Debate on the Address

Debate between David Davis and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 7th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I agree with the hon. Lady on the saving money element, and I will come back to that in a second. The truth is that this Government have poured more money into the health service than anybody ever predicted, and more money than they intended over time, but decisions within the health service—I come back to management rather than money—led to some of those decisions. The hon. Lady is dead right that it is a waste of money not to do the diagnosis. I am talking about MRI and CT scans, blood tests, and all the other things that help us get ahead of the disease.

I talked to Randox, one of the diagnostic companies, which is based in Northern Ireland, and asked about this issue. It has technology that it says will reduce a seven-day analysis of blood samples, for example, to 30 minutes. My view is that we should break clear of the ideology and look dramatically to increase the amount of scans and diagnostic procedures—when I say “dramatically”, I mean a multiple of what we currently do—and we should use the private sector to do it. I know that causes a bridling and a backing off, but the only way we can do this fast enough is to do that. That would save about £3 billion and reduce waiting lists for millions of people. Most importantly of all, it would save thousands of lives. If there were one thing I would do within healthcare, that would be it; there would be other things, but that would be that.

[Jim Shannon]

The right hon. Gentleman is talking a lot of sense in relation to cancer diagnosis and better treatment. One way of doing that is through research and development. For example, there have been advances in prostate cancer at Queen’s University, with that centre of excellence in Belfast, and news today of pills that can reduce the risk of breast cancer. Those are just two examples. Does the right hon. Gentleman feel that research and development is key to advancing and saving lives, and getting better results for cancer patients?

[Mr Davis]

That is exactly right, which brings me to my other health topic, and the whole question of national health service data and the use of data. It is widely accepted that we have one of the greatest information treasure troves in the world in the form of national health service data—data about all our citizens. There have been two or three attempts—certainly two in my memory—to bring that data together and manage it in one block, so that it is available for managing the treatment of patients and for research. A third attempt is happening right now, with contracts out to introduce a new data management system for the whole health service. The two previous attempts failed because the national health service executive and management do not understand the importance of privacy. Each time they tried to do it, the reaction from GPs and patients was, “We are not going to co-operate with this.” There was a vast waste of money, and the projects crashed and were over. More importantly than the money, we missed the opportunity to do exactly what the hon. Gentleman says: use that data for research to advance this country to the front of the world.

The Government are doing the same again this time, because the contract has gone out, and it looks likely that the company that will win it is Palantir. For those who do not know Palantir, it started, I think, with an investment from the CIA. Its history is largely in supporting the National Security Agency in America. Bluntly, it is the wrong company to put in charge of our precious data resource; even if it behaved perfectly, nobody would trust it. The thing that destroyed the last two attempts will destroy this one: people will not sign up and join up. The health service has got to get its act together on this. If it does, and privacy is protected, we can do things like having a complete nationwide DNA database. If privacy is not protected, that will not happen. There is an opportunity there, and the Government should grasp it, not drop it.

Technology also has a large possible application to education. I was lucky that when I was a teenager, social mobility in Britain was probably as great as it ever has been, for a variety of reasons, ranging from grammar schools, which I know are controversial, through to the fact that post war, there was huge growth in the middle classes, which expanded opportunities. Those combinations together created a massive social mobility advantage for people like me. I was very lucky in that respect. Today, while I think we are about No. 10 or 11 in the PISA—the programme for international student assessment—tables, we are No. 21 in the social mobility tables, and we should not be that far down.

We need to do something about that issue. One reason it happens is that 35% of children by the age of 11—children going through their primary education—are unable to cope with their maths and English sufficiently to make progress in other subjects. In essence, they are failed by the age of 11. For free school meal kids—I am looking at my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) —it is 50%. Half of children on free school meals have been failed by the state by the time they are 11, and there are all sorts of reasons why. Even with vast amounts of effort, with committed teachers, headteachers and so on putting all their effort in, it still comes apart.

One thing we can do about it—and the Department has begun to talk about it—is to start to use AI in the classroom, so that children can have tailored teaching. A kid who is falling behind gets diagnostic responses from AI, which then generates appropriate teaching patterns to pull them back up. We already have such technology. In fact, a British firm called Century Tech does exactly that. I saw it in action in Springhead Primary School in my constituency, where there was an intervention class for children who were falling behind, and they were pulled back up using this technology. If we applied such technology right across the board, it would raise the average performance in our schools by one grade per subject. That is an enormous change. That is my judgment, not anybody else’s. If we did that, our competitive advantage and our social mobility advantage would be enormous.

We have to think very hard. The Department for Education has to be a lot more imaginative than it has been so far in this area, and it has to look hard at improving the options for all those children we currently let down. That is not because the Government intend it, or because this Government or previous ones have fallen down on it; this statistic has been going on for a long time.

The last thing I want to talk about is not technology, but bricks and mortar. I have some sympathy with the comments of the PAC Chairman, in that it is as plain as a pikestaff that we have a supply problem, however we analyse it and whoever we blame for it. Our population has grown by about 10%— 6 million or 7 million—over a couple of decades, for all sorts of reasons; we can get into controversy on that, but the truth is that housing has not grown to match. One of the problems—I guess the primary problem—is the planning system. This is not the first time the country has faced this problem. We faced it after both the world wars, when “Homes fit for heroes” and so on were the slogans of the day. How did we deal with it? We had a movement to create well-designed and well-created garden towns and cities in the right places, not by trying to tack on 100 houses to this village, 100 houses to that village and 100 houses over there, in each case overwhelming the schooling, transport arrangements or whatever. We need to look hard at cutting this Gordian knot, and it seems to me that the only way we will do that is by creating well-designed, well-financed garden towns and villages, not by going through the mechanism we have been pursuing so far.

