Clive Lewis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 23 Jun 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  May I associate myself with the comments made across the House about the dire and despicable nature of the Iranian regime? That said, last week the Foreign Secretary told the House that attacks on Iran were not in our national interest. So does he believe that the strikes led by Trump and Netanyahu—two hard-right authoritarians with no love for a rules-based order—have made Britain or the world any safer? Or does he agree with me that, for much of the world watching, the message is chillingly clear? In a global order where rules mean little and might makes right, deterrence not diplomacy is now the only defence; and that, as he must acknowledge, makes global security more precarious than ever.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  People talk about whether something can be taken out of public control and put back into privatisation. Of course, Parliament is sovereign and that can always happen, but there is a point about giving control to the public. Let us take the NHS, which is a public service. Any Government in the post-war period could have taken the NHS back into privatisation. Why did they not do so? They would not have dared, because it would have been so publicly damaging and politically destructive. That is what would happen with our water. Does the hon. Member agree? [Interruption.]

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for making a powerful speech in this debate. There are a few things to say about the costs. First, we would control the assets. The assets would come off the balance sheet, which would be one mitigating factor. Secondly, throughout the post-war period, with British Leyland, Railtrack in 1945, coal, steel, gas, civil aviation and even the Bank of England, we paid less than the market value. As I explained at the beginning, this is about a mindset. We can do an audit of what the companies have taken out —what money they have extracted from our economy— and then we can pay them an appropriate rate and return. It may well be that they are paid nothing, but they may get something. Their creditors may take a haircut, but, frankly, that is better than our constituents taking a continuous haircut with their bills.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  With the leave of the House, I will not get back into a tit for tat over some of the comments that have been made at the Dispatch Box, because I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this fabulous debate on a critical issue. I think that most of us want to get to the same place: we want clean, drinkable, swimmable, and surfable water. I thank everyone who took part in this debate. I thank the Minister for all the work she is doing and will be doing. I thank the Opposition too. Even my wife Katy Lewis turned up today to come and listen, so I thank her for that. It is probably the longest say I have had in a debate in quite a while—I will not hear the end of that for a while, I am sure. I will finish on this point. I sometimes wonder what would happen if the NHS did not exist and we in this place had to come together to decide how we were going to provide healthcare for the people of this country. Having listened to today’s debate, I think this place would say that it was too difficult to create a national healthcare system and that we could not do something based on need, rather than on profitability and private sector investment. Yet we managed to do that after the second world war, which had absolutely obliterated our public finances, because we knew it was right, and we knew that some things are not to be judged by their profitability, because they are things that we need. Our health is one such thing, and I and millions of other people believe that water is one of them too. I hope that at some point, those on the Benches on my side of this House—my Government—will acknowledge that and do something about it. Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.— (Taiwo Owatemi.) Debate to be resumed on Friday 4 July .

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I will make some progress. Let us recap, because I do not want to go on too long; I want to conclude, if I can. That money from Thames Water—that half a billion pounds in interest payments—will keep a rotten system afloat for just a little longer. The myth of privatisation is that the private sector will act in the long-term interests of the British public because it wants to turn a profit. That is preposterous, as is proven by the state of our water, and exhibit A is Thames Water. We can now turn to the question of where the investment will come from. Under public ownership, it will come from the only place it ever should have—from us, the public—and every penny of it will go back into the system. It will go into the pipes, the rivers, the seas we swim in and the water we drink. There will be a direct relationship between what we pay and what we get, with no offshore dividends, no bloated bonuses and no debt-laden shell games—just clean, accountable, democratic water. When I was in Afghanistan, every soldier had one critical duty: to stay hydrated. To dehydrate was considered a military offence, because it put the soldier and their team at risk. If someone ran out of water, we did not debate markets or metrics; we shared what we had. We had each other’s backs. As the desert-dwelling Fremen in James Herbert’s novel “Dune” believed: “A man’s flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe”. It is time our water returned to the tribe, to the people, to the public. We can do better; we must, and with this Bill, we will. I commend it to the House.

• 3 Sept 2024 · Healthcare Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his input, and his points were well made. When researching this debate, I probably spent more time working out what I did not have time to say than what I could actually put into the debate, so I have tried to do a broad overview. Many of the issues the hon. Gentleman raised are also of concern in my Norwich South constituency and across the eastern region. I am sure that during the debate many of those issues will be raised and dealt with in more detail. Our Government have said they are a Government of service, but a legitimate fourth question that I ask the Minister is: in service of whom and to what end? It is clear to many that the interests of big business, of big tech and data companies and of private finance do not always sit well with the public interest, particularly when it comes to health. There are areas where they do, but there are also areas where they do not. We know with whom the last Government sided; whom will ours back when push comes to shove—big business, big tech, the finance industry or Joe public? I want to briefly provide a snapshot of the scale of the crisis in the eastern region. Ambulance response times in the east of England are significantly worse than those in the rest of England. In 2023, response times for category 1 cases—that is, severe cases—were nearly 12 minutes in East Anglia, while the national target is seven minutes. They were nearly the worst on record. The Care Quality Commission, now under inquiry and investigation itself for its capability to do its job, has described Norwich university hospital as the “worst in the East of England” for ambulance handover times. Referrals to mental health services increased by 18% between 2018 and 2020. Compared with the rest of England, Norwich and Norfolk have higher rates of self-harm, death by suicide and mental health issues among young people, as well as more self-diagnosed mental health issues generally. Our mental health trust—Norfolk and Suffolk NHS foundation trust—is notorious for being the worst in the country, and I do not think that can be said enough. Norwich is a dental desert. In July, the Secretary of State branded Norwich North the “Sahara of dental deserts”. That is a rather romantic notion, but it is a desert where people pull their own teeth out in this burgeoning phenomenon of a do-it-yourself dentistry industry. Indeed, some of my Ukrainian constituents have told me that they find it preferable to dodge Russian missiles and artillery to use Ukrainian dentists. Ukraine arguably has a better dental system in the middle of a prolonged war. That is unsurprising given that in the east we have one NHS dentist—no, it is not even one NHS dentist; it is one dentist—per 2,600 people. Just picture that in your head: one dentist with their tools with 2,600 people queued up. That is what it feels like to many of my constituents. For the second year running, no dental practices are accepting NHS patients. Norfolk children under five have some of the worst tooth decay in the entire country. Thousands of people have had to go to hospitals in Norwich and Norfolk for abscesses that should have been prevented. The list goes on and on. I am sure that many of my colleagues from the eastern region will also outline some of the issues and stories that they know are taking place on a daily basis, and that have been for many years now.