Bernard Jenkin MP: speeches

Speeches

• 13 Apr 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  Will the Prime Minister remind some of his colleagues that the United States is a democracy and an ally, and Iran is an odious regime that could have ended the war this weekend had it agreed to give up its ambitions for nuclear weapons and to cease supporting its proxy terrorist organisations around the middle east? Would it not be helpful if the Prime Minister criticised the Iran regime a bit more, rather than supporting his colleagues in criticising the United States?

• 13 Apr 2026 · Southport Inquiry · Hansard source

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  I thank the Home Secretary for her statement, and for the way in which she is promoting learning rather than blaming, because that is the best way to get the change we need. I also thank her for her robust response to the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), about the point he raised, and for the point she is now making about the requirement for a cultural shift. Can she take a close interest in this? Not many leaders in many organisations understand that it means changing the attitudes and behaviours of individuals in their organisations—it is not just about setting a policy. It requires a very concerted act of leadership, alongside diligence and consistency, as well as making sure that those who do not want to make that change are eased out of their positions and that there are no promotions for those people who do not respect and demonstrate the changed attitudes and behaviours that are required. This is a big ask, and does not often happen in the public service.

• 26 Mar 2026 · Local Government Reorganisation · Hansard source

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  May I inform the Minister that the previous Conservative Government listened to the people of Essex, and the MPs and county and district councillors for Essex, and cancelled any plans for LGR? That is because county government in Essex predates the Norman conquest. It is more embedded in our history than almost anything else, except perhaps our churches and ancient buildings. Nobody in Tendring district or Colchester city wants to live in an amorphous area called “North East Essex”. What is more, people there know that this upheaval and reorganisation will cost public services, inflict damage on continuity and push up council taxes—and it is good for us, because we will simply blame this wretched gerrymandering Labour Government.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  I listened to the Minister’s remarks with great care. Many of the things that he says, he says with great sincerity, but some of the things he says, I do not believe that he quite so fervently believes. I ask him, being the hon. and gallant Gentleman that he is, to consider whether criticising those who criticise Government policy on the basis of the question “How dare you criticise the Government at such a serious time?” reflects the same kind of attack made by supporters of Neville Chamberlain against Winston Churchill and his supporters even as late as 1940. As they went through the Division Lobbies in May that year, they taunted those coming through voting against the Adjournment of the House: “Quislings”, they said. To implicitly brand my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition as some kind of warmonger who is out of control—that is what the Government are basically saying—reflects exactly the gibe thrown at Winston Churchill: that he loved war so much, he was not objective. Yet he was the one who appreciated the dire emergency of the situation being faced, even as the British Expeditionary Force was losing in France and the Norway campaign was proving such a disaster. I appreciate that it is perhaps obligatory for the Minister to say these things about the two-child benefit cap for the satisfaction of many of his Back Benchers, but we are now spending so much on welfare and so little on defence. Maybe the two problems have something to do with each other. If we could just spend the same on in-work or out-of-work benefits for people of working age as we were spending before covid, we could save £50 billion a year, but that does not seem to matter to the Government at all. The Minister talked, I am sure with great sincerity, about how important it is to have a system that works “for them”—I think I am quoting his very words; he said that we need a social system in this country that works for the poorest people in our society. Well, the system over which the Government are presiding is failing. We now have a rising and terrifying number of young people who are not in education, employment, or training—the so-called NEETs. Even those operating on the frontline of food banks—I visited a food bank recently—understand that if we keep indexing benefits with inflation, but do not index tax allowances, that means that people pay more tax at lower rates of pay, and if we increase benefits, such as by removing the two-child benefit cap, and do not uprate the tapers to protect the better-off who are receiving universal credit, we create a disincentive to work. When I first visited food banks, which I think was under Tony Blair’s Government—they were not originated under the Conservatives—there used to be a tiny number of people who were permanent beneficiaries of food banks; the vast majority were in a state of transition, and that persisted until quite recently. At the food bank I visited at the weekend, 80% of beneficiaries are now permanent clients, because they say there is no point in them trying to take work, as it does not pay. The system is not working for them, because we are spending too much on welfare and we have not cut taxes enough. The next question is: are we