Edward Leigh MP: speeches

Speeches

• 4 Mar 2025 · Palestinian Rights: Government Support · Hansard source

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  Thank you, everybody, for taking part in what has been a very powerful debate. We are completely united. We condemn Hamas, but we stick up unequivocally for the rights of the Palestinian people. Everybody, from all parties or from no party, has made that point—it has even united the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and me. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered Government support for Palestinian rights.

• 3 Mar 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  Our enemies should know that our Prime Minister has 100% support from us. I noticed in Moscow that they are referring to the small size of the British Army. Perhaps the Prime Minister could remind them of what the Kaiser said in 1914 about “the contemptible little British Army”. Will the Prime Minister tell President Putin and other tyrants that our Army, the most professional in the world, is quite capable of giving as good as it gets? To continue the historical allusion, as in 1939, if we do stand up to the mark with the French, it is best to have a security guarantee from the Americans.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Illegal Israeli Settler Violence · Hansard source

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  A week ago, I was in a Palestinian village with colleagues, including the hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh). We went to a school that had been demolished by illegal settlers. Immediately, two punks turned up with sub-machine guns, intimidating us—that is happening all over the place. We went to Hebron. It is completely closed down. This is appalling. The whole House should unite against the extremist Jewish settlers and the illegal settlements, because it is not in the interest of moderate Israeli opinion. It is directly contrary to peace and we must fight this. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cost of Rail Services · Hansard source

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  When the Secretary of State finally steps in and knocks heads together and we get our Azuma train to Grimsby via Market Rasen, will she instruct the railway company to name the locomotive Margaret Thatcher to remind us all that the best way to reduce the cost of rail services is to end restrictive trade union practices?

• 13 Feb 2025 · Cost of Rail Services · Hansard source

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  9. What steps she is taking to reduce the cost of rail services.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  This is a vital issue, and Labour voters feel as strongly about it as Conservative voters. Our inability as a country to control the people smugglers is utterly debilitating to the political process, and is causing tremendous unhappiness and angst in our nation. We can throw brickbats across the Chamber and blame each other, arguing about which Minister is or is not responsible, but until we solve this problem together we are simply feeding a vast populist movement that could be intensely damaging to both the Conservative and Labour parties, so we have to work together to solve it. I know that I will not persuade Labour to support the Rwanda scheme, but experience shows that the only effective deterrent is to detain and deport. We know that from other countries, such as Australia. I will not become involved in an argument about whether Rwanda is right or not, or how many people were or were not exported, and I agree that the Government should be commended for wanting to be seen to do something, but what they are doing is ineffective because it scraps the Rwanda scheme. The devil is in the detail, so let me deal with one detail to prove this point. Article 33 of the 1951 refugee convention forbids the return of refugees to countries where they may be at risk, but it creates a specific exception for those claiming refugee status who either pose a danger to the security of the country or have been convicted of a particularly serious crime. That exception exists regardless of the threat of being persecuted, so, under the convention, someone who is a criminal can be exported to Afghanistan. Article 3 of the European convention on human rights is a very sensible and restrained one-sentence article prohibiting torture, but the European Court has expanded its meaning to interpret it as prohibiting Governments from returning individuals to countries where they could be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment. That is a massive extension of article 3’s sensible and reasonable intention. I am sorry to go into so much detail, but it is essential to understand what is going on. This is typical of the way in which judges have worked to undermine legitimate Government action undertaken by elected representatives. Two weeks ago, I sat in the hemicycle of the Council of Europe listening to Lord Hermer saying that he would always accept every interpretation of the convention. That, in my view, is unhealthy, and undermines our democracy as well as the public legitimacy of the system. The refugee convention was drafted in 1949, in tandem with the European convention on human rights—it is very old, even older than I am, and that is something—and it was drafted by the same people. It was never intended that the ECHR should apply to immigration at that time; it was only in the 1980s that judges in the European Court extended it. In 1996, in Chahal v . United Kingdom, it was held that there was an absolute rule to prevent the exporting of criminals. I am a delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and the Government should work with other members there to seek to revise the convention. All European Governments are struggling: we are all in the same mess.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  I know that the right hon. Gentleman has a particular point of view, but what I am trying to explain to the House is that the convention was never intended to apply to immigration. The refugee convention applied to it, and under the refugee convention we can export criminals. It is judges who have extended the European convention on human rights. Unless we persuade the Court to change, I am afraid that if we want to solve this problem—if we want to stop people coming across the channel, and if we want to detain and deport—in the end we will have to grasp the nettle and get out of the European convention on human rights. There is precedent for issuing a temporary derogation, given that we are facing a crisis, but if that is not heeded, we always have the option to leave the convention altogether and opt out of the Strasbourg Court’s expansive rulings. That covers the criminals claiming asylum or entering illegally. For non-criminals, we need a programme like Rwanda, although it may not be Rwanda; I know that I will not convince the Government on that. As for legal migration, the Government—any Government—must stop subsidising legal arrivals undercutting existing workers in Britain. I am very critical of my own Government for allowing this mass immigration, and I was constantly raising these points from the Back Benches, but at least, albeit too late, the Conservative Government committed themselves to raising the earnings minimum to meet the average earnings in the UK. That must be kept up to date and enforced. Let me end by saying that it we are to solve this crisis, we need, ultimately, to get out of the convention, stop the boats, and stop importing low-paid workers legally.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  That is a matter for debate, but I am sure that plenty of Members present will give the argument for the petitioners, so I would not worry much about it.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  I remind Members to bob if they wish to speak.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  Order. Before I call the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) to move the motion, I should inform Members that during today’s debate the parliamentary digital communications team will be conducting secondary filming for its series on procedural explainers. Forty-nine colleagues have asked to speak in the debate, so if everyone is to get in, I have to impose from the beginning a three-minute limit on everybody taking part after the opener, apart from the winding-up speeches. Every time Members intervene, they will ensure that one of their colleagues will not get in at the end. If the hon. Member for South Norfolk, in his opening speech, takes too many interventions, or his speech goes on too long, he will prevent others from taking part. Let us all bear that in mind—short speeches of no more than three minutes, please.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  Order. The hon. Member has spoken for 15 minutes, so could he bring his remarks to a close to allow others to speak?

