Ministerial Code: Investigation of Potential Breach

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

As I said earlier, there is information being gathered, and that will be the first point to determine the next steps. It is always interesting to hear from the SNP about farcical situations with ethics. The one advantage of a campervan, I suppose, is that it does not go very fast.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I have no first-hand knowledge of this particular case, but does my right hon. Friend the Minister agree that there is and should always be a difference between asking a civil servant to do something that may or may not be wrong and asking a civil servant for advice on whether doing something is or is not likely to be wrong?

[Jeremy Quin]

I of course agree that there is a difference there, but I would not wish to speculate about this particular circumstance, as my right hon. Friend will understand.

G7 Summit

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 22nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We were one of the first countries to put in place an incredibly comprehensive sanctions regime against Russia. We have sanctioned, at this point, over 1,500 people—tens of billions of dollars of assets. Indeed, because of our actions, something like over $200 billion-worth of Russian state assets are currently now frozen. All that is contributing to a significant squeezing of the Russian economy, as we are seeing, and its ability to replenish its war machine, and we will keep looking for other opportunities to tighten the vice, as we did this weekend.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

If, against all original expectations, Ukraine succeeds in expelling Russia from her territory, will the time then have come for us seriously to consider admitting Ukraine to NATO, so that no future psychopathic Russian leader will ever be tempted to invade her again?

[The Prime Minister]

As the NATO Secretary-General has already said, Ukraine will become a member of NATO. The most immediate task that faces us is, as my right hon. Friend knows, to provide the support that Ukraine needs to be successful on the battlefield, and to provide the longer term security agreements and arrangements that Ukraine deserves, and to do that in a way that is multilateral—that is something I discussed with leaders across the G7. In doing so we will send a strong signal to Russia that we are not going anywhere, increase the long term deterrent effect, and strengthen the incentive for it to withdraw its troops now, and not attempt to wait anybody out.

Independent Public Advocate

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I know the hon. Lady cares deeply about this subject. I am familiar with these challenges from my time as Housing Minister, aside from the issue of Hillsborough, which I followed closely.

I totally understand the importance of the duty of candour. I have never said that the IPA is the whole picture; I said that it is a partial but important step that we are taking. It is better to get on with it, because after so long, one thing that I get from the communities, victims and survivors is the need to get on with tangible action—that is the way we will restore confidence. Thy duty of candour was included in the report by Bishop James Jones, and therefore it is right that is part of the Home Office response. As has been set out previously, the Home Office will publish that response in the spring, and of course it will cover that issue.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend explain in a little more detail at what point and under what circumstances the availability of the advocate will be triggered? I see that he or she could be involved in not just inquiries but inquests, so how large a tragedy does it have to be before the victims and the bereaved can call upon his or her services?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, who raises a very good point. The principle is that the advocate is there for major tragedies. This is a specific institution set up with a range of expertise designed to deal with that. It is not dealing with one loss of life or a smaller event like that. We will need to work closely with Members on the definition to get that right.

Northern Ireland Protocol

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I do believe that the new arrangement we have made—the Windsor framework—provides the basis for peace, prosperity and stability in Northern Ireland. That is why I have brought it forward and why we have worked so hard on it. As we have done so, we have strived very hard to respect the identity and aspirations of all communities in Northern Ireland. Balance is at the heart of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. The Windsor framework restores that balance and ensures that we can move forward positively together.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In difficult negotiations, the late, great Ronald Reagan used to say, “Trust but verify,” which I took to mean, “Be optimistic but have a reserve plan.” It sounds as if the reserve plan here is the Stormont brake, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Shailesh Vara) said, that might not apply if, for any reason, Stormont was not sitting. Is the Prime Minister satisfied that there is a plan B that would work under all circumstances?

[The Prime Minister]

This is incredibly important. What we should be focused on is Stormont being up and running. The people of Northern Ireland need and deserve their institutions to be functioning for them. I think it is entirely right that we have vested this power—this sovereignty—in the institution that represents them and do not exercise it on their behalf. Instead our priorities should be getting the institutions back up and running so that sovereignty is restored and the people of Northern Ireland are in control of their destiny.

House of Lords Reform

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I would like to begin by posing a scenario. We go to the public and we say to them, “We have a good idea for constitutional reform. Let us double the number of Members of Parliament.” How do colleagues feel that would go down? Not very well, I think. Suppose we then said, “Let us double the number of Members of Parliament, but elect half of them at one time, and half of them at another time.” How would that work in practice?