Health, education and housing: if we add those to what we have now, we have a winning King’s Speech.

Lawfare and Investigative Journalism

Debate between David Davis and Jim Shannon

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

First, the lawyers clearly do not understand parliamentary privilege. Secondly, what they are doing—I will come back to this in a second—is trying to repress free speech and transparency in this country. This is a clear case of an ultra-wealthy individual using the British legal system to try to scare his critics into silence, and what the hon. Gentleman refers to is their trying to extend that to his actions—proper actions—in this House. The work of those who have been targeted is all the more important considering that Nazarbayev has himself had a law passed in Kazakhstan preventing him from being prosecuted there. What he is doing with this lawfare is trying to extend that protection to this country, which, frankly, is an outrage.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on bringing this debate forward. Does he not agree that we can never be in a position where the fear of the personal costs of litigation prevents truth from being revealed by journalists, who are putting their homes and their livelihoods on the line to highlight individuals who will in retaliation sue them until they have not a penny to spare, and that rather than simply saying that this is awful, as we all are, what we really need is the Government to present and bring to this House legislation to prevent it?

[Mr Davis]

I will come back to that very point in a moment, but as the hon. Gentleman implies, defending oneself against a libel claim, especially by an oligarch or other wealthy person, is often cripplingly expensive. In fact, it is typically cripplingly expensive. The risk is not losing the case, which is improbable in most of these cases. The penalty for exponents of free speech is the sheer cost of a vexatious process, which is what Nazarbayev wants.

Use of Patient Data

Debate between David Davis and Jim Shannon

Thursday 24th June 2021 Commons Chamber

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

In winding up the last debate, the Minister for the Armed Forces referred to volunteering a mucker for the guardroom. I hope that my entire speech does not sound like that to the Secretary of State; it is not intended to.

Every couple of years, Whitehall, like an overexcited teenager expecting a new mobile phone, becomes fixated with data. Most recently, it has been about the power of big data mining, and I am sure that that is not just because of the influence of Mr Dominic Cummings. The Department of Health and Social Care wants to open our GP medical records—55 million datasets or thereabouts—to pharmaceutical companies, universities and researchers.

Managed properly, that data could transform, innovate and help to overcome the great challenges of our time, such as cancer, dementia and diabetes. Those are proper and worthwhile ambitions in the national interest, and I have little doubt that that was the Government’s aim, but that data is incredibly personal, full of facts that might harm or embarrass the patient if they were leaked or misused. Psychiatric conditions, history of drug or alcohol abuse, sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy terminations—the list is extensive. Revealing that data may not be embarrassing for everyone, but it could be life-destroying for someone.

Unfortunately, in keeping with the Department’s long history of IT failures, the roll-out of the programme has been something of a shambles. The Government have failed to explain exactly how they will use the data, have failed to say who will use it and—most importantly—have failed to say how they will safeguard this treasure trove of information. They describe the data as “pseudonymised” because it is impossible to fully anonymise medical records, a fact that is well understood by experts in the field.

Even pseudonymised, anyone can be identified if someone tries hard enough. Take Tony Blair, who was widely known to have developed a heart condition, supraventricular tachycardia, in October 2003. He was first admitted to Stoke Mandeville and then rushed to Hammersmith. One year later, in September 2004, he visited Hammersmith again for a corrective operation. Even the name of the cardiologist is in the public record. A competent researcher would make very short work of finding such individual records in a mass database. That cannot be for the public good. Moreover, the Government seem to intend to keep hold of the keys to unlock the entire system and identify an individual if the state feels the need to do so.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate; I have been inundated with the same concerns from many of my constituents. Does he agree that a system that allows a diversion from the court-appointed warrant to collect information is a dangerous precedent in terms of judicial due process? We must ensure that anyone who opts out is completely opted out, as is promised.

Vitamin D: Covid-19

Debate between David Davis and Jim Shannon

Thursday 14th January 2021 Commons Chamber

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

May I start by giving my thanks to the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) who cannot be with us today, but who is a fantastic ally of mine in this campaign to help protect our public?

Today, the nation is facing the second peak in the worst health crisis in living memory. To date, nearly 85,000 people have died. In November, the death rate was 175 fatalities per million, in December that figure was 222, and it looks as though January will be more than 324. To deal with this catastrophe, the Government are reluctantly instituting tough lockdowns and considering even tougher ones. Whether these measures work is disputed by some, but there is no doubt that they are incredibly costly—in economic damage, in individual freedom, in mental health, and even in lives lost to other causes.

As the death rate per million climbs month by month, from 175 in November to 324 now, the strategy certainly is not working as well as we would hope. Compare that with the province of Andalusia, a Spanish province of more than 8 million people. It started in November with a situation worse than ours—189 deaths per million as against 175—but which cut its death rate by at least two thirds while ours was doubling. That reduction, from between 50 and 70 deaths a day in November to between five and 15 deaths a day currently, started immediately after it initiated a programme of issuing calcifediol, the fast-acting high potency form of vitamin D, to at risk groups including care home residents.

The first thing that I will ask the Minister to do—not today obviously, but afterwards—is to look closely at that policy experiment and see whether vitamin D was the key to what is a spectacular success in cutting death rates by anybody’s measure. I believe that the Government in Madrid are reviewing it. So should we.

