Parliamentary Sovereignty and EU Renegotiations
Debate between John Baron and Edward Leigh(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I wonder whether all those years ago Enoch Powell was right, and that we have been dodging this issue ever since 1972. The question he posed was that if we join the EU, this Chamber and democratically elected House loses its sovereignty. Now an historic moment is approaching, and the British people have to make that choice. Will they reclaim that sovereignty or not?
Mr Baron
I can only repeat what I said to the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins)—I completely agree, and that is why this debate is important. It is not easy to say some of these words, but I regret that there has been a lack of consultation on the proposals in this renegotiation. Better engagement, certainly with the parliamentary party, and perhaps with Parliament generally, given that we are representatives, would have been useful.
Mr Baron
There will be people who want to disagree—don’t worry.
I will just turn, if I may, to the immigration emergency brake, which again is questionable. I speak here with a tinge of sadness, because I think the Government have framed this part of the debate in the wrong manner. Let us first of all be clear that the emergency brake access to in-work benefits will last only four years, with the EU, not Britain, judging whether the emergency brake is declared. Not even here do we have control. It is also unclear what happens after the period expires. In addition, access to benefits would gradually be increased, meaning it is moot how much of a deterrent to immigration a brake would actually be.
My sadness—I have said this many times in this place —is that I believe the Government are wrong to couch the debate in these terms. It feeds into a negative narrative about immigrants. It ignores the fact that almost all—the vast majority—immigrants from the EU come to Britain to work hard. They are not looking for benefits. It ignores the fact that large-scale EU immigration cannot be stopped, in all truthfulness, while we adhere to the EU’s founding principle of freedom of movement, particularly as the rise in the national living wage picks up speed. Let us have real honesty about this debate. I am fed up with listening to politicians focus on benefits and play to the gallery. It is absolutely wrong to do so. It feeds a negative narrative. The vast majority of immigrants —let us make this absolutely clear—come here to work hard and we should acknowledge that fact, so let us have clarity about the emergency brake. After all, it can only be used by the EU backseat driver, and we all know how dangerous that can be.
There are massive holes in the two key planks of the Government’s renegotiations. Is that important? For some, it will not be. I say it is important, because while the general view may be that we are standing still while inside the EU, we are in fact standing still on a conveyor belt towards ever closer union. Let us be absolutely clear about that. Indeed, the lesson of the eurozone crisis is that the EU usually finds a way of achieving what it wants, ever closer union, even at the expense of violating its commitments. As Mr Juncker once said,
“when it becomes serious, you have to lie”.
Those are the words of the President of the European Commission.
The EU is developing all the trappings of a nation state: a currency, a body of law and a diplomatic service. It makes no secret of its ambitions or its determination to succeed, even if this results in a democratic deficit with its own peoples. We only have to hear what has been said by some of the key people in the EU. Mr Juncker has made his position very clear:
“if it’s a ‘yes’, we say ‘on we go’; and if it’s a ‘no’, we say ‘we will continue.’”
Angela Merkel has made her wishes clear:
“we want more Europe, and stronger powers to intervene”.
Martin Schultz, President of the European Parliament, has been particularly blunt:
“the UK belongs to the EU”.
Mr Barroso, the former President of the Commission, has cast light on the EU’s integration process:
“they must go on voting, until they get it right”.
If things do not change, the UK is captive on a journey to who knows where. Looking into voting at the EU’s Council of Ministers, academics based at the London School of Economics—there has been very little research on this—have shown that, in recent years, Britain has voted against the majority far more often and been on the losing side more than any other member state. It is not as though it is even getting better within the internal structures of the EU. The British people never signed up to this and it is therefore right that they are finally having their say in a referendum. Do the British Government truly believe that they can muster sufficient votes to stop this inexorable vote towards ever closer union? That is one of the key questions Ministers should try to answer today.
Improving Cancer Outcomes
Debate between John Baron and Edward Leigh(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered improving cancer outcomes.
Recent analysis from Macmillan Cancer Support shows that there are now an estimated 2.5 million people living with cancer in this country—an increase of almost half a million over the past five years. May I therefore begin by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for granting this timely debate on an issue that is becoming ever more urgent: improving cancer outcomes?
I would also like to thank my fellow officers of the all-party group on cancer for all their hard work, and the officers of the other cancer-specific all-party groups. It speaks volumes about the importance of the issue that we have come together to secure this timely and important debate. I would like to give the all-party group on cancer a plug. The group is recognised as the wider cancer community’s voice in Parliament. It has a proud campaigning track record. It runs what is now the largest one-day conference on cancer in the UK—Britain against cancer—each December. In the Minister’s own words, it rightly holds the Government’s feet to the flames.