Alternatively, we could say, “Let us elect them all at the same time, but sit them in two Houses.” In which case, they rubber-stamp each other. Finally, we would say, “Let us elect one group under one electoral system and the other group under a different electoral system, but one will clearly be subordinate to the other, even though they are both democratically elected.” I wish anybody luck in trying to resolve the arguments and the deadlock resulting from that.

[David Linden]

May I add one further option? There would be 59 fewer Members of Parliament if Scotland becomes independent, and then the remaining guys could do what they want with their own constitution.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

If we were having a debate about Scottish independence, I would be happy to engage with that. Our Scottish colleagues have quite rightly chosen to participate in the UK national constitutional debate, and that is what we are considering this afternoon. I have a firm view that if the House of Lords had to go, it would be far better to have a single elected Chamber, rather than two elected Chambers that would perpetually be either deadlocking or rubber-stamping each other.

[Graham Stringer]

I agree with the thrust of the right hon. Gentleman’s arguments. Does he agree that there is a fallacy in the comparison with other countries that have two different systems and an upper House? They rely on a written constitution and the courts interpreting it. That fallacy is deep within the Brown report—somehow, constitutionally, we will limit one House when we do not have a written constitution. Is that not a nonsense?

[Sir Julian Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman is an independent thinker on his party’s Benches. Not for the first time, I find myself in total agreement with him. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) said that the system of two elected Houses works well in other democracies. I am not sure that the citizens of the United States would entirely endorse that opinion, great though their democracy is.

[Pete Wishart]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Forgive me, but I would like to develop my argument a little more. I promise that I will then give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Pete Wishart]

rose—

[Sir Julian Lewis]

How can I refuse the hon. Gentleman?

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who is always courteous. I am an abolisher of the House of Lords, but the UK is a complex democracy and some sort of revising Chamber would be required to take care of all its specific demands. The right hon. Gentleman and, I think, the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) were here when Robin Cook proposed a series of reforms. I think we voted 11 times on a number of proposals, and none of them went through because of the very arguments made by the right hon. Gentleman. We cannot have competition with the House of Commons, but surely abolishing the House of Lords would not mean that we were left with nothing. There must be something we can think of to go in its place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I remember that series of votes, because I voted against every one of those propositions. I was absolutely convinced that all of them would have changed matters for the worse.

Having said that, I agree with the hon. Gentleman as far as saying that there surely must be ways in which reforms can be made to the existing, non-elected upper House. I am sure that many thoughtful Members of that House agree with that proposition, not least the noble Lord Cormack and Lord Norton of Louth. They run an effective campaign for an effective second Chamber that is constantly looking at ways in which the existing upper House can be successfully improved.

After a promising start, having given a nod or two to the expertise of many Members of the upper House and to the quality of their debate, the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), to whom we are all grateful for introducing the debate, fell into the traditional trap of complaining mainly about what the House of Lords is rather than what the House of Lords does, and does very well. In the short time that I wish to take up, I will give an illustration of that—if my technology will allow me.

I have a confession. I have been a Member of Parliament for over 25 years, and in all that time I, as an individual legislator, have managed to change only one piece of legislation, and that was because of the most unusual occasion of a free vote in the lower House. However, in a six-year period in the latter part of the 1980s—before I became a Member of Parliament—I was able, with the essential help of Members of the House of Lords, to change no fewer than four pieces of legislation. For the record, one was to require postal ballots for trade union elections, which was incorporated in the Trade Union Act 1984 and the Employment Act 1988. The second was to outlaw political indoctrination in schools, which was incorporated in the Education Act 1986 and carried forward in the Education Act 1996. The third was a measure prohibiting local councils from publishing politically partisan material on the rates, and that was incorporated in section 27 of the Local Government Act 1988. Fourthly, a more strict definition of the concept of due impartiality in coverage of politically contentious issues on television and radio was incorporated in the Broadcasting Act 1990.

I imagine that SNP Members in particular are sitting in horror at the prospect of all those legislative changes having gone through, but whether or not we agree with the particular changes, the fact is that they were possible only because the unelected House has a very limited whipping system. If a Member persuades thoughtful and independently minded Members of the upper House of the wisdom of a proposed amendment to a piece of legislation going through the parliamentary process and convinces them to back that amendment, there is every prospect that the upper House will insert it in the legislation, and it will remain there when it returns to the lower House, thereby forcing the Government to consider it seriously.

