European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

David Davis Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)]

Those of us who voted and campaigned to leave the European Union did so for a number of reasons. I was always a constitutional leaver. For me, the test of this Bill is: does it return the sovereignty that we sought? The answer is yes. Why? Because there is no subjugation to EU law or EU jurisprudence, no direct effect and no direct application. Retention of any of those would have been incompatible with a sovereign state. In fact, from our accession to the European Community through various EU treaties, all those elements were incompatible with the concept that those who live under the law should be able to determine those who make the law. That is what we have regained in this process.

The second test for me is: does this allow us to have a genuinely independent trade policy? Let us remember that we were told that it would take more than 10 years to reach a free trade agreement with the European Union and that it would be impossible to roll over all the EU agreements that we had. I stood at the Dispatch Box and listened to the Opposition incessantly telling us that. I congratulate Ministers and officials under Crawford Falconer at the Department for International Trade for all they have achieved, and I especially congratulate David Frost on landing one of the world’s biggest, if not the biggest, trade agreements in 11 months—a world record—which, again, we were told was not possible.

When we voted to leave the European Union, we also voted to leave the single market, although for some of us the single market is also the single anti-market, with many of the restrictions and protectionisms that it encompasses. If we want to access the single market, there has to be a price to be paid. If we want to diverge from the rules of the single market, there has to be a price to be paid. Does this agreement provide effective mechanisms for us to do those things? My answer, again, is yes.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the mechanisms that this treaty has found are every bit as good as the mechanisms in the Canada treaty, for example, and all other treaties that reflect these tensions in free trade agreements?

[Dr Fox]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and not only are they effective mechanisms, but they keep us in line with the best international practice that exists, which of course enables us to move forward with greater predictability. On that point, there are a number of specific elements to welcome. The first is the acceptance of the concept—

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[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

In normal times, this House would have been packed to the rafters with people listening to the Prime Minister’s speech, because this is a new beginning for our country. There is no doubt about that. There is no doubt that, in two days, our freedom and our sovereignty will be much greater than they were as a result of the treaty.

In terms, the treaty is better—much better—than would have been achieved under the previous strategy. The Prime Minister and Lord David Frost have done a fantastic job on delivering it. They delivered it by standing up to the European Union and calling its bluff successfully, time and time again. They have delivered an outcome that we can make the most of.

[Peter Kyle]

I was in this place when the right hon. Gentleman was at the Dispatch Box and he promised the House that we would have the “exact same benefits” from Brexit. When he was challenged to put that in law, he said that we did not need to put it in law, because he had given his word. How does he reflect on that period and the failure to deliver the exact same benefits he promised?

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[Mr Davis]

That is the point. First, it was a negotiating aim, as the hon. Gentleman’s leader said at the time, but secondly, that is why I resigned. The strategy that we were pursuing then did not, and would not, deliver that. The only honourable thing I could do was to stand down.

This treaty is a new beginning, which is not to say that it is perfect—I agree with the hon. Gentleman on that. On Northern Ireland, we have issues to deal with. On fishing, we have issues to deal with, which I will come back to. On Gibraltar, we have issues to deal with. It is not over. All will lead to uncomfortable decisions in the near future.

Freedom is only as good as what we do with it; it is only as good as how we exploit it. One day, frankly, is not enough for us to deal with a 1,200 page treaty in that respect. Some may say, “Well, surely it’s a day to celebrate—to vote yes and move on,” but not at all, because the European Union will, of course, use the treaty to its own advantage. We can look at the past and see how it has done that.

For example, Switzerland struck a whole load of trade treaties, primarily in the ’90s, but subsequently as well, with the European Union. About four or five years ago, the Swiss people voted to restrict their migration and cut back on the free movement of people. The European Union bullied the Swiss Government into giving in by saying, “We will withdraw all the free trade arrangements we currently have.” That is important, because we have not been through the whole 1,200 pages here to make sure that we do not have any such issues in there. We do have one in the fishing arrangements. In five years’ time, the EU can trigger an end to the trade and transport elements. That is not impossible—we can deal with it—but we will have to devise a strategy for that.