• 6 Feb 2025 · Rail Services: Open Access Operators · Hansard source

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  I thank my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers), for securing this important debate and for emphasising the national importance of open access. His point about Hull Trains and the opportunity it has given us is very powerful. I want to speak about our little local problem, to which he and the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) alluded. Originally, there were two trains every day going up and down to London via Lincoln and Market Rasen, ending up in Grimsby. That was then cut to one train and we were given a solemn promise that that train would never be taken away, but decades ago it was taken away. I have been campaigning for decades to get that service up and running again. We are talking about a catchment area of a quarter of a million people with no direct train to London. I cannot think of any other country in Europe that would have such a situation for huge conurbations like Grimsby and Cleethorpes and a place like Market Rasen—which is a small station but serves a vast rural area, perhaps 20 miles in every direction, going all the way to Louth. Yet every time we have been to see Ministers with campaigns, over many years, we get fobbed off with every single excuse. I cannot count the number of times we went to see the Transport Minister in the last Government; now I am boring this Minister instead, but I will go on boring him and we will go on making this point. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham said, we were first fobbed off with the view that there was no capacity on the main line. Yet the Azuma train runs perfectly well to Lincoln and it would make no difference to capacity on the main line if that train carried on to Grimsby via Market Rasen, so that point does not hold. We made some progress eventually and I thought that we finally had a commitment that this train would happen. Indeed, we had a test run in June 2023. I was there—I saw it. Everything worked perfectly smoothly. The train arrived from Grimsby, there was no problem, we had our photograph taken, everybody was very happy, but we have still had no progress. Now we have had this bolt from the blue: it is no longer the capacity point, but apparently we cannot have this train because the platform in Market Rasen is too short and there is no bridge. That is an absurd point. I go all over the country and I see trains stop at short platforms, and they announce, “Will you please go to the first four carriages because it’s a short platform?” Then we got the excuse that if the Azuma train stopped at Market Rasen, it would somehow cover the pedestrian crossing, which is apparently unacceptable. Is somebody going to try to go across the railway line and climb underneath the train to get to it, stopped at the platform? It is ridiculous. I am not sure that it is even possible to climb underneath a train. Are people going to sprint down the track, leaving the platform altogether, to get round the back of the train? This is all just ludicrous. There is absolutely no reason why the train could not stop there, blocking the existing pedestrian access. Perhaps once in 100 years there might be some sort of injury; in fact I doubt whether there would ever be any injury. So, why are we stopping the whole service because, apparently, the existing pedestrian access could be blocked? It is funny—the operators never give an explanation. They say, “Oh, we now have a problem with the disabled access and it must be in a certain part of the train.” But surely there are solutions. This is a sort of not-can-do attitude, which is driving the country crazy. Whenever we write to bodies such as Network Rail, instead of their having the attitude of, “Let’s work together, let’s make this work,” once again we get fobbed off with ridiculous excuses and they never actually explain their actions. Then they say, “We have got to build a bridge.” All right, they build a bridge. Then they have come up with a ridiculous figure of £24 million. How could it cost £24 million to build a bridge? This is only a small country station with just one footbridge. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham campaigned for years for a bridge, did he not? And he got it for far less—£1 million, was it not?

