Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Hammond and Tom Tugendhat

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

T8. Mr Speaker, you will be aware of the fantastic work by the Edenbridge War Memorial Hospital in the town just near me, and you will also be aware of the fantastic news that we are having a new clinic built there. Does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that the money from the initial site, which was given by public subscription 100 years ago in memory of the young men who died in the first world war, should now be spent on medical facilities in the town?

[The Minister for Health (Stephen Hammond)]

My hon. Friend has been absolutely passionate about securing the best possible outcome for his constituents. As he knows, the Edenbridge War Memorial Hospital is held by NHS Property Services on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. Local NHS bodies in Kent are considering the future of services in the Sevenoaks area, including their nature and possible funding. I am sure that my hon. Friend will recognise that I cannot intervene directly, but I would be happy to meet him to discuss this further.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Stephen Hammond and Tom Tugendhat

Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

I understand that you would like Members to be brief, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am not a lawyer and I was not a member of the Bill Committee, so I will be brief.

On Second Reading, I spoke about an issue that has not yet been discussed today: economic cybercrime, which I have spoken about frequently in this House. The Government’s amendments enhance our ability to attack it. Constituents write to us as Members of Parliament; my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) has mentioned the huge number of privacy-related issues that have been raised, including the need to ensure that, if the Government were to interfere with the right to privacy, there would be proper oversight, safeguards and transparency. I do not need to re-rehearse her arguments, but I say to the Government and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Security that while new clause 5 may not be as perfect as those lawyers present would like it to be, it goes a long way towards satisfying the public.

I want to address two aspects of new clause 5. First, our constituents are interested in the issues covered by subsections (2)(a) and (4)(c). The onus is now on the need to consider less intrusive means and proportionality. That is an obligation. Notwithstanding my hon. and learned Friend’s comments about the need to understand the exact penalties for misuse, those two particular subsections go a long way to putting in place some protection.

Secondly, on economic cybercrime, we often talk about huge attacks on bank systems. New clause 5(2)(b) and (4)(b) relate to not just the public interest in detecting serious crimes, but the integrity and security of telecommunication systems and postal services. The reality is that there is a huge amount of low-level cybercrime that then moves into more serious economic cybercrime. By addressing the issue in the Bill, we are making a statement of intent. Given that there are so many e-commerce transactions today, it is hugely important that we protect and maintain the integrity of telecommunication systems, in the widest sense of the term, and postal services.

Whatever else may be, those of us who are not lawyers —we are not entirely sure what the difference is between new clause 21(2)(a) and (b), and new clause 5(4)(d) and (e), but I am looking forward to my right hon. and learned Friend explaining it—say “Well done” to the Government. New clause 5(2)(b) and 5(4)(b) protect all e-commerce, and putting the emphasis on maintaining the integrity of services, particularly telecoms services, will take away some of the public’s criticisms about the snoopers’ charter. The key points about subsections (2)(b) and (4)(b) are extraordinarily important, and I am pleased to see them in the Bill.

[Tom Tugendhat]

It is a great pleasure to speak on Report, particularly as the heirs of Walsingham and Egerton are on the Treasury Bench sitting in judgment over a Bill that will shape our civil liberties. In their day, Walsingham broke the code, and Egerton tried Mary, Queen of Scots. The techniques that they used are still in active use today, but they have been updated. It is a question no longer of codes on paper, smuggled out in brandy bottles, but of codes hidden in computer messages, apps and other forms of communication. That is why I welcome the Bill, which updates historical practice for the present day. It is essential that we put this into statute, because for the first time we are putting into a Bill what we actually mean. For years, the state has used interpretations of legal practice rather than setting out, and debating properly, what it should do. That is why I particularly welcome the joint approach to the Bill. The hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) has been instrumental in bringing a co-operative mood to the House, and I am grateful to him for doing so.

The Bill balances privacy against other considerations. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) pointed out, privacy is a fundamental right of all British citizens, and one that we have enjoyed for many years. But that privacy is only worth anything if we can live in safety, not just from the obvious risk of terrorism but from the risks of child abuse, drug smuggling and other forms of violence against the people of this country. I am grateful for the fact that the Government have balanced that privacy against those threats.

I will leave it there, because there are many more amendments to come. I could address some of them in detail, and perhaps I will be called to speak again.

Airports Commission: Final Report

Debate between Stephen Hammond and Tom Tugendhat

Thursday 26th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to respond to the launch by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) of an airport expansion project into Kent and East Sussex. It will not surprise him to hear that that is not the answer I would favour, and neither would it be favoured by many of my friends, colleagues and neighbours in west Kent and Sussex. That is not the answer for the simple reason that it is the wrong answer for people in the London area and the south- east; it is wrong for the country and for our economy. It will not answer the question of economic development or of replacing Schiphol or Charles de Gaulle airports, and it will not answer the challenge that was put so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), who spoke about the need for hub airports. It is wrong, wrong, wrong, and just because someone does not like Heathrow does not mean that the answer is Gatwick.

Three years and £20 million has been spent on this report, and it should not be reversed by a few words in this House. It has taken many years of effort, and it is now the right time for us to settle down and get on with things. When we consider the economic development of the United Kingdom and the challenges that globalisation presents us with, there are those who say, “Why can’t we use Skype or videoconferencing?” The simple answer is that we are humans. We interact, meet and talk, and that is how we do business and communicate.

It is essential that we travel, and part of that demands that we can get to places where we need to be. Although I like the idea of Birmingham, and I would love to see more investment in Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh, in reality, sadly we are all lured to this den of Mammon, this city of London, because it is here where so much of our business is done. I wish it were not so, because in my community of Tonbridge, Edenbridge and West Malling, there is so much opportunity for people to enjoy a proper life that is not ruined by the traffic and the smog that we in London all know.

[Stephen Hammond]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful case for his constituents and for the UK. The other den of Mammon in the world is New York, but that does not have a hub airport. No hub airport anywhere in the world is restricted to three runways, and therefore there is an internal contradiction in the report. New York has three airports—we could also run the New York solution in London.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, but even he will recognise that if we were looking at the United States—I wish people a very happy thanksgiving—we would consider the 50 states and ask, “Where is that den of Mammon?” I think we would all say, “It’s Chicago.” I am afraid that Chicago O’Hare has the appeal that productivity comes from a hub airport.

There is enormous pressure on time, so I will say only that having had Gatwick as a neighbour for a number of years, I have seen what a bad neighbour it is. It has changed flight routes, narrowed flight paths over communities in my area, disrupted lives and ruined sleep—including that of my most immediate constituent: my wife—and it has made the lives of many people in the villages of Penshurst, Chiddingstone and Hever an absolute misery. I urge hon. Members to think hard before rejecting the amount of work that has gone into this report, and before rejecting this opportunity for economic growth for the United Kingdom, so that we can take back our rightful place as the absolute centre of the international community.