Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Penny Mordaunt(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
First, I put on the record my thanks to my hon. Friend and Members of all parties in the House who have held local consultation events. Doing so was incredibly important and has made this a very good consultation, but it is also vital in establishing and building such local networks. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the solutions have to be local ones, not least because healthcare is commissioned locally. I can give him reassurances that we will bear that in mind as we go forward.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The all-party group on human trafficking and modern slavery has heard compelling evidence about how people enslaved in the UK have post-traumatic stress disorder and similar serious disabilities as a result. Will the Minister commit to meeting the relevant Minister in the Home Office to look at practical ways in which those victims of exploitation can be supported into work and be enabled to work in companies?
Penny Mordaunt
The right hon. Lady raises an important point. I can give her assurances that both my office and that of the Minister for Employment are working very closely with the Home Office on precisely the group of individuals she mentions and other vulnerable people such as refugees. I am very happy to raise any points that she wants me to make.
Drones in Conflict
Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Penny Mordaunt(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister for the Armed Forces (Penny Mordaunt)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) on securing this debate on a topic that I know is of great interest to hon. Members. I also thank him for giving a plug to what will follow this debate.
My hon. Friend asked a large number of questions; I shall try to get through them all in the time available. Let me first answer the last point about how this issue is changing both the shape and the look of our armed forces and the types of scenarios in which our armed forces might find themselves. It must be recognised that RPAS crews are fully immersed in the realities of combat. The persistence offered by these systems can result in crews observing the aftermath of their attacks, which is a sobering experience, rarely shared by other pilots or artillery men. As with any squadron that deploys in theatre, RPAS squadrons undergo pre-operational mental health briefings and post-tour briefs. They have trauma management practitioners embedded throughout to monitor the health and wellbeing of all those involved in operations. I know that my hon. Friend takes a great deal of interest in these matters, and I would be happy to discuss the issue further with him on another date.
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s acknowledgment of these systems in that they play a key part in our capability and help to save lives. If he will forgive me, I will briefly provide a bit of clarity and on the record bust some of the myths that surround the term “drone”, which conjures up images of machines free from human oversight and able to operate with complete autonomy. That is the stuff of science fiction movies, not the reality. Although drones do not operate with an individual in the cockpit, the fact is that a trained professional human being is in control of the system at all times. The difference is that they operate remotely from the vehicle. The term “drone” also overlooks the fact that the aircraft itself is part of a much larger system composed of other vital components such as the ground stations, networks and, most importantly, the personnel.
My hon. Friend asked what progress has been made on the joint doctrine note’s recommendations of March 2011 in developing a governance road map. We shall be developing that at the same time as bringing the Protector into service. I shall be happy to provide more details, but the rough date of completion for the programme will be the end of the current decade.
My hon. Friend asked some pertinent questions about the Raqqa strike. He asked, for instance, whether it would have happened if this capability had not been at our disposal. That raises hypothetical questions about whether having the capability changes our behaviour and whether we become more trigger-happy, and also about the nature of individual targeting, which, as he will understand, is an incredibly complex process. Many questions about collateral damage and the likelihood of success will also need to be taken into account. I think that the best way in which I can answer those hypothetical questions is to direct him to the Prime Minister’s statement that if there were a direct threat to the British people and we were able to stop it by taking immediate action, we would be prepared to take that action.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) suggested that the Intelligence and Security Committee would review the decisions about Raqqa. Will the Minister give the House a commitment that the Ministry of Defence will engage in the best possible collaboration with any inquiry that the Committee might mount?
Penny Mordaunt
I shall say more about that later, but, yes, it would be very welcome.
Let me say a little about the rules of engagement. United Kingdom policy relating to RPAS is exactly the same as that which relates to manned aircraft. There is no requirement for separate rules of engagement. UK crews always operate within UK and international law, regardless of what other rules of engagement apply to the operation concerned. If the United States were using one of our systems, it would use its rules of engagement, but it would be restricted by our UK red card holder, who is fully empowered to veto the use of a UK asset for action without UK permissions.
