Infected Blood Inquiry

Debate between Julian Lewis and John Glen

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

All I can do is account for what I have done since 13 November. I cannot really comment on the several decades previous to that. As the hon. Lady will know, we have had a series of ad hoc schemes, but the Government’s accepting culpability for what happened many years ago and the subsequent failure to respond will need to be addressed fully after 20 May. The Government’s amendment in the House of Lords is the first time that we will have put in legislation a duty to pay compensation. That is the start of a more comprehensive response that I am working on to secure collective agreement across Government, and I want to bring that forward as quickly as I am able to do so.

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

The Langstaff recommendation for interim payments was because of the need for speed; because people are so ill. How many people do the Government believe to be still living who were infected in this scandal? How many of them applied for the interim payments? What proportion of those who applied have received the payments? If my right hon. Friend does not have the figures with him today, will he undertake to write to me and place a copy of the letter in the House of Commons Library?

[John Glen]

My right hon. Friend customarily asks precise and penetrating questions. I do not want to quote the few figures that I think I know, so I will write him a considered reply, which I will make available. Far too many people have suffered and far too many have died. We need to put this right as quickly as possible.

Infected Blood Inquiry: Government Response

Debate between Julian Lewis and John Glen

Monday 18th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I reaffirm what I have said about my commitment to doing this as quickly as possible. Of course I regret the delays that have occurred over many years, and I want this to be brought to a conclusion as quickly as it can be. I think I neglected to answer the question from the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) about working with the various victims’ groups, of which there are a large number. I undertake to work with them to give them as much clarity as possible about the timetable and the work that I am undertaking.

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

Will the Government be making these payments within their own lifetime?

[John Glen]

I will give a comprehensive response along the timetable that I set out earlier.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Julian Lewis and John Glen

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I spoke about such matters with Jon Swinney, in my second conversation with him since appointment three weeks ago, last evening. We discussed a range of matters, and I will always try to be as constructive as I can to find ways forward when the whole of the United Kingdom faces the inflationary scourge everywhere.

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

Given that we both agree on the need for a substantial increase in defence spending, does the Chancellor accept that any immediate, necessary freeze on it should not prejudice the goal of 3% of GDP in the medium term?

Coronavirus Grant Schemes: Fraud

Debate between Julian Lewis and John Glen

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I know that the hon. Lady’s Select Committee is conducting an in-depth inquiry. I believe that the second permanent secretary and others appeared before the Committee last week, and I look forward to its report.

I can absolutely clarify that we do see the distinction between a credit loss and fraud. What we are talking about here is: what are the most effective mechanisms, and over what timeframe, to get that money back? Also, we have received moneys back from, for example, the furlough scheme: moneys and grants that were made in error. So it is a complicated picture. I am certainly not suggesting from this Dispatch Box that the Government are writing anything off, or do not grasp the distinction between a credit loss and fraud. This needs to be tackled, but it needs to be tackled in a time and money-efficient way. Obviously the law of diminishing returns begins to apply after a certain point, and we will again by led by HMRC and its excellent advice as we pursue the matter.

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

The Government are saying that fraudsters will still be relentlessly pursued. If, heaven forbid, the Minister ever had to implement such a scheme in the future, would he regard it as a satisfactory result to know that 99% of these huge sums of money went to the intended recipients?

[John Glen]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. He helpfully highlights that many of these grants and schemes were very effective in getting money to the right people in a timely way. I spoke earlier to an official from HMRC, who said, “We managed to get some of the money out in six days. If we had spent more time designing in more verification, we could have made it watertight. That would have taken several months and many businesses would have gone to the wall.” That was the dilemma we faced. I am not saying we got everything right, but it was certainly done in all good conscience to try to get the balance right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Julian Lewis and John Glen

Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to encourage home ownership.

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

The Government are committed to helping people own their own home. Our new mortgage guarantee scheme is increasing the availability of mortgages for credit-worthy households who only have a 5% deposit, helping them realise their dream of home ownership. The lifetime ISA provides a bonus to those under 40 saving towards a home, worth up to £450,000.

[Dr Lewis]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Last week, The Sunday Times detailed the colossal sums imposed on ordinary people by rapacious freeholders and reckless developers. Why should anyone risk purchasing a lease on a residential flat if we fail as a Government to protect innocent leaseholders from bearing the costs of defective extra storeys or defective extra cladding forced on them by those who are actually responsible for such terrible defects?

[John Glen]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. The Government are investing more than £5 billion in building safety, including an additional £3.5 billion announced this year for the remediation of unsafe cladding for all leaseholders living in high-rise residential buildings. We are also introducing a new tax on the UK residential property development sector and a new levy on developers of certain high-rise buildings to help pay for cladding remediation costs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Julian Lewis and John Glen

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

As I have said previously, the Government are committed to co-operating fully with all reviews on these matters. I do not accept what the hon. Lady has said with respect to the schemes that the Government have put forward over the past 14 months. Her constituency has had £16.7 million in business grants and 1,206 bounce-back loans totalling £30 million. In addition, 12,700 of her constituents have benefited from the furlough scheme, and 2,000 have benefited from the self-employed income support scheme. That is a significant contribution to help her constituents.

