Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Debate between Edward Leigh and Thomas Docherty

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Are we slowly arriving at the 21st century?

[Thomas Docherty]

We are, although I hope you will bear with me, Mr Leigh.

If we go forward to 1745, we find the Duke of Cumberland fighting in the battle of Fontenoy, during the war of the Austrian succession. Despite the use of ballistic weapons, he invited his French counterparts to fire first, although it is worth noting—this is the key point—that he had moved some distance back before inviting them to fire on his troops. As ever, the general was not in the firing line.

Moving forward to the 21st century, we see that UAVs are a logical extension of the use of such stand-off ordnance, which the hon. Member for North Wiltshire so eloquently discussed. As he said, if we look at the history of warfare, it is difficult to see a coherent argument pointing to a significant difference between the use of armed UAVs—it is important to note that the debate is about UAVs, not armed UAVs, although it has inevitably turned into a debate about armed UAVs—and the archers of Agincourt, the artillery of Fontenoy, the Mamluk gunners of Ain Jalut or the Roman archers of the 2nd century BC. However, in the modern world, our values mean that our sense of moral repugnance at the death of any civilian or military personnel has come a long way since the Duke of Cumberland so graciously invited the French to fire first on his British forces.

It is worth talking about not only armed UAVs but the important role played by unarmed UAVs. In an answer given on 30 October, Lord Astor said that only one of the five types of UAV that we currently deploy in Afghanistan is armed. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that, of the 5,000 sorties that have been carried out in the past 12 months, only a handful have been carried out by the Reaper; the vast majority have been reconnaissance missions, using the ISTAR—intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance—UAV, which is there to support our troops.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Wiltshire, who organised the all-party group on the armed forces welcome for our brave men and women returning from Afghanistan and Libya. It is worth placing on the record not only our thanks for the courageous work that our personnel do in Afghanistan, but the fact that we remain committed to giving them the best support we can in their operations. I challenge any Member of the House honestly to tell me that the support our armed forces have when they are under fire would be enhanced if we removed the UAV capability from the field of operations.

The Minister with responsibility for procurement is here, and I welcome him to his post; this is the first chance we have had to debate. I hope he will not mind my saying that his predecessor is sorely missed by the British defence industry and all of us who are interested in it; he had a real passion for, and a real knowledge of, the field. However, I look forward to working with the current Minister in the remaining two and a half years before the general election.

Perhaps the Minister can answer a few questions that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston raised in her opening remarks and which I will reiterate. As the Queen Elizabeth class carriers—the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales—come into service at the end of this decade and the start of the next one, what provisions will be made to supply them with UAV maritime capabilities? We also have the Type 26, which the Minister is currently developing with the support of BAE Systems and the Chief of Defence Matériel. What capabilities does he envisage it, or indeed the Type 45, having in the next decade or two decades?

How does the Ministry of Defence intend to support British industry on this issue? We have a long and inglorious tradition, as you will recall, Mr Leigh, of developing absolutely first-rate aviation capabilities and then allowing them to wither on the vine. The example I think of most often is the Hawker Siddeley Harrier, which was first developed by Britain in the early 1960s as the successor to the Kestrel programme and which is now flown by the United States Marine Corps and the Spanish Navy. However, it is no longer used by the UK armed forces—that is probably a debate for another day—and the latter versions are not even developed by British companies; I think that Boeing developed the latter Marine Corps version.

How will the Ministry of Defence support British companies that are assisting in the development of the next generation of UAVs, so that we do not repeat the mistakes that we have made far too often in the past? What role does the Minister see for UAVs as a replacement for RAF pilots? Those of us on the Defence Committee regularly discuss the issue with Sir Stephen Dalton and other leading members of the RAF, and so does the all-party group. To what extent does the Ministry of Defence believe that, as we move through this century, the fast-jet pilot will become obsolete, in much the same way as we went from having bombers such as the Vulcan and the Victor, with crews of five or seven, to the modern Typhoon, with just one pilot?

As technology improves, to what extent will the UAV be an all-weather, all-year-round weapon? Current UAVs are severely limited in their ability to operate; when there is a severe gust, quite a lot of them struggle. Their payloads are also severely limited in terms of reconnaissance and ordnance. How does the Minister see the long-term future in that respect?

