Julian Lewis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 11 Jun 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sure that we wish the Government well in what they are trying to do. I gather that the International Air Transport Association highlighted only last week that, at the moment, sustainable aviation fuels cost approximately five times as much as conventional jet fuel. Will she explain how the measures in the Bill will bridge that gap to make it economical?

• 2 Jun 2025 · Bus Services (No. 2) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State referred earlier to placing certain statutory duties on county councils. When she considers that, will she consider including in those duties the maintenance of companion bus passes for people with learning difficulties who cannot travel on their own? It is not much good for them to have a free bus pass if they cannot take a companion with them. Will the Secretary of State join me in expressing our sadness and commiseration over the recent passing of Mr Andrew Wickham, who spent more than 40 years in the transport industry and over a decade as managing director of Go South Coast, which operates Bluestar buses in New Forest East? I always found him to be a marvellously attentive correspondent, and he was someone who worked until almost the very end.

• 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 · 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?

• 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.

• 7 Apr 2025 · Road Maintenance · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. I thought I would get in before she gets back into her stride. Can she throw some light on an issue that has puzzled me for some time in my New Forest East constituency? A stretch of road—Southampton Road—is often used as a short cut by very heavy goods vehicles, rather than using the appropriate section of the M27 motorway. These are often very large petrol bowsers, tankers—you name it—and surprise, surprise, the roadway is constantly getting broken up and potholes appear, with all the consequences she describes. Whenever we have raised this with any of the companies to which these heavy vehicles belong, they say, “Well, it’s a public highway, and we’re entitled to drive these vehicles where we want.” Is there any obligation on companies not to do that?

• 7 Apr 2025 · Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate · Hansard source

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  As someone who has never bought a new motor vehicle, apart from a motorcycle, may I probe the Secretary of State further on what she said about the second-hand EV market? For families that will never be able to afford a new vehicle, does she anticipate a time when the second-hand EV market will be comparable in price to the second-hand market for conventional vehicles?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Defence and Security · Hansard source

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  President Trump says that he wants his legacy to be that of a peacemaker. In his difficult conversations with the President in a few days’ time, will the Prime Minister remind him that the reason the enforced division of Czechoslovakia before the war was a step on the road to disaster, but the division of Germany at the end of the war did not lead to world war three, was that the western half of Europe at the end of world war two was not demilitarised? If there is to be a stable Ukraine after any such enforced division, there must be military protection for the unoccupied half of Ukraine.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Airport Expansion · Hansard source

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  I have been enjoying the Minister’s lively presentation, but then I do not live under a potential new flightpath. Are the Government consulting their Back Benchers about the possibility of aviation and airport expansion versus net zero? If so, will they be advising them to clean up what they have said on this subject on the internet before it is hoovered up by the Opposition in preparation for the next general election?

• 18 Dec 2024 · Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and International Committee of the Red Cross (Status) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  What a pleasure it is to follow so many positive speeches on such a unifying issue. I cannot help but observe that it is singularly appropriate that the amiable Minister should be making his last contributions before Christmas on this issue rather than the more fractious one earlier of the future of the Chagos islands. Right hon. and hon. Members may recall that I spoke on Second Reading in support of the very sensible changes that the Bill will make to the status of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the International Committee of the Red Cross. By giving each organisation the status of a body corporate, the Bill ensures that the independence of their staff is sufficiently protected, and that the staff are able to continue with their work unhindered. The Bill gives a clear and welcome signal that the UK is committed to supporting democratic institutions in carrying out their important and independent work. I have been encouraged by the Minister’s positive comments throughout the parliamentary debate regarding the importance of safeguarding the institutional independence of such organisations, and the same is true, indeed essential, for the office of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. I had hoped, as I said on Second Reading, that the Bill would be expanded to include the ISC, given the very clear read-across. Unfortunately, it has not proved possible to extend the scope of the Bill to cover the ISC within the available timeframe, so I will not repeat my earlier comments. However, I hope that the Government have heard the strength of feeling on this issue, which is about upholding the commitments given to Parliament. It is about ensuring that this House is able to hold secret organisations to account, without the independent staff who do that work being subjected to undue pressure, inappropriate influence or improper interference. Following the recent appointment of the new Committee under its highly experienced Chairman, elected today by the other Committee members, Lord Beamish, formerly Kevan Jones MP, with whom I served on the Committee for four years, I trust that the Government will find another suitable legislative vehicle to allow the important changes that we are making to the CPA and the ICRC to be applied to the ISC as well. Given the very clear similarities between the two democratic institutions covered by the Bill and the office of the ISC and its secretariat, I am confident that that measure would receive the same level of strong cross-party support that has rightly been achieved for this important Bill.

• 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?