My point to the House is that we have to come back to this treaty and look at it in detail—all 1,200 pages—to devise a strategy, so we do not get into conflicts with the European Union, fall into traps or get into acrimonious disputes with the member states. They are our neighbours and friends, and we have to devise a strategy that will keep them as neighbours and friends and maximise our joint benefits. If the House does that, we will have a bright future. To come back to the point of the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), we will have better than the exact same benefits, because we will have bigger opportunities in the rest of the world, as the Department for International Trade has already demonstrated, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said. On that basis, I will vote for this treaty.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I very much hope that if hon. Members who are down to speak intervene on others, they will shorten their own speeches accordingly. If people want to take interventions, it is probably a good idea to run a little short, as the right hon. Gentleman just did.

Public Health

David Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) leaves me with an interesting image to start my speech.

Let us look at the facts. The Government tell us that this is all about protecting the national health service. Fine—so let us start with the hard UK numbers. The number of covid-19 patients in hospitals reached a peak of 16,612 in the UK, out of 127,000 hospital beds nationwide, a week or two ago. The number of patients in critical care beds reached a peak of 1,489, with a UK-wide capacity of at least 4,500. At the recent peak of the virus, the national health service had 13,000 free hospital beds and 18% of critical care beds free, which is significantly better than it usually is at this time of year —so, cause for concern, because of the potential growth of the virus, but not cause for panic.

The Government, without doubt, have to act, but they should do so on the basis of hard facts. Today, we are talking about what the Government think of as a localised lockdown: tiers 1, 2 and 3. However, we know from other studies, and other countries, around the world, what does and does not work. We do not have to guess—there is hard evidence. Some of the Select Committees have covered that hard evidence.

What works is very narrowly targeted interventions, with intensive testing and tracking of contacts, and highly localised lockdowns. Take Germany, which has its fair share of densely populated areas, but has a death rate of one quarter of ours. Their concept of a local lockdown, perhaps at its biggest, is the city of Gütersloh, with a population of 101,000, or Warendorf, with 37,000, or one meat-packing factory, with 7,000, or even one block of flats, with 700 people. That is what they think of as a localised lockdown.

Compare that with us. We locked down Liverpool city region, 1.5 million, Greater Manchester, 2.8 million, and Yorkshire and the Humber, 4.7 million—anything but a precise lockdown. Other countries, such as South Korea and Vietnam, have used a similarly targeted approach to contain the virus, with spectacularly better results than we have achieved. South Korea has just 10 deaths per 1 million of population; Vietnam is even more successful, with about half a death per 1 million of population.

The measures will, without doubt, go through today, but I will not vote for them. When we come to vote on them next time—in early February, according to the Prime Minister—I hope that they will be massively more targeted. Restrictions on a local authority level, which is what we have now, are not enough. We must follow the example of Germany, South Korea and others by having restrictions imposed on a much smaller area. They work better, they are fairer and they cause much less economic damage.

We do not know for sure whether blanket lockdown restrictions work to suppress the virus, but we do know for sure the economic damage caused by such restrictions. The impact on people’s livelihoods and even their mental health is absolutely clear. As my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), the chairman of the 1922 committee, said, in this country we do not give up our freedoms lightly. What we need today is a policy of maximum protection for minimum damage. This policy is not it. I hope that the next iteration in February does a much better job.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). I agree with him, and I will be voting against these regulations. He has persuaded me to change what I was going to say by the power of his speech. We do not have to look to Germany and Vietnam to see what it is necessary to do. We have to look at 200 years of public health in this country, which has always been done at a local level.

One of the problems with the systems that the Government have followed is that, like all Governments, they want to centralise things—they want to take control. It is not just the fact that people suffer financially and will not isolate. It is that the central system is so slow at getting the information out to people that they need to isolate that, by the time it gets there, the £22 billion or whatever we have spent on it has been wasted, and the information is useless. We have also seen evidence that Public Health England has withheld information from local public health authorities. If we want to get this right when we come back to it in two months’ time, we must decentralise the expenditure and get it into local public health systems.

What I was going to say, before the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden spoke, was that there is not a way forward where people do not die in this situation. That is tragic, and everybody in this House wants to minimise the number of deaths, but we sometimes speak as though if we have the most restrictive measures, which will undoubtedly stop people contracting covid, it will be fine. It is not. The first lockdown led to people dying from cancer as cancer services were withdrawn. People did not go to hospitals, and if they did, they often did not get treatment. The number of people dying at home increased dramatically over that period. The proposals before us will lead to more of that withdrawal of health services from some people. They will be extraordinarily damaging to the economy of Greater Manchester and other parts of the United Kingdom. We must remember that poverty kills. It is not just cancer and covid that kill—poverty kills. People commit suicide. Children have had their education withdrawn, and suicide rates among children are up by 40%. There is huge damage done across the board.

