Julian Lewis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Jun 2026 · Media Green Paper · Hansard source

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  On a similar theme, undoubtedly near the top of the Secretary of State’s to-do list today is to answer written question No. 11584, which is due for answer tomorrow. The question is about the threat posed by the BBC World Service apparently discontinuing its longwave transmitters at Droitwich, Burghead and Westerglen. What we want to know is: how will closed societies like Russia be able to receive news information when they are subject to the suppression of all the internet-based routes?

• 23 Jun 2026 · Defence Spending and Readiness · Hansard source

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  Another spurious argument, which I am afraid we heard earlier in the debate, is that the legislation put our armed forces on the same level as terrorists. The truth is that everybody is on the same level before the law. In any case, the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 sold the pass on that anyway, because under it nobody—even if they were convicted of first-degree murder, as the Americans might say—goes to jail for more than two years. That put everybody on the same level before the law, as any such legislation has to do.

• 23 Jun 2026 · Defence Spending and Readiness · Hansard source

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  One of the strong arguments put forward for the legislation is that it will help families to find out the truth of what happened to their loved ones, yet by repealing the Conservative legislation, it makes that less likely rather than more likely—because who is going to come forward and incriminate themselves by saying what happened to people who were unlawfully killed if they know that they will not then have immunity from prosecution?

• 23 Jun 2026 · Defence Spending and Readiness · Hansard source

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  This debate has been characterised by so many powerful speeches that I think it would be invidious to pick out any of them. I congratulate everyone who has contributed, particularly the Government Back Benchers who have evidently come to the debate espousing the principle that the best defence is attack. Some of their speeches have been so combative that it is hard to believe that only recently they lost their Secretary of State for Defence, their Minister for the Armed Forces, and even their Prime Minister. If morale is indeed the measure of a successful fighting force, those Government Back Benchers are doing extremely well. By happy coincidence, I had a letter published in today's edition of The Times , which I had submitted before I knew that this debate was going to take place. I say that it is a happy coincidence because I know that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, are worried about the ticking clock, and one requirement for a letter to be published in that esteemed newspaper is for practically all the argument to be compressed into no more than 150 words. These are the slightly fewer than 150 words that I chose: “An erratic, isolationist White House, a ruthlessly imperialist Kremlin and a disturbing relationship between the two have put peace in Europe at greater risk than at any time since the height of the Cold War. The prime minister’s valedictory boast of securing ‘the biggest uplift in defence spending since the Cold War’ should therefore cut little ice. We are nowhere near investing even the 3 per cent of GDP—under current MoD calculation criteria—still being spent when the Conservatives were defeated in 1997, years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Under Margaret Thatcher throughout the 1980s—again applying today’s criteria—defence received between 4.1 per cent and 5.5 per cent of GDP. This shows the scale of effort required once again to boost deterrence and prevent the appalling costs, in blood as well as in treasure, of full-scale war between Russia and the West.” That was the letter, and I will now briefly pick a couple of aspects of it on which to expand. The first is the use of the word “deterrence”. I am perturbed about the sense of inevitability that there is going to be a conflict with Russia, perhaps as soon as 2030. However, the question of whether or not there is such a conflict is not just down to Russia; it is also down to what we do—the preparations that we make, the investment that we think we can bear in the military in order to ensure that if Russia looks at the prospect of war with the NATO powers, it will see that the outcome is uncertain and the cost is likely to be unbearable. So we have to do our bit. The other aspect of that letter on which I would briefly like to comment is the opening point—the point about the isolationist White House. No one knows how far the isolationist virus that is embodied by President Donald J. Trump has spread throughout the rest of the American political system, but if when he is eventually replaced that virus reappears in his successor, the future for peace in Europe will indeed be imperilled, because the key achievement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was to ensure that any potential aggressor against any of the member countries would know that if they attacked, from day one they would be at war with the United States of America. What Donald Trump has done is cause that guarantee to be undermined. I do not know why he does it. I do not know what the nature is of what I described in that letter as his “disturbing relationship” with the killer in the Kremlin. All I know is that Europe will not be safe until again we can rely on the United States to guarantee our freedom. In the meanwhile, we must send a signal across the Atlantic, for our part, that we will do everything necessary to invest in our armed forces and to make the necessary preparations. If we do that, we will maximise the chance of restoring stability to the power balance between east and west, which saw us through the most deadly threats of the cold war—the times when it was thought that civilisation could perish—and we will get back to a situation in which people can then think about what it is nice to pay for in order to have a modern, civilised, compassionate society. Let me end with a famous quote from another Healey who was a Defence Secretary, Denis Healey. He said, memorably, that if we do not have adequate defence, we do not have all the aspects of a society that we wish to cherish; we do not have schools, we do not have hospitals, we do not have houses—what we have is “a heap of cinders”. So let us invest what we can while we can, let us get our priorities right, and let us restore the guarantee of the transatlantic relationship, which kept the peace and prevented a third world war.

