Middle East

Jim Allister Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We are working with all our allies, and having discussions at every level with the US and others about how to resolve and de-escalate the situation. Ultimately, it will have to be a question of negotiation.

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

I do not underestimate for a moment the gravity of any Government deciding to place their brave servicemen and women in harm’s way, but in circumstances in which our bases and citizens are being targeted by the terror machine that is Iran, why are the UK Government still equivocating over whether we are actively on the side of those who are determined to liquidate the threat? Why the equivocation?

[The Prime Minister]

We are not equivocating. Pilots have been in the sky since Saturday morning, hours after the attack, risking their lives. I am grateful to them for doing so. They went straight up there, and they have been up there ever since. There was no equivocation; they went up straightaway, and it was the right thing to do.

EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK

Jim Allister Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

I suppose I should be timid about entering this echo chamber of remainers and remoaners, but here I am. The first thing that strikes one is the utter disrespect for the largest democratic vote ever in the history of this nation. To many in this place, that is a nothing to be swept aside. I say to them, if they are democrats: “Shame on you!”

I am intrigued by the approach of the Scottish National party. The raison d’être of that party is a sovereign, independent Scotland but, as soon as they get that, they want to hand away their sovereignty and independence and subjugate it to the sovereignty of a foreign EU. No doubt they also want to build a Hadrian’s wall international customs border—if they join the EU, and the rest of the United Kingdom does not, that is what they are going to have. Let me tell them what that means, from the experience of Northern Ireland. It means that supply goods from the main market in Great Britain will be subject to international customs declarations, tariffs, paperwork and extra costs. That is what the independence-seeking SNP thinks is the recipe for the future.

We have heard much propaganda today about the alleged failures of Brexit. Yes, it has failed where it has not been given, which is in Northern Ireland, but look at manufacturing, which is probably the area most affected by Brexit. Is it not strange that the UK’s productivity performance in manufacturing has been the strongest of any country in the G7?

[Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)]

Order.

Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address

Jim Allister Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

It is interesting to hear from a Member on the Reform Benches that they do not agree with process or vetting. The Government are committed to both those things, because that is the way in which Government should conduct itself. As the Prime Minister has said at the Dispatch Box, had he had the information that we all have now available to him at the point of appointment, he would not have appointed Peter Mandelson. On that basis, he has apologised for any distress that that has caused for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein.

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

If I understand the Chief Secretary correctly, he is saying that when it comes to the disclosure of documents, the Metropolitan police will have an unquestioned discretion as to whether to disclose. Moving forward, if there is no prosecution, presumably all those documents will be disclosed at that point. If there is a prosecution, one presumes that those documents that are relied on for that prosecution will not be disclosed until after the prosecution. There will be a cadre of documents that are not being relied on for the prosecution but, because they have been in the possession of the Metropolitan police, will be subject to disclosure to the defence. At the point when the Crown Prosecution Service decides that it is not relying on them, will those disclosable documents be published?

[Darren Jones]

We do not disclose any documents that the Met police tells the Government are related to its criminal investigations until it tells us that they are available to be disclosed. That will be on the basis that they are not relevant to the prosecution or because the prosecution is being taken forward or otherwise. The last thing that anyone in the House would want is for us to undertake a process that ultimately undermines a case, should the CPS decide to bring it to the courts, when we want proper justice to be delivered in the court. That is why we are honouring the requests of the Metropolitan police in the pursuit of justice.

Labour Together and APCO Worldwide: Cabinet Office Review

Jim Allister Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

I can only speak on behalf of the Government; as far as I am aware, it is not providing any services.

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

If I understand this correctly, out of all this unsavoury saga there is a single investigation about a single Minister. But if that investigation is under the ministerial code, it will deal only with his time as a Minister, and his previous involvement with Labour Together is beyond that remit, is it not? In Labour Together, we have a party within a party. Surely, how it was funded and how it used those funds are things that the Labour party executive could conduct an investigation into. Is that not correct?

[Darren Jones]

Labour Together is a separate organisation to the Labour party. It is not for the Labour party or the Government to investigate third-party organisations. It would be like asking the Government to investigate Tesco—that is not something the Government can do unless there is a legal basis on which to do so. On the hon. and learned Gentleman’s first question, the ministerial code incorporates the Nolan principles that apply to all Ministers and their appointment to Government. I am sure that the independent adviser will consider those when he considers the facts.

Standards in Public Life

Jim Allister Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

No.

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

May I take the House back to where this debate started? It began with the shadow spokesman, the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O'Brien), reminding us that advisers advise and Ministers decide. On the back of that, I want to give the Chief Secretary the opportunity—for the fourth time in this debate, I think—to answer a fairly fundamental question that my constituents and I would like to know the answer to. If it is right for an adviser to resign, why not the far more culpable decision maker?