People say that these decisions have been informed by the science. I cannot see that. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care appeared before the Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committees on 24 November for our joint inquiry. When we asked him what criteria he was going to use to determine which areas went into which tier or whether there had been a cost-benefit analysis, he could not tell us. He could tell us that, because Greater Manchester leaders told him that he had got his figures wrong, in effect—he did not use the word “punish”—Greater Manchester was going to be punished for taking time to put him right on the science and the detail of what was happening there.

[Mr Davis]

The science is not the same as the opinion of a single scientist.

[Graham Stringer]

I could not agree more, and one can go right the way from the Great Barrington group to the people advising the Government. The science to send a rocket to the moon is exact. The science on epidemics is not exact. It is open to different opinions.

The Secretary of State showed his prejudice against Greater Manchester, and his proposals will wreak economic havoc on Greater Manchester. We are told, although we clearly were not present, that when the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was making his proposals to lock down London, the Prime Minister, the ex-Mayor of London, said, “No, you can’t do that. It will cost half a million jobs.” That means that the Government value jobs in London over those in Manchester and elsewhere in the country.

Integrated Review

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am interested that the hon. Member says that, because, as I recall, one cannot even sell rulers or paperclips to the US military under the Pentagon’s procurement policies; but I may be in error. The hon. Member makes an important point about the need to source as much as we can from the UK. That is obviously what we are going to do. It is a big opportunity to buy British, to stimulate jobs and technology, and to drive jobs across the UK, and I have no doubt that Newcastle and the north-east will be big beneficiaries.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con) [V]]

May I say to the Prime Minister that this is the best and most intelligent defence statement that I have heard in a quarter of a century in the House of Commons? Will he assuage, however, two concerns that I have? The first is that it appears that the numerical size of the armed forces is still on a downward trend. The evidence of recent wars—most recently in Nagorno-Karabakh—is that the route to success is through both novel technology and conventional forces. How are we going to cope with that? Secondly, since the era of the Duke of Wellington, the MOD has not been very good at managing big, expensive projects. What are we going to do about that?

[The Prime Minister]

First of all, it is important to understand that there are no redundancies in this package. My right hon. Friend is right about the need to maintain full spectrum, and that is what this does. We also have to fight the wars of the future—to adapt and change. That is what this package allows us to do; it permits us to modernise. My right hon. Friend’s final point is a very important one. We are going to be following this with a very beady eye. There have been historic over- spends and historic mistakes in procurement—some painful episodes that we do not need to go into, in which investments have not turned out well. We are setting up a unit to ensure that we get value out of this massive package.

Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill

David Davis Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 3rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

But it really does not matter, because if my hon. Friend wants to see the attitude of the Minister to the Royal British Legion, he has only to read the evidence that came before the Committee.

New clause 2 would provide a way of ensuring that minor offences were dealt with speedily. As Judge Blackett said, this could be done in a magistrates court, where, after a period of time had passed, the cases could be looked at judicially and ticked off and dismissed on the basis that the there was no evidence to go forward. That would deal with a lot of the smaller issues. People ask why that is important, but if we look at the Iraq Historic Allegations Team—IHAT—and Northmoor, some of those cases involved assault and other things that in normal circumstances could be dealt with very quickly in a magistrates court. At least if we had a judge looking at them, he or she could make a decision as to whether or not those cases had any merit. It is amazing that the Government fail to recognise that the problem is not prosecutions but actually the investigatory process.

Then, halfway through the Bill Committee, the MOD announced it was coming forward with a review of investigations, to feed into next year’s Armed Forces Act, when the obvious place to have put that would have been in this Bill. The reason for doing that was given away by the Minister in the evidence session: this Bill has nothing to do with making sure of these matters. There is no reason why what I am suggesting and other issues around investigations could not be put in the Bill now and improve it, yet for reasons of tidiness the MOD wants to do it next year.

I have some sympathy with the MOD on that, because perhaps the best way to do this is in those five-yearly reviews of the Armed Forces Acts—and I think I have been on the Committee for every single one for the past nearly 20 years as either a Minister or Back Bencher. But the reason this Bill is before us has nothing to do with that; the Minister let the cat out of the bag in Committee when he said he had to get this through now, because one of his general election pledges was to do it within 100 days. I am sorry, but that is not a good way of bringing in legislation—just trying to press it forward irrespective of whether or not it is flawed.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I have a lot of sympathy with what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but may I drag him away from his politics for a second? Would it not be very simple to incorporate the recommendation in a 1960s magistrates Act of a judge advocate general, as that would deal with exactly what he is talking about?

