Julian Lewis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 29 Jun 2026 · Youth Hubs · Hansard source

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  With the impeccable timing of an Olympic medallist and world record beater, the inspirational Fatima Whitbread is in Parliament today in room U in Portcullis House till 4 pm, stressing the importance for people like herself brought up in the care system of wraparound local authority hubs working with and including the education, sport, police and charity sectors. Will a member of the ministerial team—preferably more than one—take the trouble to leave this Chamber when questions end and go over and talk to Fatima about her interesting and constructive ideas in this important field?

• 15 Jun 2026 · NHS Dentistry · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister accept that there is a high degree of unanimity in all parts of the House about this terrible situation? Does he also accept that the British Dental Association traces this back to the 2006 contract? What it wants to know is: when are the formal negotiations on a new contract going to begin, and what is the date of the Minister’s deadline to introduce the new system in the lifetime of this Parliament, as promised in his general election manifesto?

• 15 Jun 2026 · NHS Dentistry · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that the British Dental Association, which has supplied an excellent briefing to many right hon. and hon. Members for this debate, is in no doubt at all that it is precisely the 2006 contract that lies at the heart of the problem? The BDA states that it wants two things from this debate: one is a clear timetable from the Government as to when they will start to renegotiate that contract; and the other is a firm deadline for the roll-out of a new system in this Parliament. Those are the two things that we have been invited to press the Minister to deliver at the end of this debate.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Local Government Reform · Hansard source

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  I preface my remarks by saying that I have a high personal regard for the Minister and I am sure that she would never personally wish to do anything unfair or politically partisan. However, there are very good reasons why, when changes are made to anything to do with constituency arrangements or democratic arrangements, they are normally carried out under the authority of an impartial body. I believe, as I suspect my Conservative colleagues believe, that if a body such as the Boundary Commission had been in charge of this operation, the results would have been very different. A coach and horses has been driven through anything to do with local, cultural or historical, as well as, shall we say, orientation among communities—all those ideas have been totally disregarded. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) on securing the debate, but I must say to him and to you, Dr Murrison, that we would need a much longer debate if we were to do justice to the enormity of what has been proposed. My hon. Friend laid out the fact that totally inappropriate areas will be subsumed under and swallowed up by the city of Leicester. That is exactly what is happening in the city of Southampton, with the naked land-grab of huge areas of the New Forest East constituency—wards known collectively as the Waterside—coupled with another land-grab of wards from Test Valley borough council that are contained in the Romsey and Southampton North constituency. I must emphasise that the changes were first proposed long after the general election and were not in Labour’s general election manifesto. Labour rightly thought it proper to put in its manifesto the fact that there would be elected mayors and strategic authorities, but the abolition and merging of historic borough councils, district councils and county councils was nowhere flagged up in advance of anybody’s vote. The Government like to trumpet the fact that they are strongly in favour of the devolution of political power and of listening to what local people want. Well, I have some data for the Government. Ever since this outrageous proposition that Southampton should take over vast areas of my constituency—splitting the constituency and the New Forest apart and tearing the Waterside away from the New Forest, which Waterside inhabitants have for hundreds of years viewed as part of their community—an online petition has been gathering signatures. This issue is relatively local to a part of the south of Hampshire, so we might think that, if we were lucky, the petition might get 5,000 or 6,000 signatures. I checked at exactly 10 o’clock this morning and there are 22,812 signatures so far, and I am sure that the total is well over 25,000 with paper signatures taken into account. What sort of issue must there be for 25,000 people in a local area to say that they utterly reject the tearing apart of the New Forest in this way and its takeover by the city of Southampton, which, as we have heard is the case in other scenarios, is in a far worse financial position than the people who live at present under the aegis of New Forest district council are accustomed to being in? I have many more points that I would like to make, but, out of consideration for my colleagues, I am not going to make them. I will make just one final point. We have tried—we really have—to engage in a sincere way with the Government. When the original Minister, the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon), wrote to us, he set out what appeared to be reassuring criteria: there would be no unnecessary duplication or fragmentation, and the building blocks of the new unitary authorities would be the areas covered by the existing borough and district councils unless—as an exception—there was a very strong reason for interfering with boundaries. However, the only reasons given have been vague comments about maximising economic prosperity or something, which could be said in justification of any change, no matter how politically outrageous. I am sure that if this Minister had full strategic authority—to make a bad pun—over this policy, we would not be experiencing what we are experiencing. There is total outrage about this matter. It needs to be put right, and I hope the Government can be persuaded to think again.

