister give not only that surgeries get the equipment they require, but that it is actually effective once they get it?

[The Prime Minister]

To the best of my knowledge, all the equipment we are sending out is of the correct standard. I would be happy to look at the case that the right hon. Gentleman mentions. As I said earlier, we have stockpiles of PPE, but are making huge efforts to ensure that we have enough for the outbreak ahead.

Oman, UAE and Iran

Debate between Boris Johnson and Lord Beamish

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Boris Johnson]

Yes. I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am sure he knows that Oman is one of the few countries in the world where British men and women—officers—serve in uniform in another country. I must check whether women serve in Oman—I would not want to swear to that, now that I come to think of it—but we certainly have British serving personnel in British uniform in Oman. The Sultan himself has proposed that there should be a reciprocal arrangement, and we are only too happy to look into that.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The Foreign Secretary is correct that the only way forward and out of the tragedy for Yemen is a political solution, but a big stumbling block in the way of that is the supply of weaponry by Iran to not just the Houthis but other groups in Yemen. Will he explain what reaction he got in raising that issue when he was in Iran?

[Boris Johnson]

That is a good question. I am absolutely certain that I raised that issue with every single one of my interlocutors. I made it absolutely clear that our country was horrified that weapons supplied by Iran should be directed at civilian targets in Saudi Arabia. I must say that my suggestions were greeted not with acceptance but denial—it was not a point that was accepted—and I was obliged to return several times to the fray. I came away fortified in my belief that the Iranian presence in Yemen has increased, not diminished, as a result of the conflict there. That is all the more reason to bring that conflict to an end, which will mean engagement with Iran.