I mentioned the issue of postal ballots in trade union elections, which are now accepted by all. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) tabled an amendment on that issue in the lower House, it got nowhere. It was voted down—not on its merits but because of the whipping system. The vast majority of Members who voted on it probably did not have much idea of what his amendment contained. They did what they were told. In the upper House, if I could convince people that something was sensible and they voted it through into the legislation, I found that it had a better than 50% chance of remaining in that legislation when it went back to the lower Chamber.

There are, of course, undeserving people sitting in the House of Lords, but there are also many people who chose not to become professional politicians. They chose to stay in their own professions and to rise to the top of them. They became top academics, lawyers and people in the field of, for example, medicine or any other profession or trade. I am not in any way being disrespectful to the abilities of those of us who chose to become full-time, or more or less full-time, Members of the House of Commons, but when we made that decision we gave up our ability to maintain and develop our level of expertise such as it was before we took that career path.

Having an unelected second Chamber, even though some people may be put there for the wrong reasons, should nevertheless not blind us to the fact that many people who have great intellect, knowledge and expertise can bring those talents to bear on legislation as it goes through and improve it. It is precisely because they are not elected that they can never seek to usurp the powers of the House of Commons, but always be rightly subordinate to us in this House while we benefit from the value added that they bring to the process.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I appreciate you taking the time to chair this debate so excellently, Sir Gary. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) for securing this debate. When I was first elected to the House of Commons, I was made the SNP spokesperson on the House of Lords. It is the easiest job an SNP politician can do, because when they do something, we say, “Abolish them,” and when they do something else, we say, “Abolish them,” again. There is just one line you need to know. That is why this debate has been interesting. It has been a thoughtful debate with lots of issues and concerns raised about the House of Lords. Some Members have talked about how great they think the House of Lords is, but we have also discussed a number of different issues.

I will focus briefly on the issue of constitutional obsession. We all have a constitutional obsession. Indeed, hon. Members would not be here if they did not think that things that were not working needed to be changed. It is not just about improving a single constituent’s life by writing to an energy company to complain about a wrong bill. We can improve all of our constituents’ lives by changing the system. That is what all of us are here to do. We are all here to talk and think about the constitution and the changes we want to make to it and to the systems and the ways in which we operate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North is correct that Governments of any type, in any country, have less impetus to deliver change than anyone else. Governments are appointed by whatever system they work within. That means that the system works for them: it has put them there and entrenched their power. Why would they want to lessen their future chances of getting that power?

That point is neatly summed up by the fact that one in 10 Conservative peers have donated more than £100,000 to the party. I do not know which came first: did they donate money and then happen to become a peer, or did they become a peer and then happen to donate money? I do not know the order in which it works, but surely that is a symbiotic, beneficial relationship for both groups of people. It is great for the Conservative party that it can get so much in donations, and it is great for peers that they can get £332 a day, as well as the power and prestige that comes with being a Member of the House of Lords as a result of their relationships, patronage and appointment for life.

I will now talk specifically about how the House of Lords works and operates, and what it looks like. The most recent figures I could find in the Library are from 2019 and show that the average age of Members of the House of Commons is 51. That is not as young as it should be and does not reflect the general population or even the general voting population. However, the average age of Members of the House of Lords is 71. The hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) may be interested to know that he is younger than the youngest peer in the House of Lords. Although he and I are relatively young Members of Parliament, we are far from being the youngest MPs these days.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

As a 71-year-old Member of the lower House, I will not take offence at the hon. Lady’s ageism. I will just point out, however, that if people get to the top of their professions before they get seats in the House of Lords, where they can apply their expertise, they will tend to be older rather than younger.

[Kirsty Blackman]

My issue is not with the actions of individuals at certain ages or with the fact that there are many 71-year-olds who could run rings around significant numbers of us younger ones—I absolutely agree that that is the case. My issue is that it does not represent the population. We are supposed to have a representative democracy but it fails to be so because its membership does not look like the rest of the population.

I will take a moment to tackle another thing that the hon. Member for Totnes said. Some 57% of Members of the House of Lords went to private schools, which is ridiculously high.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Hon. Members]

Hear, hear!

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker; it is kind of colleagues to respond in that way.

