Julian Lewis MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 4 Dec 2024 · Farming and Inheritance Tax · Hansard source

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  The Minister seems to be trying to suggest that not much farmland will have to be sold off as a result of this policy. However, on 4 November, following an urgent question, when I asked his colleague the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), how food security would be preserved if farms had to be broken up and sold off possibly for development, he replied: “Of course there are trade-offs. There are a range of pressures on our land, in respect of housing, food, energy and so many other things. That seems to constitute an acceptance that we will lose farming land, and people will be building on it instead.

• 3 Dec 2024 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  It is excellent to see all Front-Bench spokesmen, including the Minister, so united on this question. Does she accept that Putin has made his attitude to the independence of Ukraine—namely, that it should cease to exist as an independent nation—crystal clear, and therefore any enforced treaty to which he is a signatory is utterly and completely worthless?

• 3 Dec 2024 · UK Supply Chains: Uyghur Forced Labour · Hansard source

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  Is not the root of the problem the fact that successive British Governments, from David Cameron’s onwards, have been willing to cuddle and cosy up to a communist totalitarian state, while trying to preserve some pretence of distancing themselves from direct human rights abuses? In reality, is it not the case that as long as we try to have major economic relations with a totalitarian state, it will always be possible for that state to divert the slave labour products to its domestic economy and export the other products to us? So that action is really only a fig leaf, isn’t it?

• 3 Dec 2024 · Tackling Stalking · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the Minister on taking office. Will she elaborate on what the root of the problem is when it comes to not knowing who is doing electronic stalking or harassment? Does the main problem lie with the internet companies, or does it lie with the police, who sometimes think that privacy is such an absolute right that misbehaviour does not vitiate it?

• 2 Dec 2024 · Leasehold Reform · Hansard source

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  May I thank the Minister for the answers that he has given me in this Chamber, and in a written answer at the end of October, on the plight of leaseholders who have extra apartment levels grafted on above the blocks in which they live? I appreciate that he does not want to alter the planning presumption in favour of granting permission to build add-on extra levels, but will he at least consider outlawing any attempt by freeholders to pass on the cost of botched extensions to the poor old leaseholders, who have suffered enough by having such extensions built over their heads in the first place?

• 2 Dec 2024 · Chagos Islands: UK-US Defence Relationship · Hansard source

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  Which is more important for Britain’s vital security: to have the approval of the outgoing American President, or the approval of the incoming one? What is there to prevent China, with Mauritius’s agreement, putting listening outposts on other islands that could compromise the security of Diego Garcia?

• 29 Nov 2024 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  In the past I have voted against this type of measure, and for one overriding reason: namely, the impracticability of effective safeguards. Even if practical safeguards could be erected against external coercion, I have always felt that there was no prospect whatsoever of having effective safeguards against internal pressures on someone to request assisted dying or even euthanasia. For example, as we have heard, an elderly person in a care home, knowing that the legacy they could bequeath to their children was being reduced by tens of thousands of pounds every few weeks, would be highly likely to feel obliged to ask to die. I cannot conceive of any safeguard against self-sacrifice of that sort, whether for financial reasons or in order no longer to be a burden on one’s nearest and dearest relatives and friends. However, there is an additional point that I wish to inject into the debate. In my opinion, the key to this dreadfully difficult conundrum—about end of life care, pain and the possibility of assisted dying—lies, or should lie, in the ability of medical personnel to administer effective pain relief even if it shortens the patient’s remaining time. In my view, there should be no bar on the use of painkilling medication, if that is the only way to ease human suffering, even if it leads to a speedier death—hence the frequent references to putting dying people “on an appropriate pathway.” It was therefore most alarming to me to read a very important paragraph in a letter sent to me in favour of changing the law and voting for the Bill by my constituent, the distinguished broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen, in which she explains that doctors no longer feel able to follow this humane course of action since the atrocious Harold Shipman case, which was briefly alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis). If there has been such a change in regulations, as Dame Esther believes, it is imperative that that should be reversed. That is something positive that could come out of the imminent debate. Another issue that has been touched on more than once is the uncertainty and the postcode lottery surrounding effective palliative care. Dame Esther’s view is that there are some people, who have some conditions, for whom palliative care never can be effective. Other people expressed the view that there is always a way in which painkilling medication can be used in order to prevent suffering. I suspect the answer to that riddle lies in the fact that that painkilling care, in some cases, might lead to a shortening of life. Therefore, I conclude that there are three issues that should be in our minds. Can safeguards be effective? My answer to that, I am sorry to say, is still no. Can pain be alleviated sufficiently by palliative care? The balance of the argument is in favour of saying “probably yes”, but it is too uneven across the country and would certainly need the sort of investment that would be necessary to set up system that would work for assisted dying. Above all, have doctors the freedom to administer pain relief that may shorten life? We need to know the answer to that question, because if, since Shipman, they have been prevented from taking such merciful measures, that is a classic example of hard cases making bad law. Doctors need to be able to humanely ease people on their last journey, and the country needs to know where the medical profession stands on that central matter to this debate.