For decades, researchers and medical professionals have been warning that there is a pandemic in vitamin D deficiency, with more than 1 billion people worldwide being vitamin D deficient. The warning bells for this ignored pandemic had been ringing long before the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak of covid-19 as an official pandemic on 11 March last year. Those warnings should have been especially loud in the UK, as our vitamin deficiency levels have been described in a recent research study as “alarmingly high.”

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, given that children have been precluded, for very obvious reasons, from taking the vaccine, we need to be proactive in building up their immune system? Will he join me in asking the Minister and the Health and Social Care Department to work with the Education Department to provide free vitamin D to every school-age child? I have asked the Minister in Northern Ireland to do the very same.

[Mr Davis]

It is an excellent idea and I do join him in that request.

On the question of medical education, it has long been understood that vitamin D plays a critical role in calcium uptake and the prevention of diseases such as rickets and osteoporosis. That was what was thought to be its main effect. Since1983, there has been a large amount of research demonstrating its critical involvement in the body’s immune system. Many of the mechanisms involved are now very well understood. By 2017, it had been clearly shown in a number of randomised clinical trials that vitamin D deficiency was a very significant issue in acute respiratory disorders such as flu, colds, pneumonia—the lot—and correcting the deficiency with supplementation could reduce the severity of symptoms by as much as 70%. This and other research showed that vitamin D had a critical role in the activation of both the innate and the adaptive immune systems and in modulating some of their responses, most notably the now infamous cytokine storms. Deficiency in vitamin D led to compromised immune systems and, as a result, susceptibility to a number of diseases, most particularly respiratory diseases but of course also covid-19. Despite this evidence to suggest that vitamin D has wider health benefits than just bone health, and despite our particularly exposed situation in the UK, our public health bodies have done little to correct this problem.

At the beginning of the covid-19 crisis, several well-respected research teams noticed a high correspondence between low vitamin D levels—deficiency—in the blood and severity of covid-19 symptoms in patients. Early evidence suggested a strong link between the two, with studies showing that 40% of patients who suffered severe covid-19 outcomes were vitamin D deficient compared with 4% of those with sufficient levels of vitamin D. Moreover, mortality rates of vitamin D deficient patients were dramatically higher than for patients who had sufficient levels of vitamin D. These were correlational studies, so they were not proof of causality, but they were massively indicative given the prior evidence of the importance of vitamin D to the immune system. So this was startling evidence.

Therefore, in early May last year, I wrote to the Health Secretary calling on the Government to urgently review the available evidence to assess the role that vitamin D could play in helping us to combat this dreaded virus. The Health Secretary, quite reasonably, handed this work to his health advisers and ordered them to undertake a rapid review of the evidence. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence attempted to analyse the statistical data and came back unconvinced. The problem is that correlation is not a proof of cause and effect, and a correlation, albeit a strong one, was all that we had at that point. In effect, NICE said that more data was necessary. One would think that at this point it would have initiated a large, well-designed random control trial to pin down the question: is vitamin D a causal factor in bad covid outcomes in terms of morbidity and mortality? After all, it is an incredibly serious disease and this is a very cheap and safe treatment. Not only did it not do this, but two applications for funding to carry out random control trials were turned down. Since then, more general global evidence in many other countries has grown in strength, which makes the inaction all the more questionable. Several studies have been published showing how low vitamin D levels lead to poorer outcomes for covid-19 victims.

In September 2020, the results of the world’s first randomised control trial—the gold standard of medical research—on vitamin D and covid-19 were published. The trial, conducted in the south of Spain at a hospital in Córdoba, involved 76 patients suffering from covid-19 sufficiently badly to have been hospitalised. Fifty of the patients were given vitamin D and the remaining 26 were not. Half of those not given vitamin D became so ill that they needed to be put in intensive care. By comparison, only one person of the 50 given vitamin D required ICU admission—just one. To put it another way, the use of vitamin D seemed to reduce a patient’s risk of needing intensive care twenty-fivefold.

Other studies have shown, at a statistically significant level, large reductions in mortality too. There was an experimental study conducted at a nursing home in France with 66 participants. The outcome of that study was that taking regular vitamin D supplements was associated with less severe covid and a better survival rate. Evidence from the United Memorial Medical Center and Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, both in the US, showed that they could get a more than 75% absolute risk-of-death reduction and reduction in mortality when treating patients with a cocktail of treatments including vitamin D. Researchers at Eastern Virginia Medical School who designed the protocol estimate that if their approach, including vitamin D-to-patient management, had been widely implemented at the start of the pandemic, it could have saved many, many thousands of lives.

The results of these studies are stark and clear-cut, and what was originally dismissed in some quarters is now backed by leading medics around the globe. Richard Carmona, the 17th surgeon-general of the United States, has said:

“The response to the pandemic…should include an effort to aggressively eliminate what is becoming apparent as a morbidity and mortality risk factor in COVID-19—vitamin D deficiency.”

Dr Carmona pointed out that the classical criteria for dealing with correlation evidence was, ironically, drawn up in this country by the great British physicians Sir Austin Bradford Hill and Sir Richard Doll in their study of smoking and lung cancer. They deduced that it was possible to use correlational data to show causality if certain other conditions could be shown: consistency of evidence, specificity of evidence, dose responsiveness and what they called temporality, which basically means that what happens first is the cause and what happens second is the effect—it is fairly obvious when you put it in English.

