Iain Duncan Smith MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Jan 2026 · High Street Gambling Reform · Hansard source

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  I apologise that I will not be able to stay for this debate because I have to follow up with the family of Ryan Cornelius—they were in the Gallery earlier —whom I referenced during the previous debate. As the hon. Member knows, we on the all-party parliamentary group on gambling reform have taken very seriously the lessons from Brent, which have been cited in letters to the Government. We have to stop this ridiculous proliferation of betting shops and adult gaming centres, over which councils have no control. Councils do not think it is right to have them, yet they have no say in the matter. The No. 1 thing for the Government to do is to end this nonsense, and give councils the power to say no.

• 4 Dec 2025 · War in Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on his opening remarks, which were specific and precise; I will try not to repeat many of them, but to get into some of the other issues. My personal connection with Ukraine goes right back to a matter of months after the original invasion. I was involved with a Scottish charity called Siobhan’s Trust, which went out there to help those who were fleeing at the Polish border. When that had settled a little, the charity decided to cross the border and carry on feeding people who had been dispossessed behind the frontline. I see the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Tim Roca) in his place; I call him an hon. Friend in this, because he came out there with me to see the same remarkable charity. It is a wonderfully bonkers British charity. The team wear kilts, put the pipes in their mouths, and dance and entertain the Ukrainians only a few miles behind enemy lines, risking themselves at the same time. They show the remarkable bond that we in this country have forged with the Ukrainians in their hour of need. The charity is peculiarly British, and that is what we are about. We know what this is all about. We do not need this House to lead this debate. In truth, if we were to ask ordinary people on the high streets of this great country, they would immediately react, “We stand with Ukraine.” Why? Because they know what it is all about. History tells us what happens when countries fall: they do not rise again unless somebody else can rescue them. There is nobody to rescue countries like Ukraine if it is not us, after all our experiences of the second world war and our determination to ensure such a brutal war never takes place again. It is happening now. I have to remind the US that, even if it is not a guarantor, it certainly has an obligation to Ukraine under the Budapest memorandum. It cannot sweep that aside. The obligation came about mostly because Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. I wonder whether Putin would have invaded if it had kept its nuclear weapons. Ukraine was misled by the west. We said that we would stand by the Ukrainians, and away went their nuclear weapons Then, of course, Putin eventually decides to invade—at first piecemeal, invading part of the territory, and then fully later on. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex is quite right that the Russians have been both singularly appalling in the way that they have behaved and incredibly poor in terms of their military activity. That notwithstanding, they would never have done this if Ukraine had kept its nuclear weapons, which would have been its major line of defence. I have travelled many times to Ukraine to visit charities and others and have spoken to many Ministers in Kyiv about the difficulties and problems, including in Kharkiv, not long after Ukraine had driven the Russians back. Another Deputy Speaker, the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), was with me in Kharkiv, and we saw the devastation. How quickly the Ukrainians repair it is another marvel: I saw many buildings that had been shot at and blown apart—people had died—and by the next time I went to see them, which was a year later, they were back up and standing. That is a phenomenal testimony to the capability of the Ukrainians to recognise that, despite this terrible war, they have to keep on making efforts to live as natural and normal a life as they can. President Zelensky has rightly become the signal and the character of the defence. I know there has been a difficult relationship with the White House over his desire to wear fatigues—that strikes me as a rather petty point but, no matter how big they are, some people can be incredibly petty. His whole character, responsibility and defiance in staying in Kyiv, when Russia attacked and was determined to find and kill him, shows the courage of the Ukrainians embodied in one man. We need to support him in difficult times. We know that Ukraine is not perfect. Which country can put its hand on its heart and say it has never had corruption? Which countries have come out of the Soviet Union and not struggled with corruption? The only way people could exist in a Soviet country was through corruption, because that was how to get things done, because things were so bureaucratic and hopeless and people were not properly paid. The Ukranians are trying to get on top of that. They want to be a democracy, and they want to have freedom and human rights. Even if nothing else had happened, surely it should have been our responsibility to stand by Ukraine in its attempt to get that done. We only have to go back 150 years in this country, and we were riddled with corruption. We changed how we ran things, we changed the civil service code and we changed payments, and we got on top of it for the most part. When we talk about our lack of corruption, it came after a number of years of hardship many years ago in our history. Those who complain about corruption and point the finger should point the finger at themselves, because it is a misunderstanding of history and our obligation to a people who wish to be free. They will one day be utterly free, if we stand with them. Russia has engaged in appalling war crimes. If people go to the battlefield, they will see what the Russians have been doing. They deliberately target civilians, so that the military will come to try and help them, and then they get a bigger target. The whole nature of warfare has been turned on its head in Ukraine. A soldier who had had his leg blown off told me the other day, “There is no safe space behind the frontline, as there always was before. You have to go miles back before you can even begin to think of putting up some kind of hospital or first aid centre, because those drones fly all day and all night. What they do is hit one soldier and lay them out, dead or alive. Then, as the others run to him, they rain down on them with their explosives.” That is why more than 50,000 people in Ukraine today who have been serving on the frontline need prosthetics. Ukraine has the most advanced prosthetics laboratories that I have ever seen. They could teach us a thing or two. There is a whole problem with the tourniquet, because it cannot be released. Soldiers cannot get to the wounded soldier lying on the ground, because they know what will happen if they go to them, so the wounded soldier lies, often for an hour or more, with a tourniquet destroying their arm, even though it may be saving their life. They end up with terrible prosthetics requirements into their shoulder blades. Do they moan and complain about that? No, they do not. They sit down technically and work out how to solve it. We have a lot to learn from them, including on the battlefield and how they counter the drones. The Ukranians are way ahead of us, and I hope that the MOD realises that it is not us who can teach them a lesson, but they who can teach us. I spend time trying to bring companies over from Ukraine to give us that technology on drones and all these other areas where we should learn from them. The other point I want people to learn is that we seem to talk about Ukrainians as though they were capable of little themselves. They had no defence manufacturing capability worth talking about, but today they manufacture more than 50% of their own defence needs. They do it unbelievably efficiently and they do it under regular fire from Russia. I have visited companies in Ukraine where half of the place gets blown up and in about four days they are back manufacturing and fixing things. Those are things that we used to do when we were in the second world war being bombarded. The Ukranians show the same resilience, the same application and the same flexibility. We must stand with Ukraine. We stand with Ukranians because of what they want to be and because it is our responsibility to defend those who seek freedom and democracy as their cause. It is as simple as that. The UK has been the most united over this, and I applaud colleagues from all parts of the House, because we have all stood together. It is noticeable that when we talk to Ukrainians, they always raise that point. The UK is united, and that is the most important point. I will finish on sanctions. The problem for us is that we have failed to settle our sanctions responsibility to the degree that we should have. There are huge problems over the shadow fleet, as has been mentioned, and over individual sanctions, which we should have been using on a number of occasions. It is remarkable that with the one thing we had complete control over—the sale of Chelsea football club—£2.5 billion has sat there for three years, because we defined the ability to use it so poorly that there is now a dispute as to whether Abramovich’s own companies have a right to use the money, or whether we can seize it. We have to deal with this. If we cannot deal with that one issue, it shows how bad it will be for us in seeking reparations across the board.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Gambling: Regulatory Reform · Hansard source