I am conscious that my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham will be setting out the Opposition’s official position, so I will close by reminding Members that when we talk about drones or UAVs, we are not talking about some sci-fi technology, with the weapons thinking for themselves. These weapons are no different from a Paveway or a Brimstone; it is just that, rather than being dropped off a Typhoon or a Tornado on a stand-off by a fast-jet pilot, they are being flown under the command of a living, breathing, serving member of Her Majesty’s armed forces.

It will help the debate if we avoid wild flights of fancy—Members will pardon the dreadful pun—and remember that we are talking, I hope, about well-trained members of the British armed forces, who have, and will continue to have, overall control of these vehicles.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Thomas Docherty

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leigh]

They should, but the Government have got themselves into such a pickle over this that they will not be able to do anything because we will now be talking about it for weeks and months. What is so important about it?

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has repeatedly talked about weeks and months. May I assure Members on both sides of the House that the Opposition have made it clear that we do not intend to wreck or filibuster the Bill? This is about genuine debate, and there is no confusion as to the position that the Opposition will be adopting.

[Mr Leigh]

I think that that was said with a bit of irony and that the hon. Gentleman protests too much. Of course the Opposition are not going to wreck the Bill, which, at an appropriate moment, they will allow to get to the other place—after they have ensured that the country has had the unholy spectacle of our discussing, week after week, while this appalling recession is going on, an issue that, I can assure him, is of no interest whatsoever in the Dog and Duck in Scunthorpe. What on earth are we doing?

What is so wrong with the House of Lords? The point that I make continually is that whereas over the past 15 years, we in the Commons have had the collective courage to defeat the Government only 10 times, our friends in the other place have defeated the Government no fewer than 576 times. That point has been made already, but it is a powerful one.

I argue against this reform from first principles because, inevitably, the people who will be elected to the House of Lords will be politicians. When I made that point to the Deputy Prime Minister yesterday, he said that they would be a different sort of politician. What is a different sort of politician? We are all politicians and we are all ambitious. Although we deny it, we all want office. There is nothing wrong with that. Therefore, to a greater or lesser extent, we are all creatures of the Whips Office. We have to accept that. We come into politics because we have the ambition to become Ministers and to achieve something. The point has been made again and again that many people in the other place are past ambition.

Why do we want to abolish an institution that has held the Government so closely to account that, in the past 15 years, it has defeated them no fewer than 576 times? The fundamental problem is that once the House of Lords is elected, it will become the poodle of the House of Commons. The real problem is not with the primacy of the House of Commons, but that the Executive are all-powerful. It is only in the other place that there is any decent scrutiny and that the Government are occasionally defeated.

I am not only worried that the Government will have an easier ride in the reformed House of Lords; we must ask ourselves why our friends in the Liberal Democrat party are so determined to get the Bill through. It is so important to them because once it is passed, half of our legislature will be elected by proportional representation and, therefore, the Liberals will have a permanent lock on half our Parliament. It will be impossible for people such as me who want constantly to come forward with radical ideas from the right and for Labour Members who want to come forward with radical ideas from the left to wade through the dominance of the Liberal establishment in the other place. There would never have been the kind of reforms that Mrs Thatcher achieved in office under that system. Many people in this House may think that that would have been good, but I think that it would have been a great shame.

That is why this is an important Bill, why we should be discussing it up and down the country, and why we have to defeat it. We cannot just measure this argument in terms of programme motions; we have to measure it in terms of what is right for our country. What is right for our country is to retain the system of an elected House of Commons and a revising second Chamber that does an excellent job of improving legislation. We must leave it alone and defeat this Bill tonight.

Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Thomas Docherty

Friday 9th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I suspect that Mr Fraser would like to have that debate. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire is a sensible man—on occasion he is a Dunfermline Athletic fan, and he played in a half-decent band, so he has occasional good judgment—but I disagree with him and Mr Fraser, because Scottish Conservatives, as such, now believe in full fiscal autonomy, it would appear. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) is absolutely right: under that proposal, there would be separate Budgets from the Chancellor for those measures that apply to Scotland only, and those that apply to the rest of the United Kingdom.

The hon. Member for West Worcestershire talked about her great desire, which I think is genuine, to have decisions made at the lowest level of government. I notice—I went out and checked—that in proceedings on the Scotland Bill, she voted not to devolve power over the railways to the Scottish Parliament; that did not quite seem to fit with her logic. I suspect that there are several other cases where Conservatives claim to believe in giving greater power to Scotland, but in proceedings on the Scotland Bill have voted against doing that. I am sure that that was simply an oversight on her part, and not an inconsistency in approach.