• 4 Jun 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  In such troubled political times, it is reassuring that the House can unite in appreciation of the fine public service of Alex Younger and Meta Ramsay at the Secret Intelligence Service, and Alan Haselhurst, Jeremy Hanley and Gladys Dickson in the service of Parliament. In that spirit, may I appeal to the Leader of the House to use his considerable common sense and influence to get the Government to revisit something that was not in their manifesto—namely, local government reorganisation—and to come forward with a statement that recognises the huge opposition, with nearly 23,000 signatures online so far, to the tearing apart of the New Forest at the behest of party politicians in Southampton city? I would love to be able to go to the New Forest Association of Local Councils AGM tonight and tell them that the Government are going to reconsider this partisan matter for which they had no mandate at the general election.

• 3 Jun 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

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  I disagree with the right hon. Lady’s analysis because the whole point of what we have been saying from the Opposition Benches is that the Prime Minister himself knew about these points: he knew what Mandelson had done in relation to Epstein; he knew what he had said in relation to justice in Hong Kong; and he knew what Mandelson had said in that radio interview because I had challenged him about it. I must say, although it may not meet the high standards of court litigation, that when the Prime Minister brushed aside my challenge to him on 21 November, he sat down with a very notable and ingratiating grin, and I turned to the person sitting next to me and said, “He’s definitely going to appoint Mandelson.” It was his decision.

• 20 May 2026 · Defence Readiness · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) has such a sunny personality that I always feel cheered up after listening to her contributions, even when she is the bearer of somewhat disappointing news about the economy. I was also impressed by the speech of the former Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting), who is just about to escape from the Chamber. However, it did leave me wondering what my headline would be if I were a parliamentary sketch writer. I think it would be, “Why on earth did he resign?” It sounded much more like a manifesto in a leadership campaign than a trigger for calling one, but there we are—we all have our own motives. The right hon. Gentleman made a point that is of great relevance to this debate, which I promise I had already written down before I heard him make it: the comparison between the terrible experience of the pandemic and the terrible experience of a country involved in a full-scale war. There were, of course, casualties during the pandemic, and there was the determination to learn from it. The outcome is that we are a lot better prepared for the future, should another deadly virus attack us. As a result of the lessons learned during the pandemic, we will be in a much better position to develop effective vaccines far more quickly. However, I am afraid the real parallel is not a very happy one. It is a fact that if someone had said before we knew we were going to have the pandemic, “You need to invest a considerable sum of money in developing a system that enables you to develop vaccines quickly in response to the emergence of a new deadly virus,” we probably would not have done it. That is where the parallel lies with wartime situations, because for many years, defence-minded Members on both sides of the House have been urging successive Governments to spend a lot more on defence. If those warnings go unheeded and this country ends up in a full-scale armed conflict with a peer adversary, we will not be talking about spending 3% or 4% of GDP on defence; we will have to spend 30% or 40% of GDP on defence. We do not wish to get to that situation, because it would lead to not only economic loss—think of the human cost. If, by investing in defence in peacetime, we can deter a potential enemy from starting a war, we not only save the treasure; we save the blood that is otherwise shed so copiously. As we know, Russia is spending something of the order of between a third and a half of its gross domestic product on military power. In the past, the Defence Committee has looked at the question of what this country has spent historically. In a report entitled “Shifting the goalposts?”, and a second report entitled “Shifting the goalposts: an update”, the figures show that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) was completely correct. He said that in the mid-1980s, when he was serving, we were spending something of the order of 5% of GDP on defence. In fact, the figure given in 1983-84 was 4.4%, and in 1984-85 the figure was 4.5%. In reality, however, that was because we had higher criteria than the other NATO powers for what counted as defence expenditure, and we adopted their lower standards later. Looking back, we can see that the figures were actually 5.3% in 1983-84 and 5.5% in 1984-85. Those are very big figures. People talk about the way in which the peace dividend was taken, but as the shadow Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), pointed out, 1996-97—the year in which Tony Blair took over from the Conservative Government—was already at least half a dozen years after the end of the cold war, if we understand that to have taken place in 1991 rather than in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin wall. At that time, we were still spending 3%. That was the figure then, so as the current Chair of the Defence Committee, the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi), rightly said in an admirably objective speech, given that Russia is preparing for conflict now, we are responding too slowly and “time is short”, given the urgency of the situation. When we talk about achieving figures of 3% in a few years’ time and 5% in a few more years’ time, I would ask the House: does the killer in the Kremlin intend to give us that time? If we want to deter him from taking a step that would be to the detriment of the world, we need to invest now and, as in the case of the pandemic, find the money now. If a war broke out tomorrow, we would find the money at once, so let us find it today and diminish the chance of that terrible conflict happening the day after.

