Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill: Committee Stage

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

That is a salutary lesson from the hon. Gentleman. He knows and respects his history, and knows exactly what is being debated here and the impact that that type of speech has.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

This is not an area where I have expertise, but my understanding was that the money resolution enabled money to be spent in preparation for the Bill becoming law. So there is a financial implication of passing a money resolution, even if the Bill has not proceeded to Third Reading and Royal Assent.

[Pete Wishart]

The right hon. Gentleman is right that he is not an expert on this particular issue; he has just demonstrated that by what he said. There is no obligation on the Government to commit money in a money resolution. A money resolution would allow the Committee stage of the Bill to be given the authority that the Leader of the House suggests this motion would not allow. I looked today at some of the proceedings of the Committee. It is like “Alice in Wonderland” meets “Groundhog Day”, without any progress. The Committee seems to come together and adjourn; as quickly as it sits to consider some of the issues, proceedings are abandoned because there is nothing for the Committee to do. What an absolute and utter waste of time.

The key point is not Parliament’s responsibilities and the distinction between Government’s and Parliament’s roles in the House. The key issue is that the private Member’s Bills system is broken. It may be broken beyond repair. This is the fifth Parliament I have been involved in, and I have never known a Parliament to obsess so constantly and continually about private Members’ Bills. Usually they go through without any real issue or difficulty. The Leader of the House mentioned a couple of Bills under the coalition Government for which money resolutions were withheld. In the periphery of my memory, I remember those Bills, but that was about the first time in my 17 years in this place that the Government withheld money resolutions. We are entering a new sort of territory with this Government weapon to stop the progress of Bills that they do not particularly like. The House should consider deeply the increasing use of this method as a blocking tactic for private Members’ Bills before we continue down such an avenue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman, but he is not right. The previous Parliament passed an Act that remains the law until another piece of legislation changes it. That has not happened. A motion in the House has not in itself changed the law. I shall come on to the point about process.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

If my right hon. Friend will forgive me, I will make a little process because I am mindful of Madam Deputy Speaker’s injunction about trying to keep our remarks to nine minutes.

I want to gambol through some of the points made by the shadow Leader of the House, including what she said about numbers. As the Minister who introduced the original legislation, may I say that there is nothing magical about 600? I was asked the question at the time, and it was a manifesto commitment when we were elected in 2010 that we would reduce the size of the House to save money. It was a reduction of about 10%, but we settled on a sensible number rather than a random one. There was nothing magical about it. There was a huge suspicion among Opposition Members that that was some magical number with magical properties. It was not—it was a round number that was significantly lower than 650. The reduction would save a significant amount of money, but there was nothing particularly suspicious about the number.

The shadow Leader of the House mentioned the Opposition’s wish to move from boundary reviews every five years to every 10 years. There was a specific reason why we went for five. There is a choice to be made. My own view is that we can either have infrequent boundary reviews, which will be significant, because there will be a lot of population movement in between, or we can have more frequent boundary reviews which, by virtue of that fact, will be less disruptive because they take lesser population shifts into account. The decision made by the last but one Parliament was to have more frequent boundary reviews that individually would be less disruptive. Of course, the first one—particularly if moving from 650 Members to 600, and if there has not been one for 20 years—is clearly disruptive, but once that has taken place, subsequent reviews will be less disruptive. There is much to recommend in that approach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean]

We have heard that a few times. Of course, I was not here at that time, but in my opinion, the arguments that have been brought forward today do not stack up. Did someone want to intervene on me?

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I’ll have a go! The issue before us is that private Members’ Bills are determined by a queue which is the result of a ballot. The Government are accused of manipulating the queue by withholding money resolutions. Interestingly, what happened last Friday was an attempt by the Government to manipulate the queue by taking a Bill that was No. 8 and getting it a Second Reading on the nod, and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has attracted universal opprobrium for preventing that. That is the irony.

[Rachel Maclean]

Well, I think “Follow that if you dare” is an apposite comment. I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention, and I will proceed with my remarks.

The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) is not in his place at the moment, but he is an honourable man and I respect his campaign on this issue. Of course he has garnered a lot of sympathy across the House. We have heard about the issues that our constituents have with boundaries, and they are valid concerns. It is right that we should be airing them in this House. However, the assertion seems to be that this private Member’s Bill is the best way of dealing with those issues, and I do not agree with that.

G7

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Nothing is further from the truth. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman look at the international coalition that supported the United Kingdom in response to what Russia did on the streets of Salisbury in the nerve agent attack.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Might the prospects for consensus have been better had not leaders previously, and so publicly, announced their intention to undermine US policy on Iran?