Lots of Bills that pass through this House, or begin up the other end of the Corridor, appear on the face of it to be England-only, or England-and-Wales-only, but have clauses inserted by the Government—or have Back Benchers on either side of the House, or our Front Benchers, attempt to insert a clause—that would apply to the whole United Kingdom. I shall give one simple example. The rules for election to the Scottish Parliament are set by this place. We determine the boundaries, and the age at which people can vote in those elections. That is clearly a matter that affects only Scotland. I cannot possibly see how that would be anything other than a matter for the Scottish people; I would be grateful if hon. Members could point out a flaw in that thinking. However, as that is part of the Scotland Bill, I think that the argument of the hon. Member for West Worcestershire would still be that she, an English MP, would vote on the Scotland Bill, and on each part and clause of it, because the Bill would have been categorised by the Secretary of State as a Bill that impacts on multiple territories. I regret to tell the hon. Lady that that inconsistency means that her Bill is not perfectly formed.

[Mr Leigh]

The hon. Gentleman asked Members to intervene; I will, and I am prepared to concede that I should not be allowed to vote on the Scottish Bill, or on anything to do with Scotland, if he will concede never to vote on anything to do exclusively with England.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but I do not believe in that logic. I believe in the United Kingdom. I hear repeatedly from Government parties, “I believe in the United Kingdom”. Unlike the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, who is a proud separatist and supporter of independence, I believe that we are stronger together. Under our system, we are elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. If the Government parties wish to create an English Parliament or Assembly—I am not a supporter of regional assemblies, and I welcome the decision of the people of north-east England overwhelmingly to reject a regional assembly—they should bring forward that legislation. That is not what they told people at the election.

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[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a compelling argument. Indeed, as an ex-lawyer he does so much better than I ever could.

It is all about interpretation. Many people in London with strong feelings about the Crossrail Bill would have said that it had nothing to do with Members from other parts of the United Kingdom. It is, to some extent, in the eye of the beholder.

Turning to the suggestion of the hon. Member for West Worcestershire about the Secretary of State, she is a rational and reasonable individual and is a supporter of the Speaker, but it is possible that some of her colleagues are not so rational or have swivel eyes and are anti-Speaker. The measure is not designed to help the Speaker: it is about fixing the board for the game. Surely, it is in a Secretary of State’s interest, one way or the other, to determine for the benefit of their own party or of the coalition whether or not MPs of other nations should be allowed to vote.

[Mr Leigh]

Let us concede that it is not the Secretary of State who should decide those things but the Speaker. Presumably the hon. Gentleman would accept that the Speaker would make that determination.

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[Mr Leigh]

We have had a very long debate, but the issue is terribly simple. I agree with virtually everything that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has said—apart, of course, from the end game of what he is trying to achieve. The rest made sense. The issue is actually extremely simple, as becomes clear if we look at both the Bill before us—which is what we are supposed to do anyway on Third Reading—and our Standing Orders.

The Bill, actually, does not pose innumerable political problems for either side of the House. All it says, under the heading “Duties of the Secretary of State”, is:

“The Secretary of State must, when publishing draft legislation, ensure that the legal and financial effect of that legislation on each part of the United Kingdom is separately and clearly identified.”

It is as simple as that. It does not actually address the substance of the West Lothian question, but something that can address the substance of the West Lothian question is already in our Standing Orders.

It is so simply put in Standing Order 97(1):

“After any public bill has been first printed, the Speaker shall, if of the opinion that its provisions relate exclusively to Scotland, give a certificate to that effect”.

The House within five minutes next Tuesday afternoon, if it wished, could simply pass a motion to amend its own Standing Orders so that they read, “After any public bill has been first printed, the Speaker shall, if of the opinion that its provisions relate exclusively to Scotland or England, give a certificate to that effect”.

The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) has said—some of the points that he made were quite good—that there might be great political consequences. There would not, because as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald) has said, Standing Order No. 97 is not a closed Standing Order, because it gives a route to the House and the Minister. Once the Speaker has given his certificate, that is not the end of the process, because Standing Order No. 97(2) states:

“On the order being read for the second reading of a bill so certified, a motion may be made by a Minister”.

