Julian Lewis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 5 Dec 2024 · Detained British Nationals Abroad · Hansard source

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  On that point, it is worth mentioning that Dr Ibadoghlu’s son visited Parliament a few weeks ago, when we had an opportunity to discuss his case. He has a close association with part of the University of London, and he was given assurances that it would be safe for him to return to visit his ailing mother. Subsequent to his arrest, a PhD student, whose name is Fazil Gasimov, was extradited from Turkey and tortured into giving evidence against Dr Ibadoghlu, and he has felt it necessary to go on hunger strike. There seems to be a huge effort by the Azeri Government to persecute people, even at the same time as a COP meeting was scheduled to take place in their capital.

• 5 Dec 2024 · Detained British Nationals Abroad · Hansard source

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  In fairness to the Government, I have reason to believe that one of the Foreign Office Ministers was very concerned about the case. I think there is a high probability that it may have been raised quietly, if not publicly.

• 5 Dec 2024 · Cumberlege Review: Pelvic Mesh · Hansard source

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  Exactly right. That is why my constituent said at the time, “I do not want anyone from the hospital coming near me ever again. I have lost complete faith in them. I have been lied to and told repeatedly that it was my body rejecting the mesh. But unbelievably they kept putting more in.” Over this period of six or more years I have probably tabled about 12 or 15 questions for written answer, obviously to a previous Government. I will quote three, which were all in the aftermath of the Cumberlege report. In June 2021—for the benefit of Hansard it was question 16777—I asked the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care “what checks his Department carried out to ensure that surgeons awarded NHS contracts for the removal of failed vaginal mesh implants had not previously been responsible for (a) originally implanting them, and subsequently (b) denying that anything had gone wrong with them; and whether any personnel awarded NHS contracts to work at mesh remediation specialist centres are known by his Department to be currently facing legal proceedings for implanting mesh which injured women who are now seeking its removal at such centres.” The answer, which came from the then Minister of State, read: “It is the responsibility of the employing organisations”— presumably the NHS— “to ensure that the staff undertaking mesh implantation and/or dealing with mesh complications are qualified and competent to do so. NHS England’s procurement process to identify the specialist centres to deal with the complications of mesh considered a range of clinical and service quality issues. No assessment was undertaken regarding National Health Service contracts or staff facing legal proceedings.” Somebody in the process of suing a surgeon but still needing ongoing care may have no other option but to go to a mesh centre headed up by—guess who?—the surgeon who she is suing because he damaged her in the first place. The second written question I will refer to was in July 2021—question No. 31274—which read: “To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the debate on the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review on 8 July 2021…what steps he plans to take to research new and improved techniques for removal of eroded surgical mesh implants.” As we have heard, it is intolerably difficult to remove this stuff. One would think that the very least the NHS could do would be to make a dedicated effort to develop new techniques for doing it. The description of it being like removing hair from chewing gum is vivid. I have sometimes speculated—I am not in any way qualified to do so—that maybe the answer to this might be to develop some sort of technique that could harmlessly dissolve the material and let it be gradually flushed away, rather than physically trying to disentangle it with the risk of doing more damage. That may be completely and utterly impracticable, but my point is that we do not know because no proper national effort is being made to find a way in which this disaster can be, to some extent, effectively rectified without harming the victims further.