[The Prime Minister]

The United States has chosen to reimpose sanctions on Iran and therefore to pull out of the joint comprehensive plan of action—the Iran nuclear deal. We have worked with France and Germany because we continue to believe that, as long as Iran meets its obligations under that deal, it is important to maintain that deal. But we accept—and have been working with those countries, the United States and others—that more needs to be done in relation to Iran’s ballistic missile programme and its destabilising activity in the region. We will continue to work with all partners who want, like us, to ensure that we can take some action to reduce that destabilising activity.

Syria

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think that the hon. Gentleman has seen from the fact that the United Kingdom and France came together with the United States in this action that there is leadership being shown in Europe on this matter. We will continue to work with France, as I said, on the international grouping that it has put together on the prohibition of the use of chemical weapons. It is clear that Europe has taken a stance on this and has shown the way on the importance of the international rules-based order.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Had the Prime Minister first sought our consent, with what detail might she have persuaded us without fundamentally compromising our intelligence-gathering capability?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend has put his finger on a particular aspect of this issue. It is not possible to bring all the intelligence through to this House; it is not possible to make all that intelligence public. Sometimes, actually, more information can be made available after the event than in advance of the event, because we do need to maintain the operational security of our armed forces.

National Security and Russia

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister (Mrs Theresa May)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered national security and Russia.

Three weeks ago, the Russian Federation was responsible for an attempted murder here in our country. This was not only a crime against Sergei and Yulia Skripal: it was an indiscriminate and reckless act against the United Kingdom, putting the lives of innocent civilians at risk; it was an assault on our fundamental values and the rules-based international system that upholds them; and it was part of a pattern of increasingly aggressive Russian behaviour, but which, with the first offensive use of a nerve agent on European soil since the foundation of NATO, also represents a new and dangerous phase in Russia’s hostile activity within our continent and beyond.

So this debate is taking place because there is no greater responsibility for this House, for this Government and for me as Prime Minister than recognising threats to our national security and acting to meet them. So let me set out for the House: what we now know about the recklessness of this act and its exposure of innocent people to potential harm; the evidence that Russia was indeed responsible; the wider pattern of Russia’s illegal and destabilising actions within our continent and beyond; the extensive actions this Government have already been taking; and our determination to work with our international partners to confront the evolving nature of this threat, to defend the rules-based international system and to keep our people safe.

Let me start by updating the House on the situation in Salisbury. Sergei and Yulia Skripal remain critically ill in hospital. Sadly, late last week doctors indicated that their condition is unlikely to change in the near future and that they may never recover fully. This shows the utterly barbaric nature of this act and the dangers that hundreds of innocent citizens in Salisbury could have faced. An investigation continues into all the locations at which the Skripals had been present on Sunday 4 March. As a result, we now have a fuller picture of the recklessness of this act against our country. Although Public Health England has made it clear that the risk to public health is low, and that remains the case, we assess that more than 130 people in Salisbury could have been potentially exposed to the nerve agent. More than 50 people were assessed in hospital, with Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey taken seriously ill. Everyone in the House will welcome the news that he has been discharged and, as we said earlier, we continue to hold him and his family in our thoughts as he makes his recovery.

We are quite clear that Russia was responsible for this act. As I set out for the House in my statements earlier this month, our world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down positively identified the chemical used for this act as a novichok, a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by the Soviet Union. We know that Russia has a record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations, and that it views some former intelligence officers as legitimate targets for those assassinations. We have information that indicates that within the past decade Russia has investigated ways to deliver nerve agents, probably for assassination, and has, as part of this programme, produced and stockpiled small quantities of novichoks. That is clearly in contravention of the chemical weapons convention, so it is right that we have been working closely with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, from which a team arrived in the UK last week and collected samples. This is a normal part of our discharging our obligations under the convention, although we are clear as to what the evidence is.

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the upholding of non-proliferation regimes with our partners is central to our international security, while Russia has recklessly undermined and violated them. As I have set out, no other country has a combination of the capability, intent and motive to carry out such an act. There is no other plausible explanation—and that is not just the view of the UK Government; it was the unanimous view of every single leader at least week’s European Council and it is the view of our allies in NATO and around the world.

There are some who question whether there could be alternative explanations, so let me be absolutely clear: we have been led by evidence, not by speculation. When faced with the evidence, we gave the Russian Government the opportunity to provide an explanation, but they did not do so. They provided no explanation as to why Russia has an undeclared chemical weapons programme, in contravention of international law; no explanation that could suggest that they had lost control of their nerve agent; and no explanation as to how this agent came to be used in the United Kingdom. Instead, they have treated the use of a military-grade nerve agent in Europe with sarcasm, contempt and defiance.