The simple fact is that we can show that all the Bradford Hill criteria are met for vitamin D and covid-19 if we look at the many separate individually small but collectively persuasive studies. Every single one of the criteria can be seen to be met. That is presumably why Dr Anthony Fauci, famously the head of the US Coronavirus Task Force—a difficult job at the time—has said:

“There is good evidence that if you have a low vitamin D level… you have more of a propensity to get infected”.

These are serious voices that are now backed up by serious evidence.

To give the Government proper credit, they have instigated the provision of a supplement free of charge to the clinically extremely vulnerable in care homes. However, if supplementation is to have any material effect, the dosage has to be sufficient to correct the existing deficiency. Sadly, with the Government’s programme for the clinically extremely vulnerable, the supplementation falls far short of this. The Government are providing supplements of 400 international units, or IU. That is in line with what the national health service currently recommends to tackle issues surrounding bone health. By contrast, the American health authorities recommend 600 IU to 800 IU depending on age. The latest research from the Royal College of Physicians recommends that health authorities should urgently recommend a higher supplementation of 800 IU to 1,000 IU a day, which would more than double the current daily recommended dose of vitamin D.

However, even that dose—based on bone health—is not high enough to provide the additional benefits and protect against respiratory disorders such as covid-19 for those with existing deficiencies; it must be much, much higher. We are not aiming to protect elderly people in care homes from rickets. We are aiming to protect them from a lethal disease, which is a very different issue.

The vitamin is safe in quite high doses. In the summer months, a person could sunbathe for 30 minutes and get the equivalent of 20,000 IU—much more than would be taken in a daily dose. All the modern toxicological evidence indicates that if there are any deleterious effects at all, they do not happen until a much higher dose than 20,000 IU. Even the NHS, which is very cautious on this, accepts that a dosage of 4,000 IU a day is perfectly safe; it says so on its website. What is needed to provide adequate protection against covid-19 is a significantly higher dose of up to 4,000 IU per day, particularly for those vulnerable groups that tend to be deficient in the vitamin—namely, the elderly, ethnic minorities and those suffering from a number of medical conditions.

Providing the supplement to the clinically extremely vulnerable in care homes is a small step in the right direction. However, it is a drop in the ocean compared with the action the Government should be taking overall. There needs to be a wider scheme providing supplements to all at-risk populations, including the elderly, the obese, minority ethnic groups, diabetics and people with high blood pressure. That would be a tiny cost compared with other health initiatives. A year’s supply of a daily dose is likely to cost about £15 a person, so allocating it to the identified risk groups would amount to £45 million. Allocating it to those groups plus every ethnic minority citizen would cost about £200 million, and to every clinically obese person and at-risk people in other categories would cost a little more. However, those figures could be halved if the risk is more severe during the winter months and we just gave the dose then. The benefits would be enormous. That cost is a mere rounding error when we measure it against the cost of not defeating the pandemic or the cost of a lockdown.

It is by no means a coincidence that the United Kingdom has one of the worst mortality rates in the world. After all, we have one of the worst rates of vitamin D deficiency in the world—about 40% of the population—and with that, very high levels of people with compromised immune systems. However, Public Health England continues to refuse to acknowledge the growing evidence linking vitamin D deficiency and poorer covid-19 outcomes, and for this, we are now paying the price.



Vitamin D could be one of the tools that helps turn the tide in the fight against this terrible virus. Vaccines, of course, are now being rolled out, but it will still take some time to reach levels sufficient that lockdowns are no longer needed. The Government are doing a great job on vaccines, but there are limits to what they can do, and unlike the general effect of vitamin D sufficiency on the immune system, vaccines are very specific. If a person has a specific mutation, the vaccine can be rendered obsolete; that is not true of vitamin D. In the meantime, vitamin D supplements could be provided to all at-risk groups more quickly, and at a lower cost.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, the UK has now had nearly 85,000 covid deaths. It is long past the point where we try anything with even a marginal chance of success to prevent those deaths rising even higher. Well, vitamin D has much more than a marginal chance of success: we now have good reason to believe that vitamin D supplementation will help reduce mortality from covid-19 and cut susceptibility to infection. It will save lives, improve population immunity, and help reduce the medical and economic impact as we continue the universal roll-out of vaccines.

There is now no reason not to act. After all, in the Secretary of State’s own words, supplementation has “no downsides”—he was right. The surgeon general whom I quoted earlier said that we should not let covid-19 patients die with vitamin D deficiency while we “wait for perfect evidence”. Vitamin D is cheap; it is safe; it has many other proven health benefits; and, as the Government of Andalucía have shown, it could be a dramatically effective weapon in our fight against covid. There is no more time to waste. The time to act is now, Minister.

PSNI Policy: Journalists’ Data Obtained under Warrant

Debate between David Davis and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. You are right: I have provided a copy of what I have to say, and I will stick to it religiously throughout the debate. I commiserate with my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, who has to answer me. He seems to be the Minister for receiving hospital passes from me in the past few months, one way or another.

The issue today is very serious. Twenty-five years ago, on 18 June 1994, a crowd of locals gathered at O’Toole’s pub in Loughinisland in County Down, Northern Ireland, to watch the Republic of Ireland play Italy in the World Cup. Shortly after Ireland scored the winning goal, two members of the Ulster Volunteer Force burst into the pub with automatic assault rifles and sprayed bullets across the bar. Six people were murdered and five more were badly injured in a brutal sectarian attack by loyalist paramilitaries. The people were targeted because they were Catholic. It is known as the Loughinisland massacre and has gone down as one the darkest moments in the Northern Irish troubles. It was an atrocity that shocked even those who lived among sectarian violence day in and day out. At the time, it was described by the media as brutal, inhuman, barbaric, callous slaughter, and it was worldwide news. The families of the victims received condolence letters from the Queen and from the Pope.