The timing of this debate is crucial. With only a matter of weeks of parliamentary time before the general election, and at a time when NHS England is embarking on a new cancer strategy, this is likely to be the last opportunity for this Parliament to speak up on behalf of the cancer community and feed into that strategy.
The challenge has never been greater. Macmillan Cancer Support estimates that 3 million people will be living with cancer in this country by the end of the next Parliament. By the end of next year, 1,000 people a day are expected to be diagnosed with cancer. Hospital admissions for cancer in England have increased by around 100,000 a year, compared with five years ago. The NHS has missed the target of cancer patients receiving their first treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral for three quarters.
There is also good news, though, in that we have certainly made improvements in cancer outcomes over the past few decades. The latest figures published in December show that the one-year cancer survival rates in the UK now average 68.5% to 69%—up by a full 10 percentage points since 1997. These are figures on a page, but we are talking about thousands of lives saved every single year because we are driving up cancer survival rates, particularly in the one-year figures.
However, those improvements have been gradual and incremental, and they have not been enough to catch up with our European counterparts. Research has shown that our one-year survival rates still significantly lag behind European averages. Whereas we have 68.5% to 69% in this country, the best in Europe is 81% to 82% in Sweden. That is a significant difference that accounts, very roughly, for some 10,000 lives a year. There is always a danger in making comparisons. For example, if we look at the French figures, we are making comparisons with France’s centres of excellence. None the less, the established evidence suggests that we are down by some 5,000 lives a year on European averages, and perhaps by as many as 10,000 when compared with the best in Europe.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
That is why we want an open debate about the future of the NHS. We need to recognise that the social insurance systems in France and Germany produce better outcomes for people than our own national health service.
Mr Baron
That is a debate for another day. I accept that dramatic improvements could be made within the existing structures of the NHS, and I want to focus on that in this debate.
The Government have estimated that from 2011 to 2015 an additional 12,000 patients will survive for more than five years after diagnosis compared with the previous five-year period. That figure tells us nothing about how we are doing relative to our European counterparts, who will no doubt also have made improvements. Are those 12,000 lives just a continuation of a fairly stable and steady trend line that has been in evidence for the past 25 to 30 years, or a kick-up, as it were, above the trend line that suggests that we are catching up with our European neighbours? I would appreciate it if the Minister provided clarity on how the figure of 12,000 additional lives saved has been calculated and what action the Government are taking to ensure that we continue to strive towards matching the best outcomes in Europe.
I am conscious that a good number of other Members will speak in the debate, so, without being exhaustive, I will focus my remarks on four key areas: earlier diagnosis and survival rates; inequalities and older people; patient experience; and, last but certainly not least, the problem that some charities are having with data access.
Earlier diagnosis has long been an issue that the all-party group has campaigned on: we describe it as cancer’s magic key. All the statistics suggest that the NHS is as good as any other health care system at treating cancers once they are detected, but poor at detecting them in the first place. That suggests that we need to raise our game as regards earlier diagnosis. Most of these 5,000 or 10,000 lives are being lost at the one-year point, and the NHS is not catching up. We therefore need to drive forward initiatives at the coalface that encourage earlier diagnosis. It is almost a national disgrace that one in five cancers are first diagnosed at A and E when those patients are, on average, twice as likely to die within a year than those diagnosed via an urgent GP referral. That shows the importance of earlier diagnosis.
With this knowledge, we have spent the past two years working with the Government and NHS England to ensure that the right accountability levers are in place to encourage earlier diagnosis. We have been successful, together with the wider cancer community—because ultimately this is about teamwork—in getting one-year and five-year cancer survival rates into the NHS outcomes framework and one-year cancer survival rates into the commissioning outcomes indicator set. That is good news. We were also delighted when Simon Stevens agreed to our recommendations on including one-year survival rates in the delivery dashboard of the clinical commissioning group assurance framework from April this year.
I have used a lot of terminology, but there is a basic logic in putting the one-year figures up in lights and breaking them down by CCG. One of the best ways, if not the best way, of driving up one-year survival rates is to better introduce initiatives that encourage earlier diagnosis at the coalface. Those could be, for example, better awareness campaigns at a local level; encouraging better screening uptake figures, some of which are pretty poor; better diagnostics at primary care; better GP referral rates; or an A and E system which, when it detects these one-in-five cancers, instead of pushing patients back down the system, refers them up, potentially saving crucial time. All or any of those could be introduced by CCGs that are trying to get their one-year figures up. Putting the one-year figures up in lights will put pressure on those CCGs to raise their game on earlier diagnosis.