My hon. Friend asked about the number of individuals involved in US operations. No UK personnel are involved in flying in such operations, although three UK servicemen are currently involved in training. He raised the issue of data that might be gathered by RPAS when our allies could use them to attack targets that the UK public might find objectionable. The right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) mentioned the ISC’s offer to examine and provide oversight in regard to that whole matter. The acquisition and dissemination of the intelligence that is gathered complies with all UK domestic and international law, and oversight from that body is very welcome. I will undertake to keep my hon. Friend informed, and will do what I can to facilitate it.
My hon. Friend raised the issue of the development of so-called killer robots, in the case of which there is some level of independence. He mentioned Phalanx, but I would guess that Goalkeeper and other such capabilities would fall into the same category. He asked what regimens, agreements and criteria they were bound by; I can confirm that they are bound by all those to which he referred.
We continue to track rapidly advancing RPAS technology development. Over the last decade, it has become a very important part of our military capability. Given the rapidity with which such technology is developing, I cannot envisage any reversal in the trend. Indeed, I expect RPAS to be used in an increasingly wide variety of environments and roles, and to form a key part of our future mix. The Government have no intention of developing systems that operate without this all-important human hand in the weapon command and control chain.
My hon. Friend asked how UAVs might feature in the SDSR. That has still to report its findings, but, as the Prime Minister has already announced, Reaper will be replaced towards the end of the decade through the Protector programme, which will develop a medium altitude long endurance RPAS, providing the UK armed forces with a theatre-wide persistent ISR—intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance—capability that is able to identify, monitor and, if necessary, attack land and maritime targets. The Protector programme is set to double the number of aircraft compared with Reaper, offering yet more capability.
My hon. Friend asked a list of questions, which I can get the Minister for Defence Procurement to respond to, addressing successors to Nimrod, maritime patrol aircraft and so on.
A variety of options, including unmanned systems, are currently being considered as part of the SDSR for future UK capability. The Department is funding research into the potential of this area of future combat air systems, and we are currently undertaking a two-year study with France scoping the feasibility of developing an unmanned combat air system together. This is complemented by a national programme including further work to advance the Taranis technology demonstrator aircraft.
My hon. Friend asked about exports. The Government take our arms exports responsibilities very seriously. I have sat on the Defence Committee as a Back Bencher and we operate one of the most rigorous arms export controls in the world. The transfer of unmanned or remotely piloted air systems and their related technology is controlled through the UK’s strategic export legislation, and any export of strategic goods such as these systems would need to be considered against the EU and the national consolidated export licensing criteria. Export licences are considered on a case-by-case basis against the export licensing criteria, and in the light of prevailing circumstances at the time and depending, critically, on what we think they would be used for. Any licence to export a UAS or RPAS would have to be consistent with the UK’s international obligations under those regimes and agreements that my hon. Friend mentioned. The overall aim of that is to prevent the proliferation of sensitive materials and technology to countries and end-users of concern. We do not export equipment where there is a clear risk that it might be used for internal repression or it would aggravate existing tensions or conflicts, or would be used aggressively against another country.
On that point, my hon. Friend asked about the danger and likelihood of these capabilities being developed by non-state actors and what we are doing about that. Clearly, that is an area of concern and he will know that we constantly assess those threat levels, and we are currently, as part of the work in the SDSR, looking at measures that could be taken to counter such threats.
My hon. Friend also asked when the Navy’s maritime UAV strategy paper will be finished and when it will be published. That, again, is part of the work of the SDSR.
In summary, I welcome this opportunity to put on record again the Government’s clear views on the benefits of remotely piloted aircraft systems. The role of those systems in armed conflicts will only increase over time, whether to gain a more complex level of situational awareness for tactical crews and military commanders or to attack positively identified targets when required. I find it hard to imagine a campaign in which such technology will not have a part to play. Indeed, in the most unpredictable and difficult of operational environments, these systems are vital in providing situational awareness, often avoiding the need to place our personnel in harm’s way, whether on the ground, in the air or at sea.
I know that the various aspects of this issue are of immense concern to Members on both sides of the House, and we are keen to facilitate visits to some of the facilities involved and to ensure that the House is well informed on all the issues. I will be happy to follow up any further questions that my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire might have.