at peace or at war? Much of the discussion in the Liaison Committee was about that. I cannot find a Minister who denies that we are at war, and I am afraid that makes the question of whether we choose to get involved rather redundant. We are involved, and we cannot help being involved. Our sovereign territory is involved, because it is being attacked. Indeed, we have been involved in a war in defence of the west, NATO and Ukraine probably since as far back as the original invasion of Georgia and Abkhazia, because the nature of Putin’s regime had become apparent by then. They are quite explicit: Lavrov has said that Russia is at war with NATO, so that war is already here. What kind of war is it? Well, it reflects all kinds of conflicts, including hybrid conflict, which has often been discussed and is of such a varied nature, and what one might call cognitive conflict, which is the capacity and determination of Russia and China, and probably Iran, not just to interfere in our democratic processes, but to corrupt the truth. This is aimed at reshaping the societal, economic and informational environment, at undermining people’s faith in democracy and democratic values, and at destroying the faith of our voters in our democratic system. The question now is: what are we doing to fight back? Well, what are we doing? I know that in bits of Government, many small parts of the Government are at war. There are some wonderful people in the Ministry of Defence who are sweating the night hours to do things that are of crucial importance.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  I share the respect of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) for the Minister and his experience, but the two statements from the Leader of the Opposition that he read out are not incompatible. The fact is that we would not have joined in the military action that the Americans and the Israelis initiated, but it is undeniable that the war has now come to us. What does he think is happening in London? Did he not hear the deputy chief of the Metropolitan police on the radio this morning talking about the rising Iranian threat that is now domestic in our own capital? This war has come to us. As Leon Trotsky said, Madam Deputy Speaker, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  I draw my hon. Friend’s attention and the attention of the House to the other fundamental structural flaw in the method the Government have adopted for planning defence: the aspiration after 2029 is only an aspiration. The Treasury has agreed to no spending line in its own forecasts and figures beyond 2029, and yet the defence investment plan is a 10-year plan. How can the Treasury agree to a 10-year plan when it has not agreed to any funding for defence after 2029? It is just an aspiration.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  Will my right hon. Friend give way?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  I do not think many people in the House fully appreciate how utterly profound the drone revolution is. It means that in Ukraine, they do not have to mass troops to defend in the way they once did; they can mass drones. If we want to defend NATO, if we want to defend London and Akrotiri, we need to be able to mass very cheap drones in order to get that protection and deterrent capability, so that the option of pushing large numbers of troops over a NATO frontier at some stage is not available to Russia.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  The fact is that the whole of the deterrent stance of all the NATO nations is very substantially—I will not say hopelessly—dependent on the good will that the United States shows towards us. That was the basis on which the SDR was written. George Robertson—the noble Lord Robertson of Port Ellen—has said in public that one of the constraints of writing the defence review was to assume that the United States was our closest ally and could be relied upon. Whether that will be true in the future, we do not know. Some things that have happened have very much shaken our faith in that, but the idea that the Government should choose this moment—this very moment, when we are begging for American support in Ukraine to hold back the tide of possible Russian aggression across the whole European front—to further alienate President Trump from NATO seems to me like a bit of a tactical error. Going back to the second world war, when Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, complained to Winston Churchill that the United Kingdom did not seem to have an independent foreign policy, Churchill said, “No, we don’t. We’ve got to do what the Americans want us to do in order to get them to come into the war.” I am afraid that we are not in a great position of strength to dictate to the Americans, and pontificating about their moral judgments or their interpretation of international law seems to me totally counterproductive for the security of the United Kingdom and our European allies. To answer my right hon. Friend’s question, we need a deterrent stance. But what is the Government’s response? Well, we are waiting for a plan, but that plan is a long time coming. Drones have transformed the last few months, but the Government have not kept up with the change. We are still waiting for a plan, and it is not enough.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  Will my hon. Friend give way?

• 16 Mar 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) referred to very specific documents—meeting notes and decision notes—that have not been disclosed. May I point out that the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister himself must not mislead the House? So, do these documents actually exist? Are there decision notes and meeting notes that have been withheld, or do they not exist?

