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Julian Lewis MP: speeches

279 published records · newest first.

Speeches

  • 15 May 2025 · Sanctions Implementation and Enforcement · Hansard source
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    Does the Minister agree that, now it is slowly dawning on President Trump that his friend Vladimir is stringing him along, there are good prospects that America will not weaken the level of sanctions it imposes on Russia? Can he also clarify one point? He said in his statement—and also yesterday evening—that if Putin does not engage seriously with peace, the UK and our allies will have no choice but to ramp up the economic pressure even further, forcing him to the table. I would have thought that we ought to be ramping up the economic pressure now to the maximum level that we can, so unless the Minister is just saying that that ramping up will take longer, can I suggest that the Government get on with it as quickly as possible?

  • 14 May 2025 · Gaza: UK Assessment · Hansard source
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    As well as raping, kidnapping and killing civilians on 7 October for the sake of it, Hamas had a strategy: to try to prevent further peace deals between Israel and its Arab neighbours by provoking a massive, frenzied reaction to the atrocities. Does the Minister share my dismay that this brutal strategy seems to be succeeding?

  • 14 May 2025 · Sanctions · Hansard source
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    The Minister referred to the attempts to cripple the ghost ships and fleet. Does that have any effect on the shipments of oil to third parties, such as India, that refine the oil and then sell it on to countries that, like us, are trying to sanction Russia directly?

  • 14 May 2025 · Ministerial Code: Compliance · Hansard source
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    The right hon. Lady is an attentive Leader of the House, and I hope the Government show the same degree of loyalty to her after a tough couple of weeks that she is showing to them. Although I do acknowledge that the Government make many statements to the House, all too often they make them to the media first, as you noted, Madam Deputy Speaker, in your announcement on Monday: “Mr Speaker does not understand why the Government persist in making announcements in this way, when the ministerial code is absolutely clear”. —[ Official Report , 12 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 47.] Will the Leader of the House take back the message, even if she cannot confess it on the Floor of the House, that they are going too far and they need to stop?

  • 14 May 2025 · Infected Blood Inquiry: Government Response · Hansard source
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    The Minister referred briefly to something called a duty of candour, which will try to avoid a repetition of what was described as a “defensive culture in the civil service”. Will he expand on that phenomenon? It is quite extraordinary, is it not, that when people in all innocence were infected with lethal diseases by the NHS, civil servants should have gathered round to deny them the help and compensation they needed? Surely some sort of sanction ought to be involved. Will anyone be held to account for this, because otherwise, it will happen again, won’t it?

  • 13 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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    Is a pattern emerging where the Trump Administration take initially extreme positions on international trade and foreign policy and then quickly re-adjust to more realistic and sensible policies? What opportunities does that give for British diplomacy?

  • 13 May 2025 · Mansion House Accord · Hansard source
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    At a time when we have been commemorating a significant anniversary of VE Day, does the Minister share my concern that certain large pension firms are refusing to invest in profitable defence industries on spurious ethical grounds? Is that something that his pensions investment review might care to investigate?

  • 12 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment Assessments · Hansard source
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    Can the Minister explain why it appears that telephone assessments for PIP have a significantly higher success rate in applications than face-to-face applications?