• 27 Nov 2024 · Stellantis Luton · Hansard source

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  I assure the Secretary of State that I would have put the question I am about to ask to a Conservative Minister equally. If all British car manufacturers came together and told the Government that they could not possibly meet this 2030 goal, would the Government nevertheless persevere in maintaining it as an immovable target?

• 27 Nov 2024 · Respect Orders and Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

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  An estimated 60,000 hours of police time was spent on non-crime hate incidents in the past 12 months, and we already hear about burglaries not being investigated for lack of police time. So, while welcoming the description of the problem, how is it to be solved unless chief constables are to be directed to reorder their priorities?

• 26 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Will the Foreign Secretary take every opportunity to impress on the incoming President the importance of the article 5 guarantee, whereby the United States will come to the aid of any NATO country that is attacked? Will he impress on President Trump that we will do everything that we can to encourage other NATO allies to contribute more to the cost of defence?

• 26 Nov 2024 · Tobacco and Vapes Bill · Hansard source

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  Can the Secretary of State tell us if there is any place for vapes as a step-down, in the context of the addictive aspects of tobacco? I seem to remember that when vaping first came along, it was heralded as a way to help wean people from their tobacco addictions. Sadly, it has turned into something else, as he describes, and starts children on the road towards nicotine addiction, but does it have a role as a step-down?

• 26 Nov 2024 · Tobacco and Vapes Bill · Hansard source

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• 21 Nov 2024 · Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation · Hansard source