[Mr Jones]

It would. That and judicial oversight would improve the Bill tremendously. It would then actually do what it is supposed to do, which is stop reinvestigation and stop the worry that these individuals have, but it does not do that; that is the big hole in the Bill.

It is not as though the Minister has not had a chance to look at this. I have raised it with him—I tabled amendments in Committee, which he pushed aside, and we are going to go ahead with what we have now, which will be a flawed Bill. Once it has passed, it will lead to a situation whereby a lot of people think that as a result they have protections when, frankly, it will do nothing of the sort, because it will not stop investigations and reinvestigations. One of the worst things we can do in politics is promise people things and give them the impression that we have done something when actually we have not, because once the penny drops and they see it is not actually the case, they rightly feel very bitter.

As the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) has just said, there is time to put this in the Bill. If Ministers are not going to do it in this place, they should do it in the other place, because it will improve the situation.

There is another dishonesty with this process. From, again, using the MOD website, which I do not think is appropriate for political reasons, we see there is a promise about Northern Ireland. The Minister is on record as saying that similar legislation will be brought in to cover historical cases in Northern Ireland. Well, I am sorry, but it will not do so if it is like this Bill; if it is like this Bill then, frankly, it will do nothing at all on investigations. If it is a mirror image of this Bill, all those people who think that somehow they are going to get protection will find that they do not, and that is just not fair.

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We must address the deficiencies of the investigative process and provide those who are under investigation with our full support, but we cannot use deeply regrettable instances of failure to renege on our legal and moral obligations. Let us show some leadership and lead by example. I very much hope that the Government will think again.

[Mr David Davis]

It is a privilege to follow the gallant and hon. Gentleman, who is a co-signatory with me to amendments 1 to 10, which deal with the issue of torture. If this country stands for anything, it stands for the rule of law. That enhances our reputation abroad and increases our influence abroad. It is also important to the reputation and effectiveness of our armed forces, who are made safer and more effective because of it. The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) spoke at length about the Bill not dealing with investigations, so in the interests of time I will move past that.

As the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) said, the Judge Advocate General—the most senior judge in the Service Prosecuting Authority, the person who is the most knowledgeable about all these issues and who was in place for 16 years when these issues were being dealt with—says that this Bill does not address the issue. I will quote him again later on, because he is clearly not some left-wing, liberal lawyer or somebody who wants to undermine the armed forces; he is somebody who wants this country to succeed.

In the witness statements to the Bill Committee, the overriding view of the witnesses was that the principal failing was the failure to include war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture in schedule 1, which in their view contravenes the UK’s commitment to international law and invites the attention of the International Criminal Court.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Article 3 of the Geneva conventions covers torture and crimes against humanity, and there is a convention on torture itself. When I was a member of the armed forces, we were subject to that as our highest priority. Indeed, I often used the Geneva conventions to justify my actions, and the Geneva conventions guide the armed forces. All those people who go on operations are guided by the Geneva conventions, I promise that.

[Mr Davis]

My hon. and gallant Friend is exactly right, and I want to see the reputation that comes from that preserved after this Bill becomes law.

I will briefly address the weaknesses of two parts of the Bill separately—this addresses directly my hon. Friend’s comments: first, the criminal prosecutions and then the civil cases.

Prosecutions against armed forces personnel are not brought by just any lawyer. They are brought by the Service Prosecuting Authority, which is part of the Ministry of Defence. As it stands, a prosecution can be brought only where there is sufficient evidence that the accused committed the offence and where it is in the public interest that the prosecution should be made. There is therefore already a high threshold for prosecution. As a result, since 2000, there have been 27 prosecutions. Given how many thousands of members of our armed forces have been in operations in difficult circumstances—in close quarters with the civilian population, fighting against an asymmetric enemy—that is an astonishingly low number. That is not a prosecution system that is out of control. That alone shows that the system is not slanted against soldiers.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I agree with my right hon. Friend that the prosecution system is not out of control, but does he agree that the investigatory system is? To answer my own intervention on the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), is my right hon. Friend aware that clause 3(2)(b) says that the five-year limit will not apply unless

“compelling new evidence has become available”?

Why is he not reassured by that?

