Debate on the Address

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to welcome the work that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union has undertaken in preparing our negotiations and starting the formal negotiations on Monday this week. I will be in Brussels for the EU Council later this week to take that work further forward.

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)]

I am grateful that the Brexit talks have now started. The ability of those people who have come from the other 27 countries to live and work in the UK, and the status of the UK citizens living and working in the other 27 countries, is going to be a vital part of those talks. They will be waiting to learn of their future. Will the Prime Minister guarantee to the House that she will come here as quickly as possible, without waiting until the discussions have finished, to assure them that they will be able to live and remain in the countries where they have decided to live and work?

[The Prime Minister]

We have always said, from the beginning of this process, that we want to address that issue at an early stage of the negotiations. Indeed, that is the agreement that has been reached: it is one of the very first issues that will be addressed in the negotiations. I will make every effort, and I guarantee to my hon. Friend that I expect to be able to come to the House to show the opportunities that the United Kingdom will be setting out for those EU citizens who live here in the UK. Of course, we want to see UK citizens in the European Union being treated fairly as well, but we will soon be setting out our offer as regards EU citizens living here in the United Kingdom.

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[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is an honour to follow a wise speech, and in my shorter contribution I may reflect on some of the points made in it.

I should also like to pay my respects to two colleagues who departed in the past 12 months. The losses of Gerald Kaufman and Jo Cox were deeply and strongly felt. Both people made huge contributions to this place, their constituencies and our wider community. Gerald Kaufman’s career in this place lasted as long as I have been alive. We do not just reflect on his great contribution to the Labour party and our national public life but contrast that with the single, solitary year that Jo Cox spent in this place; in so many ways, she made as big an impact. It is right that we celebrated her life and values in the recent Great Get Together. I hope that that will continue for many years to come as we stand by her, her family and her legacy.

I should also refer to some of the appalling events that have taken place in this country in the past few weeks.

The Grenfell Tower tragedy left many of us utterly speechless. The sense of appalling tragedy, the horror that those people had to go through, and the immense personal loss—the loss of loved ones, the loss of everything —is something we can barely imagine. But there is something very different about this tragedy, in that it is a source—I feel it myself, if I am honest—of great anger. Whatever we say and whatever we do, the implications of what happened—the loss of dozens and dozens of lives—is that some lives in our society are apparently worth less than others. That is how that outrage came to take place, and we must learn from it and take action to demonstrate we have learned from it.

We have all spoken at length about the three terrorist incidents—Finsbury Park just recently, London Bridge and Manchester—and about our horror and outrage at what happened. But let us remember what terrorists seek to do: they seek to divide us, and our response must be to be united. I went to the Muslim welfare centre next to Finsbury Park mosque last night, and among the people I met I had the honour of meeting Mohammed, the young imam, whose dignity shone out on the night of the attack, and who actually protected the assailant from a very dangerous situation. That is a reminder that, when we speak about the different communities in our country, we must do so with care, with love and with inclusion.

It is not just us in politics who should use language in that way, as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) rightly pointed out. Dare I say gently that our friends in the media must also be immensely careful about how they report such incidents and, indeed, all matters to do with community relations in this country? If a person living in a non-diverse part of the United Kingdom gets their information about community relations, terrorism and risks only from certain newspapers, they will end up believing that there are problems that, perhaps, there are not, and demonise others when there is absolutely no place for that. We have to work incredibly hard, in uniting our communities, to use language that is right and inclusive, and to make sure we do not allow those who seek to damage and divide us to actually win.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

The hon. Gentleman started his speech by paying tribute to Jo Cox and Gerald Kaufman. I hope he does not mind if I also mention Paul Keetch. Paul, who was a comrade of ours, was a Member of Parliament for many years. He retired through ill health and, sadly, died just before the general election. He is somebody we will miss greatly.

[Tim Farron]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that. Paul stepped down from the House in 2010, but he was a friend and colleague of mine. I am bound to say that, among his many other achievements, he was the defence spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats during the Iraq war. People will remember—wrongly—that the Liberal Democrats took the popular side in opposing the Iraq war, but we did not: we took the unpopular side. Sometimes it is important to do right, and Paul Keetch sat on the Front Bench, next to the equally late and great Charles Kennedy, making that case at that very difficult time for our country.