Incredibly, the Russian Government have deployed at least 21 different arguments about it. They have suggested that they never produced novichoks, or that they produced them but then destroyed them. They have tried to claim that their agents are not covered by the chemical weapons convention. They have pointed the finger at other countries, including Slovakia, Sweden and the Czech Republic, and they even tried to claim that the United Kingdom was responsible for a chemical attack on our own citizens. For a nation state like Russia to resort again to peddling such preposterous and contradictory theories is unworthy of its people and their great history.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Cabinet Ministers in this House defended Russia, despite the growing evidence of the enormity of its crimes, from 1929 to 1931. At least that was understandable on the basis of a shared ideology. Now that Russia has abandoned that ideology, to what can the Prime Minister attribute the reluctance of the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) to point the finger where it properly lies?

[The Prime Minister]

I can find no reason to attribute to the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for the stance that he has previously taken on this issue. I hope that, like some of his right hon. and hon. Friends, he will take a different position in this debate.

As I was saying, to peddle such preposterous theories is unworthy of the Russian people. It is merely an effort to distract from the truth of Russia’s violation of international law. This unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom is a clear violation of the chemical weapons convention and a breach of the UN charter. This act against our country is the latest in a pattern of increasingly aggressive Russian behaviour, attacking the international rules-based system across our continent and beyond.

Russia’s illegal actions in Crimea were the first time since the second world war that one sovereign nation has forcibly annexed territory from another in Europe. Since then, Russia has fomented conflict in the Donbass, repeatedly violated the national airspace of several European countries and mounted a sustained campaign of cyber-espionage and disruption.

European Council

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

No. I am sorry, but that is not what I should be doing. My political secretary does a very good job as my political secretary, and as I have said, any statements that have been made were personal statements.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Were we to adopt the Leader of the Opposition’s policy of domestic procurement preference, would that not be a passport to ruin?

[The Prime Minister]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s way with words in his question, and I think he is absolutely right. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration said earlier this afternoon, we want to ensure we are providing a secure document and good value for the taxpayer, and show that we as a Government believe in competition and open markets.

Salisbury Incident

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks—he made a strong statement on Monday in the House as well—and assure him that I and the Government will stay the course. As I said in my statement, we recognise that there might be further Russian provocation. If there is, we have further measures we can deploy, but it is important—and we will encourage our international allies to do this too—that we recognise that this is an important moment to stand up and say to Russia, “No, you cannot do this!”

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

The Russian economy is a fraction but its expenditure on offensive capability a multiple of ours. Is there a lesson there?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course we constantly look at the resources we put in to ensure our national security, which is assured across a number of Departments, and we continue to do so.

Salisbury Incident

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We should all be wary and careful in looking at media outlets that any Member chooses to appear on. As I said, the issue of Russia Today is of concern to Members across the House, and I will make a further statement in the House after we have had the Russian state response.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

In the early 1980s, the planning assumption was that the road to war with the Soviet Union would be preceded by six months of increasing tension, sabotage and assassination. What are the current assumptions?

[The Prime Minister]

There was a time when the threats posed by Russia and others were clear and limited in their type; today, we see a diversity of threats. The previous question referenced Russia’s use of propaganda, and we see it using a variety of means by which to attempt to interfere, intervene and affect countries in the west. We must be able to respond across the range of threats posed.

UK/EU Future Economic Partnership

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The United States has expressed interest in a trade deal with us—so have a number of other countries around the world, such as Australia and others—but as I have said, and as the Environment Secretary and others have said, we remain committed to high animal welfare and environmental standards.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Were a settlement close, how will the Prime Minister react to entreaties to delay departure by agreement within article 50?

[The Prime Minister]

It is our intention to ensure that we can negotiate what is necessary to negotiate within the time scale that is set within article 50.

Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: Border Arrangements

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Pithiness personified—Sir Desmond Swayne.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

What lies behind the European Commission’s partial decision to develop the options?

[Mr Lidington]

I am afraid that that is not a question that I can readily answer. However, it is important that the Commission recognises, as the Prime Minister said earlier, that as far as the Government are concerned, whichever side those of us around the Cabinet table voted or campaigned for during the EU referendum, our commitment to the Union of the United Kingdom is absolute. There is no division whatsoever on that matter, and I hope that our negotiating partners understand that.

Strengthening Families

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

I entirely agree with the case that has been made for the manifesto, of which I am a supporter. I will draw to the attention of the Minister—in so far as it has not been drawn to his attention already, because it most certainly has—the magnitude of the problem we face. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) drew attention to the quite shocking statistic that this country has the most volatile family life of the entire developed world for children under 12, and that comes with huge consequences.