Defence Reforms
Debate between John Baron and Edward Leigh(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House notes concerns about the Government’s defence reforms in relation to whether its proposals for the reserve forces will deliver either the anticipated cost savings or defence capability; and urges the Government to delay the disbandment of regular units until it is established that the Army Reserve plan is viable and cost-effective.
Let me first express my gratitude to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate. Many of us on both sides of the House believe this to be an important topic for discussion.
I suggest that Government plans to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists are on the rocks. Territorial Army numbers are at a low ebb; reserve recruitment targets are being missed; costs are rising; and there are delays and disorganisation. The plans will produce neither the anticipated cost-savings nor the capability envisaged. The time has come to say “Halt”—to halt the axing of the regular battalions and units until we are sure that the reservist plans are both viable and cost-effective. We run the risk of wasting taxpayers’ money on the back of false economies and unrealistic expectations.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Were we not promised by the previous Secretary of State that the cuts to the regular forces would happen only if it were clear that we could increase the reserves? Yet that is not going to happen, so what happened to the original promise?
Mr Baron
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the original plan, which was to allow the build-up of the reserves before we axed regular battalions because it was deemed that deployability was terribly important. Exchanges took place on the Floor of the House in 2011 between the then Defence Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), and my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), which clearly confirm that the plan was to get the balance right—to build up the reservists before winding down the regulars.
My first questions, then, to the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, who is replying to the debate, are: why and when did the plan change? To make this debate as productive as possible, I would be delighted to take interventions from my right hon. Friend if he wishes to answer the questions we pose as the debate proceeds. I think that the questions why and when the plan changed are wholly legitimate ones, because the plan has changed and the House should be in no doubt whatever about that. Just two years ago, the plan was to say, “We will not wind down the regular troops until we know that the reservists are up to strength”. That plan has changed.
Iraq War (10th Anniversary)
Debate between John Baron and Edward Leigh(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Baron
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. For many of us, the lesson from all this is that we must be wary of Government spin when we are addressing foreign policy issues, in particular; instead, we must focus on the evidence.
Bringing this up to speed, I suggest that in the case of Iran, for example, no intelligence service, whether American, British, Israeli or any other, has yet been able to publicly produce any hard evidence, as opposed to circumstantial evidence, that the Iranian leadership has decided to build a nuclear weapon or is taking that course. Nevertheless, that has not prevented our policy makers from painting a very different picture, and tensions are running unnecessarily high as a result.
The Iraq war is also a reminder that interventions often produce unintended consequences that can turn out to be counter-productive to our interests. A woefully inadequate post-war reconstruction ushered in a vicious civil war, as other Members have outlined. Studies estimate that many hundreds of thousands died in Iraq as a result of the invasion. In fact, Iraq became a honeypot for extremists worldwide. In a bitter irony, al-Qaeda only gained a foothold in Iraq after Saddam’s downfall and then proved difficult to eradicate. Minorities suffered as well. The Iraqi Christian communities, resident for centuries, have suffered immeasurably in the wake of the invasion.
Mr Baron
My hon. Friend and I are very like-minded on this. We have a very bad track record of considering the consequences of our actions in relation to minorities within these countries. Syria is a good example, in the case not only of the Christians but of the Alawites.
Today, Iraq looks into the abyss because of economic failure, sectarian violence and political turmoil and corruption. Prime Minister al-Maliki, having centralised power, is a tentative supporter, to say the least, of President Assad, and a new wave of sectarian unrest seems imminent. That is one example of how unintended consequences can come back and bite us when we do not think these things through carefully.
Furthermore, there is little doubt that the removal of Saddam Hussein fundamentally altered the regional balance of power. We tend to forget in this House that we supported Saddam Hussein in Iraq’s attack on Iran. At that time, there was an approximate balance of power in the region. In effect, by taking Iraq out of the equation we ourselves created a regional superpower in the shape of Iran, the consequences of which we are still living with today.
I also suggest to the House that the invasion ignored the lessons of history. Interventions have a tendency to support, reinforce or have an embedding effect on the existing regimes. Looking back at history, communism, for example, has survived longest in those countries where the west has intervened militarily, such as China, Vietnam, Cuba and Korea. Meanwhile, the neo-con dream of establishing a sort of liberal democracy in Iraq lies in tatters. Democracy is taking root in north Africa, in regions where the west has put in very little support, not in Iraq or Afghanistan, where the cost to the west, particularly to this country, has been very high in terms of lives and treasure.