[Mr Davis]

I will tell my right hon. Friend in a moment exactly why I am not reassured by that, but he is quite right that the issue is the repeated investigation of people who are innocent, in most cases. That is a harassing and destructive thing. The best known case is that of Major Campbell, who underwent eight investigations. I am afraid that the real blame lay with the Ministry of Defence for at least four of them. That is what we should address.

As I say, the prosecution system is not slanted against soldiers. I will give the rather gruesome, well known example of Baha Mousa, a 26-year-old Iraqi man who, in 2003, was dragged from his desk while working as a hotel receptionist by British soldiers, handcuffed and taken to a detention facility in Basra. Thirty-six hours later, he had been beaten to death, having suffered 93 separate injuries while in the custody of British forces. The number of solders convicted of murder as a result: zero. The number convicted of manslaughter: zero. There was a single conviction of one soldier, who confessed to inhumane treatment and got one year in prison.

It is difficult for prosecuting and other authorities to make out a clear-cut case of torture, inhumane treatment or even manslaughter, so I do not believe that the system operates against the interests of the armed forces. Indeed, on the several occasions on which the Government have been asked to produce a case of vexatious prosecution—not investigation, but prosecution—they have never been able to name one. That is not surprising. The Service Prosecuting Authority—the body that brings prosecutions—already dismisses claims that it believes are vexatious. In evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, Nicholas Mercer, the former Command Legal Adviser in Iraq, said:

“Before I left the army, I gave legal advice on a number of prominent cases…I found a case that was without merit and I closed it. It was as simple as that. I do not need legislation to do that. It happens already.” That is a good reflection on our system, and we should not be ashamed of it.

The area of contention, which has been mentioned by the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central, is the triple lock against prosecutions. The Government’s own stated aim is to raise the bar for prosecutions after five years. In its scrutiny of the Bill, the Joint Committee on Human Rights concluded:

“a limitation period that would prevent prosecutions is unlawful under international law if it prevents investigations and prosecutions in relation to torture, war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.”

The Government state that the measure is not a statute of limitations. The Law Society, which some may dismiss, agrees with the JCHR, and concludes that the presumption against prosecution creates a “quasi-statute of limitation” that is “unprecedented” in criminal law, and represents

“a significant barrier to justice.”

Rather more importantly, the Judge Advocate General, whom I described earlier, has said:

“In my view, what this Bill does is exactly the opposite of what it is trying to do. What it is trying to do is to stop ambulance-chasing solicitors and vexatious and unmeritorious claims. The Minister quite rightly said we want rigour and integrity. What it actually does is increase the risk of service personnel appearing before the International Criminal Court. That is why I said it was ill conceived.”––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c.117-18, Q234.]

That is the Judge Advocate General, the most expert person in the country on this subject. He also described, incidentally, the Bill as bringing

“the UK armed forces into disrepute”.

If the Government really think that schedule 1 does not make justice more difficult, they would not have excluded sexual offences from the remit of the Bill. If it is not difficult to get a prosecution, why exclude any category? It was right to exclude sexual offences, and the Government should exclude torture on exactly the same grounds. That is the point of the amendment in my name and in that of many others.

I have a couple of minutes, so I will deal briefly with the issue of civil claims. There have been 1,000 civil claims, according to the Ministry of Defence, all of them against the Ministry, not against individual soldiers—as far as I can tell. Surprise, surprise, someone trying to get money goes to the Ministry, not to a poverty-stricken soldier. However, that does not help veterans; it actually hinders veterans.

The point has been made by other Members, so I will press it no further, except to quote the British Legion director-general:

“it protects the Ministry of Defence from civil action—from someone bringing a case. That longstop does not protect the armed forces personnel.”––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c. 86, Q161.]

Of course, what the Bill could stop are the sorts of cases that exposed Snatch Land Rover, the lack of provision of body armour and a number of other scandals, which quite properly improved the operation the MOD.

The Bill does the same for torture cases. All the stories about torture and rendition came in the first instance from civil cases—all of them. That is what brought them into the public domain; there was not a single criminal prosecution in the first instance. It is difficult to bring a torture case. In most, only two people know about the torture: the victim and the oppressor—the torturer, or torturers. Typically, no other evidence is available in the public domain. A case is difficult. Even in the case of Belhaj, the most famous torture case—we delivered Mr Belhaj and his pregnant wife to the Libyans, for heaven’s sake—it took 10 years, essentially, to get to court, and of course he got an apology from the Prime Minister. That is why the issue of torture is almost impossible to bring to court.

