Covid-19: Vaccinations

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Bob Stewart

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the Minister for being so assiduous in giving very thorough answers to the long and complicated series of questions that have already been put to him, but I must say to the House that we now have half an hour more for the rest of this statement, so I insist on having questions, not statements, from everyone. I specifically mention this to people who are coming in virtually, because they seem to lose a sense of timing when they are not here in the Chamber. A question means a question—just one question. I say to the Minister, who has been most assiduous, that where he has already given an answer to the question, I will not insist that he has to give the answer again because the person who is now asking it has not listened to his first answer.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I will be as quick as I can, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Some of my Beckenham constituents have contacted me to say that they think they should have had the vaccination already; two of them are in their 90s, so I am slightly alarmed. I am told that GPs are not necessarily the people to go to in order to ask what is happening, so I wonder who my constituents and I should go to when the system—inadvertently, perhaps—does not actually give out an appointment that it might have done.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend’s constituents will be contacted, either by their primary care network or by letter from the national booking service. They do not have to go to the national vaccination centre if that is inconvenient; they will be able to get their vaccination through their primary care network or the hospital hubs. I am very happy to take those particular two cases offline, look into them and give him some more details.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Bob Stewart

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Thirty hours is a success story. The summer numbers are 340,000 children aged three and four benefiting from 30 hours a week free childcare. For those parents taking advantage of that, that is a £5,000 saving a year. We are conducting a review to look at the economics of the model, as we have done in the past, when we raised the hourly rate from £4.65 to £5. It is a huge success story, and clearly the hon. Gentleman is running scared.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

May I ask the Minister to explain how the Government intend to increase free childcare for foster carers, which is a great idea?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend is right. We have listened carefully, including to many views in this Chamber, and we have delivered. As of September, foster carers who qualify for the 30 hours a week free childcare for three and four-year-olds can take advantage of it.

Britain in the World

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Bob Stewart

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Having listened to the hon. Members for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) and for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) and the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Ms Ahmed-Sheikh), I am sure you will agree, Mr Deputy Speaker, that we are going to have a dynamic, robust and diverse Parliament.

In seeking to influence international events, we have to make the most of what we have. We have a lot going for us: an open, welcoming, free-trading, entrepreneurial economy; some of the world’s best universities; a global financial hub; the fourth-biggest defence budget; ring-fenced aid spending; and, of course, the English language. Then we have our history, which, for better or worse, binds us to much of the rest of the world. This month marks the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, and much has changed since then.

[Bob Stewart]

At the battle of Waterloo, we had a stumbling problem with the French, but the Germans came to our assistance in the end. Does my hon. Friend think that that will work in our EU referendum?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Indeed so. My hon. Friend has stolen my punch line. Back in 1815, the main issue confronting His Majesty’s Government was how to prevent Europe from being dominated by a single over-mighty power hellbent on imposing one law across the continent, and as he rightly points out, with a little help from our German friends, we triumphed, to the benefit of all Europeans. I hope that this sets a precedent for our Prime Minister’s renegotiation strategy.

The century and a half after Waterloo saw the rise and fall of a global empire. We are still living with that legacy. The question of what role a post-imperial Britain should play in world affairs has never been conclusively answered. I welcome the comments and commitment in the Gracious Speech that the Government will seek a political settlement in Syria and offer further support to the Iraqi Government, but if we are to make good on those commitments, we need to answer that question. It is not enough just to say that we might be a small island but we punch above our weight. It is very true, but it is not a substitute for a serious foreign policy strategy based on a realistic assessment of what we can achieve.

The nation-building approach of the 2000s was not realistic. We deposed dictators, we held elections and then we cut and ran. We know all too well that without a lasting political settlement, it does not work, yet the west’s current approach to the world’s trouble spots, while most realistic, is not serious. Now we do the bare minimum, acting piecemeal and always reactively. We can see that in the current conflict with ISIL. Despite the warnings of regional allies, the capture of Mosul took us by surprise. Our response has been, yes, a few airstrikes and some small arms grudgingly supplied to the Kurds. That approach does not deliver results. It leaves our regional allies high and dry and helps to feed the middle east’s vast conspiracy theory industry. On the Arab street, the word today is that the west itself is behind ISIL’s recent victories, and that we are employing the classic colonial tactic of divide and rule.

We need a new approach for foreign policy—one that recognises that, although we cannot design the world in our own image, we are not powerless to influence events and that it is still possible to play a constructive role through intelligent long-term engagement. That requires us to be more flexible, more innovative and, dare I say, more patient. We need to recognise that, although we cannot act alone, we occupy a unique position in international diplomacy, with disproportionate soft power as the closest ally of the world’s only superpower and with the finest diplomatic service in the world, a tradecraft honed over many centuries of global engagement. As we seek to exert our influence, we need to bring all three advantages to bear.

We also need to get better at working with the reality on the ground rather than trying to fit the facts into a preconceived policy. In Iraq and Syria today, the reality on the ground is that the best the west can hope for is a form of loose federation, with high levels of autonomy for each of the region’s communities, a fair division of the oil wealth and a federal Government that are seen to govern in the interests of all. Our middle east policy, which has always been based around unitary states with strong centres, now needs to reflect the reality. That means effectively arming the Kurds, who have proved to be one of our most reliable allies in the region. We should be talent spotting the next generation of Sunni politicians, whose support is vital to a lasting peace in both Iraq and Syria.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Bob Stewart

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

The choice between head in the sand and boots on the ground has always, to my mind, been a false one. In recent days we have heard much about the limits to our influence on events in Syria, but we must not allow ourselves to believe that we can do nothing for the Syrian people. I recently visited a refugee camp near the Syrian border in the Kurdish region of Iraq. It was a harrowing reminder of the brutality of this war and its complexity.

In demographic terms Syria is like a photographic negative of Iraq. Both have large minority populations of Christians and Kurds, but in Syria it is the Sunnis who form the historically oppressed majority. In Iraq, we have seen what happens when a ruling minority is violently deposed. Today, large swathes of Sunni Iraq have all the characteristics of a failed state. My fear is that the envisioned post-Assad Syria would be equally unsustainable. A Sunni-dominated Syria would show no mercy to the defeated Alawites, and would therefore be completely unacceptable to the minorities, whether Alawite, Christian or Kurd, who would undoubtedly rebel with the support of regional powers.

The ever-shifting maze of internal politics and external agendas, and the sheer complexity of the situation, demand that we should be modest about what we hope to achieve. My constituents are deeply concerned about the prospect of another open-ended war in the middle east, and I will not vote for any action that would entangle us in regime change. There can be no more nation-building. We simply do not have the capability to do that; indeed, the most powerful country in the world does not have that capability.

[Bob Stewart]

Whatever we do, we must be quite precise about it. People talk about an exit strategy, but I have never seen an exit strategy in any other military conflict. I went into Bosnia with no mission whatever, but with just one idea: to save people’s lives. That is what we should be doing: saving the lives of people in Syria if we can.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

That is right. Any intervention by Britain must have a clear objective and defined limits, and our objective must be to protect civilians, as my hon. Friend has just said.