The Royal Ulster Constabulary’s investigation, however, was marked by a litany of missed opportunities to gather and examine evidence. The morning after the shooting, the police found the getaway car abandoned in a field in the nearby town of Ballynahinch, but they failed to examine the field properly. They left the car wide open to the elements before it could be fully examined, and they destroyed the car only 10 months later. The murder weapons were found in another field only 10 miles from O’Toole’s bar. The police recovered ample DNA evidence from the rifles, but they failed to follow that up on investigation. The police also had informants embedded in the UVF who were involved in the procurement and distribution of arms, but, again, the police failed to follow up.

The investigation was such a failure that it prompted the victims’ families to call for the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland to look into it in 2006. In his damning report, the ombudsman concluded that

“corrupt relationships existed between members of the Security Forces in South Down and the UVF Unit, to whom police attributed the murders at Loughinisland. The failure by police to investigate the veracity of intelligence that those responsible had been ‘warned’ by a police officer of their imminent arrest is inexcusable.”

It is clear that the investigation was a case of both incompetence and collusion, and those responsible for this heinous crime have never been arrested, charged or prosecuted.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman takes a special interest in journalistic freedom and civil liberties, and I have already shown him a copy of this intervention. May I respectfully direct him to the work of another journalist, Mark Rainey, who writes in the Belfast News Letter? Mr Rainey ran a most illuminating series of articles about the officers involved in the investigation of the wicked and heinous murders at Loughinisland, writing that

“almost all of the original concerns about the actions of police—which helped spark the fresh ombudsman investigation in 2012—have now been dismissed as bogus or unjustified, including the erroneous identification of the alleged getaway driver claimed to be a police agent.”

[Mr Davis]

As well as my interest in press freedom, I share with the hon. Gentleman a long-standing interest in the affairs of Northern Ireland throughout the whole course of the troubles, as he well knows. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to his gallant service in the Ulster Defence Regiment right at the height of the troubles and the difficult times, so we are in the same place on this. I have the greatest respect for the original RUC and now the Police Service of Northern Ireland. All the officers serving in those forces are brave, and the vast majority are absolutely determined to see justice delivered, but on this occasion, there is a different view put by the ombudsman, and I think I have to treat that as the overriding judgment. This is not the main point that I want to make today, but I urge the Government and the PSNI to reopen the original investigation into Loughinisland to ensure that it is done to everybody’s satisfaction this time.

Thirteen years on from the brutal assault, two Northern Irish journalists, Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney, exposed the truth. In a remarkably hard-hitting documentary called “No Stone Unturned” released in September 2017, they told a story of the victims of the massacre and their families, shining a light on the collusion and incompetence at the heart of the investigation and naming those suspected of being responsible. Like countless journalists have done over the years, they got their information from an anonymous leak. In a plain unmarked envelope, Barry McCaffrey was sent an unredacted Police Ombudsman’s report naming the suspects and detailing the evidence behind the allegation of police cover-up. It found collusion between the RUC and the UVF, incompetence and a cover-up of the true events, and for the first time, it named those whom the police believed to be responsible for the brutal murders. What started as a hard-hitting documentary on a huge event in Irish history would now become a dramatic exposé of the failure of policing.

It was of course an investigative journalist’s dream leak, but, even so, during the film’s pre-publication and editing process, the journalists offered the named suspects a right of reply, which was not taken up. They also informed the ombudsman of the suspects the film would name. The ombudsman passed that information on to the PSNI. They wanted to be sure the PSNI was informed in case there was any concern for the safety of the suspects or in case the police had any other compelling reason why the film should not be released. They received no response.

When the documentary was released in 2017, it was well regarded by both communities in Northern Ireland, and in July 2019 it was nominated for an Emmy in the “outstanding investigative documentary” category. But a year after it was broadcast, Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney were arrested on extraordinary charges by the PSNI. For simply doing their jobs, they were arrested and charged with suspected theft, handling stolen goods, breaches of the Official Secrets Act and breaches of data protection rules. The PSNI’s action was extraordinarily heavy-handed; some 100 armed officers turned up at their homes at seven in the morning while their families were eating breakfast. The police arrested the journalists in front of their wives and children. Then the police searched their homes and offices, and seized their phones, laptops and hard drives. They even seized the phones of Barry and Trevor’s children. Now the police hold a huge amount of very personal data belonging to these journalists and their families.

Imagine if the same had happened to the journalists who published leaks from the National Security Council on Chinese involvement in the 5G network, an issue that really did have an impact on national security; or the leaked diplomatic telegrams from Sir Kim Darroch; or the leaked Yellowhammer documents last month—there rightly would have been a national uproar. All those leaks were uncomfortable for the state, but that is precisely what journalism is for: to hold those with power and authority to account, and force them to answer for their decisions.

Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney had the courage to challenge this outrageous intrusion into press freedom in the Northern Irish courts. In June, the High Court quashed the search warrants used to search the properties and seize the electronic equipment—I was in the Court. Sir Declan Morgan, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, handed down a damning indictment of the police’s conduct and in defence of a free press. He struck down the search warrants as unlawful. He went on to say the journalists acted in a

“perfectly proper manner with a view to protecting their sources in a lawful way.”