Time is running out, so I will finish by quoting the questions that the Judge Advocate General put to the Minister in Committee. He said that

“six Royal Military Police were killed…in 2003”,

and asked:

“would we accept that there would be a presumption against… prosecution”

of their murderers? Would we expect special arrangements—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I will let the right hon. Member read the quote before finishing.

[Mr Davis]

I will read the quote:

“Would we be content that a member of the Iraqi Government’s consent would be needed to prosecute? Would we accept a decision by that person not to prosecute? In my view, there would be outrage in this country if”––[Official Report, Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2020; c. 128, Q278]—

the Iraqis behaved in that way. The Judge Advocate General said that we should always remember that the law should be “even-handed” to all people.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to the debate on Report, and to do so early, following the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and a number of other contributors. Time is tight on proceedings, but had the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) spoken for the entirety of the Opposition, Members would have been largely content. I was clear on Second Reading that, while we support the Bill, many aspects of it could have been—and I regret were not—improved in Committee.

I will make this broader point at this stage: just because the Government have the strength of votes does not mean that they have a monopoly on wisdom, or that they should not engage more productively and proactively with some of the concerns that have been expressed. I do not say that belligerently or to cause difficulty; those who have served with me on the Defence Committee know that I approach such matters sincerely. I say it because we want to see the right outcome and the right protection for our service personnel. I am afraid that, following the Bill Committee, we are not quite there yet. We have the opportunity this evening to make necessary amendments.

I will repeat at this stage, although it is not part of the Bill, that I resent the fact that Northern Ireland provisions have not been brought forward. The Minister gave me a commitment on Second Reading—I am glad that he did—that the Government will not resile from the commitments that they have given to veterans who served in Northern Ireland. I accept that progress on those provisions is now, regrettably, outwith the Minister’s domain, but that commitment is still there from the Government and we look forward to seeing how they will honour it.

Covid-19 Update

David Davis Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am always grateful for any kindness from the right hon. Lady, but I can tell her that, generally speaking, our co-operation with the Administration in Cardiff has been excellent, and I have no doubt that it will continue to be so.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

The Prime Minister is clearly and quite properly trying to do everything possible to cut infections and deaths from covid-19. To that end, over the weekend, a number of eminent scientists called on the Government to try to resolve the vitamin D deficiency issues in the United Kingdom to reduce the severity of the pandemic. There have been dozens of studies over hundreds of countries in the last six months that show—or imply, anyway—that that could reduce infection rates by half and case death rates by half again. The Scottish Government are sending four months’ supply of vitamin D to everybody who shielded in Scotland. Given that it is low cost and there is no medical downside, will our Government consider the same approach in England?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend. He is entirely right that we are indeed looking at the possible beneficial effects of vitamin D, and I know that we will be updating the House shortly.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are considering what reforms we can bring in. We have set out clearly the principle that this is not just about the immediate return on investment; it is about the long-term opportunities that procurement would open up for every part of the UK.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

2. Whether his Department has made an assessment of the extent to which the use of voter identification will tackle voter fraud.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

The Government are committed to introducing voter ID, as well as extra postal and proxy voting measures, to reduce the potential for electoral fraud in order to give the public greater confidence that our elections are secure. Evaluation by the Electoral Commission and the Cabinet Office of the pilots we ran shows that they were a success, and that public confidence in the electoral system was higher in the areas involved.

[Mr Davis]

The Minister will be unsurprised to hear that I am unimpressed by this illiberal idea. The Electoral Commission says that fraud relating to proxy voting, postal voting, bribery, undue influence or tampering with ballot papers, on which voter ID will have no effect, accounts for three quarters of electoral fraud, so what are we doing about that?

[Chloe Smith]

As I mentioned, we are looking at a range of measures, including ways to improve the security of postal and proxy voting. It is important to recognise that electoral fraud in any form is a crime, which is why we should stand by measures to deal with it. We should be on the side of the victims of that crime, whose voices are taken away—indeed, stolen—by such fraud. That is a good reason why this was in our manifesto, on which, I gently remind my right hon. Friend, we both stood.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

Again, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. [Interruption.] Forgive me. It is only a matter of time, I suspect. The broader point is that the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and No. 10 work seamlessly together to ensure that the wishes of the British people, as expressed in the last general election, to strengthen our United Kingdom, to level up our economy and to make sure that people have the opportunity to excel in every sphere are carried out with harmony, unity and energy.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

T8. Given the ridiculous bluster and sabre rattling that we have heard from the European Commission in the past few days, what assessment have the Government made of the damage the European Union would do to its own economy if it denied itself access to the United Kingdom market?