• 21 Apr 2026 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance, in what I believe is truly a genuine point of order, as to how Parliament and the public should understand the terminology in “Erskine May” about inadvertently misleading the House. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) pointed out: “The Prime Minister has said various things about Peter Mandelson’s vetting process…that have now turned out not to be true.” He asked: “Does he accept that he inadvertently misled the House of Commons?” The Prime Minister replied: “No, I did not mislead the House of Commons.” —[ Official Report , 20 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 51.] He then argued that other information that had been withheld from him had led to this situation. My understanding is that giving the House wrong information, but in good faith, is precisely what is meant by inadvertently misleading the House. The Prime Minister does not seem to understand that, and nor does the Foreign Secretary, to whom I asked a similar question this morning. Is it me who is misunderstanding the meaning of the term “to inadvertently mislead the House”?

• 26 Mar 2026 · Prison Officers: Mandatory Body Armour · Hansard source

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  Yes, indeed. No debate in this Chamber or the main Chamber would be worth while without a typically relevant contribution from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). The rise that I quoted earlier equated to 122 attacks on staff for every 1,000 inmates on the prison estate. Such a level of violence has inevitably brought into question the safety and adequacy of the current protective equipment available to prison officers at work. Only last year, three officers were viciously attacked in a particularly serious incident at HMP Frankland, the same prison where Claire was badly wounded. The full implications of this unacceptable deterioration have yet to be learned, though significant progress was made last September, when the Justice Secretary announced during a visit to Belmarsh prison that 10,000 more staff would be given stab-proof vests and 500 tasers would be supplied to trained personnel. Although those steps are welcome—they would have helped protect Claire in her prison—they go only part of the way. The extra 10,000 vests will provide a stab-proof garment for every prison guard working in high-security facilities, but even with body armour being made mandatory for prison officers working in close supervision and separation centres, too many at-risk staff remain without protection. Any prison officer working on any wing of any prison can be attacked. Therefore, any prison officer working on any wing of any prison deserves to be protected from violence while trying to do his or her job. Yes, progress has been made, but as long as any prison officers lack adequate protection and remain vulnerable to attack, there is still work to do. High levels of violence coupled with a lack of protective equipment will undoubtedly serve as a recruitment disincentive for potential prison officers. That must be remedied to ensure that our justice system continues to function and our society remains safe. Prison officers will always face challenges, often in trying circumstances. It is up to us to minimise the risk of attack, if we expect people to volunteer for such a vital, though difficult, career. It is also a matter of justice and fair play. We cannot expect to be protected by brave prison officers if they do not feel that appropriate safety measures are in place. If the principle of providing protective body armour to all prison officers is accepted, we must ensure the adequacy of the equipment itself. We must listen to and draw upon the experiences of those who have already been issued with protective equipment to make certain that it meets the highest safety standards. In 2024, more than half of police officers and staff in England and Wales said that their uniforms were “unfit for purpose”, restrictive and causing health problems, according to the first national police uniform and equipment survey ever undertaken. Furthermore, that survey revealed alarming health consequences, with 44% of men reporting muscular pain, which was often linked to body armour or heavy equipment, and women reporting that body armour failed adequately to accommodate female anatomy. Ultimately, 62% of male and 85% of female respondents reported at least one physical health condition as a result of equipment flaws. Lessons must be learned and procurement tailored accordingly, in both senses of the word. As well as its protective function, body armour must be light in weight, not impair mobility and remain comfortable if worn for lengthy periods. I understand that Claire Lewis has identified at least one designer and manufacturer of stab vests and other protective clothing that she believes to offer enhanced protection against blunt force, significantly reducing the risk of injuries from punches, kicks and strikes from improvised weapons. Clearly, market research and objective evaluation will need to be done. The argument is twofold: we should ensure that all prison officers have comparable protection from attack by prisoners, and the selection of protective equipment must be right rather than rushed. Not only is this morally sound, but it will save costly claims later on from individuals suffering health consequences from faulty equipment. I conclude with the following questions for the Minister, to whom I have given advance notice—I thank him for his accessibility in this matter. First, does he accept that, regardless of which prison wing an officer works on, he or she deserves protection from violence? Secondly, if that is agreed, will the Government seriously consider rolling out mandatory body armour to all prison officers in all prisons? Finally, may we have the Minister’s word, here and now, that any new body armour procured will be of the highest specification, to avoid causing physical problems for male and female officers further down the line?