[Darren Jones]

As the Prime Minister has made clear, he apologised for appointing Peter Mandelson to the position of ambassador. Had the information that is now available been available at the point of his appointment, the Prime Minister would never have appointed Peter Mandelson in the first place.

Lord Mandelson

Jim Allister Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

There is an old proverb—it might be of Russian extraction, which would be fitting enough—that says, “Tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are.” Doesn’t that sum up Peter Mandelson? The friend of the child abuser. The friend of Jeffrey Epstein. He is the living personification of that proverb. He is a man apparently so corrupted in his own morals that he thinks what he did was okay, and is perhaps corrupted financially. That corruption, of course, is the product of his intoxication as a freeloader on the rich and the powerful.

Peter Mandelson has brought us to a very sorry pass indeed, but the abiding two words that will live from today relate to the Prime Minister, and they are: he knew. Those words will long outlive this debate. He knew, when he appointed Peter Mandelson, that he had that ongoing relationship with Epstein. He told us today that he did not know the depth of the relationship. Sorry, but it is not about depth. It is not a question of scale. It is a question of whether there was a relationship, and the very fact that there was should have been enough for any Prime Minister. That calls into question fundamentally the judgment of our Prime Minister. Our Prime Minister has to make fine judgments on the world stage. Day and daily, he has to make judgments that affect us all. If, on a matter as glaring as this, his judgment is patently and fatally flawed, it raises fundamental questions as to how we can trust his judgment.

Even those who knew Peter Mandelson tangentially would have had enough suspicion to question his appointment. We in Northern Ireland know something of him: he was our Secretary of State at the turn of the century for two years, until he had to resign over the passport application scandal. I then next encountered him when I was a Member of the European Parliament and he was the United Kingdom’s Trade Commissioner in the European Commission from 2004 to 2008. That was not uncontroversial. In 2006, I well remember in the European Parliament the controversy about the fact that he had been holidaying on a yacht with an Italian tycoon whose business had benefited from his imposition of EU anti-dumping tariffs on Chinese shoes. There he was, months later, on the businessman’s yacht. Two years later, he was on another yacht—must be something about yachts—in Corfu with an Russian oligarch. Mr Mandelson as Trade Commissioner had just cut the EU import tariffs on aluminium, benefiting the oligarch’s company Rusal, which was in the aluminium business.

[Simon Hoare]

Does the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that there may be some considerable merit in both the European Commission and the European Parliament looking over their paperwork to see precisely where these things link up and whether Peter Mandelson breached rules when he was serving as Commissioner?

[Jim Allister]

That was the point I was coming to.

Sadly, the European Union being the European Union, it had no great interest in investigating those matters; they were rather swept under the carpet. I say to the Government that Peter Mandelson was there as the United Kingdom’s Commissioner to the European Commission, and that gives status and opportunity to venture into inquiries about those matters. Then, of course, he came back to be sacked, again.

All of that is largely in the public domain, and that is before we come to Epstein. Equally in the public domain at the point of appointment was the knowledge that Mandelson had an ongoing relationship with a man whose release from prison for child abuse he described as his “liberation”. Our Prime Minister decided that he was a suitable person to be our ambassador in probably the most important capital in the world, in Washington. That was a fatal flaw of judgment by the Prime Minister. I fear that it will be the hallmark of much of his premiership that he made a decision such as that and then came to this House in September, when things began to leak out, and expressed his confidence in Mandelson. There was flawed judgment not only in appointing Mandelson, but in continuing to express confidence in him. The Prime Minister has finally run out of road on this issue, but left hanging around his neck is the fatal misstep of appointing Mandelson—a fatal flaw of judgment. It raises a fundamental point about the credibility of this Prime Minister. That will be the abiding legacy of this situation.

China and Japan

Jim Allister Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It is astonishing that the Scottish National party is simply not interested in the progress that we have made on the India trade deal, which is hugely beneficial to Scottish businesses, or in the halving of tariffs that comes into effect today in relation to China. Businesses in Scotland know exactly what that means to them, which is why they are celebrating. SNP Members cannot bring themselves to even welcome it.

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

I certainly acknowledge the tariff easement for Scottish whisky, and for the apparently superior Bushmills whiskey from my constituency, but will the Prime Minister’s visit do anything to address the proliferation of heavily subsidised Chinese vehicles, which are flooding our nation, particularly in the bus sector? We have 500 subsidised Chinese vehicles on the streets of our capital city, courtesy of Transport for London, whereas in Scotland and in my constituency, we build the highest-quality buses. Will there be any action to support British buses as a result of what the Prime Minister is seeking to do?

[The Prime Minister]

I see that we have opened a whisky competition, but the hon. and learned Gentleman is quite right: it is really important that we champion the building of buses and so much else in the United Kingdom. We have great examples of that, and we will always put the national interest first.