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend makes a characteristically acute point. It is the case that the European Union exports more in goods to the UK than we export to the EU. Were some voices—I stress that it is a minority of voices in the European Union—to prevail and were they not to progress these negotiations in the way that, I am sure, we would all want to see, there would be damage to the EU’s economy, and that is the last thing that I want to see.

UK Special Forces: Iraq and Afghanistan

David Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

It sounds to me as though I have an ally in the former Chair of the Defence Committee, because I think that part of the remit of the judge-led inquiry that I have advocated on the Floor of the House tonight should be to make a recommendation to the House on what mechanism the House or the Government bring to the House so that these operations can be properly scrutinised. The ISC would be an obvious outfit for that, although I know that other Members would perhaps disagree.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

It seems to me that the hon. Gentleman makes three separate points. One is about having a war powers Act. I was a co-signatory, with Mr Tony Benn, 20 years ago, in a call for a war powers Act. That is one issue about the role of the House in approving conventional wars over and above article 5 responses—defensive actions.

Secondly, there is a question about the oversight of special forces operations. I have doubts on that, because of the cramping effect on our ability to respond flexibly to serious, non-full-war operations.

It is important to differentiate the third point, which is about the allegations—they are just that at the moment—that have been put by reporters and repeated by the hon. Gentleman. The proper response to those is through criminal actions; we need not an inquiry by this House, but proper investigation and proper criminal prosecution, independently by the authorities. All the soldiers I know —senior special forces soldiers, senior generals and operational officers in the field today—would welcome that, because no soldier wants to be fighting from the low moral ground. A British soldier wants to be fighting from the high moral ground, and in that at least we are in the same place.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman deeply for that intervention, as he is of course entirely correct. I would just come back to the second point he picked me up on, which was about oversight. Nobody wants to deny flexibility; clearly, there has to be an ability to respond. We discussed earlier how the US system is not perfect, but I do not think anyone can say that President Trump feels particularly inflexible as a result of the oversight mechanisms that exist on Capitol Hill. I am not suggesting we mirror those in their entirety, but the right hon. Gentleman is a great authority on these affairs and I think it is time—it is only my proposal at this stage—that if we have a judge-led inquiry that investigates these matters, part of its remit could be to make a recommendation to the Government and the House on the best means of moving forward for proper oversight that does not compromise flexibility and security, because nobody would want that.

Prime Minister’s Statement

David Davis Excerpts

Saturday 19th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I certainly do not anticipate that it will be possible to call everybody on the statement, and we will want to proceed with the debate on the motion. In the name of maximising participation, there is a premium upon brevity from those on the Back and Front Benches alike.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

Despite the fact that those who oppose Brexit have tried to undermine his negotiating position at every turn, despite the fact that the Benn Act sought to remove his strongest negotiating lever, the Prime Minister has done what they said was impossible two weeks ago and got the European Union to reopen and change its negotiating position. Does he agree that, during the referendum, this Parliament effectively made a promise to the British people to deliver on their decision, and that today is the day to deliver on that promise?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend for what he has said, and he is indeed correct. I do believe that this excellent deal dispels the doubts of many people about what this country could achieve and, indeed, will achieve in the future. I thank him—my fellow campaigner on this issue—for the way that he has stood up for the vision that we both share for our country as an open, global, free-trading, generous, outward-looking, but European economy, and that is what this deal allows us to be. I believe that it is a great step forward, and I hope that the House endorses it.

Detainees

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I cannot speculate about what an incoming Administration might or might not do. I am grateful to the hon. and learned Lady for her welcome for the principles, but I disagree with her on this point: I do not see that a revived judge-led inquiry would add anything to the actions that have already been taken. The Government and the agencies have accepted that things were done wrong, for various reasons, between 2001 and 2010. As a result of internal investigations, the ISC’s reports and the commissioner’s recommendations, significant improvements have been made to the internal training of staff in the agencies. There is much greater clarity and rigour in the guidance that officers are given, and the accountability of officers to Ministers in cases where there might be a risk of torture or inhuman treatment has been highlighted in the guidance and the training.

In the light of those changes, it is our view that no new policy decision would arise out of a further judge-led inquiry, nor do we believe that there is a legal obligation on the Government to hold such an inquiry. The police have had access to all the material they wish to access about individual cases, and, as I have said, they have concluded a number of investigations without need for further process, while a few investigations are continuing. So I think all necessary steps have been taken.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I will resist the temptation to reply to the failure to provide a judge-led inquiry in four words; those words being, “See you in court,” because it is quite plain that this decision will face a judicial review and that will take even more time and give less closure.