• 19 Mar 2026 · Northern Ireland: Legacy of the Past · Hansard source

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  I would like to start by referring to the intervention of the hon. Member for Belfast South and Mid Down (Claire Hanna), who is sadly no longer in her place. She talked about people stepping forward and speaking the truth. I believe that the Government’s new approach makes that less, rather than more, likely to happen. In their response to the Select Committee report, the Government speak in disparaging terms about the immunity provisions that the previous Conservative Government laid down; those immunity provisions are described as an affront to democracy. I do not believe that is true at all. It is not true any more than claiming that what happened in South Africa, when Nelson Mandela sought to heal that society, was an affront to their new democracy.

• 5 Mar 2026 · Palliative Care · Hansard source

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  I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) most warmly on her exemplary record in campaigning for better palliative care. I will address just one segment of her panoramic presentation, namely the work done by the charity that she briefly mentioned, Together for Short Lives. It provided me with a detailed briefing and I apologise in advance if I make some points that others, who may have received the same briefing, anticipate making. Children’s palliative care enables babies, children and young people with life-limiting conditions, life-shortening conditions or severe medical complexity to live as well as possible until they die. Palliative care for children and young people is defined by the charity as “an active and total approach to care, from the point of diagnosis throughout the child’s life, death and beyond.” By embracing physical, emotional, social and spiritual elements, children’s palliative care helps to achieve the best possible quality of life and care for every child with a life-limiting or life-threatening condition and their family. Giving families an opportunity to set out what they need and want is key to this approach. Children’s palliative care is holistic and is provided by a network of services in hospitals, homes and children’s hospices by the NHS and the voluntary sector, including children’s hospices. These services should be planned, funded and provided in a way that enables children and families to access them when and where they need them. The key problem is the one that I am about to set out: “In England, integrated care boards have a legal duty to commission palliative care for children, young people and adults that it considers necessary. Across England and the wider UK, there is huge variance in the extent to which palliative and end of life care for seriously ill children and young people is being formally planned, funded and provided in ways that meet national and regional standards. Of particular concern is children and families’ access to end of life care at home”— we heard this from the hon. Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos)— “24 hours a day, seven days a week, provided by nurses and supported by advice from consultant paediatricians who have completed sub-specialty training in paediatric palliative medicine (also known as GRID training). Despite some improvements, freedom of information…requests published in March 2025 have revealed that less than a fifth…of ICBs currently commission these services on a formal basis. Meanwhile, over a third…are still failing to meet this established national standard. As a result, many families feel abandoned by a complex system which should support them to provide care once their child is diagnosed.” I have been asked by the charity to raise a rather large number of questions, which I am going to cut down to just six, if I can manage to squeeze them in. The charity stresses the fact that the Government’s decision to allocate up to £80 million in ringfenced NHS funding for children’s hospices in England over the next three years is very welcome, but many challenges remain. These are the six questions that I have picked out of more than a dozen and a half that I was presented with. First, will the Minister confirm that the modern service framework for palliative and end-of-life care, which we heard about from the hon. Member for York Central, will explicitly acknowledge the difference between adult and children’s palliative care and ensure that the needs of seriously ill children are not overlooked? Secondly, can the Minister confirm that the framework will take a holistic approach and address the wide-ranging needs of seriously ill children and their families, including medical, emotional, social, psychological and practical needs? Thirdly, will the Minister commit to using the upcoming 10-year workforce plan to examine how the existing children’s palliative care workforce can be used as equitably as possible, organising services into NHS-commissioned children’s palliative care operational delivery networks, such as I gather are used in neonatal care services, in order to help to achieve that? Fourthly, can the Minister commit to increasing investment in specialist paediatric palliative medicine training by £2.4 million annually to address the funding gap identified by the charity Together for Short Lives? Fifthly, do the Government support the call of the Royal College of Nursing for nurse-to-patient ratios in all health and care settings? Will they commit to tackling the shortage in NHS community children’s nurses? Finally, with ICB funding for children’s hospices varying significantly across England, how is the Minister ensuring that every seriously ill child and their family, regardless of where they live, has equitable access to palliative care?