Some months ago, the Government took the welcome decision to raise the retirement age for justices of the peace from 70 to 75. However, the question of reinstatement for those previously caught by the 70 age limit has been left, I believe, to local regions, rather than a wider cohort being allowed to go back on the bench, even if they are willing to travel. Can more flexibility be put into this system, so that people can be reinstated under those circumstances?

[Mike Freer]

It is my understanding that this issue is subject to the oversight of the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice. I understand that it is very firmly on their radar and that they will use their discretion as appropriate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously, charitable status is a matter for the Charity Commission, but more generally, we believe in free speech and the vibrant debate of ideas. That is a good thing and we should do absolutely nothing to stamp it out even when we disagree with it.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

In the run-up to the autumn statement, will my right hon. Friend do everything he can to persuade the Chancellor to assist those people who took out mortgages in good faith and are now at risk of losing their homes through unaffordable increases?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise mortgage payments. This is why it is absolutely crucial that we put our public finances on a sustainable footing to limit the increase in interest rates, because ultimately that is what puts pressure on people’s mortgage payments, and that is what this Government are determined to do. In the short term, I hope he can direct his constituents to the support available through the welfare system for those with mortgage payments.

Tributes to Her Late Majesty the Queen

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Saturday 10th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Towards the end of yesterday’s proceedings, participants were encouraged to avoid repeating the points of their predecessors. That is no easy task when such unanimity prevails. Some Members of this House clearly had far more contact with Her Majesty than others. Yet, it is natural that so many of us wish to record our tributes to the outstanding monarch of the modern age—not simply for ourselves but on behalf of tens of thousands of constituents who also adored her.

One reason for that adoration was the Queen’s accessibility. The Lymington Times has helpfully listed four notable visits she paid to our part of Hampshire, including in 1979 to mark the 900th anniversary of the New Forest and in 2012 as part of her diamond jubilee tour. Multiply those visits by well over 600 constituencies and the scale of her efforts, on visits alone, is colossal. New Forest East was formed before the 1997 general election and, as its first MP, I described to the House how even so beautiful an area had been touched and toughened by the impact of war. Princess Elizabeth’s formative years were similarly shaped and strengthened by that ordeal. Her family’s involvement with the services, already so strong, could only increase. While others directed the operations of the military, the allegiance of those forces was to her and her alone. This is more than symbolic: it is an essential guarantee of the constitutional independence of the military.

I am very fortunate to represent so many people with past, present or potential service in the armed forces of the Crown. One such constituent—my partner’s father—received his Distinguished Flying Cross from the hands of the Queen as long ago as 1955 during the Malayan emergency. He was struck by the depth of her knowledge even then: it went far beyond the formalities of an investiture. We can truly be thankful that, at the top of society, she chose to be its servant. She adapted to change, yet always seemed the same. She did her duty unfailingly and was, in short, an inspiration to the nation.

CHOGM, G7 and NATO Summits

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is completely right: the Turks are absolutely indispensable to solving this. They are doing their very best and I thank President Erdoğan for all the efforts that he is making. It does depend on the Russians agreeing to allow that grain to get out. The UK is offering demining facilities and insurance facilities for the vessels that will be needed to get the grain out. He is right about the urgency. We will increasingly have to look at alternative means of moving that grain from Ukraine if we cannot use the sea route—if we cannot use the Bosphorus.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister accept that, before there was a shooting war in Europe in the 1980s, it was right for this country to spend 5% of GDP on defence and, if he does, why does he think it is adequate for us to spend only half that percentage by the end of this decade?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend has campaigned on this issue for years. I think we will have to spend more. Logically, Mr Speaker, if you protract the commitments that we are making under AUKUS and under the future combat aircraft system, we will be increasing our spending very considerably. What we want to do is to make sure that other allies are doing the same. That is most important. That is why Jens Stoltenberg is, we hope, going to set a new target and allow the whole of the alliance to increase its funding.

Sue Gray Report

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have apologised and, as I said, I am deeply contrite about what happened. I take responsibility. We have already made a huge amount of change in No. 10, and it is my judgment that the best thing for the country is now to move on from this issue and to learn the lessons.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Given the cavalier way in which these rules were interpreted in No. 10, does my right hon. Friend agree that rules of such intrusiveness and rigidity must never again be imposed on the British people as a whole?

[The Prime Minister]

We were dealing with an unprecedented pandemic, and we did not have any immediate tools to control it, short of a vaccine, without asking people to restrict their behaviour. I am sure there are plenty of lessons we can learn for the future about how to do it better, and that will be a matter for the inquiry.