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  In an ideal world, there would be a limitless supply of lawyers who would provide their services to victims and defendants alike, free of charge. Then, the issue of SLAPPs could never arise. We are not talking here about trying to restrict the right of individuals to seek the protection of a court and clear their name of defamatory claims about them. If that was what we were seeking, I would be something of a hypocrite, because 30 years ago, I had to pursue such a libel action against an impecunious magazine that thought it could get away with saying anything about public figures, no matter how baseless, because it had no assets, so if someone pursued a libel action against it and won, they could never recover the tens of thousands of pounds in costs. That is when the boot is on the other foot: a person who has no assets therefore uses the costs of lawyers against the person they wish to defame. However, what has happened in more recent times, particularly since the demise of that magazine, because there were other ways of dealing with it, is precisely what the hon. Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton) said in his excellent introduction was an abuse of the legal process—and in particular of the huge costs that apply to hiring lawyers to defend oneself—by what I believe he described as a very small number of very rich people. The solution to this type of problem is therefore for the courts to be able to deal with it at such an early stage that, even though some costs will be unavoidable, the huge threat of unbearable costs will be removed, because a worthless libel claim against an investigative reporter whose story is well founded will be thrown out beforethe vast bulk of the expense can be incurred. Some hon. Members who were here in the previous Parliament may remember that we had a brief debate on 20 January 2022 dealing with the question of lawfare. I made a couple of interventions on behalf of a former Member of the House, Charlotte Leslie, who faced what was certainly a SLAPP as a result of her not even having published anything, but having privately contacted a number of people, including me, given my then position as the Chair of a Committee that she regarded as relevant to her concerns. She wrote to us to try to do due diligence on an individual who proposed getting involved and investing money in an organisation by which she was employed. Fortunately, in the end, the case failed utterly in court, but only after she had been put through a nightmarish ordeal. I pay tribute to her resilience in coming through that ordeal. We are of course particularly concerned about vulnerable individuals, but sometimes even large organisations can be subject to the SLAPP technique. If hon. Members look on the internet, they will see that on 12 January this year—on the BBC website, no less—a story headed, “Post Office lied and threatened BBC over Horizon whistleblower” begins: “The BBC can reveal that in the period leading up to the broadcast of Trouble at the Post Office, the 2015 Panorama programme featuring the whistleblower testimony: Experts interviewed by the BBC were sent intimidating letters by Post Office lawyers about their participation in the programme Senior Post Office managers briefed the BBC that neither their staff nor Fujitsu—the company which built and maintained the Horizon system—could remotely access sub-postmasters’ accounts, even though Post Office directors had been warned four years earlier that such remote access was possible Lawyers for the Post Office sent letters threatening to sue Panorama and the company's public relations boss Mark Davies escalated complaints to ever more senior BBC managers”. The article also states: “The Post Office’s false claims did not stop the programme, but they did cause the BBC to delay the broadcast by several weeks.” As we all know, the BBC had the resources to resist a major legal action had one ensued. Only three days earlier than that article on the scandal, there was an article on 9 January 2024 on the website of the Press Gazette , which is the industry-representative body. It commented on the way in which the ITV drama about the Post Office scandal had brought to a wider audience the shocking story of the hundreds of postmasters who were wrongly prosecuted and, indeed, the four who committed suicide as a result. The article is headed, “Attention to Post Office Horizon IT scandal follows 14 years of dogged journalism”. It rightly pays tribute to the freelance reporter Nick Wallis, who wrote the famous book “The Great Post Office Scandal”, and to two other reporters, Rebecca Thomson and Karl Flinders, who both wrote numerous articles for a much smaller enterprise, a journal called Computer Weekly . In fact, it can be said that the first investigation into Horizon, which was published in 2009, was carried out by Computer Weekly after a year-long investigation by Rebecca Thomson. The investigations editor of Computer Weekly , Bill Goodwin, is quoted as saying that the magazine persisted despite “bullying letters” from the Post Office demanding to know its sources. He said: “We ignored them. Reaction was muted when the story first appeared but it initiated a slow-burn chain of events that lead to the uncovering of a scandal of enormous proportions.” I am very grateful to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has already been mentioned in this debate, for providing a little more detail on what Computer Weekly faced. It has supplied me with some further embellishment, as it were, of what I have already recounted. It tells me that the general counsel for the Post Office sent threatening legal letters to Computer Weekly and that the trade magazine’s brave campaign, which continued regardless of the threats, often left it as a lone voice, with other outlets seemingly very reluctant to pick up on the important reporting with which it persisted. One legal letter from 2015 shared with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism threatened Computer Weekly over an article that said the Post Office closed a working group responsible for looking into claims against the Horizon software. The general counsel claimed that the article included a “significant number of inaccuracies” and “damaging errors” and argued that the reporters had acted improperly, stating: “We are most concerned that Computer Weekly chose to publish this highly damaging article without taking the proper steps to verify the information.” The letter acknowledged that Computer Weekly had amended its article to include Post Office comments, yet it persisted with the threats: “You should not underestimate the seriousness with which the Post Office views the publication of such damaging and inaccurate allegations. The steps taken by you in response to this letter may well influence Post Office’s decision as to any further steps it may take to protect its reputation.” It has now emerged that the Post Office took multiple aggressive actions to shut down the story about its failures over prosecutions that were sparked by the faulty Horizon software. The scandal only really spread into the mainstream press after the breakthrough moment in 2019 when Alan Bates and 554 litigants took a civil case against the Post Office to the High Court, which they won a couple of years later. Even then, as was said earlier, the full story was not widely known until the 2024 ITV drama was broadcast. In response to what the Bureau of Investigative Journalism stated, the Post Office now sings a welcome different tune. It says that the organisation is committed to supporting the ongoing public inquiry and that it is fair and right for the Post Office to be held to account by journalists. It says: “The approach of the Post Office today regarding communications is based on the knowledge that we must apologise sincerely, learn from the past, be transparent with stakeholders, and support justice and redress for those who have been impacted.” It also says that it is actively exploring additional ways to strengthen transparency. That is all well and good, after the Post Office fought so hard to cover up what had happened and close down the story of the scandal, but I will close as I began by saying that any SLAPP legislation is not meant to give anybody carte blanche to say anything they like on the basis of no evidence—to smear, belittle or denigrate people simply because they wish to target them for whatever reason. The purpose of such legislation is to stop people who know perfectly well that the accusations against them are well founded, as the Post Office knew, but who nevertheless persist in abusing the legal system because of the horrendous threat of costs that will drive people to bankruptcy or to surrendering in the face of possible bankruptcy before the issue ever gets resolved in court. Central to any SLAPP legislation must be a simplification process that ensures that a worthless case—a case with no evidence; a case that is truly a SLAPP—is thrown out at the earliest possible opportunity before unbearable costs are incurred.