  • 6 May 2025 · Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan: 80th Anniversary · Hansard source
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    What an excellent speech to have the privilege of following. It is always so impressive when people do their duty right up to the very end, and so I ask the House to salute the passing of Normandy veteran Cecil Newton, who as recently as last year came back to Lepe beach in New Forest East and read out the names of more than a hundred of his comrades in the Royal Dragoon Guards who were killed in the D-day landings and beyond. He was one of 6,000 troops who landed on Gold beach, having departed from Lepe beach. He was in an amphibious Sherman tank that made it to shore—not all of them did—and he survived being wounded in combat too, passing at the great age of 101. We have heard from many speakers about the connections between their constituencies and the military history of the second world war. That was a theme on which I expatiated back in May 1997 in my very first speech in this House. I will repeat just one reference from that oration, about when I discovered a small plot of RAF graves in Fawley churchyard in my constituency. I could not help but be moved by the inscription on the headstone of a young airman, John Burrow, whose parents had written the following: “Into the mosaic of victory we lay this priceless piece—our son”. I thought that that was such a wonderful thing to do in the depths of their loss: to say, nevertheless, that this is what we are doing for the victory of our country over Nazi Germany. I salute them and their memory too. How does one do justice to the second world war in a few minutes? I will pick out one key factor without which everything else would have been different: the existence of the English channel. There can be no doubt that if we had been contiguous with the continent of Europe, we would have suffered the same fate as all our allies there. There is no way in which we could have resisted being overrun. When we think about how difficult it was to reinvade and retake the continent for democracy in 1944, even with Britain as the launch area for that invasion, we realise how virtually impossible it would have been without the United Kingdom remaining outside Nazi German control. We can also look at the areas covered by a simple listing of the campaign stars that were awarded: the Atlantic Star, the Africa Star, the Italy Star, the Burma Star, the Pacific Star, the France and Germany Star and, much belatedly, the Arctic Star for the brave men of the merchant navy and the Royal Navy, who risked everything to get supplies to Russia. Let us not forget one last thing. When the war ended, the country for which we went to war, Poland, remained under occupation by the Soviet Union, and it took another 44 years of determined deterrence, coupled with the nuclear balance of terror, to ensure the eventual emergence of democracy in that country too.

  • 6 May 2025 · Counter Terrorism Policing: Arrests · Hansard source
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    In the fullness of time, it will undoubtedly be revealed what the targets of these terrorist plots were going to be. If it turns out that one of them was again the broadcaster Iran International, which had to relocate to Washington temporarily in 2023, will the Minister undertake to speak with his Foreign Office colleagues about the importance of impressing on the Trump Administration that these repressive regimes fear free broadcasting agencies, and that that is why the Trump Administration should not be closing down Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty or indeed Voice of America itself?

  • 30 Apr 2025 · Energy Grid Resilience · Hansard source
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    I commend what the Minister said at the outset on the need to insure against high-impact, low-probability events. In a non-dogmatic spirit, may I appeal to him to reconsider the way in which the Government are dealing with the question of the two shale gas wells, which they have decided, under normal circumstances, they do not wish to see exploited? Surely those wells should not be sealed so permanently that if we were in a wartime conflict situation they could not be reactivated?

  • 30 Apr 2025 · UK Airstrike: Houthi Military Facility · Hansard source
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    It is unusual for a terrorist group engaged in a civil war to invite retaliation of this sort by attacking international shipping so comprehensively. Clearly, the Houthis are acting as an agent of Iran. Can the Secretary of State advise us what the Government know about the ability of Iran to keep fuelling the attacks in the Red sea? Now that the domestic ability to manufacture drones in Yemen has been degraded, how easy will it be for Iran to supply them directly to the Houthis?

  • 29 Apr 2025 · Kashmir: Increasing Tension · Hansard source
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    I am sure the Government recognise that the strategic aim of this sort of terrorist atrocity is to provoke indiscriminate retaliation and undermine peaceful relations between neighbouring countries between which there may be some history of hostility. Will the Minister impress on the Indian Government the necessity of focusing on the actual perpetrators and not on the wider community, and will he impress on the Pakistani Government the importance, in good faith, of tracking down those responsible?

  • 29 Apr 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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    As we need some oil and gas while on the road to a clean energy economy, does it not make sense to produce our own, rather than importing it from other countries and thus increasing the global carbon footprint?

  • 28 Apr 2025 · Freedom of Speech: Universities · Hansard source
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    Can the Secretary of State confirm that the new freedom of speech provisions will ensure that, if any member of a university’s staff gives the same definition of a woman as the Prime Minister did in his most recent iteration of it, they will not be no-platformed or driven out of their job?