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[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)]

When the news came in of the attack on the Manchester Arena, the election campaign was rightly suspended. This cowardly attack robbed many people of their loved ones and hospitalised many others. I discovered that one of my own constituents, Michelle Kiss, was killed. She was the young mum of three lovely children, and she was a loving mother and the loving wife of Tony Kiss. I went to the vigil in Whalley, where the community stood together, embracing one another and showing solidarity for the family, who were in deep shock and were grieving. We all stood with them. Nothing better personified the community coming together than that concert in Manchester, where people stood shoulder to shoulder and enjoyed the singing of Ariana Grande. It was incredibly moving, and fantastic weather as well.

Whatever the intention was of the terrorist that day—it mystifies me—it brought people together. It robbed people of a loved one, and it hospitalised others, but for what? I will support any new measures to prevent the radicalisation of people in this country, to track down the terrorists and ensure that they cannot spread their hatred on the internet or anywhere else, and to ensure that the Prevent strategy is completely reinvigorated and that the police are given the support they need to do the job they need to do. Of course, since that atrocity, we have seen other terrorist attacks as well.

The Grenfell Tower tragedy was another appalling incident with a massive loss of life, and clearly we need to do what we can to ensure that whatever steps are necessary are taken to make tower blocks safe. The lack of money should not be used as an excuse for not doing anything. We know just by looking at it that the retrofitting of sprinklers and the use of second exits from tower blocks and proper alarm systems have to happen, irrespective of how much that costs. As has been said, there will be people living in such tower blocks tonight who are fearful about spending a night in what have to be deemed unsafe conditions. We must do what is necessary.

The election came as a surprise to me. The bigger surprise was the result. I am sure that we all held our breath as we waited for the exit poll, which was—sadly, as far as I am concerned—accurate once again. If only the Queen’s Speech we heard today had been the Conservative manifesto, I think we would be a lot happier on the Government Benches. The Queen’s Speech was the Conservative manifesto stripped of all the toxic rubbish we allowed to appear in it.

Taking school lunches away from children and replacing them with a bowl of Rice Krispies or an egg simply was not good enough. Foxhunting was seen as completely irrelevant to the people I spoke to, and I represent a rural constituency. The triple assault on senior citizens was awful, and we could not tell people whether they were going to lose winter weather payments or not. We said only that the rich would lose them, but what is rich? We could not say with any authority who they were. As far as the triple lock was concerned, people were fearful that they were going to lose money, and the so-called dementia tax—irrespective of whether it was or was not, that was how people perceived it—was appallingly sold without a proper ceiling.

The fact is that that has all been stripped out—but it cost us an election. I am delighted that some of the people involved in putting those things in the manifesto are no longer working at 10 Downing Street and that there is now a change in style of governance. It did not start with the current Prime Minister, but with Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, and probably people before them, and it has just built up. I am delighted that Cabinet governance is back in this country, alive and well. At least this has all served one purpose. The fact is that, yes, we now have to rely on the votes of other people in this House to get the legislative programme through.

I am a Brexiteer, and I am delighted that we are going to leave the European Union, but we must ensure that the new opportunities of trade are realised, whether that is with the United States of America or, indeed, with the European Union. When we import £80 billion more than we export, the European side has clear interests in trading with us. Getting controls on immigration means that we cannot be in the customs union. We cannot be a member of the single market, but we will trade with it. All of that has to happen, and—this is exciting for me—Parliament will be the Parliament of an independent country where we govern ourselves with our legislation.

It is a mistake to go down from 650 to 600 Members of Parliament. We should look again at 650 Members of Parliament on equal boundaries, because when the legislation comes back from Brussels we will have a lot of work to do. People do not realise how much work there is. I have seen the workload disappear since 1992 when I was first elected. It is all coming back. Brace yourselves, everyone, because we will have to do a lot of work. I am grateful for the Gracious Speech today.