• 21 Nov 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I have been impressed by the courtesy and assiduousness with which the Leader of the House sends those of us who ask a business question in which we request a statement or debate a copy of the letter she sends to the appropriate Department. She would impress me even more if she instituted a requirement that the Ministers who receive those letters must respond, so that she can send us some feedback on why they do or do not intend to give us the debates or statements we have requested.

• 21 Nov 2024 · G20 and COP29 Summits · Hansard source

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  Given the Prime Minister’s unequivocal backing of Ukraine, and his admirable assertions that Putin must be seen to fail, will he rule out replacing, if she has to be replaced, our professional diplomatic ambassador in Washington with a party politician who has stated that Ukraine must lose the occupied territory to Russia, give up on becoming a member of NATO, and rely instead on security guarantees from European states?

• 20 Nov 2024 · Defence Programmes Developments · Hansard source

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  This is a black day for the Royal Marines. I advise the Defence Secretary that he would do well to have a look at the report, “Sunset for the Royal Marines?”, which was published by the Defence Committee in February 2018, when the issue of scrapping our amphibious assault ships was described by the cross-party Committee as “militarily illiterate” and totally at variance with strategic reality. Does he accept that the purpose of HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark, which were due to remain in service for nine and 10 more years respectively, is to have the capability of making a landing across a foreshore when it is opposed by enemy forces, just as the Fearless and Intrepid did the job before Albion and Bulwark? Does he agree that we have no way of knowing whether the absence of that capability for the next decade will be an incentive for somebody to try something like the Falklands?

• 20 Nov 2024 · Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation · Hansard source

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  I do not envy the hon. Lady in her job. Does she agree that no amount of hotel accommodation will ever suffice as long as there is no effective way of preventing large numbers of people from coming into this country without permission? As a form of interception near the French coast will probably be the only deterrent, will she at least keep open the possibility of negotiations with France as to how we could work together to do that?

• 20 Nov 2024 · Police Reform · Hansard source

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  Having worked with the right hon. Lady on Committees over a number of years, I am delighted to congratulate her on her appointment. In that spirit, I will make what I think is a helpful suggestion about non-crime hate incidents. Clearly, chief constables have huge discretion over how much effort they put into investigating local crime and non-crime incidents of the sort that she says have a place in the spectrum. Could she perhaps require chief constables to report back to her Department on how many hours their forces spend investigating crime incidents and non-crime incidents? It appears that tens of thousands of non-crime incidents are being investigated every year.

• 19 Nov 2024 · Infected Blood Inquiry · Hansard source

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  I am sorry not to have been here for the opening speeches. Does the Minister recognise the fundamental similarity between the way in which the victims of this scandal and those of the Post Office scandal, and no doubt other terrible scandals, were treated by the state? Does the Government have any plan, possibly on a cross-departmental basis, to try to educate the bureaucracy that when terribly difficult and potentially expensive things like this crop up, they should not follow this well-worn path of denial and cover-up?

• 18 Nov 2024 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  Does the Secretary of State share my concern at the recent media interview given by a leading candidate to be Labour’s next ambassador to Washington DC? This supposedly clever negotiator declared that Ukraine should not expect to get its territory back, and should not expect to be put on the path to join NATO, but could perhaps secure some security guarantees from western countries. Does the Secretary of State agree that whoever is sent to Washington should be somebody who supports Ukraine in defending itself and does not reward Russian aggression with pre-emptive capitulation?

• 12 Nov 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  That sounds reasonable, except for the fact that, unless there were a phasing of the process, it would not be possible within the numbers available to the Leader of the Opposition to nominate more than a small fraction. Can the Minister offer any more flexibility on that?

