Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Owen Thompson and James Cartlidge(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)
The 2023 armed forces satisfaction survey confirmed that half of personnel do not believe that their family benefit from being a service family. The impact of service life on family and personal life remains a top factor behind the intention to leave, so what does the Secretary of State propose to do to listen to forces families and implement policies to make a difference?
Wagner Group: Sanctions Regime
Debate between Owen Thompson and James Cartlidge(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
James Cartlidge
I have merely stated the fact, and it is the case, that these decisions are routinely taken by senior civil servants. I also said that we are ultimately responsible. We, as Ministers, are accountable to Parliament. That is why we will conduct the internal review.
Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)
I would be grateful if the Minister could outline to us what it is about billionaire Russians such as Yevgeny Prigozhin and others that make this Government feel that they need special licences so much that they are able to dodge sanctions.
James Cartlidge
To be clear, we do not make any of these decisions with prejudice to the legal case that the individual is pursuing. They have a right under our law to have legal representation. What we have here is a process for considering applications to use frozen assets to fund legal fees in specific cases.
Covid-19: Contracts and Public Inquiry
Debate between Owen Thompson and James Cartlidge(3 years, 5 months ago)
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James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
It is kind of a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan). His tieless, sedentary, relaxed demeanour contrasted somewhat with the demeanour of the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who I admire and respect, because when I intervened on him and raised the issue of the very widespread levels of covid currently pertaining in Scotland, it is fair to say that he did not react with what I would describe as calm statesmanship.
Only two days ago, The Scotsman, no less, had as one of its headlines the question, “Why does Scotland have the highest covid rates in Europe?” That is a fundamental question.
James Cartlidge
If the hon. Gentleman wishes to intervene and defend that, he is more than welcome to the chance. He will not defend it; well, there is a surprise. [Interruption.] Come on then, why does Scotland have the highest rates in Europe?
Owen Thompson
Of course, The Scotsman is well known to be a great supporter of the Scottish National party; the hon. Gentleman might want to have a look at that. The Scottish Government do not have control of our borders. The delta variant has come in and has created so many of these cases. That is outwith the control of the Scottish Government, who are doing everything they possibly can to bring them down.
James Cartlidge
That is unbelievable. Scotland has the highest covid rates in Europe. The SNP is governing in Scotland and it will take not a shred of responsibility for this situation.
James Cartlidge
I might give the hon. Gentleman another turn, but let us just put some facts on the table.
In June, 2,000 people in Scotland who tested positive for covid had attended a Euro 2021 event. I am no killjoy. I am quite happy that they attended. I will be attending a Euro 2021 event tonight to watch England vs Denmark. I am quite happy that many thousands of Scots made the journey to London to watch that game, in which their team performed admirably—far better than we did. The idea that the Scottish Government had no power in this matter is ludicrous. If they really thought that this variant was such a concern and that we should have closed the borders, they should not have allowed people to come down in their thousands. The evidence shows that those people are now super-spreaders of covid in Scotland. The hon. Gentleman should not pretend that the Scottish Government had no power in this matter.
Having said all that, I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, who has now returned to the Chamber, for introducing this debate about covid contracts, because it gives me the opportunity to talk about two covid contracts that are far more important than all the other guff we have heard today. Those contracts are, first, the contract that this Government—indeed, my right hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock)—signed with AstraZeneca to procure a vaccine, along with all the other ones that we took a risk on procuring before the rest of the EU. That has brought liberty to millions and saved the lives of thousands, for which we should all be grateful.
The second contract is one that we will not find a copy of, and there was no procurement for it, but again it is of fundamental importance: it is the social contract that exists between the Government and the governed on the basis of when we are expected to give up our precious rights because an emergency exists and when—the key question for me—those rights should be returned because the emergency has passed: a fundamental point given the Prime Minister’s statement on Monday.
