Julian Lewis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Nov 2025 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.

• 18 Nov 2025 · Northern Ireland Troubles Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend says that it is highly likely that an appeal would have succeeded. In support of that, I cite the fact that the Defence Committee took evidence in great detail from four professors of law in 2017. They were not talking about that specific legislation, but they all agreed that it was possible and legal to combine a statute of limitation, providing that there was a truth recovery process. A range of people gave evidence, from Professor Richard Ekins on the right of centre, shall we say, to Professor Philippe Sands on the left of centre. It was possible, it was legal, and even if that law was struck down, something similar could have been put in its place.

• 18 Nov 2025 · China Espionage: Government Security Response · Hansard source

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  Do the Government accept that China is a bad faith actor whose basic technique can be summed up by a single phrase: buy influence and build dependency? Is that not exactly what has happened in our universities?

• 17 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  It is often reported that a high proportion of people who enter the country illegally do so without any reliable identifying documentation. Can any Minister say, in percentage terms, roughly what the proportions are of illegal immigrants who do and do not have documentation?

• 17 Nov 2025 · Budget: Press Briefings · Hansard source

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  I am disappointed that the Minister does not know of the example of the Chancellor who resigned from Attlee’s Government for inadvertently or otherwise leaking details of the Budget. Does he at least appreciate that there is a difference between speculating about the contents of a Budget and leaking a Budget, and does he think that there should be any punishment for people who leak a Budget, irrespective of whatever the details were?

• 17 Nov 2025 · Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Power Station: Wylfa · Hansard source

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  No one likes to consider the prospect of international conflict, but we have seen from that between Ukraine and Russia how dangerous a situation can be when fuel supply installations are targeted. What thought have the Government given to affording the same level of protection against either sabotage or external attack for these new smaller reactors as those that are already built into the construction of the larger plants?

• 13 Nov 2025 · Rogue Builders · Hansard source

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  This is an issue that is crying out for a solution. In my opinion, there are two principal remedies that need to be applied to the plague of rogue builders: criminalisation of those builders who are shown to have fraudulently fleeced their innocent victims; and a requirement for all builders to be registered with and licensed by a professional body, together with an insurance scheme to remedy failure or harm, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) has already explained in his admirable opening speech. I have decided, on balance, not to identify the specific rogue builders and their victims to whom I shall refer today; however, I do not rule out doing so in the future. My first case study concerns Graeme, a constituent of mine who paid more than £1,800 to a builder in 2023. Although the same builder had done satisfactory work in the past, on this occasion he gave a succession of excuses for not turning up before ceasing to respond at all. A solicitor advised Graeme that it would cost more than any sum likely to be recovered for lawyers to be involved, and suggested contacting the police. Graeme writes: “I was born at the very end of the 1960s and, to me, if someone deprives me of my money, it is theft or even fraud.” As someone born at the beginning of the 1950s, I heartily endorse that view, but the police responded that stealing £1,800 from Graeme in that way did not meet “the threshold for theft or fraud”. Similarly, his bank was not keen to help once it knew that the builder had previously completed satisfactory work for Graeme. Next, he found that trading standards could be contacted by an aggrieved individual only via a charity such as Citizens Advice, which also came as news to me. His CA recommended the money claims court; Graeme followed its advice and eventually obtained a county court judgment for £1,800 plus costs and interest. Even then, it took action at a higher court level for bailiffs to be appointed. They extracted a few weekly payments of a fraction of the sum stolen before giving up the ghost. One might say that it could have been particular circumstances or misfortune that led the builder to let down his client—although that is no excuse for keeping his money. However, Graeme managed to establish directly that he had treated another victim in precisely the same way. Indirectly, Graeme heard of several others who had suffered in similar fashion. He was forced to conclude that, irrespective of a pattern of dishonesty towards multiple victims, the police still regard such behaviour as “a civil matter” and a “breach of contract”. Thus, with criminal prosecution closed off, all that remains is the costly, risky and often ineffective civil route. To date, Graeme has received a paltry £260, with more than £2,040 awarded by the court outstanding. While Graeme rightly feels aggrieved by the injustice of his situation, my second constituent, Malcolm, has had his own and his family’s life totally upended by a truly nightmarish experience—one of the worst cases I have had to deal with in 28 years as a Member of Parliament. After a career of admirable public service in the Royal Navy and as a fireman, he has lost huge sums of money from his life savings and pension schemes at a time when a close relative with stage 4 breast cancer was meant to be benefiting from his support. It was for that purpose, I believe, that he commissioned the alterations—primarily converting a garage into extra ground-floor rooms—to his home in the first place. Malcolm selected a building firm that he chose from a respectable trade recommendation website, where 5-star ratings for it were recorded. He agreed to pay about £25,000 for, supposedly, three weeks’ work to be undertaken while the family was on holiday in 2022. Despite an extra week’s delay, they returned to a scene of incomplete and utterly shoddy work and, in some respects, dangerous disorder. Indeed, Malcolm injured himself quite badly in a fall at the property that he attributes to this. In addition to the very large payment made irrecoverably to the rogue builder, it cost Malcolm a horrifying £45,000 more for remedial works, which he had to undertake to make his home safe and inhabitable again. The trade recommendation website, which he thought had validated the rogue builder, offered its maximum level of compensation —a modest £1,000. Later, he discovered that the builder had no gas safety qualification, as he had falsely claimed. Malcolm succeeded in communicating with trading standards, which indicated that it would be helpful if a pattern of similar construction disasters could be established. Malcolm therefore turned investigator, and discovered several other families in my constituency and in nearby Southampton. He calculated total losses caused by the same rogue builder to be at least £200,000. One victim, a lady living with multiple sclerosis, was left without a functioning toilet. The police, nevertheless, still insist that the threshold for criminality had not been reached. If so, that threshold needs to be changed, and changed substantially. Despite correspondence from me to Hampshire county council pointing out the multiple victims, the apparent evidence of companies being repeatedly set up and dissolved by the rogue builder—as we have heard from another hon. Member—and his not infrequent changes to his own name, nothing effective has been done to punish or constrain him in any way. As stated at the outset, there are two fairly obvious remedies. First, if the police are right that the current state of the law prevents such devastating and ruthless misbehaviour reaching the threshold of criminality, that threshold must be repositioned by legislation to include it. Secondly, like other skilled professions, builders must be licensed before being allowed to operate. The good news is that, as we have heard, the Federation of Master Builders is ready and able to undertake this vital role. That must be coupled with an insurance scheme to which builders will contribute to enable redress where appropriate and where standards are breached. Rogue builders can ruin lives; now is the time to banish that evil.