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

How many promoters and operators of schemes subject to the loan charge have been prosecuted for promoting and operating those schemes.

Equitable Life

Debate between Julian Lewis and John Glen

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

Let me start, as others have done, by acknowledging the role of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), his long-standing work on the issue and his success in securing the debate. I also need to declare an interest, as I did when I responded to the debate on 31 January 2019: my late father was an investor in Equitable Life and, therefore, I am keenly aware of the history and the importance of the issue to all concerned.

As we have heard and grasped again today, this is a complex and technical subject, the history of which has been very well documented over many years. I should also remind Members that the Equitable Life payment scheme closed to new claims over five years ago, so nothing has changed since that previous debate two years ago. Many of the speeches made today have covered the long and sad history of this matter. I do not propose to revisit all of that this afternoon. I do, however, want to remind hon. Members that the Government took more action than any of their predecessors to resolve this issue and committed significantly more funding than any other.

I appreciate that some investors remain disappointed by the steps that we took and would like to see further funds made available, but the Government have been clear and consistent in saying that this issue is closed and no further money will be paid out. This is in line with the ombudsman’s report, which was explicit about having no expectation of the full amount being paid.

[Dr Lewis]

Will the Minister give way?

[John Glen]

I will not, because of time. Indeed, the ombudsman wrote to the APPG to clarify that position. Today, we have heard additional representations on the transparency and accuracy of the payments made by the scheme. I heard very clearly that point from my right hon. Friend and his reference to me during the debate, and I shall respond to that now.

First, the Treasury published the calculation methodology in full in 2011, as well as a simplified explanation to assist members of the scheme who were anxious about how it would work, with worked examples of the calculation. These explain how every payment made by the scheme was calculated. In addition, the Treasury has also incurred actuarial fees well in excess of £100,000, answering the questions reasonably posed by the actuarial representative of the Equitable Members Action Group, in an effort to ensure that there was maximum transparency to that group and to those members who were concerned, but no errors were found in the methodology. The group confirmed to their members that the payments to annuitants were accurate, and all this was set out in detail to the Public Accounts Committee in 2018.

Some hon. Members have spoken about policyholders who have received increased payments from the scheme, but given the closure of the scheme to new claims, I can only assume that these are historical cases. The Treasury is not aware of any corrected payments having been made to policyholders since the scheme closed, but I recognise that it may be helpful to go into some more detail on this point. The most critical determinant of the value of any payment is the input data received from Equitable itself, including payments in, payments out and the type of policy bought. Actuaries checked this data carefully and made any obvious corrections automatically before payments were made. But then the scheme also gave policyholders the opportunity to verify their own input data, which would be a significant driver of any errors, and where an error was found, the scheme corrected it and recalculated the payment. That is likely to have been what happened in specific cases that Members have raised today, and I believe that they show that the system that the scheme established to ensure accurate payments worked well.

The Government have taken significant action to resolve this issue and to balance the expectations of the policyholder with the needs of the taxpayer. The scheme was fully transparent, as I have set out. We published the calculation methodology in full. We made significant resources available to explain it. And we put systems in place to ensure that where there were errors in that input data and, therefore, payments, they were remedied swiftly. I appreciate investors’ desire that the scheme should pay out more, but the Government’s position has always been clear and consistent, both since the original announcement back in 2010 and since the scheme was wound down over five years ago. I am afraid that that position remains and will not change.

Coronavirus: Employment Support

Debate between Julian Lewis and John Glen

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

The hon. Lady makes a reasonable point about the concerns that are being raised. That is why the Cabinet Office will give further advice today on key workers and the support that will be given. I recognise that yesterday’s announcement on schools will be a significant disruption to the lives of many of our citizens. It is very important that we put in place urgently clarity about who is involved—who is designated in those categories—and the support that will be available. I will ensure that her point, which I am sure reflects the views of many, gets to the Cabinet Office after this session.

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

Given that the suggestions of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) could be implemented so speedily, will the Minister undertake to try immediately after this session to get an answer on whether they should be implemented?

[John Glen]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. Of course I will.

Passchendaele

Debate between Julian Lewis and John Glen

Thursday 13th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. He makes a wise point with his customary eloquence, and I am sure it will be echoed across the House.