The first contract was the generic process through which the UK Department of Health and Social Care negotiated contracts for those vaccines and delivered them in a way exceeding almost all other major nations, delivering millions and millions of doses. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) for saying in his intervention that that was the one thing the Government got right, but, boy, that one thing is more important than anything else: it is the way out of the mess; it is the way we get out of lockdown; it is the ways we save millions of lives. And it is not just lives in the United Kingdom that are being saved; it is not just lives in every corner of this precious Union. The AstraZeneca vaccine contract was negotiated so it would be produced at cost. The significance of that enormous contractual point is that the vaccine has been spread around the developing world. We have seen 400 million Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines go into the arms of the poorest in the world. We should be incredibly proud of that. This Government have an incredibly honourable record in what has passed.
Covid was one of the greatest crises the world has faced; it was completely unprecedented, and every time we have had to make a choice we have been between a rock and a hard place, but the only way out of it, as we all knew, was through vaccines, and we made the right call at the right time, which no other Government in Europe made at that point, and we should be proud of that contract, and it is far more important than all the other stuff mentioned today.
On the second point, the social contract, this is my first opportunity to respond to the enormous announcement we heard on Monday—one I am so grateful for—that we will be returning to normal, restoring our precious freedoms. I believe in the social contract; it is implicit—we all have our own interpretation of it—but at its heart must be the idea that Government have certain powers but they can only use them in exceptional circumstances, if those circumstances are truly an emergency.
Tonight, as I said, thousands—millions—of people around part of the Union will be going to watch a football match. They will be crowded in pubs. The idea that we are still in an emergency is for the birds, and that is because of medical science, and I am profoundly grateful; it is because of the first part of the contract that I spoke about, but because of that we must start taking decisions that restore freedom and return this country back to normal.
I understand that some people are nervous, because I have had emails from constituents who voted in all ways for all parties—and in all ways in the referendum, in case anyone tries to make that link. Some people are still nervous; they worry and think we should still have to wear masks after 19 July and that the Government should still keep measures on. I have no idea where the Labour party stands on this; as far as I can see, they want us to remain in lockdown, but, as the Prime Minister said, if not now, when? Let me answer that: if not now, it is never, because the whole point of the social contract is that if we allow the state to keep that power for too long, it will not come back. The default disposition of the state must be that its citizens are free and that they are only not free in exceptional circumstances, and I believe those circumstances have now passed, and that is because of the vaccine; there are still high numbers of cases, but they are generally not resulting in significant ill health, and because of that we can unlock this lock- down.
UK's Nuclear Deterrent
Debate between Owen Thompson and James Cartlidge(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Owen Thompson
I will not take interventions. I am keen to make my speech as quickly as possible, because a number of other Members wish to speak.
Do we genuinely want to renew this weapon of vengeance? That is what the debate boils down to. We are talking about rogue states. We are talking about situations that we cannot yet begin to comprehend. The threats that the country currently faces are not posed by states with nuclear weapons; they are posed by terrorist attacks and cyber-attacks. Nuclear weapons are not the answer to those problems.
Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to the many members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Scottish CND who have come from all over the country to lobby us. They came to Parliament last week, there were events throughout the country over the weekend, and more came here today. Some Members will know that last year I presented a ten-minute rule Bill on the nuclear convoys that regularly travel through my constituency. Sadly, the Bill ran out of parliamentary time and could not be given a Second Reading, but to me the answer seems simple. If we do not have the nuclear weapons, we do not need the nuclear convoys, and we can reduce the risk to those in our communities.
Let me end with a thought for Members to ponder. At the weekend, a friend said to me that if 50 nuclear warheads were set off—which is not impossible; we certainly have that capability—the result would be worldwide famine. That is the reality of the weapons that we are dealing with. There can be no place for them in the world in which we live today. It is time for the country to take a lead, to make a stand, and to say, “We are taking the first step.” By doing that, it could genuinely make the other countries follow its lead, and we could get rid of nuclear weapons throughout the world.
Tax Credits
Debate between Owen Thompson and James Cartlidge(9 years, 3 months ago)
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James Cartlidge
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. My point about work incentives is based on my experience as a small business owner. I found the situation with tax credits extraordinary. I had members of staff who declined pay rises because they would lose so much from their tax credits, and most common of all were part-time staff who would not go full time because the tax credits were so generous.
James Cartlidge
I will not give way at this moment. People were receiving the equivalent of full-time pay on part-time hours, and in that situation can we blame someone for not wanting to take on more hours? It is a real problem, and many other employers have made the same point to me. The problem is widespread.