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  In the light of that, some two years ago it was recommended very clearly that a gambling ombudsman should be set up. So far, across two Governments, nothing has happened on that. That is needed to check that all these elements are being dealt with at the same time. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree with me that that should be one of the first acts that the Government should get on with right now?

• 1 Dec 2025 · Office for Budget Responsibility Forecasts · Hansard source

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  I have been here a few years and have seen the run to different Budgets. In line with the Chair of the Treasury Committee, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Dame Meg Hillier), I have to say that this Budget has been utterly chaotic and appallingly dangerous. The reality is that the Minister said there was plenty of speculation in the media. It was not speculation; it was informed statements by the media of what they had been briefed from the Government. The Government know full well the damage that that has done to our reputation, and the unprecedented requirement of the OBR to publish its advice to them demonstrates the damage that they have done. Will the right hon. Gentleman come to the Dispatch Box in all decency and say, “The Government apologise for the mess that they have made”?

• 28 Oct 2025 · China Spying Case · Hansard source

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  It is a particular pleasure that you should be in the Chair for this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, because like me and the others, some of whom have been named, you are sanctioned by a brutal Chinese Government. I think it is excellent that you are here to invigilate this debate and to keep us on track—forgive me if I go over. [ Laughter. ] I am not going to take the blandishments of the hon. Member for Rugby (John Slinger) who told us to look in the mirror. I stopped looking in the mirror a long, long time ago. In fact, when I was elected in 1992 I was told by a journalist at the Express that I could look in the mirror and see my career behind me. I feel like I have been walking backwards ever since. Can I just say, I think the whole principle that underlies all this is the Government’s behaviour over this decision? I will come to the decision in a second, but I want to address how the Government dealt with the decision—and how they have publicly dealt with it, which is really rather peculiar. It has been almost impossible throughout this to drag information out of the Government about why the DNSA took the decisions he took, where the Government were in this and when meetings took place. Denials slid towards acceptances that dates were in fact as they stood. As I understand it, it was even exclaimed by the Prime Minister that The Sunday Times was lying when it raised the idea of there being a meeting on 1 September containing all the various individuals, including the DNSA. It has been a sort of meticulous nonsense. Dodge, duck, dive, dip, and dodge—the five Ds of dodgeball, or in this case the five Ds of dodge the spying case. Getting to the truth of this has been painful, and if it is painful for the Government, they have only themselves to blame. Had they come out straightaway at the beginning and been clear about all this, instead of hiding behind the DNSA, they might have found it easier. I find ridiculous the position that the DNSA stated yesterday—that he was bound to reflect the position of the Government. The DNSA is not bound to reflect the position of the Government. He was asked by the DPP—and therefore bound to respond to the DPP—whether or not he said that China was an active security threat. What I do not understand is how the then DNSA, both at the time and again when giving evidence yesterday, was able to say that China posed a range of threats—just as the Minister said—on different areas all across the board, from sanctions right the way through to espionage. I do not understand the difference between posing a series of significant threats to our national security in different areas across the board and being a threat to our national security. It is impossible to even conceive that we could define this so narrowly that we are unable to come out with the very simple statement: “They pose a threat to our national security.” From my standpoint, I face a threat. I have been chased and regularly followed by wolf warriors, which are low-level intelligence operatives of China. They have impersonated me abroad and spread lies about what I have said, and those of us who have been sanctioned have been spied on. I know what a threat looks like. It looks like that. It is not a duck; it is a threat. There is no reason why any self-respecting Government could not have said that. The DNSA should have said that straight off—not go out and tell us that the police asked him to introduce what had been in the manifesto of the Labour party in the last election and then say that he knew nothing at all about it previously but had to put this in context. He was not asked to put it in context. The DSNA was asked to state clearly, from what he sees and the evidence he has taken, whether China poses an active security threat. At the nub of this is another particularly important point. The 1 September meeting is critical in all this, because we have been given assurances throughout this—by the Prime Minister, for example, at Prime Minister’s questions on 15 October. He