Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Stewart Malcolm McDonald and David Lidington(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend makes a very important point about the vital role that further education plays not only in equipping young men and women with the skills they need to give them good career opportunities, but often also in providing a passport to higher education at a later stage in their careers. The Augar review provides a blueprint for how we can make sure that everybody can follow the path that is right for them, and my hon. Friend is right to say that we need to study Augar’s conclusions carefully in the run-up to the forthcoming spending review.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
Police Scotland prepared a report for the Crown Office on extraordinary rendition flights stopping at Scottish airports. Counter-terrorism officers and the Lord Advocate have made it clear that they require full access to the unredacted Senate intelligence committee report from the United States Government, who have so far refused to provide it, and that is prohibiting them from determining whether a crime was committed. Given that intelligence sharing is supposed to underpin our relationship with the US, has anyone from the Government raised this issue with President Trump while he has been here? If not, will the right hon. Gentleman pledge to do so on behalf of Scotland’s law enforcement agencies before President Trump departs UK soil today?
Mr Lidington
Unsurprisingly, and in line with precedent under all Governments, I am not prepared to discuss security intelligence matters on the Floor of the House, but I will draw the hon. Gentleman’s question to the attention of those of my colleagues in the Government who are directly responsible for these areas of policy.
National Security Council Leak
Debate between Stewart Malcolm McDonald and David Lidington(5 years 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
Mr Lidington
Appropriate contact is of course being made with our key allies, as my right hon. Friend would expect. He is absolutely right. I, like he, can recall discussions that involved not only material of the highest level of classification within the UK Government system but the sharing of information disclosed to us in confidence by key allies. Without going into detail—for obvious reasons—I should remind the House that among the subjects discussed at the National Security Council in the last year alone have been our analysis of and response to the chemical weapons attacks in Salisbury and our analysis and response to the civil war and conflict in Syria. I think that Members on both sides of the House will appreciate the importance of these discussions remaining confidential at all times and of all participants having full confidence that that will continue to be the case.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
This is a most disgraceful episode from the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson). Fair play to the Prime Minister for acting as swiftly as she did, but I am afraid that it is not in her gift to say that the matter is closed. Indeed, the fact that we are here shows that it is far from closed. The fourth paragraph of the Prime Minister’s letter states that all the Cabinet Ministers interviewed
“answered questions, engaged properly, provided as much information as possible”,
yet the conduct of the right hon. Gentleman was not “of the same standard”. What was his conduct? What exactly did he avoid answering?
What is the purpose of this investigation? Surely to God it was not set up only to determine who the leak came from. Surely once that has been determined there must be a more severe consequence than just someone losing their Cabinet position. If the integrity of the Government—what is left of it—is not to be further shot to pieces, there must be more severe consequences. Does the right hon. Gentleman who has been sacked have a future in the Conservative party, or will he be suspended from it? Will he be eligible for future candidacy within the Conservative party, and will he have his CBE removed by the Government? Finally, will the Minister stand at the Dispatch Box and answer a clear question? Has the Official Secrets Act been broken—yes or no?
Mr Lidington
The hon. Gentleman’s final question is not a judgment that I or any other Minister in any Government can make. Whether a criminal offence has been committed is a matter for independent prosecution authorities, and ultimately for the courts. I said earlier that I would not go further into the details of the investigation and its conclusions than had already been set out in the Prime Minister’s public statement.
Members across the House will recognise the history of the close working relationship between my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), and that ought to persuade the House that the Prime Minister would not have taken such a decision were there not compelling evidence and no credible alternative explanation for what happened. As the hon. Gentleman said, the Prime Minister stated in her letter that during the investigation the conduct of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire and his team was in contrast with the full co-operation received from other ministerial members of the NSC and their teams, and the Prime Minister came to the decision that she announced last night.
On the hon. Gentleman’s request for further punishments, honours are not a matter for a ministerial decision but for an independent committee in any case, but I would just say that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire has lost a job that he loved and to which he was utterly committed, and I think that should stand.
UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union
Debate between Stewart Malcolm McDonald and David Lidington(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Lidington
I am not going to give way again for a while, Mr Speaker, because when I spoke in the Chamber about a week ago, you gently chided me for having gone on for too long, and when I looked at Hansard it was because I had perhaps taken too many interventions. I think I have given way a fair number of times already today.
I want to put on the record—because I think this will help to clarify the nature of the choice for hon. Members on all sides of the debate—that article 50 of the European treaties does say, in terms, that the treaties “cease to apply” to the departing member state
“from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification”
of triggering article 50. In other words, it is the sooner of the conclusion and entering into force of the withdrawal agreement, and the two-year deadline. Logically it therefore follows that, were an extension of any length to be negotiated and agreed, it would always be possible for the House and the other place to bring about an earlier conclusion to that extension than the specified deadline by agreeing to a withdrawal agreement at that earlier date.
Mr Lidington
No, I am not giving way again for a while.
I hope that the factual document that the Government published this morning, coupled with the latest statement from the President of the European Council, Mr Tusk, will have convinced right hon. and hon. Members that the choice I have described is not one that has somehow been invented for political ends but rather one that this House must face up to and confront.
I want to take a moment to set out to the House the reasons why the choice is so binary. That means explaining in a bit of detail the interaction with the European Parliament elections. Those elections will take place across the EU on 23 to 26 May, and the new European Parliament will meet for the first time on 2 July. As the Father of the House said, it is a fundamental requirement under the EU treaties that EU citizens are represented in the European Parliament. That derives from article 9, which says,
“Every national of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship”,
and from paragraph 2 of article 10, which says:
“Citizens are directly represented at Union level in the European Parliament.”
The subsequent legislation that the European Union has passed is founded on those key principles set out in the treaties—the primary law that every member state of the European Union has to comply with and which has primacy over any domestic law to the contrary.
It flows from that that the new European Parliament would not be properly constituted if any member state did not have MEPs, and that for it to be improperly constituted would put all that Parliament’s actions, and the proper functioning of the EU’s institutions and its legislative process, at risk. There is no legal mechanism by which the UK could return MEPs to the new European Parliament other than by participating in the elections. The upshot is that the longest extension that we could propose without holding the elections is until the end of June, and if we did that, it would not be possible to extend again, because, as I said in response to an earlier intervention, to do so without having elected MEPs would compromise the proper functioning of the EU’s institutions and its legal process. In the absence of a deal, seeking such a short and, critically, one-off extension would be downright reckless and completely at odds with the position that this House adopted only last night, making a no-deal scenario far more, rather than less, likely. Not only that, but from everything we have heard from the EU, both in public and in private, it is a proposal it would not accept.
Mr Lidington
I have not seen that particular item, but my understanding is that the legal service of the European Parliament has made it very clear that it does not see that an extension is possible beyond the date of the first plenary meeting of the new Parliament on 2 July, in the absence of treaty change.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald
Can I take the deputy Prime Minister back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) when he said that it was a matter of law that the UK can revoke article 50 in its entirety? Should there be a member state that does not agree to an extension—for example, Hungary or Italy—would it not therefore be a matter of political reality that the revocation of article 50 should be exactly what the Government do? If that happens, will they revoke article 50?
Mr Lidington
It would be a decision for the House to take were that to happen. It was open to the hon. Gentleman to table an amendment to that effect today had he wished to do so. These are matters for the House as a whole.