• 23 Feb 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

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  In response to an earlier question about the role of the Intelligence and Security Committee in relation to the Cabinet Office, the Minister rightly said that the ISC is concerned about its independence. As its former chairman, I can vouch for the fact that it was particularly concerned about the dominant role that the Cabinet Office had in its affairs. In his annual report covering 2023 to 2025, which was published on 15 December last year, my successor as chairman states: “The Committee in the last Parliament became very seriously concerned that the vital scrutiny that the ISC provides was being undermined by continued interference by the Cabinet Office in the Committee’s Office… The root of the problem lies in the control exerted over the Committee’s staff and resourcing by the Cabinet Office.” This is an opportunity to let the ISC have what it has asked for and wanted for years, which is independence from the Cabinet Office. Will the Minister please take that message back?

• 9 Feb 2026 · Standards in Public Life · Hansard source

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  It is notable that despite the Government’s huge majority, they have run out of people to stand up and defend their position. The Minister is—I am not being patronising—a very intelligent man. I therefore ask that he does not insult the intelligence of the rest of us by talking about the Prime Minister having believed Mandelson’s lies after he asked him questions. We now know from the forensic questioning by the Leader of the Opposition that the Prime Minister knew that the relationship between Mandelson and Epstein carried on—“ongoing” was the word—after Epstein was jailed for offences related to paedophilia and prostitution. The Prime Minister apparently chose to ask more questions after that, and was lied to. What more did he need to know to realise that that man should never have been allowed within a mile of the post of ambassador to America?

• 29 Jan 2026 · Ukraine: Non-recognition of Russian-occupied Territories · Hansard source

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  Having listened to all the excellent preceding speeches, I have to say that occasions such as this make me proud to be a Member of the British Parliament. I congratulate everyone who has spoken with such a united voice. If I may, I will just make some brief elaborations on the opening comments and superb contribution of the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel). He referred in particular to the non-recognition of the Baltic states, and it is worth looking at that a little more closely. The Baltic states were occupied and incorporated into the Soviet Union for approximately half a century; never did this country recognise that. If those of us who saw the Soviet Union at the height of its power in the mid-1980s had been told that one day the Governments in exile of those three absorbed republics would be able to step forward and pick up the torch of democracy owing to the collapse of their overlords, we would have said, “Well, we would love to think that would happen, but do we honestly think it is going to happen in our lifetimes? Probably not.” But it did, and when it did, the implosion was dramatic, unexpected and complete. [Dawn Butler in the Chair ] Yet there are some people who regard the break-up—the dissolution—of the Soviet empire as a geopolitical disaster. Hon. Members know to whom I am referring in particular: Vladimir Putin. Given that that is Putin’s attitude, one thing that we can certainly deduce from the present situation is that there is no such thing as a peace deal to be had with Vladimir Putin and his cohorts. The fact is that if there is a deal of any sort—if there is a ceasefire—it is for one reason and one reason only: that Putin feels at the time of such a deal or a ceasefire that he cannot successfully go further. If then there is a cessation of fighting for a while, we can be equally sure that the moment Putin thinks he can go further, he will start all over again. So there is absolutely nothing to be gained, in terms of good will, or a basis for future relationships or stability, by giving any concessions to Putin whatsoever in terms of land exchanges or recognition of occupation. Let me turn to another parallel with the 1930s—the fact that Putin made one big error. He signalled by his early occupation of Crimea what his intentions were, but he was not then able to carry them out for quite a few years, in which time the defensive capability of the Ukrainians had massively increased with the surreptitious help, I suspect, of certain western powers, including ourselves. As a result, Ukraine was able to put up a much stronger defence than anybody who was not part of that secret rearmament and training programme would have anticipated.

• 28 Jan 2026 · British Indian Ocean Territory · Hansard source

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  Ministers keep saying “How dare you compare this with the Falkland Islands?”, but Labour’s manifesto at the last election gave a commitment to defend the sovereignty of the British overseas territories—not some of them, all of them. If they cannot be trusted on this one, they cannot be trusted on any of them.