• 16 Mar 2026 · Strait of Hormuz · Hansard source

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  Do the Government not realise that this nation is already at war? Iran is firing on sovereign British territory, and Russia has already proclaimed that it is at war with the United Kingdom. Is it not time to put the whole Government on to a war footing, because otherwise we will carry on running behind the curve as we have over this recent matter of the strait of Hormuz?

• 25 Feb 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  As my right hon. Friend knows, I was with him in Kyiv on that occasion, and managed to exchange a few words with President Zelensky to point out that the British delegation was there. He made it very clear that he was very pleased to see us there, and that we were very welcome. It was an honour to give him our support.

• 25 Feb 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way; had I got here a little earlier, I would have tried to make my own speech. We brought back three home truths from Ukraine. First, we were asked so often, “Why do all these rich western European countries only give us enough to continue fighting but not enough to win?” Unless we change that, we are just offering a recipe for a continuing war. Secondly, Members should have no doubt that the Ukrainian Government are resolved to carry on fighting in the absence of an acceptable peace settlement. If that means planning for the next two or three years, that is what they are talking about. They are not talking about collapsing at all, and that will never happen—I make that forecast. Finally, Ukrainians are grateful for the coalition of the willing initiative, but they are very disappointed that the United Kingdom and France were the only two countries to sign the memorandum at the end of that meeting. Nothing has really happened since. They are also very concerned about the lack of war readiness among NATO forces. Given how utterly transformed Ukrainian forces are in terms of their capability to fight the Russians, what are we doing to transform our armed forces so that, with limited manpower, like the Ukrainians, we can hold back a Russian advance and ultimately protect NATO?

• 25 Feb 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 25 Feb 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  It was also clear in our meetings that the Ukrainians are very pleased with the interception of two or three shadow fleet tankers. I wonder why we cannot be far more proactive about uninsured or unseaworthy boats that should not be at sea and that have illegal crews. There are many legal pretexts on which we could intervene with these ships in international waters to add to the cost and risk of Russia’s oil and gas exports, thereby reducing its foreign exchange earnings.

• 9 Feb 2026 · Standards in Public Life · Hansard source

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  Yesterday, the Prime Minister’s adviser, Morgan McSweeney, resigned because he had advised the Prime Minister to make this appointment. What advice did the National Security Adviser, Jonathan Powell, give the Prime Minister? If he gave the same advice, should he not resign as well?

• 26 Jan 2026 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source

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  When did the Minister first learn that the United States could effectively veto this agreement with Mauritius?

• 20 Jan 2026 · Chinese Embassy · Hansard source

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  Let me point out that when the previous Conservative Government proclaimed a “golden era” of relations with China—when David Cameron welcomed President Xi for a state visit in 2015, as Theresa May was championing Huawei for our 5G infrastructure—the security services supported their then Prime Minister; or they were brought into line, which I expect is what happens under these circumstances. Can we ensure that we are not using the security services for propaganda purposes? I predict that in the fullness of history, we will look back at this decision with great regret.

• 19 Jan 2026 · Business Rates: Retail, Hospitality and Leisure · Hansard source

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  When is a U-turn not a U-turn? I would suggest it is when the Government realise that they have made a terrible mistake, brief that they will change the policy and then send a Minister to this House to explain that nothing is changing at all. Does the Minister realise how much despair people are feeling? This is not a problem about a transition; this is a fundamental flaw in the whole concept of business rates that hits the smallest businesses the hardest. We need our policy, which is to leave the transitional rates relief permanently in place until there is a new system that exempts smaller businesses from this punitive tax.

• 19 Jan 2026 · Local Elections: Cancellation · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Forgive me, but I must correct the record: Harlow council is a Conservative council, but it is the exception that proves the rule that they are otherwise all Labour councils.

• 19 Jan 2026 · Local Elections: Cancellation · Hansard source

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  Is it just a coincidence that the only three councils in Essex that want to cancel the elections—Basildon, Harlow and Thurrock—are all run by the Labour party, while all the others—Braintree, Chelmsford, Colchester, Brentwood, Epping Forest, Rochford, Southend and Essex county council—want the elections to go ahead? Is the Minister going to listen to the majority?

• 14 Jan 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  Briefly, because I want to be as swift as possible.