• 5 Dec 2024 · Cumberlege Review: Pelvic Mesh · Hansard source

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  That being said, Mr Stringer, I am absolutely delighted that the hon. Lady made that intervention. When someone of her expertise and experience says that even she had not realised the scale of this issue, it shows the magnitude of the task that faces us. This is every bit as bad as we heard in the excellent introduction from the hon. Member for Harlow (Chris Vince)—I apologise for not paying tribute to him earlier. He has done us all a great service by bringing this debate to Westminster Hall. This is on a level with the infected blood disaster, and it deserves the same level of treatment and remediation in so far as that is possible. Reverting to the written question I asked, the Minister of the State at the time answered: “There are no current studies specifically relating to new and improved techniques for the removal of eroded surgical mesh. However, there are five studies ongoing on surgical mesh implants and the National Institute for Health Research welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including on the removal or implantation of vaginal mesh. There are currently no plans to establish a unit in order to train mesh removal specialists.” I want to quote a third and final written question of those 15. Question 124936, from February 2022, stated: “To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress has been made in establishing the South East Regional specialist centre for the treatment of women damaged by mesh implants; and whether checks will be carried out to ensure that such women, when seeking remedial treatment from that specialist centre, are not placed in the hands of surgeons who were responsible for (a) implanting the mesh originally, (b) denying that anything had gone wrong with the implants and (c) claiming that women reporting extreme physical pain from the implants were imagining it.” After a fairly long paragraph in reply, the answer concluded: “Patients can discuss their choice of surgeon with the multi-disciplinary team if they have concerns regarding a specific clinician and can also discuss a referral to a surgeon in another specialist mesh centre.” Think of the conversation that would require. A patient would have to explain to the person who had—to quote my right hon. Friend the Member for Wetherby and Easingwold—“butchered” them that, because they did not want to have his or her ministrations any further, they wanted to be referred to somebody else a long way away. Good luck with all that. I will briefly touch on some points raised by people in the community of damaged women. I have been told about difficulties regarding personal independence payment applications. It has been suggested that staff managing PIP applications and renewals need better training and understanding of mesh injury. There has been some progress, apparently, in the gradual acceptance that many women had not given informed consent at the beginning, and this is perhaps beginning to make itself felt in relation to the legal actions that some people are undertaking. Just imagine being in constant pain and having the burden of undertaking those legal actions. There is concern that mesh removal centres do not seem to have the same approach across the board for treatment or surgery. There are also very lengthy waiting lists if someone opts for a second opinion, for the reason I have already explained or any other reason. Mental health support and counselling is not readily available, which is another gap. We have already heard an excellent contribution by the hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) noting that the 10-year limitation for legal action on medical devices needs to be reviewed, because by the time some women have confirmation that the mesh is the problem, the 10 years could well have passed. I have already mentioned that the Government ought to be looking to assist the legal cases against the pharmaceutical company or companies. It would be interesting to know whether the Government are making any progress on the subject of interim payments, which I believe the Cumberlege report recommended prior to any more bespoke payments based on individual circumstances. Will the Government encourage the yellow card Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency reporting to be made mandatory? If people are not reporting in when these things go wrong, how can we be sure of the scale of the problem? Finally, it is noted that there is a clear need for transparency for the public to be aware of exactly what payments medical professionals in the health sector receive from the pharmaceutical industry when they recommend these “routine procedures” that so often go wrong. I conclude with a case that I have deliberately anonymised. Nothing should be drawn from where I happen to represent as to which surgeon in which mesh centre I might be referring to. This is what one victim has said about someone I will call surgeon X. He “operated on me in 2009 to insert the mesh, which was described as a simple procedure that would solve my problems. Mesh was eroding through the vaginal wall immediately, and I had seven further ‘repair’ surgeries, which did not solve the erosion problem. In 2016, he advised me he could remove the mesh, so I paid privately for the surgery. During the surgery, nerves were damaged, causing severe pain and limitations, and the mesh was not all removed. I am left with the pain and limitations permanently, and have been told by another surgeon that full removal is now not possible. This surgeon is the clinical lead of the mesh centre” local to her. She concludes: “No surgeon should ever be allowed to cause damage to multiple patients, yet not only continue to perform the same surgeries, but to be head of the very centre which should be helping women. I feel sick at the thought of passing him in the street, let alone needing to see him as a health professional. I am sure we all feel the same.”