The battle was infamous not only for the terrible conditions but for the sheer scale of the losses. In the region of 250,000 allied soldiers and around the same number of German soldiers, a total of some 500,000 men from both sides, were wounded, killed or missing. Those are quite frankly unbelievable numbers. Fought between 31 July and 10 November 1917, the battle saw the British Army attempt to break out of the notorious Ypres Salient and put intolerable pressure on the German defences. Troops from across Britain and Ireland took part, along with significant numbers from today’s Commonwealth, particularly from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. Allied air forces played an important role, providing vital reconnaissance for the ground forces and fighting deadly dogfights with their German counterparts in the skies above the trenches. The battle was conceived, in part, as a means of influencing the struggle against German submarines, and the Royal Naval Division served on Passchendaele’s battlefield alongside other soldiers. Many others contributed during the battle and in the fighting around Ypres during the conflict, including servicemen from India and the West Indies, labourers from China and, of course, the nurses and medical staff who worked behind the lines to treat the wounded.

For all those who fought in that small corner of Flanders in the late summer and autumn of 1917, including those in the Belgian, French and German armies, it would prove to be one of the most gruelling experiences of the conflict. Much of the first world war’s enduring photography, poetry and artwork was inspired by the desolate landscape, which became a featureless quagmire over the course of the battle. After periods of intense rain, the mud became so bad that men and animals could be swallowed up in the swamp. Images, such as the photography of Frank Hurley or the evocative paintings of Paul Nash, are a harrowing reflection of the utter devastation that was wrought.

Many families, villages and towns were touched by the fighting. In Wales, the battle is partly remembered for the loss of the renowned poet Ellis Evans—better known by his bardic name Hedd Wyn—who died on Pilckem Ridge on the opening day of the battle.

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

I apologise to the Minister because I have to be briefly absent for part of the debate, but I will return at the earliest opportunity. I know that props are not always welcome in the Chamber, but in the light of what he said about photographs, may I share with him a pair of photographs? They show Passchendaele village in June 1917 and in December 1917, and it is possible even from a distance to see how entirely the landscape was obliterated by the bombardment.

[John Glen]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his pertinent intervention, which the whole House will welcome.

Britain in the World

Debate between Julian Lewis and John Glen

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

While not disagreeing with my hon. Friend, I am trying to explain to the House the means of conducting the review. That is the point I am interested in—not the way in which Labour may afterwards have carried out its defence and foreign policies, about which I would have a large measure of agreement with my hon. Friend. The fact is, it is one thing to fail to live up to a good plan, but it is another not to have a good plan in the first place; and if we want to have a good plan, we need to take our time over the strategic defence and security review, and not rush it, and not simply say, “You’ve got X amount of money; how much defence can you give us for that sum?”

I want to say a quick word about NATO and deterrence. We have heard a lot about the 2% and I do not intend to waste the House’s time by reiterating the arguments we have all heard many times, but I would just make one point on the subject: the 2% is not a target, it is a minimum, and therefore there should be no question of our failing to meet the minimum. The question is how much above that minimum we can safely manage to use as the basis for the future shape and size of our armed forces.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

But does my right hon. Friend not acknowledge that perhaps the bigger challenge is the fact that 26 members of NATO are nowhere near meeting the 2%, so, regardless of what we do, is it not imperative that we influence those other nations to reach that commitment in the first place?

[Dr Lewis]

That is a very good point, because even when I said that it is not a target but a minimum I was debating whether to add the sub-clause “but it is of course a target for those countries that have not even met it.” My hon. Friend is absolutely right: if we stop what we have done consistently, which is comfortably to meet, and indeed exceed, that minimum, what sort of a disincentive is it to other states—for whom it is an aspiration yet to be achieved—when they see we are beginning to lose our grip of our own hitherto much more successful allocation of resources to defence?

We should also remind ourselves that every Government say defence is the first duty of Government. If so, it does not make sense to ring-fence other areas of Government and not to protect defence. If we are going to do that, then come clean and say, “Okay, it isn’t the first duty of Government any more” and try to defend taking that position. I do not like this selective ring-fencing of different Departments. A Government ought to have the guts to order their priorities, to set them out, and to stand up in the House of Commons and defend them.

Finally, I just want to say a word about deterrence. I am talking not about nuclear deterrence—unless provoked, the word Trident shall not pass my lips—but about deterrence in the context of the very sad situation whereby Russia, whom we all hoped would continue down the democratic path, has decided to revert, if not to a permanent type, to a type that was all too familiar to us during the cold war years. We see that not only in its behaviour in Ukraine but in the way in which opponents of the regime are being assassinated. We recently had the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, and now we find that Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was a close associate of Boris Nemtsov, has been suddenly struck down with a very serious and undiagnosed illness and is now fighting for his life in a Moscow hospital. Those are not the features that we wish to see in a modern state that wants to play its part on the world stage; they are more of a reversion to a type of regime that held the world at bay for more than 50 years. We hoped that we were entering a new era after the events of 1989 and 1991 so, when we are deciding our priorities, let us remember that in the dark years of the cold war we thought it necessary to spend between 4% and 5% of GDP on defence. I am not calling for that now, but I am certainly calling for us comfortably to exceed the NATO-recommended minimum. I hope that mine will not be the only voice on either side of the House, and I am sure it will not be, saying that we must meet that obligation and carry out our commitment so that the peace that Europe has enjoyed for so long can continue indefinitely.