The Court rightly stood up for the fundamental principle of press freedom and protected these journalists from a misguided attempt by the police to prevent their own embarrassment. If this warrant had been allowed to stand, it would have had a hugely chilling effect on investigative journalism across the whole country—the whole United Kingdom. A truly free press must be able to stand up to the state and the establishment without fear of reprisal. It must be able to expose uncomfortable truths and ask tough questions. That is what this case represents, but it is sadly now back in the courts.

Following the quashing of the warrants, the PSNI had to be hauled back before the Court again to have the journalists’ property returned. Again, the Court ruled in the journalists’ favour, and the police duly complied. But the police now insist on retaining the data taken from the phones and computers seized from the journalists. So far, everything I have said is in the public domain. However, as you said at the beginning, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am precluded by sub judice rules from discussing the particular issues currently before the Court in this case. It must be said that this is a judge-only hearing heard by the Lord Chief Justice, so there is little risk of any undue influence. Nevertheless, I will comply with the rules.

Data retention by the police throughout the UK has been a long-running issue—from DNA to fingerprints, from biometric data to personal electronic data. These issues often face tension between civil liberties, individual privacy and the demands of the police. For example, when someone is arrested, it is commonly the case that their phone data is held long after the person is released and exonerated. We all understand that a certain amount of data retention is necessary for fighting crime, but by definition this data should be about guilty people committing crimes; as far as possible, we should avoid retaining the data of innocent people. On the rare occasions when that proves necessary, it should be under the strict control of the courts and its use strictly limited.

Without very good reason, data from innocent journalists should never be kept. It surely cannot be right for police to store data obtained from a warrant that has been ruled unlawful. I therefore urge the Home Office and the Northern Ireland Office to keep a close eye on the development of the Loughinisland case and, when it is adjudicated, review the policies on data acquisition and retention for the PSNI and other police forces throughout the country. This issue is not confined to Northern Ireland, so it will impact investigative journalists and whistleblowers across the whole country. Whistleblowers will see such cases, feel intimidated and think that the information they give to journalists is subject to capture and inspection by the police or other agencies of the state. Press freedom is at the core of our democratic system, and it must be protected.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between David Davis and Jim Shannon

Thursday 6th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

That is hardly surprising, given that we have the biggest aviation hub in Europe and one of the biggest in the world.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It was said earlier that all the regions in the United Kingdom would support the backstop. Members of the Democratic Unionist party in the House do not support the withdrawal agreement. Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise—I suspect that he does—that Unionists feel alienated by proposals that will weaken our position in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, because the EU will have the final say on what happens in relation to the single market and the customs union over Northern Ireland?

[Mr Davis]

Let me reinforce the point that I made to the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman): I told the Prime Minister that last December, as everyone now knows.

I do not take a utopian or a dystopian view of the WTO option. There are Conservative Members who think that it will be the best option in the long run, because it is the freest in terms of outcomes, and there are those who fear it as a complete disaster. I think that it is neither. There has been an enormous amount of black propaganda about the outcome of the WTO proposal. A month or two ago, we heard that the supplies of insulin would dry up. No, they will not. We talked to pharmaceutical companies and to the NHS, and they did their checks. No drugs will dry up, full stop. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries) mentioned aviation. We were told that planes would be grounded, but a European Commission briefing document showed in January 2018 that there would be EU-wide contingency measures ensuring no stoppage of aviation.

EU Exit Negotiations

Debate between David Davis and Jim Shannon

Monday 13th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

Yes.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and the fact that he says he will not accede to the demands in the leaked EU paper that Northern Ireland should stay in the customs union and the single market, given the constitutional and economic implications of such a proposal. Does he agree that it would be in the interests of the Irish Government not to allow their future relationship with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to be dictated by EU negotiators, who have less interest in the needs of a small country such as the Republic of Ireland than they do in the European project?

[Mr Davis]

It is not for me to tell the Irish Government what they should do, but I would say that they share with us a determination to maintain no hard border. They obviously have an economic interest in the outcome because we are their biggest trading partner. They must have a very strong interest in a similar outcome to the one that we are seeking, and I hope they will reflect that in their conversations with the Commission.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Davis and Jim Shannon

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I reassure my hon. Friend and his constituents that protecting the rights of EU citizens in the UK, and of UK nationals in the EU, is our first priority in these negotiations. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made clear repeatedly at the Dispatch Box, and again in her recent open letter to all EU citizens in the UK, we want people to stay and we want families to stay together. We continue to seek a reciprocal arrangement that will work in the interests of EU citizens in the UK, and of UK nationals in the EU. As I said before, we are confident that with flexibility and creativity we will be able to conclude the discussions on citizens’ rights swiftly.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the Secretary of State outline the discussions he has had with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Home Secretary about EU citizens’ rights in relation to the visa system for seasonal workers, who are desperately needed to ensure that farmers’ crops are brought in at the right time of the year.