Tomorrow I will hold a surgery, and the 10 or so people who attend will have a range of problems. Some of them will come and tell me about their debt, with the perhaps unrealistic expectation that there is something I can do about it. Equally, there may be a problem with housing—perhaps the completely inadequate nature of someone’s housing, which may be too small, or too damp, or bed and breakfast accommodation, or indeed appalling neighbour problems. It might be to do with schooling—not being able to get their child into the school of choice, the school not being near enough, problems with getting the child to the school, problems with the child’s performance at or behaviour at school. For children in my part of the country, the problem might be lack of access to mental health provision. It might be some other aspect of poverty, such as having to use food banks or whatever. But scratch the surface, and one finds that however that problem may have presented, for nine out of 10 of the cases that came through the door, the cause will have been family breakdown. It is the surest way to poverty and it is for that reason that I support my hon. Friend and this manifesto. Family breakdown is costing us billions and we have to make sure that, across all of Government, we pursue policies that will deal with this epidemic—and it is an epidemic.

Let me draw attention to two particular areas. We had a debate in Westminster Hall on Tuesday last week on marriage. In summing up, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), slipped into what I hope the Minister who is here today will not slip into—indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) warned him not to. I mean that habit of quoting civil servants, or whatever. The Under-Secretary responded to the debate by saying, “Well, of course, of course, families come in many shapes and sizes.” I intervened and asked him, “How many? How many shapes and sizes?” and I challenged him, saying, “A family is not just any collection of people who happen to share a fridge!”

When it comes to this education consultation that is going on at the moment with respect to relationships, I do not believe that it is satisfactory to say that, whatever the continuing education requirement is, relationships education must include family life. Actually, it is the other way round. The law now is clear—the education must be about marriage. Of course, we want relationship education—the strength of relationship education—to be about marriage and other relationships, not relationships including marriage. The emphasis is the other way round, which brings me neatly to the Bill that passed last Friday promoted by our hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton).

That Bill seeks to make civil partnerships available to mixed-sex couples. Civil partnerships were introduced in 2002 only for single-sex couples—same-sex couples—because marriage was not available to them. His intention is that civil partnerships should be extended; there should be equality and they should be extended to mixed-sex couples. I understand that the Government’s intention is that the Bill will be amended in the Bill Committee so that there is a review of whether there should be such an extension. I have an open mind. I was accused of seeking to undermine marriage by my support for the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013; my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham accused me of that in the Bill Committee. My fear was that introducing some sort of step-down marriage is the danger that will undermine marriage. However, I have an open mind about what a review under the current Bill should look at.

It seems to me that there is a possibility that extending what is a clearly protected, committed, legal relationship to people who would not otherwise have entered into one may actually be a significant advantage. Equally, it may be that, by introducing some form of “marriage-lite”, we actually undermine marriage, by persuading people who do not feel that they could go for the full-fat version that they can enter a civil partnership, on the basis that it is not quite the real deal. In fact, it is: the legal obligations and protection that provide for civil partnerships are identical to marriage in almost absolutely every respect, and I think it would be a mistake to persuade people that somehow they were entering into a relationship that was less committed if they were to enter a civil partnership.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I intervened on our hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) last Friday, saying that there are unintended consequences to consider. I made the point that if he gets his way, everybody, of whatever sex, will be able to marry anybody they like, or have a civil partnership with anybody they like. The only people who would not be able to have a civil partnership are siblings.

I raised this issue in 2004, when the first Act on civil partnerships—the Civil Partnership Act 2004—got through. I had been written to by two sisters who had lived together all their lives, but when one dies the other one will be forced from their home. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne), I have an open mind on this subject, but if we are going to reform the law we have got to think of the unintended consequences. It would be fatuous if anybody can have a civil partnership or marriage apart from siblings.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

My hon. Friend draws a very important and powerful corrective to proceeding with that Bill, certainly in its current form.

I am very glad that the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) spoke earlier. I draw attention to what she said about service life. Those of us who have experienced service life and who have a constituency with a large number of service personnel will know that the statistics for marriage breakdown are much higher and much worse for military families. That is largely as a consequence of the pressures of having to deal with prolonged absences and the whole operational cycle. I put that to the Minister in the hope that he will draw it to the attention of Defence Ministers.

There certainly is scope within such institutions as the armed forces to provide training courses that will help with family breakdown. There are all sorts of courses available that help people to strength their relationships, and I have experienced them myself. I suggest that within a military environment there is scope for making such courses available to both partners—not just the serving partner—in a way that would not be available in civilian life. After all, those of us who have served did our MATTs every year. I have long ago forgotten what that stands for, but as well as the ordinary battlefield drills, skill at arms, and nuclear, biological, chemical and battlefield first aid, part of it was about standards and values, and it strikes me that there is scope under standards and values to strengthen relationships.