Ukraine

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is so right, and I know that is what the House thinks. We admire the Russian people. Our links to the Russian people go back to the time when we stood shoulder to shoulder with them to fight fascism. Russia’s contribution to culture, to art, to literature and to music is unparalleled. It is an extraordinary country, and nothing we do or say should obscure that.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Winston Churchill created the Council of Europe as a bastion against fascism and communism. Since the fall of communism, Russia has set great importance on its membership, as a fig leaf of respectability. Every time our Conservative group has tried to get it expelled, we have been foiled by Russian gold. Will the Prime Minister now instruct his ambassador on the Council of Europe to move for the immediate expulsion of Russia from the Council, so that there is no place for gangsters in the halls of civilised nations?

[The Prime Minister]

Eloquently put, and my right hon. Friend is dead right. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell), who is on the Council of Europe, made that point the other day, and I certainly agree with it.

Living with Covid-19

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 21st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

If the hon. Lady waits a little longer, she will get a breakdown of how we propose to support the most vulnerable. We will support them, as we have done throughout the pandemic.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Experts will argue for years about whether we made the right choices. Some of us, for what it is worth, would have liked a lighter touch. However, one thing is certain, and we know this from independent testimony that has emerged from a former adviser to the Prime Minister: but for the Prime Minister’s freedom-loving, libertarian instincts, these lockdowns would have been much longer and much worse, with incalculable consequences for the young and for people’s mental health. Can we rely on him to rule out any more lockdowns in the coming decade as he remains Prime Minister?

[The Prime Minister]

What you can certainly rely on, Mr Speaker, is the Government taking the tough decisions to protect the British people. We will have a vaccine and science-led approach to dealing with the pandemic.

Covid-19 Update

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We are able to make progress on the covid rules, and to get rid of them, because of our deep understanding of the pandemic. I thank the hon. Gentleman and all our Scottish colleagues for helping to communicate what we are doing in such a way that British people across the whole UK have been able to move forward more or less together. The differences between us are far, far smaller than the similarities, about which I am very proud.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Only this morning, I received an email on behalf of deaf pupils who have been so disadvantaged by forced mask wearing in schools. But for this Prime Minister, we would have had far more severe lockdowns and restrictions. Will he please remain true to his instincts and sweep away all the remaining controls, such as isolation, that are crippling the NHS? To paraphrase Leo Amery, “For God’s sake, keep going.”

[The Prime Minister]

I have not sat here quite long enough—nothing like it, in my view—but, yes, my right hon. Friend is right about schools. It is very important to keep them going. I think masks erode our ability to educate properly and to learn properly, and I am glad they are going.

Covid-19 Update

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I certainly share the frustrations of everyone who has found it difficult to get a test during a time of unbelievable demand. We have taken responsibility by tripling supply and creating our own home-grown UK lateral flow testing manufacturing capability, of which the Labour Front Bench was in unbelievable ignorance when this debate began.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Earlier this week the Lincolnshire hospitals declared a critical incident, and people in Lincolnshire no doubt thought that they were being overrun with covid. However, NHS officials told the Lincolnshire MPs yesterday that of all the intensive care beds in Lincolnshire, only two were taken by people because of or with covid, and although there were large numbers of staff absences, a quarter could be accounted for by staff being absent because they were isolating. The suspicion is that the NHS is being brought to its knees not by covid, but by the rules that require people to isolate for so long. What is the road map for shortening the period of isolation?

[The Prime Minister]

What we are doing is supporting the NHS, supporting staff and making sure that we have as much capacity as possible, and absenteeism, although high, is not as high as it has been at some other points during the pandemic, although that is no cause for complacency. What we will do is keep the period of isolation under constant review, and if we think we can bring it down without increasing infection, of course we will do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question, and I appreciate the personal experience that makes her interested in psilocybin. I am aware of interest in the area and it has been talked about several times. I propose that she has a meeting, as soon as it can be arranged, with the relevant Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Apparently the Government are thinking of relaxing visa controls for India in order to get a free trade deal. While a free trade deal is valuable in itself, we should not be held to ransom. Does the Prime Minister agree that our new working-class voters who voted for Brexit did not vote to replace immigration from Europe with more immigration from the rest of the world, any more than that when they were told that we would take back control, we would lose control of the channel? Will he convince us that he is determined to connect to our supporters and control immigration?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. I do not recognise the account that my right hon. Friend has given: we do not do free trade deals on that basis. Indeed, I can tell him that since we took back control, net immigration has gone down—[Interruption.] That is all the Opposition want—their answer is, everywhere and always, uncontrolled immigration. That is their approach to the economy, and it is not the right way forward. That is why our Nationality and Borders Bill, currently in the House of Lords, is so important—it will enable us to take back control of our borders properly and to tackle illegal immigration. What would be good would be to hear some support from the Labour Benches.