• 6 Feb 2025 · Rail Services: Open Access Operators · Hansard source

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  I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. This is a serious issue. There is absolutely no reason why the great conurbation of Grimsby and Cleethorpes should not have a direct train to London, and there is no reason why the good people who live in the rural areas around Market Rasen should not have a direct train. What has actually happened—one might argue that this is not really LNER’s fault—is that since we have had the Azuma train going directly from London to Lincoln, our indirect service has got worse. There are more delays and there is a reduced service. It really is hard work to get from that part of my constituency to London. So, enough of excuses. We had a tremendous relationship with the Transport Minister in the last Government and we look forward to our relationship with this Minister in this Government. There is nothing party political about this matter. What we are doing—the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham and I—is begging the Minister to please intervene to knock some heads together to get this train going and stopping. That is all we ask.

• 5 Feb 2025 · Southport Attack · Hansard source

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  May I press the Minister further on the issue of transparency? He says that Ministers did not wish to prejudice the trial, but the murderer’s possession of the ricin and the terror manual was revealed before the trial. There is a suspicion that this information was not released within days because there was a feeling in Government that it might inflame racial tensions, but this lack of transparency unfortunately simply fed conspiracy theories. Will the Minister confirm whether Ministers took a conscious decision not to reveal that information, and have they learned the lesson so that in future, should such an outrage occur—which we all hope will never happen again—we can be completely transparent?

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  In my experience, parents have a pretty good instinct for what is a good school, and the great generator of progress has been the academy programme, with headteachers responding to what parents want. We should be giving them more freedom, not less. Is there not a danger that if we create highly complex Ofsted reports with league tables across 40 different areas, we will replace headteachers concentrating on what parents want with a tick-box culture focused on appeasing the man in Whitehall? The solution is not endless auditing but delivering what parents want.

• 23 Jan 2025 · ECO4 and Insulation Schemes · Hansard source

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  I refer the Minister to the last words in her statement, which were that the Government will “ensure that families have lower bills.” There will always be a problem with insulation in a country with a massively degraded and older housing stock, which underlines the vital importance of cheap energy. We have had a month with virtually no wind and no sun, and so-called green energy is producing hardly any of our energy. We are importing energy, we are stopping drilling in the North sea and we are not building gas-fired power stations. What about old people? Their heating allowance has been taken away, and we are crucifying them with ever higher bills. Meanwhile, China—its annual increment in emissions is more than our entire emissions—is going on pumping out emissions, and “Drill, baby” Trump is pumping out emissions. Why are we crucifying our old people?

• 22 Jan 2025 · Listed Places of Worship Scheme · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) on his speech. As the Government are making a written statement today, this might be one of the shortest and most successful campaigns ever. Churches are one of the great glories of Lincolnshire. We have 124 listed churches in my constituency alone, and I have visited them all—often when I have had a rest from canvassing in the 11 general election campaigns I have fought. The later editions of the Pevsner guides describe Lincolnshire as “incredibly rich in medieval churches from Saxon times onwards, many of them still little known”. In villages and towns up and down the county, there are small churches, often medieval, that are precious works of art. They are also focal points for the community. As pubs, shops and post offices shut, the churches in our villages remain, whether or not services are held regularly. Lincolnshire is not unique in this regard, as colleagues from all over the country know. I want to quote a worshipper and member of the parochial church council at St Chad’s church in Dunholme: “We are all deeply concerned that the above scheme is due to expire in March 2025 and fearful that it may not be extended for another term. I am sure you are well aware of the plight of fund-raising in rural areas in order to maintain and improve Grade I listed buildings plus the absolute need to, to ensure they are there for future generations. We are constantly fund-raising to ensure that our beautiful rural church is fit for purpose to meet the needs of both the community and worshippers”. She obviously speaks very much from the heart. We have some glorious countryside in Lincolnshire. I spent many years as president of the Lincolnshire Ramblers, and one of the great joys of being the MP for Gainsborough is walking in the wolds. The old church at Walesby, which is known as the ramblers’ church, is open to one and all to come and spend a moment of quiet contemplation. Thanks to the efforts of many volunteers, we also have the West Lindsey churches festival every year. Across two weekends this May, 88 churches will be open to the public, completely free of charge, and church volunteers will be present to explain. Public places of Catholic worship were not allowed until 1791, so our medieval churches today are only slightly more than a handful. None the less, there has been a growth in appreciation of the architecture of 18th, 19th and 20th-century churches. Indeed, Augustus Pugin, the architect responsible for much of what we see around us, designed many Catholic churches that are now listed. Of the 3,000 Catholic churches in England and Wales, 750 are listed, and many have had their listings upgraded to grade I. I urge the Minister to listen to the debate, concede, and carry on with this wonderful scheme.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  When I visited St Barnabas hospice in Lincoln recently, the chief executive told me that it was having to pay £350,000 extra every year to cover the national insurance increase. I do not expect an answer now, but as we all agree that palliative care is so important and we want to encourage it, and the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill started its Committee stage today, will the Government keep that increase for hospices under review?