[Mr Davis]

We have had a number of conversations about the labour market generally and about Northern Ireland in particular, because it is an important area with unique characteristics. We have commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee to produce a report that will cover this issue. However, if the hon. Gentleman has specific issues he wants to raise with me directly, I would be very happy to hear from him.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Davis and Jim Shannon

Thursday 7th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I think I should say, in the interest of maintaining amity across the negotiating table, that Mr Barnier clarified that he did not intend to say “educate”. He meant that he wanted to bring everybody up to speed on the benefits, as he sees it, of the single market. Both sides want to achieve the best possible outcome and the strongest possible partnership for the future, and that is what we intend to do. It is in neither side’s interest for there to be a cliff edge for businesses or a threat to stability. The UK and the EU will work together to agree provisions for an interim period that will allow people and businesses in both the UK and the EU to adjust in a smooth and orderly way to new arrangements. That will minimise disruption, give as much certainty as possible and meet the wishes of my hon. Friend’s constituents.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Nowhere is the timetable for leaving the EU more important than in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Press reports today indicate that there will be a special relationship in how we work the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Can the Minister give us some idea of those discussions and of what has happened so far?

[Mr Davis]

At the moment, I can talk only to the discussions within the European Union negotiating group. From the beginning we were very keen to start on this as quickly as possible. We understand, of course, that the conclusion we get will be dependent, to some extent, on all the other decisions on borders. How much special arrangement we have to make will depend on how open the borders are generally. We have made very good progress. At the last round in particular, the Commission was concerned that continuing with the common travel area would impinge on European Union citizens’ rights. We have persuaded the Commission that that is not true, and it has basically accepted our argument.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Davis and Jim Shannon

Thursday 27th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

All I can say is that my hon. Friend tempts me too much.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Taking into account the state of devolution, how will Northern Ireland be represented in the preparations for the United Kingdom to leave the EU, and, specifically, how will the Minister be able to meet the intricate needs of Northern Ireland at this time?

Debate on the Address

Debate between David Davis and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 8th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

For two months. Health tourists coming to this country to get a single operation or a single course may be wanting only the two months, so this is another area where we have carefully to think through the obverse effect of these actions. I know the pressures on politicians are high following the UKIP flurry in the past week or two, but we have to think carefully.

[Jim Shannon]

rose—

[Mr Davis]

I am trying to sum up, but I will give way.

[Jim Shannon]

I understand that the statistics show that those coming from Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and other eastern European countries bypass Italy and Germany to come to Great Britain because of the better NHS treatment and the better benefits system, so does the right hon. Gentleman feel that that has to be addressed?

[Mr Davis]

I am afraid that that is not true. I do not want to end up giving a lecture on this, but let me say that the previous Government made a simple mistake in allowing access before the transitional periods were up for those from the entire A8 group of accession countries—Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and so on. Therefore a large number of people who could not get into Germany and France at that time came to this country, because they were allowed legitimately to do so; ours was the only big country to do that. As a result, we end up with a Polish community—with Polish shops, Polish newspapers and so on—and so where do Poles go when everything is opened up? They come to where there is an indigenous Polish community, and that is perfectly reasonable. All of this is rational behaviour on the part of people who want to work, make a living and get on in life, and I cannot disapprove of them doing that. So one mistake was made then and that is what it led to. We are not going to be in the same position in respect of Romania and Bulgaria, so it is difficult to predict the numbers. I was the shadow Home Secretary who challenged the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) when, as Home Secretary, he said that 13,000 eastern Europeans would be the total number coming to this country. He eventually got so nervous about this that he started saying, “I am the Home Secretary, but the Home Office is saying this.” He realised that his numbers were wrong and the real number turned out to be millions.

Foreign Secret Intelligence and State Secrets Privilege

Debate between David Davis and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this debate.

The story I am about to tell is extraordinarily dramatic. Frankly, had I not been able to verify some of the hard facts for myself, I would not have believed it. Essentially, the story is of an intelligence-gathering operation that, had it gone ahead, would very likely have yielded advance information about the 9/11 attack in New York. The operation was delayed by what can only be described as a turf war between American intelligence agencies, and as a result the intelligence opportunity was lost.

The American Government then used the state secrets privilege to cover up that embarrassment, and did so in such a heavy-handed way that it facilitated the defrauding of some British citizens of millions of pounds. This is the same state secrets privilege, and the same American Government, that the British Green Paper on justice and security is designed to protect. The case I am about to describe will show how intelligence agencies misuse these laws not to protect our security, but to avoid their own embarrassment and, sometimes, to cover up criminal activity.

In the mid-1990s, Afghanistan, a country of almost 30 million people, had fewer than 10,000 working telephones. There was no mobile phone network and no internet, and ordinary Afghans had to queue for hours to use the few functioning public phone boxes. The country had even lost its international dialling code. In 1998, the Taliban Government decided Afghanistan needed a new phone network. As no domestic companies had the necessary expertise, they invited foreign companies to bid for the rights to build the network. The company they chose was called Telephone Systems International.

Based in New Jersey, TSI was owned by one Ehsanollah Bayat, a Kabul-born American citizen on friendly terms with the highest echelons of the Taliban Government, and particularly its leader, Mullah Omar. Helped by Mr Bayat’s powerful connections, TSI was awarded the exclusive licence to build and operate Afghanistan’s new telephone network, including domestic, international, mobile and landline calls.

Mr Bayat had a problem: he had the connections, the funding and the exclusive contract, but he had no telecommunications expertise. He needed expert advice and operational skills, and sought it from two British citizens. One was Stuart Bentham, a former officer in the Corps of Royal Engineers. The other was Lord Michael Cecil. Between them, Bentham and Cecil had built new mobile phone networks in Kenya, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and Bayat wanted them both on board. In 1998, they struck a deal under which Bentham and Cecil would each receive shares in TSI, amounting to about 30% of the company, in exchange for overseeing the building of the Afghan mobile network.