  • 24 Apr 2025 · Ukraine War: London Talks · Hansard source
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    If the Government could persuade the Nobel peace prize committee to give the award to Donald Trump on condition that he stops siding with the aggressor against the victim, does the Minister think that American policy might revert to one of NATO deterrence, which prevented world war three for half a century after the end of world war two?

  • 24 Apr 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source
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    I thank the Leader of the House in advance for the very large number of follow-up letters she will be writing after this marathon session. I know that it is probably quite a chore, but we really appreciate that she does it so conscientiously. In a brief exchange about NHS dentistry on 13 March, as part of the formidable campaign being waged by the National Federation of Women’s Institutes on that subject, I was quite impressed when the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said that the problem requires, “not simply tinkering with the system as it is, but fundamentally rethinking it” —[ Official Report , 13 March 2025; Vol. 763, c. 1298.] I am sure he is absolutely right about that, so will the Leader of the House urge him to make a statement to the House on what progress he anticipates making on this very important issue?

  • 24 Apr 2025 · London Sudan Conference · Hansard source
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    I appreciate the pressures on the Minister’s officials, but does the Minister agree that this disaster playing out in Sudan is under-reported, and, therefore, may I encourage him in the future to take every opportunity to come to the House voluntarily with statements, rather than rely on urgent questions, to give him the opportunity, which he has quite rightly taken today, to spell out where we are in this awful situation?

  • 23 Apr 2025 · Hair and Beauty Sector: Government Policy · Hansard source
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    I know it is not the main thrust of my hon. Friend’s argument, but does she share my concern at the detailed exposés at the end of March in the Evening Standard and The Sunday Times about the huge proliferation of barber shops, which could not possibly all be conducting legitimate trade? For example, the Evening Standard talked about 17 barbers in and around a two-mile stretch of Streatham High Road, and about 25 on a similarly sized section of Kingsland Road between Stoke Newington and Haggerston. That is clearly criminal activity on a major scale.

  • 22 Apr 2025 · British Steel · Hansard source
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    On the day that Parliament was recalled, I gather that the workers themselves had to confront Chinese executives who were intent on coming on to the site. They believe that those executives intended to take unilateral action to shut down the blast furnace irrecoverably. Is that correct? What does that tell us about the motivation and behaviour of China when it gets its hands on our strategic industries?

  • 22 Apr 2025 · Ukraine Update · Hansard source
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    Coupled with the decision of the leader of the free world to describe Ukraine as the aggressor in this war is the news today that America may be considering no longer supplying the Supreme Allied Commander Europe to NATO. Is the Defence Secretary looking forward as much as the rest of us are to hearing what President Trump has to say, if he comes to this Parliament in September, about how it is that the system that kept the peace in Europe for 50 years after the second world war is no longer applicable for the future?

  • 22 Apr 2025 · Ukraine Update · Hansard source
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    indicated assent.

  • 22 Apr 2025 · Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill · Hansard source
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    The right hon. Lady has just said something very important: namely, that she would normally expect a pre-sentence report to be given in all, or at least almost all, cases. I hope that is her position, because what seems unfair to me is that a pre-sentence report, which presumably enables people to present arguments in mitigation, should be available to some people who have been convicted of a crime but not to others. Surely it should be available either to everyone or to no one, because everyone’s individual circumstances deserve the same degree of consideration.

  • 22 Apr 2025 · Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill · Hansard source
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    I do not think anyone is questioning the firm action the Lord Chancellor is taking. The point my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) made is: why should it be necessary for her to take that action? Surely, if the Sentencing Council cannot see the distinction she makes between its proper role and Parliament’s proper role, it is not fit to do the job.

  • 22 Apr 2025 · Birmingham: Waste Collection · Hansard source
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    Given that the Minister no doubt sincerely believes that the offer on the table is a good one, why does he think the unions are not accepting it?

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