• 20 Jan 2025 · New Hospital Programme Review · Hansard source

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  Will the Secretary of State forgive me if I give the House a few seconds’ respite from the blame game by trying to make a positive suggestion? Everyone accepts that the real problem facing our hospitals is the number of frail and elderly people who do not need to be in hospital and should be in some sort of care facility. Does the Secretary of State agree that while building brand-new, all-singing, all-dancing hospitals is very expensive, there is a future for smaller cottage hospitals such as the one in Gainsborough and a case for opening other facilities so we can move elderly, frail people out of those big hospitals into a caring environment and free up space?

• 16 Jan 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  I think the Foreign Secretary has spoken for the whole House today with his tone. I am sure he would agree that it is possible to be four-square behind the Israeli Government in their right to defend themselves and defeat Hamas and at the same time to care about the suffering of the Palestinian people. Will the Foreign Secretary use his charm or whatever influence he has on the incoming Trump Administration to persuade them to use their power to convince the Israeli Government that these illegal new settlements in the west bank must stop, and the pressure on the Palestinian people in the west bank must stop, because it is fuelling a sense of despair and future extremism?

• 14 Jan 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T3. Leaving aside whether it is wise to spend £9 billion on giving away what is already yours, given that the Trump Administration is now less than a week away, would it not be wise to wait another week, pause these negotiations, have a quiet word with the incoming American Secretary of State, and then work out what is in our interests and those of our closest ally?

• 13 Jan 2025 · Hospice and Palliative Care · Hansard source

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  On Friday, I went to St Barnabas hospice in Lincoln, our local hospice, which does wonderful work, and talked to its chief executive officer, who is tearing his hair out. Because of the national insurance increase, he is losing £300,000 a year. He pays his nurses less than the local hospital; he has to. He is literally funding the NHS and cutting his own service in the hospice. I beg the Government to think again about the national insurance increase on hospices.

• 9 Jan 2025 · Public Finances: Borrowing Costs · Hansard source

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  On 6 November, the Chancellor said: “We have now set the envelope for spending for this Parliament, and we are not going to be coming back with more tax increases or, indeed, with more borrowing.” I am sure, because the Chancellor is an honourable lady, that she will not be opening that envelope, putting her sticky fingers inside and coming out with more borrowing or tax increases. Will the Minister give an absolute assurance of no more tax increases or borrowing?

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  One of the most impressive aspects of the previous Government was the work instituted by Michael Gove to build on the reforms of Tony Blair, and carried on by successive Secretaries of State, such as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). Will my right hon. Friend commit the next Conservative Government to reversing these changes and ensuring that we have more choice for headteachers on curriculum, hiring and firing and expulsions so that we bring competition to the schools sector, not the dead hand of a Whitehall bureaucrat?

• 6 Jan 2025 · Health and Adult Social Care Reform · Hansard source

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  I welcome the consensual parts of the Secretary of State’s statement, but I wonder whether we have been entirely honest with the public about the sheer unaffordability of the cap proposed by Dilnot. I do not absolve my own Government from this: maybe we should start telling the truth to the public. Does the Secretary of State think we need a new social compact on bringing in social insurance so that people can plan for their entire life? They would know that they will have to pay more in taxes during their life for their old age, but at least they would have certain rights.