• 26 Jan 2026 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source

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  The Minister is keeping up a brave face in public, but when he goes back to his colleagues he will have to tell them that the only contribution from his own Back Benches was to disagree with the Government’s position, and to do so bravely and articulately. Does the Minister accept that the reason that this Bill may not go through is the work of the Conservative Opposition in both Houses of Parliament and the words of the leader of the Reform party in Mr Trump’s ear? Does that not show what can be achieved when two parties make common cause in a very worthwhile aim to achieve a vital objective?

• 19 Jan 2026 · Proposed Chinese Embassy · Hansard source

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  The Intelligence and Security Committee was set up specifically to fill a gap in oversight whereby this House could not directly look at highly classified and sensitive information. Having chaired that Committee throughout the previous Parliament, when we undertook our very detailed and sensitive inquiry into China—the published version of which was quite well received, to put it mildly—I can assure the Minister that absolutely no aspect of this matter could not be shared with the ISC. Can she tell the House whether the National Security Adviser has discussed with the ISC and briefed it on the security aspects of this proposal, the proceeding of which enjoys such hostility on both sides of the House?

• 18 Dec 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  May I endorse what the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) and the Minister have said about Lance Corporal George Hooley, who sounds as if he was a fine individual and a great soldier? On 29 December, it will be the 85th anniversary of President Roosevelt’s famous fireside chat radio broadcast, in which he defined his country, which was not then at war, as the “arsenal of democracy” in support of those countries that were at war. He did not say that Churchill had no cards to play. He did not say that Adolf Hitler should be rewarded with recognition of the countries that had been occupied. By the end of the war, the Americans had seen the importance of standing in alliance with the other democracies, and when Germany was divided, they made certain that the western part of Germany was not a military vacuum. Does the Minister agree that if Ukraine is divided by force, then we democracies must make sure that western, free Ukraine is not a military vacuum either?

• 16 Dec 2025 · Electoral Resilience · Hansard source

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  I hope that the Rycroft review will take account of the fact that the giving of money is by no means the worst aspect, or the main aspect, of treacherous behaviour, because very often these people do what they do out of a genuine belief in a potential enemy’s point of view. It would be interesting to know whether the crime would have attracted such a large sentence as it did if, instead of just money being given, it had been a matter of clandestine contact because the person was willing to spout the Russian line anyway. Let us not be overconcerned with the giving of the bribe, which is often a bonus to people who want to betray us to a potential enemy in any case.

• 9 Dec 2025 · Northern Ireland Troubles: Operation Kenova · Hansard source

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  I am sure the Secretary of State will agree that running any double agent inside a murderous organisation is bound to be a moral nightmare. The justification for such action is always—as it should be—that many more lives will be saved as a result, even if the agent is implicated in illegal and, indeed, murderous activities. What is unusual about this case is that it appears that more lives were not saved by this particular operation. Can the Secretary of State say whether the agencies accept that this particular operation was counterproductive, even in its own terms, and if he cannot share that with us openly, could it at least be shared confidentially with the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament?