• 13 Nov 2025 · Rogue Builders · Hansard source

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  What about the fact that these people, in some cases, are criminals and their actions ought to be subject to the criminal law?

• 13 Nov 2025 · Northern Ireland Troubles Legacy · Hansard source

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  May I take this opportunity to point out something that the Defence Committee discovered in its investigation of these matters in 2016 to 2017? The maximum of two years actually spent in jail, no matter how horrendous or multiple the murders, also applies to British service personnel. The argument is put forward that victims wish to see justice attributed and punishment given out, but everybody involved in the killings receives a disproportionately light sentence, so there is no justice of a retributive sort in any case.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  May I try to find some common ground with the hon. Gentleman? As has been pointed out, his party was in coalition with the Conservatives for five years. Can we at least agree that Nick Clegg’s decision to vote for trebling tuition fees, thus breaking a manifesto commitment, was a disaster for his party’s ratings? Can we also agree that if the Government do the same in respect of what they have pledged to do, it will be a disaster for their ratings as well?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  There is, of course, a third possibility, which some people with twisted minds have been suggesting: that the Government plan to do some pretty terrible things in the Budget but are setting up a strawman that they are going to break their manifesto promises. Then, when they do not do so, everybody will swallow those other terrible things. Is that too Machiavellian?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 12 Nov 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  As somebody who has been around a long time and remembers when Chancellors used to have to resign for leaking things about the Budget in advance, may I ask the Minister to explain how it has been possible for the present Chancellor to make speeches about what may or may not be in her Budget in advance with no consequences forthcoming whatsoever?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  Can my hon. Friend throw any light on the apparent contradiction whereby the Government seem prepared to import fossil fuels—thus exporting our carbon footprint—but not to allow us to develop our own fossil fuel resources? Is it because they are afraid that, once we develop them, we will not want to stop using them, or is there some other explanation?

• 11 Nov 2025 · BBC Leadership · Hansard source

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  I would fight in the last ditch to prevent the BBC from ceasing to be a public service broadcaster and from being broken up. Any large organisation can have bad actors who behave unethically, and that has happened on this occasion, but it does the BBC no service when people parrot the line that the person responsible for this crisis is not the idiot who tampered with Donald Trump’s quote but a former Tory spin doctor, one of 13 members of the board, who allegedly influenced other members of the board to somehow provoke the present crisis. The crisis has nothing to do with Robbie Gibb; it has something to do with a mindset that, on the front page of today’s Guardian , has the whole thing about Robbie Gibb and relegates the fact that a $1 billion lawsuit may be taken out by Donald Trump against the BBC to a tiny paragraph at the end of the article on page 2. If you wants to know what is wrong with some bits of the BBC, read The Guardian today.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Remembrance Day: Armed Forces · Hansard source