Human Rights Legislation

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I think the hon. Gentleman must have read the papers a little bit quicker than I did. It is not just Conservative politicians. Indeed, former members of the judiciary make the case for reform very powerfully, and there is of course the Labour architect of the Human Rights Act in Jack Straw, who has made the case for reform. But the real truth is that the calls for reform and a bit more common sense in the system have come from our voters—the public—and he would do well to remember that.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I am a member of the Council of Europe, which I think has lost its way. It lets Russia literally get away with murder but interferes in the minutiae of so-called human rights in western democracies. I support what the Secretary of State has said today, but I want to be convinced that if we stay in the European Court of Human Rights and the Council of Europe, what he is doing will actually make much difference. He can convince me in one way. At the moment, our deportation policy is a complete joke. We never deport anybody. Illegal migrants know that they can vanish in the community. Will he now convince me that after we pass this we will be able to deport these people and stop this illegal migration?

[Dominic Raab]

Human rights reform will no more be a silver bullet for all the ills of the world than any other reform, but it will deal with a whole range of serious and significant issues that the people of this country, my right hon. Friend’s constituents and mine, want dealing with. The reason I give in the consultation paper—I wrote about it in The Times today—is that article 8 is an example of a qualified right that allows us to stretch, or to press, the margin of appreciation. Some 70% of the successful human rights challenges to deportation orders by foreign national offenders come from people claiming under article 8 on the right to a family life. That is a very good example of what we can address.

COP26

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

And the hon. Lady certainly must not shout at me.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I urge the Prime Minister and other world leaders not to get ahead of public opinion on this. The people of Gainsborough South West ward, which I represent—the 27th most deprived ward in the entire country—are worried not so much about the future of the Great Barrier Reef in 50 years’ time, but about their great big bloody heating bills now. They are heavily reliant on gas, of which we have an abundant supply. Manufacturers in northern levelling-up towns are worried about their competitiveness with China, as more and more regulations are imposed on them. To be fair to India, in Uttar Pradesh, there are millions living in dire poverty whose emissions are very low. Do we represent them? Their whole future depends now—this minute—on fossil fuels; otherwise, they might literally starve. Be realistic.

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Of course we must be realistic, but we have seen that it is entirely realistic to move very rapidly to renewable energy and see the cost of that renewable energy fall vertiginously, as it has done—the cost of wind has fallen 60% just since 2015, and solar likewise.

I urge my right hon. Friend to tell his wonderful electorate in Gainsborough that this is a massive opportunity for us. We have first mover advantage, as we did in the first industrial revolution. We are going with this green industrial revolution now; I believe that it will be of massive long-term benefit to people across this country.

G20 and COP26 World Leaders Summit

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady asks me to go for the detail, but having said some kind things about her approach just now, after listening to that I think I prefer the forensic—or the pseudo-forensic—approach of the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer). She is completely in ignorance of the basic facts. We have cut our CO₂ emissions by 44% on 1990 levels, largely by moving from 80% dependence on coal 50 years ago to about 1% or 2% today. It is a massive cut.

We have not cut our investment in overseas development aid for climate change funding—[Interruption.] No, we have not. We have kept it at £11.6 billion. I do not know whether the right hon. Lady was paying attention to the news, but only the other day we announced another £1 billion, which we were able to do because of the growth in the economy. She is completely wrong about the facts. As for what she said about vaccines, I am afraid it is an insult to the incredible work done by the UK vaccine roll-out programme across the world. One and a half billion people have had access to cost-price vaccines, thanks to the deal that this Government did with Oxford AstraZeneca—a record no other country in the world has—to say nothing of the £548 million extra that we put into Gavi, or the extra 100 million vaccines that we are donating by June next year. This country has an absolutely outstanding record in supporting vaccination around the world. If the right hon. Lady wants to look at the detail, I urge her to go off and study it.

I welcome the broad thrust of what the right hon. Lady said about COP26. I think she was saying that she sees signs of progress but there is a lot more to do, and frankly, there she is right. Perhaps I can point to the things that have happened since G20, and draw her attention to India’s massive commitment to cut CO₂ by 2030 by cleaning up its power system. I can point to the $10 billion from Japan over the next five years to support developing countries around the world, and I point also not just to Brazil, but to Russia, China and 110 countries around the world that have signed up to the forestry declaration to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. That considerable achievement will make a huge difference, and we will use consumer power, and the power of corporations and the private sector around the world, to effect that change.

For me, the single most important thing that came out of COP was an agreement around the world about the basic intellectual approach now being taken by the UK through the clean green initiative and what Joe Biden calls the build back better world initiative. That is the thing that offers greatest hope for humanity. We are not just putting in Government money to help countries around the world clean up, and putting in development aid money—although we are massively supporting that—but we are now leveraging in tens, perhaps hundreds, of trillions of private sector investment. That is the way to make the difference, and if we can get that right at this COP it will be a truly remarkable thing. As I say, however, there is still a long way to go.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Given that we are now taxing people at a higher rate than at any time since we were impoverished under the Attlee Government, and given that despite the fact that we produce only 1% of global emissions and China produces 27% we are now loading further controls on our industry that are not being matched in China or India, further eroding our competitive advantage, will the Prime Minister grip all his spending Departments and ensure that we root out waste and incompetence and create a genuine enterprise, low-tax economy?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, and that is why we still have among the lowest corporation taxes in the OECD, in spite of the measures that we have been obliged to take because of the pandemic. That is why we put in, for instance, the 125% super deduction for companies to invest in capital, invest in infrastructure and expand their businesses. The results—the benefits—are already being seen, just in gigabit broadband alone.

