Indefinite Leave to Remain: Healthcare Workers

Debate between Jamie Stone and Edward Leigh

Monday 18th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I rise to speak for a slightly different reason, which is that I have the honour to be the Chair of the current Petitions Committee and this is its first debate. I thank the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for an excellent contribution. He described a worrying, if not harrowing, situation. I also place on the record my thanks, at this early stage in the life of the Committee, to the Members who have joined it. Their enthusiasm is most encouraging. I cannot continue without saying that we have been hugely impressed by the work put in by the Clerks and all the team who give us the presentations and so on. I will keep my remarks very short, because we want to hear the proper detail about this particularly harrowing issue, but I want to end by saying that to my mind the work of the Petitions Committee is very important, and it has a very high hit rate from members of the public who watch the proceedings and go into Hansard to see what we said. It strikes me that that is an important part of the way we do democracy in this country. I will conclude my remarks with that.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

If Members wish to speak, they have to rise in their place.

Foreign Affairs and Defence

Debate between Jamie Stone and Edward Leigh

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have sat through this important debate and it has been an absolute pleasure. What a galaxy of maiden speeches we have heard all around us—and that, of course, is democracy. Everyone can take great encouragement from what they have seen today.

The only problem is that I do not know all these new faces, so can I issue a blanket apology in advance to all those on the Labour Benches if I come up to them and say, “I’m so pleased you are a new Lib Dem MP”? I do not mean anything by it. If I say to Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches, “Well done on getting elected on a Labour ticket”, I am terribly sorry about that. You can take comfort, Mr Deputy Speaker, in the fact that I visited an old folks’ home recently and a lovely old lady thought I was Jeremy Thorpe. At least it was the right party.

I am on my feet today because my party’s defence spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), is ill with covid. I am sure we all wish him a speedy recovery. However, I did five years as my party’s defence spokesperson. That leads me to my main theme, which I will touch on by simply saying that we will build relationships with those on the Government Front Bench and the shadow Front Bench—that is how we work.

I will always remember Ben Wallace arranging for me and the present Secretary of State to be helicoptered to Belvoir castle for a meeting of the joint expeditionary force Foreign Ministers. I have never forgotten that, because it was just two days before Putin’s tanks rolled across the border. I remember going in the car from the MOD to board our military helicopter, and the civil servant asking me and the present Secretary of State, “What do you think will happen?” I think we both said, “He’ll probably invade.”

I also remember Ben Wallace saying, during the dinner with the Foreign Secretaries, “I am doing this because Governments change and it’s as well you are prepared, although you may belong to other parties, and that you know as much as you can about the defence brief.” I want to go on the record as thanking Ben Wallace for his very generous attitude to keeping me briefed on intelligence, and I thank the present Secretary of State for his generous offer to see that my colleague, my party’s defence spokesperson, is similarly briefed. That is very good news indeed.

I want to congratulate, through reasons of friendship, those on the Government Front Bench on their appointments; it is very good to see them in their places—and indeed, I am bound to say, it is good to see those on the Opposition Front Bench in their places. The shadow Foreign Secretary was quite correct to remind us of what is going on in Sudan. It is not just about Russia and Ukraine or the middle east; there are all sorts of terrible things happening in the world. I liked too the Secretary of State’s saying that Britain is “democracy’s most reliable ally”. We ought to remember that on a day like today, when all these new faces exemplify democracy in its good, healthy, working form.

I do not have much time, but I want to touch on two points, one of which I think those on both Front Benches know I care passionately about. I served for a short spell of time as a private soldier in the Territorial Army, and one of my children served in the forces until recently. The size of our forces matters an enormous amount to my party, and I think we all understand that we are very far stretched at the moment—hence my intervention earlier in the debate about the present size of the British Army being not exactly helpful to recruitment.

One other thing that I think is desperately important, based on when we met with the joint expeditionary force Foreign Ministers, is that—as all hon. Members have said—we must work across borders, we must work with the European community, and we must work with friends. Only by co-operation, by standing together, can we take on the Russian bear and see it off. As has quite correctly been said, if Ukraine falls, what is next?

Finally, in defence debates during my years in this place, I have always thought the atmosphere of consensus across party boundaries very important. I know from my own family that it was encouraging to our servicewomen and servicemen to know that politicians were speaking as one. From what I have heard this afternoon, I have no reason to worry that that will not go on in future. I think that we can work together for the defence of our nation, which we love so well.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Edward Leigh)]

I call the Opposition spokesperson.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jamie Stone and Edward Leigh

Thursday 9th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to support farmers.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

5. What steps he is taking to support rural farmers.

Military Action Overseas: Parliamentary Approval

Debate between Jamie Stone and Edward Leigh

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I believe that the Government’s argument about the legality of last week’s action is technically correct: the use of military force is part of the royal prerogative; her Majesty invests the Government with that power; the Queen is commander in chief; and this is an important power, which is vital to the effectiveness of our armed forces. So I have no constitutional disagreement with what the Government have done. However, there is a word of warning here. As Chesterton put it:

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”

There is a risk here and a moral to be learned. I do commend the Prime Minister for the limited scope of the intervention. Although it is true that the Government can intervene technically and militarily without consulting Parliament, I believe that the power should be used on as few occasions as possible, if at all. That is where I echo what the Father of the House, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), has said.

I do not accept that we need a war powers Act, because it would be justiciable. I do not believe in referring everything to the UN, where, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) has said, one power has a permanent right of veto. But I think we should proclaim this afternoon the right of Parliament to debate and vote on military action in the future, unless, as was probably the case here, there is an urgent humanitarian case to be made.

I want to say a word about some of the problems we face in the middle east, one of which is that we are seen to be parti pris in this conflict. We are seen by many people not to be primarily engaged in humanitarian concern for the people of Douma, but to be engaged in a proxy war. I know that that is not a fair point of view but, unfortunately, we have in the past proclaimed our desire to replace the Assad regime. The conflict began in 2011; Assad is still President of the Syrian Arab Republic. The idea that the Americans achieved a great deal by backing the Free Syrian Army—a kind of Lib Dems with guns—has proven to be a complete and total fantasy.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I thank you for allowing me to intervene, Mr Speaker; I was late for this debate, for which I apologise.

I cannot resist rising to that challenge. We heard the line of questioning from constituents about whether Parliament was going to be recalled—“Are you going to have a vote on it?” My answer that I did not know led to puzzlement and confusion. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that in itself is corrosive to the electorate’s democratic confidence in their elected Members and what we do in this place?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I have considerable sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s argument. I have just said that I agree with the Father of the House that in general Parliament should have its say before action is taken.

I believe that there is so much opposition to what we are doing in the middle east because from the beginning western Governments have not really been cognisant of the sheer complexity of the situation. The Americans are against Assad and the Russians, and for the Kurds, many of whom are against Assad, but the Americans are also allied to the Turks, who are against the American-backed Kurds, and the Turks will do anything to stop the Kurds, even though both are friends of the Americans. That shows the sheer complexity of the situation.

I must quote the patriarchs of the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church and the Melkite Catholic Church. They are based in Syria and rely on the Assad regime for protection and their continual survival. This can perhaps be dismissed, as they are subject to pressure from the regime, but their beatitudes say:

“It causes us great pain that this assault comes from powerful countries to which Syria did not cause any harm in any way.”

They are Christian leaders speaking in Syria. We should be very careful.