Meanwhile, as we have heard, our intervention has radicalised elements of the Muslim world against us, not only in regions of the middle east, but on the streets of this country. Scandals such as Abu Ghraib reinforce this alienation. As has been mentioned, Dame Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, said that the invasion “increased the terrorist threat” and
“spurred some British Muslims to turn to terror.”
We are still living with the consequences of this radicalisation, as very sad recent news has highlighted.
One scratches around for positives from this period. Perhaps there are a few. If al-Qaeda was one of the reasons for the invasion, it is now abundantly clear that the Iraq war was a 19th-century colonial-style solution to a 21st-century terrorist threat. There is no point invading countries if we are chasing extremists and terrorists. Instead, our efforts against international terrorism must be much more nimble and nuanced. They must reflect the flexibility of the terrorist threat itself, focusing on intelligence and operations, supporting friendly Governments in their anti-terrorist endeavours and applying properly resourced special forces. Indeed, there are encouraging signs that we have learned lessons from that period. We must also better focus international aid on the poverty and grievances that al-Qaeda and others have all too readily fastened upon in the past.
Perhaps—I am coming to an end—there is a more general lesson to be learned. We failed at the time to carry the international community with us, and in doing so I would suggest that we lost the moral high ground. The view adopted by the US and the UK at the time was that might is right. This sets a dangerous precedent. The coming decades will see the emergence of at least regional superpowers—or even global superpowers—that might be eager to flex their muscles. Our invasion of Iraq will make condemnation of any future aggression by others less effective. The invasion showed international law to be no guarantee of sovereignty or, indeed, security. This in itself may have encouraged some countries to seek other guarantees.
If there is a positive, it is perhaps that this war may have served to lay to rest, once and for all, the view that the British electorate would instinctively support politicians advocating intervention or war. I would suggest that Blair was never trusted thereafter. As our Prime Minister considers possible responses to Syria, he would be wise to reflect on that. In conclusion, let us hope that these lessons have been learned, for the sake of future generations.
Iran
Debate between John Baron and Edward Leigh(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Baron
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I must say that we need to examine these statements very carefully, because that translation too is open to dispute. It is all very well coming to the House with these translations, but Farsi is a complex language, as she will know, and we have to make sure that we get them right. Many scholars outside this place verify that President Ahmadinejad’s original statement was misquoted—theses have been written about it—which is why I ask the Foreign Secretary to clarify the situation. We need to get this quote clarified.
There can be little doubt that the west’s policy of sabre-rattling and sanctions has failed; the Iranians are not going to back down on their nuclear programme. Mr Mousavi, the unofficial leader of the green movement and one of the great hopes of the west, said during the 2009 presidential campaign that any backtracking on the nuclear issue would be tantamount to surrender. Iran’s statement that it is introducing an oil embargo for certain countries shows that it is impervious to sabre-rattling, yet we in the west still pursue that policy when confronting Iran. Indeed it is considered “naive”—I have heard that word used a lot—to rule out the use of force. We are told that all options must be left on the table. Some people go further: there seems to be a hairshirt auction among Republican candidates for the presidential nomination in America as to who can be toughest on Iran, with Mitt Romney openly advocating war over the nuclear issue. I would counter that by saying that what is naive is pursuing a policy that has clearly failed. Sanctions and sabre-rattling are yesterday’s policies and they have brought us to the brink of a military conflict, which is hardly the sign of success.
What compounds the error of that approach is that most agree that a military strike would be counter-productive to the point of being calamitous. It would reinforce the position of the hard-liners at the expense of the pragmatists within Iran, just as the Iran-Iraq war boosted patriotic support for the regime and helped to cement the revolution. Military intervention would not work; the US Defence Secretary judges that it would delay the Iranians for only a year at most. Knowledge cannot be eradicated by military intervention, and such intervention will only delay the inevitable. If Iran is set on acquiring nuclear weapons, she will not be scared away; and if she is not, a military strike would encourage her to do so. We even hear voices from within Israel against a strike. Meir Dagan, the hard-line former chief of Mossad—nobody could accuse him of being a pussycat—has referred to an attack on Iran as “a stupid idea.”
I ask hon. Members to reflect on a wider historical point. It is perhaps relevant to reflect more generally that military action often has an embedding effect: it reinforces the position of the existing regime. For example, communism has lasted longest in those countries where the west intervened militarily—North Korea, China, Cuba and Vietnam.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
My hon. Friend talks about the verdict of history. Is the verdict of history not also that when dealing with tyrannies it is unwise to rule out force in defence, and that sometimes it is wise to keep tyrannies guessing as to one’s intentions?