My right hon. Friend asked us to accept that the Government have solved the problems, and ironically he cites as evidence of that a number of ISC reports from some years ago that are now understood to have got the answer wrong because they were misinformed. The current ISC report—much better, much higher quality—was of course limited, as we heard from its Chairman, by the restriction on witnesses.

So the Government are asking us to allow them to mark their own homework. If we want a real coruscating comment on that, we need only look back at the Binyam Mohamed case and the remarks of Judge Neuberger on the Government’s and agencies’ handling of it throughout. The Government should simply not be allowed to mark their own homework.

On the point that the Government have solved the problems, I am afraid that that is plainly and demonstrably not true. That is illustrated most clearly in the point raised by the shadow Foreign Secretary that there is no prohibition on Ministers approving torture. My right hon. Friend the Minister says that they are required to obey the law, but they were required to do so in 2002 when the law was precisely the same in terms of international convention, so that does not apply either. We have evidence from one month ago, Mr Speaker, when you allowed an urgent question in this Chamber to the Ministry of Defence, which had produced internal policy documents that explicitly conceived of Ministers approving co-operation with states that had used torture to acquire information. So, plainly, the Government have not learned their lesson yet. There are a number of reasons for having an inquiry—legal, reputational, operational, closure and the simple one of keeping the promise we gave—and I am afraid that the Government will eventually be forced into that position.

[Mr Lidington]

My right hon. Friend has been pursuing these issues for quite a long time now. He has always been absolutely consistent in the position he has taken, and I respect that position even though the Government disagree with his views.

Going back to the question about witnesses at the ISC, the offer was always there for agency chiefs, senior officials and Ministers to speak on behalf of officers who were or had been junior at the time of the events complained of. That is the way in which the Government respond to every Select Committee of Parliament, with the seniors in a Department or agency taking responsibility for the decisions made by junior staff.

In respect of what my right hon. Friend said about the Ministry of Defence, he will find when he looks at the principles that they apply expressly to members of our armed forces. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence has issued a written ministerial statement today in which she says that the Ministry of Defence accepts the principles in full and has already begun work to update its internal guidance accordingly.

Detainee Mistreatment: Judge-led Inquiry

David Davis Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

Obviously I will not pre-empt the content of the Government’s statement later this week, but I think it is clear from the way in which the right hon. Lady has posed her questions that it is acknowledged on both sides of the House that this is an extremely important as well as an extremely sensitive decision. What I will say to her is that the protections against involvement in the use of torture apply to this and any future Government in the United Kingdom, not least by virtue of Ministers’ obligations to obey the law. That includes our international legal obligations, including those set out both in the United Nations convention against torture and the European convention on human rights.

In recent years we have seen not only a much stronger and, for the first time, a statutory role for the Investigatory Powers Commissioner—who now reports annually on his work, including the application of detainee policy—but enhanced powers for the Intelligence and Security Committee, notably the power that enables it, in law, to require rather than just request information from the security and intelligence agencies.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I hear what my right hon. Friend says about obeying international law, but it is clear from the Prime Minister’s apology to the Libyan victims alone that the British Government, at very best, came perilously close to breaching article 3 of the European convention on human rights, which forbids torture but also its facilitation or complicity in it. Moreover, without an independent judge-led inquiry, the Government may now be in breach of article 13, which, as well as encapsulating centuries of established common law, provides for the right to “an effective remedy”.

I do not know what is making the Government take so long to decide whether to pursue a judge-led inquiry. It may be pressure from the agencies, although I doubt that now, or it may be pressure from allies who were complicit or involved in this. Whatever it is, I hope that what I shall say next will help my right hon. Friend in his argument with them. If he does not announce an independent judge-led inquiry in his statement later this week, or next week, I will certainly seek advice on whether we have broken either of those articles, and, if need be, use the proper judicial mechanisms to ensure that the Government are put back within the bounds of the law.

[Mr Lidington]

As I said earlier, it is the duty of every Minister, in line with the Ministerial Code, to comply with our international as well as our domestic legal obligations. In the case of officials, those obligations are statutory, because the civil service code is itself incorporated in statute. I hope that when my right hon. Friend sees the detail of what will be announced later this week, he will be able to feel reassured by it.