• 17 Jul 2024 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  Who would have ever dreamt, Sir Edward, when we first met in October 1981, that so many years later both you and your equally radical and progressive friend, my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), would successively grace this House by occupying the Speaker’s Chair? I wish to make congratulations a theme of my short contribution. I want to congratulate in particular the three maiden speakers we have heard so far. It takes quite a bit of doing to make one’s maiden speech so soon after entering the House of Commons, and it is greatly to their credit that they made such generous tributes to their predecessors. The hon. Member for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle) talked about working across party boundaries, which I wish to come back to. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) concentrated on housing issues and the great sports record and legacy of his beloved Wolverhampton. I, too, can remember Billy Wright from all those years ago. The hon. Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley), who has just spoken, showed an intimate knowledge of the local issues affecting his new seat, and I am sure he will be extremely assiduous in attending to them. I said that I believe congratulations are a theme that is in order, and I wish to echo what my right hon. Friend the Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale) said about the result of the election and the way in which power was transferred. It goes without saying that whenever we have a general election and one side achieves a significant absolute majority, as has happened in this case, there will be a majority of people in the Chamber who feel self-congratulatory, but I suggest that we all ought to congratulate ourselves and each other on the way in which we have handled the transfer of power. It is a cause for great concern that when we look among modern democracies, both in western Europe and, sadly, across the Atlantic, we see that the cause of democracy in those countries is currently so ragged and threadbare. Let us hope it is but a passing phase. To those situated on the Opposition Benches, I have to say that, bad though the result was for the Conservative party, those who observe these Benches today should not think it was quite as much of a wipeout as it might appear. I think that two of us at least have had the experience of sitting on these Benches before. I was one of 32 first-time Conservative MPs elected in the Blair landslide of 1997. I had 13 years on the Opposition Benches, and then after that I had five years in a coalition. Which was the worse I am not sure, but I offer a piece of advice to all new entrants to the House, including on the Government Benches: if you want to enjoy your time in this place, ask yourself the following question, and hopefully give yourself the right answer. Would you still want to be here if you knew that you were going to be a Back Bencher for all of your parliamentary career? If the answer is yes, you are in the right place. Cling to it, because then anything else that happens is a bonus. If the answer is no, you made the wrong career decision. Get out at the next possible opportunity, because you will never be satisfied. People who come in with that attitude are disappointed. They may make it to the Front Bench but not make it to be a Cabinet Minister. They may make it to the Cabinet but not get to be one of the top four, or they may make it to the top four but not get the top job. We know what happens even to many Prime Ministers who get right to the top. So enjoy the status that you have got, bank it and look on everything else as a dividend. I turn to the King’s Speech, on which I will make just a couple of observations, because we do not have the time for anything more detailed. On planning presumptions, I am always a little bit worried about presumptions in favour of this and presumptions in favour of that. Let us hope that is not a shorthand for ignoring what people want. In my constituency of New Forest East, the biggest local issue for the first six years of my time in this place was a proposal to build a giant container port on reclaimed land on Southampton water called Dibden bay. Associated British Ports said that, without doing that, the port of Southampton would begin to die. We fought that for six years and we won. Guess what? The port of Southampton did not die; it found other ways of dealing with the container traffic, which has thrived. Now we have the prospect of a freeport in the area. I like to think that the new people in charge of Associated British Ports will be a lot more sensitive about what they plan for the delicate parts of the constituency. All I would say is: do not trample roughshod over communities’ concerns about major infrastructure projects, because sometimes that may not get us the best projects. On conversion therapy, I just leave a question hanging in the air. Anybody who votes for this change needs to be able to answer this point: what is it that you are proposing to outlaw that is not already forbidden under existing laws? The danger with well-intentioned laws of this nature is that we can end up really talking about thought crime. Seventy-five years after George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” was published—technically speaking, perhaps it is now 76 years—we need to be wary of that. I have a constituent with whom I happen to disagree about abortion. He is totally opposed to abortion; I am not, and I do not think that there should be demonstrations outside abortion clinics. He wants to be able to stand silently by himself on the pavement and pray internally. If he is asked by the police what he is doing and he says, “I am thinking about my shopping list”—or some other domestic issue—he is fine, but if he admits that he is praying in relation to the abortion issue, he could end up being accused of committing an offence. We should be careful before going down that road too far. When it comes to modernising the membership of the House of Lords, we must be careful about blanket proposals. A well-informed group led by Professor Lord Norton of Louth have been grappling with sensible ways of trying to modernise and reform the House of Lords for quite a number of years. Such voices need to be listened to. The House of Lords, though some people are appointed to it on the wrong basis, does an important job. If I may please have a few more moments, I have one last point, which is significant and relates to the Intelligence and Security Committee. This is an essential matter that will need to be incorporated into one of the pieces of legislation that the Government are to introduce. A single amendment to the Justice and Security Act 2013 is required to protect a particular aspect of our parliamentary democracy that is currently being undermined. The amendment would establish an independent office to support the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament—which I chaired until recently—in order to safeguard the Committee’s independence. For the benefit of the newer Members of the House, the ISC is a cross-party and cross-House Committee created by statute. Under the Justice and Security Act 2013, the ISC has the legal responsibility for overseeing the UK’s intelligence community on behalf of Parliament. Newer Members will be surprised to hear that the ISC’s office—a very small number of staff—belongs to the Cabinet Office, when the ISC oversees large parts of the Cabinet Office. They would be right to be surprised. That is a fundamental conflict of interest. That is why, at the time of the Justice and Security Act, the Cabinet Office was supposed to be only a temporary home but, in the more than 10 years that have elapsed since then, the Committee’s office is still beholden to, vulnerable within and unfairly pressurised by the very part of the Executive that it is charged with overseeing. The Executive should not be able to constrain and control the Committee’s democratic oversight on behalf of Parliament by exerting control over the Committee’s small team to the extent that the Cabinet Office officials are actually overriding the Committee, as has happened repeatedly in respect of staff assessments in recent years, or starving it of resources so that it is unable to fulfil its legal responsibilities. The members of the ISC in the last Parliament therefore determined unanimously—across all parties and both Houses represented by its membership—that it was essential for parliamentary democracy that the Committee’s office move out from under the control of the Executive and be established instead as an independent body corporate with a link to Parliament rather than the Executive. In the King’s Speech—this is my final point—we heard this morning a programme outlined that gives an obvious vehicle for putting this matter right: the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and International Committee of the Red Cross Status Bill, which is designed to change the status of those two organisations. That is therefore the obvious place to include a short amendment to the legislation necessary to change the status of the Committee’s organisation as well. I hope that we can work across party boundaries to ensure that the resources and the independence of the staff of the Intelligence and Security Committee can now be secured after a difficult time in which the excellent staff have helped to produce many important reports. However, they should not have to be looking over their shoulders with a problem of this sort.