To respond to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, if there was doubt about whether the tuition fees Bill related exclusively to England—on the face of it, one might think that it would relate exclusively to England, given that it concerns education—because of a possible knock-on financial effect for Scotland, there could be communication through the usual channels. Despite the Speaker’s certificate sending the Bill to Grand Committee—the English Grand Committee in this case—I am sure that we could accommodate the SNP, because our Standing Orders are sensible and, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire has said, we have to live together in this place. In such circumstances, we could say that the tuition fees Bill should not be given to the English Grand Committee and that it should not be considered exclusively by English Members. There is therefore a neat and elegant solution to the problem.

Despite four decades of debate about the West Lothian question, we could move in a slow and traditional way—in a Fabian way, if I may say so; not a revolutionary way—to solve the problem. We could simply amend our Standing Orders and develop a procedure, bit by bit, through which exclusively English legislation would be referred to an English Grand Committee, so that only English Members would vote.

If that approach was such a problem, why, during the time we have had Standing Order No. 97—throughout the 20th century and, for all I know, the 19th century—has no hon. Member said that there was a great problem? There was no great debate even between 1992 and 1997. At that time, if the Speaker issued a certificate to say that a Bill was exclusively Scottish, it would be considered by the Scottish Grand Committee, on which the Labour party would have had a big majority, and there was no argument. If there was an insuperable problem with extending the remit of Standing Order No. 97 to England, one would have expected that the measure would have been the subject of great debate in the past, but that was not the case.

To return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), if the Government wanted to act, they would not need a commission. We would not need even the Bill, because all it does is say that the Secretary of State will express an opinion about how legislation will affect particular parts of the United Kingdom. The Bill is completely harmless, because it ties neither the House nor any Minister.

[Thomas Docherty]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am not a Fabian—I probably never will be a Fabian—but the difference between Standing Order No. 97 and the Bill is that clause 1 provides that the Secretary of State will make the determination, not the Speaker. Does he agree that that shows the political danger in the Bill?

[Mr Leigh]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, because that point was the one grain of truth in his speech. It increasingly worries me, because I wonder whether we are wrongly politicising the problem. We all know that the Bill, like all private Members’ Bills, is fundamentally a campaigning Bill. We acknowledge our debt to my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), because she has achieved a huge amount through her campaign by actually getting a commission set up, even though it is entirely unnecessary.

I understand the point made by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife. If I thought that the Bill, if enacted, would tie the hands of the House and politicise the process in such a way that a Conservative Education Secretary could determine that a Bill was exclusively English and therefore stop any Scottish Member voting on it, I would have my doubts. However, while my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire may tell me that her Bill is more ambitious than I believe, I can read only what it states:

“The Secretary of State must, when publishing draft legislation, ensure that the legal and financial effect of that legislation on each part of the United Kingdom is separately and clearly identified.”

The Bill does not say that the Secretary of State will decide whether a Bill is exclusively English; all that will happen is that there will be more knowledge. The Speaker would make his determination, but even after that, if my proposal were accepted, the Minister, in consultation with the other parties, could decide that a Bill—relating, say, to tuition fees—should be discussed on the Floor of the House. There is absolutely no problem or difficulty about it.

Hundreds of thousands of words have been talked about the West Lothian question—about how it will divide us, and about how there would be two classes of Member and all the rest of it. That is complete nonsense; we have always had several classes of Member. There have always been Ministers and Back Benchers. There has always been the Scottish Grand Committee, and nobody has said that it would lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom. The Speaker issuing a certificate to say that a Bill is exclusively about English education will not break up the United Kingdom. It is so simple; why do the Government not do it?

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Edward Leigh and Thomas Docherty

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leigh]

Or hopefully not changing it, as my hon. Friend has said.

It does not necessarily help the argument to question what happens in Australia, Finland or the USA. It is what happens here that is important, because we care about this place and we want to create our own system, which we want to be discussed and understood by the public. We also want to make a judgment that will be considered fair.

[Thomas Docherty]

I have just returned from the British-American parliamentary group visit to the US, with colleagues from all parties. [Interruption.] It is an excellent place to visit and regards were sent to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who was on last year’s trip. It might help the Committee to know that millions and millions of dollars are spent on each individual question put forward. Given that we rightly have restrictions on how much each side can spend, does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is one more reason why it should be a stand-alone vote?

