Iain Duncan Smith MP: speeches

Speeches

• 5 Jun 2025 · Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy · Hansard source

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  Thank you for that, Madam Deputy Speaker—that has given me a few more minutes. The ARAP scheme was introduced to provide a lifesaving path to safety for Afghan nationals who directly supported the UK’s mission in Afghanistan. At its core, it is a moral and strategic obligation. These individuals risked their lives working for UK forces, and I believe the UK must duly protect them. The Government were right at the time to introduce the scheme, and it is important to acknowledge that it has achieved something. However, in practice, I believe the scheme has fallen dramatically short both morally and logistically. Many eligible Afghans are still stranded under Taliban rule and fearing for their lives, which highlights the failures in the scheme’s execution.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 5 Jun 2025 · Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy · Hansard source

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  Indeed. The hon. Lady is right in raising those points. The fact is that this scheme does not fit the requirement any longer, and I think it is, in many senses, quite brutal and inhumane. I will deal with a couple of the problems here, then I will deal with a personal case. First, the scheme is utterly slow and bureaucratic. I will say to the Minister from the start that this debate is not party political; it is very much about a scheme that we brought in and that the Government have inherited, and I hope that it can be changed.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy · Hansard source

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  We are close to running out of time, I understand that. If I may, I just stress that the failing I am referring relates to the fact that the officer who commanded the garrison met this man regularly and had him at meetings in which they discussed future operations. He was trusted. He fed them intelligence. He helped support them, so that they did not go into areas where they should not have gone. The major who worked with this guy also made a statement about how important he was, even though, officially, there was not some kind of P45 that tied him to our pay structure. The reality is that he served us. All I ask is that the Minister recognises that, goes away and says, “This is not good enough. This individual needs to be saved very soon.” He may be dead. We do not have much time.

• 2 Jun 2025 · Government Announcements · Hansard source

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  May I say to the right hon. Lady, whom I have known for a little while, that normally when a Speaker upbraids the Leader of the House, the first response of the Leader of the House is to grovel and apologise? That is standard, because she has to take it for the party that she represents in government. I simply suggest that I am a little surprised that she did not make peace in that way with Mr Speaker. Notwithstanding that, I say gently to the Leader of the House that it is not just a case of not having brought the review to the House. We know now that journalists were given scrutiny of it. When I was leader of the Conservative party, I remember that Tony Blair, as Prime Minister, offered me advance sight of documents that were a bit delicate or needed security clearance. The Leader of the Opposition was given the opportunity to look at such documents so that they were fully informed of developments. Was such an opportunity offered to the Leader of the Opposition or the leader of the Liberal party?

• 13 May 2025 · Consular Assistance: Statutory Right · Hansard source

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  18. What discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on introducing a statutory right to consular assistance.

• 13 May 2025 · Consular Assistance: Statutory Right · Hansard source

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  I remind the Government that their manifesto promised a legal right to consular assistance in cases of human rights violations. The Government have now been in power for close on a year. This is not something that should take a big shove; surely, we should do it straight away. Surely such assistance should be a legal right. People including Ryan Cornelius and Jimmy Lai are still being held. Ryan Cornelius has been held illegally for 17 years, which the UN has criticised as a human rights violation. For ages we did not send anybody to see him; surely now we must act and call out these regimes. The first place to start is by giving those people the absolute right to consular assistance.

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  On national insurance!

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  Reform Members are not here, so I will answer that point. They are not on the same page as us because their amendment, which was not a proper one, did not fit on the same page of the Order Paper!

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and as I have said, we have worked together in the past quite a lot. I will just ask a very simple question. The Government have constantly said they will not breach their red lines. They have apparently said that publicly in Europe, and they have said it here. My simple question is: is dynamic alignment one of the red lines?

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my neighbour for giving way. If she wants to deliberately not go down that rabbit hole, she should be talking to the Government Front Benchers.

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  Will my hon. Friend give way?

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  Apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker—that was a lapse on my part.

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  I want to make a couple of points on this issue before I give way. We know, and everybody else around the world outside the EU knows, that the EU puts up very hidden tariff barriers. America is right about that; it complained that Europe finds all sorts of little regulations and problems, so that it cannot break in with its products and goods. That has happened for a long time, and it has happened with us—we know that it was even happening when we were in the EU. We are by nature a free-trading country, and there is no way on earth that we think the EU as a construct is as free trading in that sense. It wants to protect its markets more than anything else, rather than open up to the rest of the world.

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  Of course, that argument was used in reverse on those of us who had had concerns about Europe for 40 years as we were told—exactly to my hon. Friend’s point—that a referendum was superior to continuous elections. We made a decision after the last referendum; that was a generational move. We have hardly had a generation in the few years since the referendum.

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

• 13 May 2025 · UK-EU Summit · Hansard source

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  He is not—what a pity.

• 7 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Minister, and I hope that that might find its way on to the face of the Bill with a little more description, but I understand that and I acknowledge that he does as well.

• 7 May 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  It is not too late.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s argument. I have been in this House for a little while; I have sat on both sides of the House, and I have been in government. I have never come across a Government who have failed to get regulation through when they feel it is necessary to do so, but it goes through with debate. We cannot just impose regulations because we think it is right. There has to be some measure of whether it is balanced and whether it works, and that is normally done by this House. Why give it to the Government alone?

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I have campaigned for greater regulation of bicycles, which have got away with killing individuals, not to mention e-bikes. I want to pick the Secretary of State up on a particular point. I do not disagree with him on the need for regulation, and it should have been done some time ago, so we are as one on that. However, I still do not think that he has quite answered the question posed by the hon. Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) just now. Why do we need to have a wide-sweeping Bill like this if we could do it already in the House by vote? If we have a powerful enough argument to say to both Houses, “This must be done,” then they will see it through very quickly by the power of persuasion, but they would have the right to vote on it and to disagree. The Bill takes that right away and achieves the same result, but only by way of a diktat from whoever is in power—and, by the way, I agreed with what the Secretary of State said in opposition.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend was asked just now whether the previous Government were likely to have introduced this legislation. May I set the record straight? Had we done so, the Secretary of State would have voted against it.

• 1 Apr 2025 · Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  rose —