• 12 Nov 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the Father of the House agree that inevitably, given the nature of the Bill, we have been talking more about the process by which people become Members of the House of Lords than about the activity that it carries out? In particular, although not everyone in the House of Lords is an expert, a large number of them are: people who have reached the top of their respective professions, whether those professions be academia, the law, the arts or the judiciary. Can the Father of the House cast his mind back to 1984, when he and I, having both fought the 1983 general election—he stood in Gainsborough and Horncastle, which is why he was in the House; and I stood in Swansea West, which is why I was not—co-operated on trying to have postal ballots for trade union elections? Does he remember that he introduced a Bill that got nowhere in this House, because of the strong whipping system of elected Members, but when we took it to the House of Lords we were able to persuade people on the arguments because of the light whipping? The amendment went through, and when the Bill came back to the Commons the then Government brought in their own measures to meet the point. Does he agree that, apart from creating gridlock, an elected second Chamber would not have the possibility of introducing fresh ideas that, once introduced, may be accepted by a Government in this place, but which would never get off the starting blocks if they were introduced in this place initially?

• 12 Nov 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I am not aware that anything I have said this afternoon has been in favour of retaining the hereditaries. It has not. If the hon. Gentleman had listened to my earlier interventions, he would have known that is the case. That is why I said I am going somewhat wider than this Bill, which focuses solely on the hereditaries. The suggestion that the upper House stands in low repute is ill-conceived, and I urge the hon. Gentleman and other new Members to take advantage of the seminars that Labour and Liberal Democrat Members and I try to organise to enable new Members from all parties to be brought into contact with leading Members of the upper House, to see what they do. That would be a good use of his and other Members’ time.

• 12 Nov 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Government would find considerable sympathy for their position if they were to make provision for those hereditary peers currently in the House of Lords who have done good work and who have acquired a lot of experience by possibly introducing a phase-out or a generous allocation of life peerages to those who are considered worthy on the basis of their past record of participation.

• 12 Nov 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  The elements that make up the House of Lords consist of different groups of people: some have got there by accident of birth and are now going to leave; some have got there as the result of political horse-trading of some sort, and perhaps should not have been put there in the first place; but a great many have got there, as I said earlier, by having reached the heights of their various professions and having proved themselves to be outstanding intellectuals who can bring a level of specialisation to the scrutiny of legislation. Even if we in this House were on exactly their same level of accumulated knowledge, we cannot bring that same level of scrutiny because of the demands we face on our time and in looking after our constituents, which inevitably works to the cost of the amount of attention we could give purely to focusing on improving legislation. I wish to place on record that the reason why I became an ardent advocate of an unelected second Chamber—and why I would rather have no second Chamber at all than two elected Chambers—is precisely that it is impossible to whip such a Chamber to prevent people with good ideas from persuading peers of the virtue of those ideas. Members of an unelected second Chamber are able to have at least a sporting chance of amending legislation in good ways that would not get beyond first base in this House, because the elected Members, for the most part, almost all the time, obey the whipping. Before I was an MP, when I was a political activist, I and my colleagues managed to get four pieces of legislation into law. Since I have been an MP, I have got only one, on the privacy of Members’ home addresses, on to the statute book, because, exceptionally, that was a free vote. How many free votes happen in this House? Hardly any. The equivalent of free votes in the upper House happen all the time. We required postal ballots for trade union elections, which was incorporated into the Trade Union Act 1984 and the Employment Act 1988. We outlawed political indoctrination in schools, which was incorporated into the Education Act 1986 and carried forward in the Education Act 1996. We prohibited local councils from publishing material that “promotes or opposes a point of view on a question of political controversy which is identifiable as the view of one political party and not of another”, which was incorporated into section 27 of the Local Government Act 1988. Finally, we more strictly defined the concept of “due impartiality” in the coverage of politically contentious issues on television and radio, which was incorporated into the Broadcasting Act 1990. Every one of those measures was got through the House of Lords first, and then either adopted in the House of Commons directly or brought forward by the Government in their alternative proposals. We do away with the expertise of the House of Lords at our peril. All we will be left with are machine politicians, whether they are in one elected House or two elected Houses, and that is to the detriment of our democracy, not to its enhancement.