• 14 Jan 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I completely agree. There should be a NATO operation to intercept every ship that comes into NATO’s operational area in the north Atlantic and the North sea around the north of Scotland. We could choke off a significant amount of this, but we are not doing so; we are letting it carry on. Getting all of Europe’s NATO powers in line with that is a problem, but let us do it. Together, the NATO nations in Europe could show Trump that we are prepared to deliver for European security, but we are not doing that at the moment. It is essential for us to discuss the so-called coalition of the willing. We all know that there are already some armed forces personnel in Ukraine providing advice, logistics, training and intelligence, and supporting planning and headquarters—that sort of thing. There is probably more that we can learn from the Ukrainians about fighting the Russians than we can teach them. But is 7,500 troops in formed units—a brigade—supporting a combat battalion or two what we are talking about? I have grave doubts about that, including on the rules of engagement and how we would provide force security. Would we not just be presenting a lovely target for the Russians to attack? They might not attack it directly—it might be “accidental”—but it would blur areas and create all sorts of problems if we were so overt. I have my doubts, unless we have a force in there that can actually fight and defend itself against the Russians. How we would respond in such a situation, were Russia to escalate, is a very open question. I have no desire to be an armchair critic of the Government’s policy, and this brings me to the main point that I want to make. It has become fashionable to believe that Parliament has a right to tell the Government when and when not to deploy troops, but there is no constitutional basis for this whatsoever. In fact, the Prime Minister assumes his office, takes the seals of office and takes the responsibility upon himself about when to direct the armed forces into harm’s way. There is no constitutional impediment to him doing that. What we saw in the Syria debate—I commend the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (David Taylor) for his excellent speech—was a humiliating abdication of the Government’s responsibility. They knew that it was right to deploy armed force in Syria, but they then volunteered not to do so because of a finely balanced debate and vote in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister stood there and said, “I get it.” This was really O-level politics and O-level statecraft. It was ridiculous, and the hon. Gentleman is completely right to say that it projected weakness when we knew that the Russians were supporting the Syrian Government in deploying chemical weapons and murdering their own people. It was also weak of Obama to say this was a red line and then fail to do anything about it. We projected weakness and we invited Putin to try again, and I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman about the consequences. The point is that the Government have the responsibility to make this judgment. They cannot pass this judgment on to 650 armchair generals jaw-jawing in the House of Commons when we do not have the intelligence or the assessments. We can express our views and we can hold the Government to account for the outcome of what they decide, but I put it to the Minister that in that debate on Syria we learned that a Prime Minister does not resign when he loses such a crucial vote. Part of that was to do with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. If he had made it a vote of confidence, would he have won it? If not, would there have been a general election? No, there would not have been. He might have had to resign, but there would not have been a general election. We were at a very artificial point. I put it to the Minister that if the Prime Minister were to bring a vote to the House of Commons this time and lose it, he would either have to resign and hand over to somebody else or call a general election, because we no longer have a fixed-term Parliament. We are back to real accountability, and the accountability that counts is at the ballot box, in the final analysis. The one power the Prime Minister has is to call a general election and ask the King to dissolve Parliament. If he had lost such a vote, that would be the only honourable thing for him to do. He cannot come here and engage in the kind of abject, humiliating abdication of responsibility that we saw before. On the other experience, the Government of the day won the Iraq vote, and I happen still to think that was right. We have a democracy of sorts in Iraq, and Iraq is no longer a Russian puppet, but who in this House still believes that was the right decision? The polls went in favour of the Iraq war at the last minute, and maybe that helped Tony Blair get the vote over the line. Was that a good basis for making a decision? No, it was not. Either the Government make such a decision for themselves and hold themselves accountable to this House, or the Prime Minister should not accept the seals of office and become Prime Minister, because that is the job.

• 14 Jan 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I agree that the foreign exchange earnings of the Russian economy have been badly damaged by the sanctions, but we are also coming to the conclusion, are we not, that it is legal for Western powers to intervene on the fake flag fleet—the shadow fleet—as we saw last week? What plans do the Government and our allies have to make the whole business of exporting Russian oil and gas far more risky, by undertaking a large-scale interception of the shadow fleet?