International Aid: Treasury Update

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Programme motion
Tuesday 13th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Keir Starmer]

I will in a moment.

This has been providing education for women and girls; fighting poverty; providing sanitation, healthcare and vaccines; building resilience and infrastructure; and doing incredible post-conflict and reconstruction work, where I think Britain does a better job than anyone else, so it has real results. Let us be clear what these cuts would mean: 1 million girls losing out on schooling; nearly 3 million women and children going without life-saving nutrition; 5.6 million children left unvaccinated; an estimated 100,000 deaths worldwide. [Interruption] The Prime Minister says “Rubbish”; that is the human toll of the choices the Government are making, and it is not rubbish.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The case being made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman is that the Prime Minister is making a promise he will not keep, but what did Tony Blair and Gordon Brown do? They made a promise but they never, ever spent 0.7% of GDP on aid, and therefore the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s speech lacks all moral force.

[Keir Starmer]

They more than doubled it; they set the goal, and then successive Prime Ministers implemented that goal. That is such a weak argument—11 years into this Government that is such a weak argument. When I was Director of Public Prosecutions, which has a five-year term, the very idea that I could turn around four or five years into the role and say it was somebody else’s fault five, 10, 15, 20 years ago—I have always found such an argument particularly weak. This is such a bad argument but it is used all the time. They have been in power for 11 years; either take responsibility for what you are doing or give up.

Our overseas aid budget goes beyond that moral obligation: it also helps build a more stable world and keeps us safer in the UK. In Afghanistan aid has supported improvements in security, in governance, in economic development and in rights for women and girls, yet, despite all the challenges that that country now faces and the security and terrorist threats that that poses to the UK—we know about those, and the previous Prime Minister the right hon. Member for Maidenhead knows about them—UK aid to Afghanistan is being cut from £192.3 million to £38.2 million. That is Afghanistan. [Interruption.] The Prime Minister chunters, but they are actually the Government figures. In Yemen, where there is the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world, UK aid has been cut by nearly 60%; in Syria, the Government are slashing aid by around 50%; and for the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh there is a cut of 42%. All of those decisions will create more refugees, more instability and more people having to flee their homes.

Voter ID

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Patricia Gibson]

I will not give way, because we need to move on. What we do have evidence for, from countries around the world where voter ID operates, is that it creates the barrier that we have heard about—a barrier to voting, and a barrier between citizens and their right to exercise their democratic choice.

The hon. Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) said that we do not know whether election fraud is taking place. All we can rely on are the facts, and the facts do not bear out the claim that there is a need for this Bill. Here is the rub: all the evidence shows that the more socially disadvantaged a voter is, the more likely it is that that voter will be further disadvantaged by the introduction of voter ID. Is this a mere accident? Is it a mere accident that the demographics most likely to be disadvantaged by the Bill are less likely to vote Tory? It must be an accident, surely. It must be an accident, because the title of the Bill—[Interruption.]

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Can we all just calm down?

[Patricia Gibson]

The Bill was called the electoral integrity Bill, and the long title still refers to “integrity”, so I am sure that any advantage or perceived advantage to the Tory party will be accidental.

The American experience tells us that voter ID resulted in reduced turnout among black, Hispanic and working-class voters, but of course this Government will know that. Research in the UK shows that the voters least likely to possess the necessary ID include the most disadvantaged groups in our community, but again, the Government will know that. The Government well know that 3.5 million voters across the UK do not have access to photographic identification and 11 million do not have a driving licence or a passport.

The example of Northern Ireland shows that an estimated 25,000 voters did not vote, because they did not have the required form of identification, but this information is not routinely published and no proper work has been done to analyse the further effects in Northern Ireland. The Government are willing to spend the estimated £10 million in implementing this exclusive, unnecessary scheme at a time when, as the Government will surely agree, spending is under real pressure, so it is almost impossible not to be suspicious of this measure.

In contrast, what do we see in Scotland? We see the franchise extended to 16 and 17-year-olds for the Scottish Parliament and local authority elections, and we see votes for foreign nationals who have leave to remain. Perhaps it is worth considering that, as a direct result of that, the voter turnout in May’s Scottish Parliament election was the highest for any election since devolution was established in 1999. There might be a lesson in that for proponents of this legislation. Surely any healthy democracy would seek to encourage voter participation instead of doing what we know suppresses turnout, for reasons that simply are not backed up by any convincing and sustained evidence. The so-called electoral integrity Bill, as was, is very much about elections, but let us be clear: it has nothing to do with integrity, which many argue is not really a priority for this Government anyway. Sadly, that is a problem for this Government, because the voters are watching and they understand what is going on here. The views expressed by those of us today who oppose the Bill speak for the electorate, who know.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

I just inform hon. Members that we had a 22-minute suspension, so we now have to finish at 6.12 pm. Can the Front-Bench spokesmen keep an eye on the clock, because it is only fair to give the proposer of the debate some time at the end?