said: “There was no further submission of evidence, one way or the other, after any discussion in September.” —[ Official Report , 15 October 2025; Vol. 773, c. 368.] Yet we know that now not to be the case. Why was the Prime Minister making such a fundamental statement at Prime Minister’s questions trying to shut this down? Did nobody bother to tell him that this had gone to a meeting? By the way, we were told that at no stage was the National Security Adviser or any other appointed individual at any meetings with or in contact with the DNSA throughout the submission of evidence. That is utterly untrue. We know that the DNSA was at the meeting chaired by the National Security Adviser on 1 September. What did they discuss? Was it football scores or what was right in front of them there and then: the still-unfinished business of whether or not the DNSA was going to comply with the DPP’s requirement for a very clear statement? It is that bit of subterfuge, with dipping and dodging throughout, that is really quite peculiar. I have respect for the Minister. When he gets to his feet, can we not have this ridiculous game of “You did this” and “You said that”? I would simply like him to recognise that China poses a national security threat. Let us deal with that threat and take clear action, and not play games with terminological inexactitudes about what happened at what meeting. We now know that the DNSA met all those characters —we do not know who they are—so the minutes of the meeting should be released. If the Government will not release them to Parliament, they can do it in camera to the Intelligence and Security Committee. They should do it to clear the record; I recommend that they do. People like me, the Chairman of Ways and Means and others have suffered attacks from this brutal regime, which has massacred people in China and committed genocide. Surely now is the time to make our position clear.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Korean War: 75th Commemoration · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the 75th commemoration of the Korean War. May I say what a pleasure it is to have you invigilating our proceedings, Mr Twigg? This debate is about North Korea, but it is also specifically about the 75th commemoration of the Korean war, in which we took part. I have just discovered that this morning North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles into the East sea, just a week before President Trump’s visit to South Korea for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit. I think North Korea may well also have done so because it had heard about this debate. [Laughter.] I pride myself on that, rather than APEC, being almost certainly one of the greater reasons why it did so. It is a great privilege to open this debate on the 75th anniversary of the Korean war. The world today is yet again at a crossroads between democracy and the axis of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, as we have not been since the fall of the Berlin wall. Over 81,000 British servicemen fought in the Korean war, providing the second largest military contribution to the United Nations Command after the United States, which is something that people rarely talk about. Over 1,100 of them never came home, which is more than the total British losses in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands combined. Among their most heroic stands was the battle of the Imjin river in 1951. There, 652 men of the 1st Battalion the Gloucestershire Regiment faced three Chinese divisions, numbering at least 42,000 men, in one of the most courageous defences in British military history. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) will no doubt share in detail, those brave Gloucestershire men held the UN line for three days against the overwhelming Chinese spring offensive. When the battle ended, of the 652 men who fought there for those three days, 67 walked away. The rest were killed or captured, and the name Gloster Hill was etched forever into history, although too often schools do not remind everybody of the sacrifice that they made for those who now live free. Today, only a few veterans of the Korean war remain with us here in the United Kingdom. One of them, Mr Scott, shared a story later recounted by his son in Stockport: “Of all the campaigns I fought in, Korea was the one that affected me the most. One night, I was called out on a reconnaissance mission I didn’t want to do. But when I returned to my platoon, they had all been wiped out.” His son, Mr Steven Scott, reflected: “My father was deeply affected by the Korean War. He had served in the Army during the Second World War and was called up from the reserves for the Korean War.” Their sacrifice, courage and service secured freedom for one half of the Korean peninsula, a freedom that the democratic world still cherishes today. The other half remains in darkness, suffering under the most brutal regime on earth; it is hard to imagine the brutality of that leadership. We must ensure that their sacrifice is honoured and remembered by generations to come. Many young people around the world today enjoy K-pop, K-dramas and the vibrant culture of modern South Korea, yet without the sacrifice of those who secured its freedom, none of that would be possible. In stark contrast, totalitarian Pyongyang denies its people access to the internet, mobile phones, YouTube or social media, and those who are caught watching anything from the south or from the outside world face imprisonment or even execution.