Question put and agreed to.
Passport Applications
Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Penny Mordaunt(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Parliamentary Representation
Debate between Fiona Mactaggart and Penny Mordaunt(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I was proud to serve as a member of the Speaker’s Conference and I want to reflect on some of its broader aspects, because I think it is regarded as being just about how to change the composition of the House of Commons. In fact, it was a big reflection on democracy and politics. I strongly recommend to Members that they read the whole report because there is not enough in politics today that makes the case for political parties and for an active democracy. That is what I think the conference did.
The reason issues of representation became so core to this is that in order for democracy to work, people need to trust politics. In order to trust those of us who are professional politicians, they have to think that we get what is happening in their lives. That means that we have to look normal to them. When the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), demonstrated the other day that the composition of the Front Bench of the governing party was all-male on that day, one of the reasons why that had so much resonance was the sense that half the country felt that they were not there —that we are extremely odd, peculiar, not like them. Until there is a sense that politics gets it and that it is like us, that gap of trust between the voter and the votee, if I may call us that, will grow. It is extremely significant.
It is only in the past four years, for example, that we have had any Muslim women in this Parliament. On the Labour Benches in the previous Parliament, the hon. Members for Gloucester (Parmjit Dhanda) and for Bradford West (Marsha Singh) were Sikhs. Now on the Government Benches the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal) is a Sikh. I know that my Sikh constituents believe that I can understand their issues—such as whether Britain was involved in the invasion of the Golden Temple or not—but they want to make sure that somebody who has the gut feeling, the cultural baggage which is so important to them is part of the conversation. Having that genuinely does change the conversation.
I will never forget the conversation that I had with the Clerk to the Defence Committee in about 1998. I asked him whether having women on the Defence Committee had made a difference. It was the first time there had been any women on that Committee ever. “Of course,” he said. I asked what difference. He said, “Well, we always used to talk just about how big the bombs were, and now we talk about the families and children of the soldiers and the other people who are out there defending us.” It seems to me quite obvious that if we are asking someone to be extraordinarily brave, the most important thing for them to know is that their family is safe. It is a no-brainer, but it took women on that Committee to have that insight.
It is true that diversity brings different kinds of insight. If we miss out on those insights, politics is poorer. For example, one of the achievements of the Speaker’s Conference was changing the rules in relation to Members of Parliament who have mental health challenges. The interesting thing since those rules changed is that a number of colleagues have been able to come out and say that they have suffered from poor mental health, and that has helped the general public feel, “Oh, maybe they’re more normal.” Confessing to abnormalities has made people feel that we actually have the same struggles and challenges as them.
I did not want ever to speak in Parliament about the fact that I have multiple sclerosis, and I only did so when it was relevant to a debate on stem cell research. That was really important for one of my constituents. He has a much more severe form of the condition than me, but he felt, “If she can do that, I can step up.” There is a sense that if we show people—my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) made this clear—that we are like them and have had different challenges, politics can be more engaging and make more sense to them.
We still have big challenges. I still regularly hear people saying—I speak as the first generation of my family to speak with a southern accent—“Why don’t I hear more politicians speak like me, with an accent?” We really need to address such issues.
Where does this all come from? One of the things that the Speaker’s Conference made clear was the importance of the role of political parties themselves. It said that
“political parties are the mechanism by which people of any background can be actively involved in the tasks of shaping policy and deciding how society should be governed…The extent to which political parties are the subject of both contempt and general public indifference should be a cause of concern to all who are interested in how our country is run.”
That is what I want to address. It seems to me that the biggest risk is to our parties, which are the mechanism through which we can deliver some of the changes needed, yet we do not do it well enough. In introducing the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) reminded the parties of the commitment they made to publishing their selection records.
We as politicians know that it is political party activists who only ever go to talk to people about politics and how to vote. I am very proud that I and my Labour colleagues have spoken to at least 18,000 electors in Slough since December. We are very dynamic in the way we go to talk to voters and we can probably claim the best record in the country. That is one of the reasons why I am still the Member of Parliament for Slough, because my constituents know that they can engage with people on the doorstep who are like them—people who might not feel comfortable doing what Members do in this Chamber every day and who might not be able to make the sacrifices in their lives that many of us have made in ours, but who nevertheless recognise that political parties are an agent for change.