• 5 Dec 2024 · Cumberlege Review: Pelvic Mesh · Hansard source

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  Listening to the heartfelt contributions of so many new colleagues, I get the impression that most if not all of them had, like me, never heard of this problem until a constituent walked into their surgery and told them of the terrible experience that they had had. I have a practical suggestion: at the end of this debate, which will no doubt follow in the footsteps of several previous debates that were equally well informed, passionate and horrifying, we should perhaps put our names to a joint letter to a man called Nick Wallis. He is a freelance journalist who did a wonderful thing: he researched the Post Office Horizon system disaster and wrote a book called “The Great Post Office Scandal”. If I remember correctly, it was serialised for a week on Radio 4, and subsequently he was the consultant to the remarkable production, “Mr Bates vs. The Post Office”. We can have these debates regularly, as we have been doing, and we can upset and horrify each other by recounting our constituents’ pain and the appalling negligence that led to these terrible outcomes, but until the issue grasps the public imagination, I do not think people will get anywhere. Interestingly, one point that has not been mentioned is the possible responsibility and liability of the large pharmaceutical company that manufactured the mesh in the first place. What research did it undertake? What responsibility does it have? What help can the Government give people who have been irreparably harmed to go after that company for compensation? There has been one great positive development, which has been referred to several times, and that is the magnificent work of Baroness Cumberlege, who certainly did the whole community of damaged women the best possible service in conducting that excellent review. The question is to what extent will her recommendations be implemented? I pay tribute in particular to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke), who spoke earlier, and the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), from whom we are about to hear, for their exemplary leadership of the all-party parliamentary group on this terrible disaster and for keeping the flame burning all these years. I say “all these years” because it has been a long time. Looking back on my own website to check my contributions, I see that this is now the fourth full- scale debate in which my colleagues and I have gone over the same ground. If anybody is interested, the dates of the previous three debates, which were packed with testimony and interesting information, were 19 April 2018 —slightly longer ago from now than the entire duration of the second world war—8 July 2021 and 3 February 2022. It would not be appropriate for me to go over in detail what has been said previously, as it is all there on the record, but it is important to recognise that we are talking about thousands and thousands of damaged women—10,000 at the very least, and as we have heard, some estimates put the number as high as 40,000. Treatment centres have been mentioned, but there is a particular question about who has the skill to practise in the treatment centres. Who will put themselves forward as being appropriately skilled? It will be the very people who inserted the mesh in the first place. In one of the earlier debates, I cited a constituent who was 35 when she was given what was described to her as “routine surgery”, 16 years before the debate in question took place. I said then: “She was initially told that it was her fault that her body was rejecting the two mesh implants. She then went through a cycle of implants, the removal of protrusions and eroded segments and seven bouts of surgery. Three TVTs—trans-vaginal tapes—are still inside her, she suffers chronic pain from orbital nerve damage, constantly needs painkillers and has had constant side effects, indifferent treatment and a refusal to admit fault or to refer her to an out-of-area specialist in mesh removal.” —[ Official Report , 19 April 2018; Vol. 639, c. 508.]

• 5 Dec 2024 · Cumberlege Review: Pelvic Mesh · Hansard source

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  I think that often the reason people feel guilt is because they feel that they were not given the necessary information at the beginning and they did not ask for it, but if they had only known, they would not have touched this debatable and deplorable procedure with a bargepole.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Northern Ireland: Legacy of the Troubles · Hansard source

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  I am less enthusiastic than many people for this development. If, as the Secretary of State says, the purpose is for the families to find out the truth, can he confirm first of all that the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 remains in being, so that if somebody is prosecuted successfully for the most heinous of offences, they will not serve—whether they are from the armed forces on the one side or the terrorist forces on the other—more than two years in jail? Given that that is the case, which is the more likely to give the families the truth: trying to take people to court, where they will defend their position and try to cover up inconvenient facts; or trying to have an amnesty—that hated word—coupled with a truth recovery process, where the truth can be said because people know that they will not go to jail as a result?

• 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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  rose—

• 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.