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  I congratulate everyone who has contributed to the debate so far. Of all the fine contributions, I want to start where the hon. Member for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane) left off. He spoke about the mother attending the memorial where her husband and two sons’ names were all inscribed. On Saturday I had the privilege of attending the War Widows’ special ceremony of remembrance at the Cenotaph. If one looks at the website of the War Widows Association, one sees this interesting piece of historical context. It says: “Originally, when the association was formed”— in 1971— “the widows were not allowed to take part in the annual November Sunday service and march past at the Cenotaph. As they wanted to show their respect to their husbands they began to hold a very short service on the Saturday at the Cenotaph in London. They dashed between the cars and laid their cross, said a prayer and dashed back to the pavement.” Well, how things have changed. Not only do war widows now participate on Remembrance Sunday, but Whitehall is closed specially in their honour on the preceding Saturday. Led by fine military musicians, they march in tribute to those whom they have lost in the service of our country. It was, as I said, a privilege to be invited to attend, and a pleasure to see our hon. and gallant Minister for Veterans and People present in solidarity. That same evening, the BBC broadcast two hours of the finest television imaginable. The festival of remembrance perfectly combined music, pageantry, belated recognition of those who unjustly lost their service careers because of their sexuality, and unforgettable tributes to the fallen. I for one will never forget the testimony of the children of Corporal Mark Palin, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2011, and their bearing as they carried the book of remembrance to the centre of the Royal Albert Hall. Strangely, one ward in my constituency by tradition holds its ceremony in the afternoon, so I was able to attend two local ceremonies: that at St Michael and All Angels church in Lyndhurst in the heart of the New Forest, and that at All Saints’ church on the waterside, close to where the Solent meets Southampton water, north of the Isle of Wight. Both events and the attendant parades were admirably organised, with Royal British Legion veterans at one end of the age range and uniformed young people at the other bringing style and panache to the occasions. The high levels of attendance testify to the importance to our communities of such solemn and sacred occasions. In the few seconds remaining, I draw attention to the Airborne war cemetery, which lies about 7 km west of Arnhem, near the village of Oosterbeek. One of the last bastions held in the dreadful battle of Arnhem was the Roman Catholic church of St Bernulphus in Oosterbeek. It was left in ruins but beautifully rebuilt soon after the war. The rebuilt church remains a focal point for Arnhem commemorations, yet it is now under serious threat of sale and disposal. It is profoundly to be hoped that organisations such as Support our Paras and Government Ministers will make representations to the Dutch authorities about preserving that historic building.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Blood Transfusions during the Falklands War · Hansard source

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  As an officer of the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood, I would like to confirm, in support of what the Minister is saying and the advice she is giving, that the contact I have had with IBCA has been very positive. It seems to want to engage on a personal basis with people who have suffered in this way. The hon. Member for Liverpool Walton (Dan Carden) really should advise his constituent to take up this offer to engage with the authority; I think he will be pleasantly surprised at the positive response he will get.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  What does the Deputy Prime Minister have to say about the unprecedented letter in The Times today from nine recent former heads of the armed forces, stating that the Government’s Northern Ireland troubles and legacy legislation breaks the compact between service personnel who do their duty and the Government, who should stand up for them, not open them up to endless litigation and persecution?

• 11 Nov 2025 · Prisoner Releases in Error · Hansard source

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  May I try to make a constructive suggestion to the Deputy Prime Minister? Has he considered that when somebody is due for release, they should be read a short statement saying that if they think they are being wrongly released, they should say so now, and if they do not do so, a further penalty of some sort will be imposed? Might not that act as a bit of a deterrent, as well as a check?

• 5 Nov 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review · Hansard source

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  It is welcome news that the Government plan that children should be taught critical thinking and how to guard against fake news and misinformation, but the Secretary of State will be aware that some teachers, like some politicians, regard “fake news” differently from the rest of society. Will she ensure that teachers who teach that subject are schooled in the knowledge of the requirement for political impartiality in schools introduced in 1986 and carried forward in subsequent legislation?

• 5 Nov 2025 · Conflict in Sudan · Hansard source

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  May I repeat the question that I asked the Minister’s colleague last week: are there no other regional powers that could intervene physically to separate the warring parties? May I put it to the Minister that, while it is fortunate that we have been granted successive urgent questions on this subject in successive weeks—thanks to the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), to the shadow Foreign Secretary and to Mr Speaker—it would be a recognition of the anxiety felt in all parts of the House if the Government made regular ministerial statements on it, rather than us having to rely on applications for urgent questions?

• 3 Nov 2025 · Ukraine: Military Support · Hansard source

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  As we build up towards Remembrance Sunday, does the Secretary of State agree that it is appropriate for us to remember the circumstances in which two world wars began, when democracies were relatively weak in the face of armed autocracies? Therefore, does he agree that the help we give to Ukraine is the best possible guarantee that aggressors will not be emboldened to attack other countries as well?

• 3 Nov 2025 · “Soldier F” Trial Verdict · Hansard source

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  Does the Secretary of State envisage any circumstances in which an IRA terrorist could be prosecuted after he had received a letter of comfort, and if so, what are those circumstances?

• 3 Nov 2025 · Huntingdon Train Attack · Hansard source

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  I will be very brief. When the Home Secretary undertakes lessons learned and recommendations for the future, will she look into the question of whether there is any protective equipment, or even disabling equipment of a non-lethal nature, that could be issued to staff for use in such an emergency?

• 30 Oct 2025 · Sudan: Protection of Civilians · Hansard source

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  Can the Minister explain to the House what is the attitude of other states in the region towards this conflict? Is there any prospect that they could unite and possibly make some form of physical intervention to separate the warring sides in Sudan?