One of the things that really worries me is that the media perceive political parties as a conspiracy against the voters and as somehow trying to defraud them, and I believe that we feed that conspiracy by having a lot of private little arrangements to deal with things. For example, we have no formal maternity or sick leave arrangements. Instead, the Whips secretly make deals across the Chamber to pair Members. Why are those things not proper rights and more transparent? We need them to be. The risk of us looking antediluvian and ancient is not just because of who gets here and the fact that we do not reflect the whole of society as well as we ought to, but because of our ancient habits and ways of doing things and our habit of saying across the Chamber, “You’re all bad guys and we’re all good guys.”
At the moment, I am missing a sitting of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee on the draft Modern Slavery Bill. Its members are working across parties—in quite an intelligent way, I hope—to herd the Home Office into producing slightly better legislation than would otherwise occur. Listening to them, people would not be able to tell which party they belong to or what line they are taking, because we are united in a common cause. Members from all parties have united with colleagues from across the Chamber on areas on which they have a common cause.
When we do politics, we should copy Mars, which does not say, “Cadbury is poisonous; go for Mars”, but, “Ours are just better”. In our politics, we have a real problem or challenge about permitting a discourse saying that the other guys are all evil, rather than that we share many values with them, but disagree about some of the ways to deliver those values.
Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making an incredibly important point. When accusations are made about really appalling behaviour—bullying—they are not made about or ascribed to an individual behaving badly in the Chamber or outside it, but to a general group of people. For example, they are made about our male colleagues who, on the whole, are kind, supportive and generous individuals. Do such accusations not perpetuate the impression that this place is an ordeal, particularly for women, whereas it is in fact a wonderful place to work and a fantastic job to have? Will she encourage people who complain about bullying to identify its source and complain to Mr Speaker, rather than to tar all our colleagues with the same brush?
Fiona Mactaggart
I am not sure that the victims of bullying do the tarring; I think that our media are unable to differentiate sufficiently between groups of people, and therefore ask whether men have been the source of the bullying. The situation has got a lot better since I first arrived here and went through a door marked “Members only”—I thought that that was for me—only to find a urinal behind it.
Bullying still occurs, but I do not think that it is only by men of women. I feel guilty when journalists ring me about people shouting in Prime Minister’s questions—I am very reluctant to confess this, but I will do so in front of Mr Speaker—because I have a voice that can very easily be heard and I have been known to behave inappropriately at Prime Minister’s questions. It is not a wholly male thing, because I have done it. I have taken a vow to stop, and I will keep trying to do so. I have also taken a vow to give up chocolate and alcohol during Lent, but I digress.
The hon. Lady’s point is that there is a risk in saying that a whole class of people is guilty of inappropriate behaviour. One thing that we fail to do is to say that the class of people wanting to represent others is, on the whole, made up of people who are honest and want to make a better world, even though some of them have a very funny idea of what that world should look like. We have not done enough to advocate democratic politics as a better way than any other of changing the world and building a better society. Out of this debate should come very strong consensus throughout Parliament about such a belief, as well as a belief that to make politics stronger, it must be less peculiar, involve more normal people and be more possible for people with a range of challenges in their lives.
We need to make our behaviour to each other more supportive here, so that it is more possible for people to do things. Although I have not had detailed conversations with the women on the Government Benches who will be leaving Parliament shortly, I think that partly what is happening is that they are people whose lives were quite normal; who have not been through generations of hateful politics and developed skin a mile thick; and who found the change to their lives, their income and their families very challenging. They have thought, “What I am giving up and what I am having to put up with is too much.”
We all need to have a bit more solidarity for one another, so that people who want to do that noble thing of representing constituents and building a better world do not get put off by the exigencies of public life. We could all help to meet that challenge through our own behaviour, whether it is by shouting less at Prime Minister’s questions or by offering just a little support to someone when they are having a hard time. Frankly, that is something that political parties do not do sufficiently for our colleagues.