[Mr Leigh]

That is a very good point and the hon. Gentleman referred earlier to another one about the number of spoiled ballot papers in the Scottish elections. If I were a Scottish MP, I would be angry about what is going on. We in this national Parliament are hijacking their election, when a very large amount of what is now decided for Scotland is decided by the Scottish Parliament. If I were a Scottish person, I would be angry, given that there is this concentration of media interest and writing in London, where no election at all is taking place, and the entire media will be focused on the AV issue. That would detract from the attention that should be paid to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

[Mr Leigh]

There has not yet been enough debate today about Northern Ireland—or, indeed, about Wales—but the arguments are all the same. The fact is that 39 million people will vote on the first Thursday of May in the parliamentary elections, the Assembly elections and local elections. I repeat that 39 million people will be involved. Why should those important elections, which are crucial to the regions and nations of our country, be subsumed into this referendum?

It is incumbent on the Government to provide an argument. They should not try to pull the wool over our eyes about money. This is not about money; it is about something else. There are many other and better ways of doing this. The Government should listen to the arguments adduced in Committee, which are overwhelming. The overwhelming argument is that we should debate the issue calmly and sensibly, that the argument should be rolled out and that the people can make the decision. Let right be done; let us have a referendum on a different day.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to amendment 1, tabled by me and some 40 other Opposition Members representing all four nations of the United Kingdom. I am conscious that many Members wish to speak and that time is, thanks to the programming, restricted. I will therefore restrict my remarks to two aspects of the amendment: why we tabled it, and why the date of 8 September 2011 was chosen.

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[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful for that point. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) is present and he has usefully highlighted the fact that in the last three months the Deputy Prime Minister’s own costs have risen from £80 million to £100 million—a sign of inflation going mad within the coalition.

The second reason for suggesting an alternative date is in order to ensure that there is the fairest possible ballot. As I mentioned in response to an earlier intervention, not all parts of the United Kingdom will be holding elections on 5 May 2011. Large swathes of England have no elections scheduled. Recent history shows that in such circumstances turnout in the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish elections is significantly higher than in places in England that are holding purely local government or mayoral elections. If the referendum is held on the same day therefore, we will not be starting from a level and equal playing field in respect of participation. I and many others believe that, in effect, those who propose the referendum in this way are hoping to rig the methodology in their favour.

[Mr Leigh]

I think that one of the Deputy Prime Minister’s calculations was that there would be a differential turnout. He calculated that there would be a greater turnout in Scotland, as people are used to AV there, so they would be more likely to vote in favour. That argument might hit him in the back of the neck, however.

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Given the current Liberal Democrat poll ratings, however, I look forward to them receiving a round thumping in May, both in my area and across Scotland. The Deputy Prime Minister is so out of touch with Scotland that he is not aware of just how unpopular he has become in the past five months. The hon. Gentleman’s point about the Deputy Prime Minister’s logic does stand, however.

There are a number of specific reasons why we have chosen 8 September 2011. First, that would allow us sufficient time to overcome the voter fatigue that I touched upon. It would also provide for several months of campaigning by those of all parties in a non-party political manner. Those colleagues who wish to campaign for a yes vote can come together without party badges and work for that, and those colleagues who wish to campaign for a no vote can also come together without the baggage of our party affiliations.

We also appreciate that there are other elections scheduled for spring 2012, spring 2013 and spring 2014, and we believe that it is important to be consistent and logical in our approach, which rules out those slots. We have therefore sought to find a date that provides sufficient breathing space between all those elections. We are also mindful of the advantages of good weather in ensuring strong voter turnout, and the clocks have not yet changed in September—although I accept that a private Member’s Bill that might deal with that is coming up in December. That issue needs to be balanced against the argument about clashing with school holidays; we have had many discussions about that in the Chamber. As the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) mentioned, having the referendum in September of next year would also provide ample opportunity for the six-month period of grace for the Electoral Commission to carry out its due diligence. Finally on the argument for September, as has been mentioned, in 1997 we held two referendums in September in Scotland and Wales, very successfully with excellent turnout and a seamless process. That followed, in particular, a constitutional convention in Scotland, in which I know you played an active role, Mr Hood.

The Deputy Prime Minister claims that the idea of fair votes is what motivates the referendum, but it now appears that, shamefully, the Liberal Democrats in government will act unfairly in order to try to achieve their ends. It is not too late for the Deputy Prime Minister and the Government to do the right thing: to listen to the united voice of Labour, nationalist and Unionist politicians across the United Kingdom and accept the rational and fair date for the referendum.