Chinese Embassy

Jim Allister Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

Fundamentally, Government are there to make the British people safer. For the reasons that I have explained, I am confident that this is the right decision from a national security perspective.

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

Is not the plain truth that this was a predetermined political decision from the moment that the political decision was taken to call it in, when the Government were faced with due process because the council had refused the planning application? After all that has gone on, does this not simply bring the whole planning process into disrepute? London’s Labour group has condemned the decision, so is not one of its members right when he says:

“wrong embassy, in the wrong place, at the wrong time”?

[Dan Jarvis]

I do not agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman’s analysis. I have been crystal clear that people are entitled to their opinions and will have different views. What sensible members of the public will be interested in is what the security professionals—the security agencies, the intelligence services, those people who really understand the nature of the risk and the threat—have said and what they think, and I have been clear about what they think and about the way in which we have approached the process, which I believe will deliver national security benefits for our country.

Digital ID

Jim Allister Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

The scale of the response to this petition—almost 3 million people—should cause us all to pause. This rash proposal has clearly touched a deep-seated opposition among our constituents to anyone interfering with their personal data and personal details. Almost 5,000 of my constituents are among that number, and I well understand and support their opposition.

Yes, digital ID might be convenient and it might be expedient for some people to have all their data in one location that they can share, but the key issue here is that the Government are choosing—without a mandate—to make it mandatory. It would be a different matter if the Government were coming to this House to say, “We are going to provide a facility whereby, if you wish, you can have the convenience of this: if you want to take the risk of being hacked, we will provide the facility,” but when they say to the citizen, “You must,” or, “We will impose,” they have crossed a line that no self-respecting Government should cross and that no self-respecting people should tolerate.

That, for me, is the critical component: this is a Government who think they know better and who will impose it, and we will be left with no choice as citizens. That is so illiberal, so fundamentally an assault on our personal freedoms, that no one in this House should be entertaining it, least of all the Government.

[Mr Mohindra]

The hon. and learned Gentleman is making an excellent contribution, as always. If this is such an important issue, why was it not in the governing party’s manifesto at the last general election?

[Jim Allister]

That is a question that I obviously cannot answer, and it is one that I doubt the Minister will answer, but it is well posed. Why, oh why, if the Government were going to impinge on the personal liberties of their citizens, would they not, in asking for their votes, tell them that that was their agenda?

[Jamie Stone]

As Chair of the Petitions Committee, I must of course be fair minded and impartial at all times, but the hon. and learned Member might be acquainted with the fact that I represent the most remote mainland constituency in the whole of the UK. Let me just put this point: we do know what digital exclusion is.

[Jim Allister]

As I represent North Antrim, I know of many parts of my constituency where people cannot get the digital connections that are supposedly promised, and I know what digital exclusion is in that regard as well. This proposition is flawed no matter which way we look at it, but most fundamentally flawed in the compulsion that it brings.

The final point that I want to make to the Minister is this: whatever happens on this subject—I trust the idea will be ditched in its entirety—and whatever the ultimate outcome is, it has to be a nationwide outcome. Too often, I have seen differences of treatment in my part of the United Kingdom that add to the already obnoxious situation in which we are partitioned by an Irish sea border. We do not want to be partitioned by a digital border as well.

Official Secrets Act and Espionage

Jim Allister Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, as I am always. He made an important point about parliamentary security, and I hope that, as a very dedicated parliamentarian, he will know that the Government take these matters incredibly seriously. That is why we are working very closely with Mr Speaker and this House, through the defending democracy taskforce, to make sure that we have the appropriate mitigations in place to counter the nature of the threat we face.

I hold the hon. Gentleman in very high regard, and I refer him to what the Prime Minister said on Monday. The Prime Minister made an important point that is highly relevant to the question the hon. Gentleman raised:

“Protecting our security is non-negotiable. Our first duty. But by taking tough steps to keep us secure, we enable ourselves to cooperate in other areas.”

I hope he agrees—I know he does—with that.

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

Today, the Minister has again said that the reason the case collapsed was the inadequacy of the 1911 Act. That raises this obvious question: how come these two gentlemen were ever charged in the first place? The evidential test at the moment they were charged is exactly the same as the evidential test when the case was dropped, so how did they come to be charged under this Act if it was inadequate? Is it not quite clear that the Act was more than adequate to charge them and more than adequate to convict them?

[Dan Jarvis]

I am not sure that anybody really thinks that the 1911 Act was appropriate. As the hon. and learned Member will know, because it is a statement of obvious truth, the decision to proceed was taken not under this Government, but under the previous one. All I am able to do in this House is to account for the decisions and actions taken by this Government. What this Government will always do is ensure that we protect our national security. It is our first duty and nothing matters more.