• 4 Dec 2025 · War in Ukraine · Hansard source

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  One of the advantages of being called at a late stage of the debate is that I can put my hand on my heart and truthfully say that every single speech in this debate so far has been outstandingly good. I have agreed with virtually every word of every one of them, and looking at the calibre of the remaining people, including all three Front-Bench representatives, I have every confidence that the standard will be maintained till the end. A former occupant of your chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, used to give courses in good public speaking technique. He always said, “If you wish your speech to have any useful impact after the event, it should not contain more than one, or at most two—and that is stretching it—key points.” So here is my one key point, which, I am delighted to say, has been touched on very effectively by the hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith), among others: any settlement that does not have a military presence on the ground of unoccupied Ukraine from the country or countries offering a security guarantee will be a disaster. I ask the House to consider Europe at the end of the second world war, when the tripartite alliance had largely broken down, and Stalin was in occupation of eastern Europe and, of course, the eastern half of Germany, which his troops had conquered. The west was in occupation of the remainder of the European continent—literally, in the case of West Germany. What would have happened—knowing what we know now about the nature of Soviet communism—if, instead of the victorious western allies maintaining a very large military presence in occupied western Germany, they had said, “Right, we’ll demilitarise this and clear out, but we’re going to give the West German politicians who follow a security guarantee that if any trouble happens, we will stand by them”? The only thing that stopped a conflict breaking out between the Soviet occupying forces and the western world was the fact that, right up against the dividing line between Soviet-dominated East Germany and the rest of Germany, there were western allied troops, and it would have been impossible for the Soviet forces to move against West Germany without immediately triggering a major military counter-action. I have often said—and I make no apology for saying it again—that it is worth looking at the two halves of the 20th century. In the first half, we had two global conflicts—two world wars. In the second half, despite the intense ideological and military rivalry between the communist world and the democratic western world, we had no global conflicts—no third world war. I put that down to two factors. One was unprecedented: the nuclear balance of terror. But it was not enough to stop all forms of conflict, because it is possible for conventional conflicts to go ahead under the threshold of the nuclear balance without necessarily triggering Armageddon. That is why we have to have strong conventional deterrent forces, too. So, what was the other factor preventing the cold war from becoming the third world war? It is quite clear that it was the most successful alliance in history: the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It grieves me to say that because of some of the occupants of high office in the capital of our ally the United States, the future of the NATO alliance—and therefore the future of world peace, frankly—is hanging by a thread. It was the chief staff officer and representative on the war time chiefs of staff committee of Winston Churchill, General Sir Hastings Ismay, who became the first Secretary-General of NATO. He is credited with having made the rather pithy but nevertheless very accurate observation that the purpose of the alliance at the time it was founded was threefold: to keep the Americans in, to keep the Russians out, and to keep the Germans down. That third element fortunately became redundant as West Germany developed into a democracy—so quickly, in fact, that in May 1955, 10 years virtually to the day from the surrender on Lüneburg heath of the Nazis to General Montgomery, Germany itself was admitted to the NATO alliance. I ask people to take another counterfactual look at history. If the Kaiser had known in 1914 that if he invaded neutral Belgium, he would immediately be at war with the United States of America, would he have done it? I think the answer is no. If Hitler had known in 1939 that if he invaded Poland, he would immediately be at war with the United States of America, would he have done it? I think the answer very probably is no to that as well. Therefore, the secret to keeping the peace in the world is to keep America engaged with the security of Europe. America is going through a phase at the moment—which seems to hinge on a number of personalities who hold power in that great democracy, apparently with the approval of a majority of the electorate—in which its commitment to European and thus world security is in doubt. This is the chance for Europeans, whether inside the EU or, like us, outside it, to show that we can do our bit. We have to keep the show on the road until America once again stands up for the policy of the second half of the 20th century, which stopped the third world war, rather than it reverting to its policy of isolationism from the first half of the 20th century, and standing by, which caused two global conflicts that could have been prevented.

• 20 Nov 2025 · Migration: Settlement Pathway · Hansard source

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  As the descendant of immigrant grandparents, I have a high degree of empathy with the Home Secretary’s opening remarks about her own family. Does she agree that the reason that both main parties are facing the possibility of an electoral bloodbath is not so much the overall level of immigration, but the fraction of it—still a very large number of people—who come to this country on small boats and by other illegal means? We do not know what they believe, we do not know what values they have, and because in many cases they destroy their documents, we do not even know who they are. Can she explain how the measures she has outlined today will have an impact on deterring that sort of person from breaking into our country?

• 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.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Northern Ireland Troubles · Hansard source

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  I am surprised that no one has mentioned the letters of comfort that were given to the IRA and the question of whether or not they still hold water, but let me go back to what the Secretary of State said about the possibility of IRA bosses like Gerry Adams claiming compensation on technical grounds that the “wrong” Minister signed their internment papers. As I understand it from what the Secretary of State said earlier, the remedial order that he is laying before Parliament will open up the possibility of such people suing the Government for compensation, which the new legacy legislation that he is bringing in will nevertheless then rule out. He referred to a possible gap between the new legislation coming into force and the remedial order opening the gap. It has been suggested to me that the Government are briefing the press that the remedial order will not actually be voted on until the new legacy Bill has gone through Parliament. Is that his policy, and if not, what is his policy?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Manchester Terrorism Attack · Hansard source

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  As in the case of the attack on Parliament in 2017, this attack was a combination of the use of a vehicle as a deadly weapon and an attempt to break into premises to kill people indiscriminately. On both occasions, brave men had to sacrifice their life to prevent access. Would it not be a sensible first step for all vulnerable premises to have doors that can be easily locked, so that people do not have to put themselves at risk physically holding them closed? I congratulate the Home Secretary on an excellent statement.