So far, so ordinary, you might think, except that Mr Bayat was no ordinary telecoms entrepreneur. Cecil and Bentham knew his secret, but at this point the Taliban had no idea that the man they had asked to build their phone network was an FBI informer. With their man now in charge of Afghan telecoms, the FBI saw a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gather intelligence on the Taliban and, of course, al-Qaeda.

The plan was simple: the Taliban wanted American equipment for their new phone network, so the FBI and NSA—the National Security Agency—would build extra circuits into all the equipment before it was flown out to Afghanistan for use. Once installed, these extra circuits would allow the FBI to record or listen live to every single landline and mobile phone call in Afghanistan. The FBI would know the time the call was made and its duration, the caller’s name, the number dialled, and even the caller’s PIN. The FBI would also be able to monitor the telephone gateways channelling international calls in and out of the country—gateways already being used by Bin Laden, Mullah Omar and their associates, thanks to the satellite phones given by Mr Bayat to Taliban Ministers as gifts.

The FBI gave the operation the codename Operation Foxden. Encouraged by a supportive Taliban Administration and eager American intelligence agencies, work on the new Afghan phone network began in earnest in 1999. Early progress was good, until suddenly, on independence day in 1999, the Clinton Administration imposed trade sanctions on Afghanistan and banned American citizens from doing business with the Taliban Government. For months, TSI had been legally exporting telecoms equipment to Afghanistan. Overnight, this activity had become a serious criminal offence. Construction of the Afghan phone network was delayed, as was the opportunity for the FBI to eavesdrop on the Taliban’s and al-Qaeda’s conversations.

In the meantime, the American security services continued to discuss the project. In December 1999 and January 2000, Stuart Bentham and Lord Cecil flew to the US for meetings with officials from the FBI and NSA. Both agencies remained convinced that building and tapping the Afghan phone network from the ground up was a massive intelligence opportunity. The NSA even provided $30 million of funding, and offered technical support, cover stories and fake passports to TSI employees to help get the job done.

In January 2000, Mr Bayat and his team were gradually finding a way to work around the sanctions and the limitations placed on them, and he made plans to fly to Afghanistan to get construction moving. According to a TSI technical expert who was on the ground in Kabul at the time, the new phone network could and would have been up and running in months. But the CIA had become aware of the project and had decided it could continue only under its control. Thus started a turf war that set the project back by some 20 months. Instead of getting the Afghan phone network built and starting to eavesdrop on Taliban leaders and al-Qaeda leaders, officials from the FBI and CIA spent more than a year and a half fighting over who should be in charge. Furthermore, when it was decided that the FBI should hand control of the project to the CIA, the CIA’s near east division and counter-terrorism centre then proceeded to bicker among themselves over which of the subsets of the CIA should run the operation.

Eventually the bickering stopped and finally, 20 months after the project had been put on hold, TSI was given the green light to resume building Afghanistan’s phone network. Within days, and with MI6’s blessing, Bayat’s British advisers, Bentham and Cecil, met CIA officials and technical experts at the Sheraton hotel, New Jersey. There they discussed future plans, Afghan satellite capacity and the possibility of more American funding. The project seemed to be back on track, but it was too little, too late. The Sheraton meeting, held in a room overlooking the World Trade Centre, took place on 8 September 2001. Three days later, while Bentham and Cecil were travelling by taxi from Heathrow to Matrix Chambers to get advice on the legality of their operation from Ken Macdonald QC, they heard on the radio the terrible news of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre.

Of course, we cannot say for certain that if US intelligence agencies had managed to tap the Afghan phone network sooner, we would have intercepted evidence in time to stop the 9/11 attacks, but it seems quite likely. After all, there was clearly a good deal of related activity in Afghanistan immediately prior to 9/11. Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud was assassinated two days before the 9/11 attacks, clearly to a timetable and clearly in a move to take out a potential US proxy against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It is probable that there was telecoms traffic relating to that, if not to the 9/11 attack itself. In addition, Massoud had told the European Parliament only that summer to expect a massive “spectacular” attack against the west in the near future, presaging the 9/11 attack.

So it looks as if a huge opportunity was missed, but that is only half the story.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

rose—

[Mr Davis]

I am sorry, but I shall not give way. I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not mind, but I am sticking to a very narrow script on this occasion.

By early 2002, coalition forces had toppled the Taliban and controlled most of the country. In April, the new Afghan phone network, which now connected all the major Afghan cities, was officially launched, with Hamid Karzai making the first official telephone call. The project had been a belated success and was then very profitable indeed. As agreed at the outset, Mr Bayat gave shares in TSI to Cecil and Bentham, the two British men whose advice had helped him get the Afghan phone network off the ground. In May 2002, a declaration by the American Federal Communications Commission in Washington confirmed that, showing that Cecil and Bentham each owned 15% of the shares in TSI, with Bayat owning 51%. However, not long afterwards Bayat changed his tune. He first offered to buy out Cecil and Bentham for derisory sums, then denied that they were entitled to any shares at all. That “Bayat” is an Arabic term for an oath of honour must have seemed a cruel irony.

For months the dispute continued, eventually ending up in the New York southern district court, where Bentham and Cecil claimed the value of the shares they had been promised and Mr Bayat accused the British men of fraud, deceit and conspiracy. “So what?” one might think. After all, commercial squabbles between former business partners happen every hour of every day in courts around the entire world.