• 18 Jun 2026 · Infected Blood Compensation Scheme · Hansard source

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  Like others before me, I pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford). He is the driving force behind the all-party parliamentary group, which has done so much to highlight this terrible tragedy. I was struck by what my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) said about having been alerted to this as far back as 2010. In my case, it was not quite so far back; it was 2015, but that is still more than a decade ago. I spoke in this House about the case of my constituent Lesley, which illustrated how long it often took for victims of contaminated blood to discover that they indeed had been infected. I pointed out that in 1970, she and her future husband had been involved in a serious road traffic accident, and she had to receive no fewer than 44 pints of blood. For many years, she knew nothing about the fact that she had been infected, although over those years she had many visits to GPs and hospitals, with numerous symptoms of illness, and considerable pain and suffering. It was only in 2014 that she finally discovered that she had been infected with hepatitis C by NHS contaminated blood. Another example of a constituent who is in regular contact with me and my office is Stephen. He came to see me in August 2023. He was diagnosed as haemophiliac as an eight-year-old in the late 1960s. He thinks that he was infected with hepatitis C in 1974, which persisted for nearly 15 years before it eventually cleared from his system. He says that although it did not inhibit his professional life too badly, it had a deep impact on his personal life. He was married in 1986, and he was constantly having to have testing for fear every time that he had to have a transfusion that he might be being infected. He was told in quite firm terms not to have children, and he said that he was often too scared to have treatment. Once he had quite a bad leg injury, which led to complications, and his fear of treatment led to him being effectively disabled for a period of time. Stephen’s brother’s case was far worse, because he was one of about 400 chronic hepatitis C victims of this scandal. To this day, he can only effectively live on a day-to-day basis; he cannot plan because the complications of his infection mean that whether he will be able to do something will depend on how he is on the day in question. In Portcullis House on Tuesday, we benefited from briefings from a number of organisations that are concerned with this scandal. I will briefly touch on a couple. One was a campaign about a condition of which I was previously unaware, called thalassaemia. This rare blood disorder requires sufferers to have a transfusion every three to four weeks—a blood transfusion every month. These people are at a very high risk of having been infected, and many of them were. These regular blood transfusions deposit more iron into the major organs, which, coupled with the hepatitis C virus with which they had been infected, maximises the prospect of their developing cirrhosis and liver cancer. The drug interferon has been mentioned a couple of times already. I am old enough to remember when interferon was first regarded as a great breakthrough in the treatment of some cancers. Sadly, like so many medical interventions, it has side effects that can be harmful. Taken in combination with what these patients are also suffering from by way of infection and, in the case of thalassaemia sufferers, the build-up of iron, the interferon used in their cases also has complicating adverse effects. That was a point impressed on me at the briefing by the representative of the Terrence Higgins Trust, who pointed to the additional negative impact of treatment with interferon, which was for a significant time the only option available for HIV-positive patients. I am indebted to the Haemophilia Society for briefing material that I hope will simply add to the excellent statement and laying of the groundwork in the opening speech so ably delivered by the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst. The Haemophilia Society draws attention to one or two specific points that I would like to put before the House. We all acknowledge that the infected blood community has fought valiantly for the truth for decades. We also accept that the Government are clearly committed to compensation following the inquiry. The debate now focuses on how to deliver that commitment and how to make sure that people are compensated without further delay and that the compensation is truly fair. In this connection, I would like to make reference to a detailed opportunity I had virtually to participate in exchanges with senior people—in fact, the most senior people—at the Infected Blood Compensation Authority back in June last year. Again, that was at the initiative of the chairman of the APPG, the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst. My participation was online, but I was able, as was he, to discuss all these matters with the interim chairman at the time, Sir Robert Francis; the chief executive, David Foley; and other key officials. In particular, we were able to talk directly with members of IBCA’s cases team. I must say that I, for one, found them to be both compassionate and empathetic. I was very impressed with the calibre of people who are involved in this agency, and I am hopeful that if they are given the direction they need and the resources they require, they can succeed. I got the feeling that this is an organisation that really does want to help the people it has been set up to support, not an organisation that wants to be in any way obstructive. I hope everything can be done to encourage it. I know that it is operating in uncharted waters with a tragedy of this magnitude, but I hope it can succeed in overcoming the obstacles that have been causing the delays. More than two years have passed since the Government accepted the need for compensation, but the majority of eligible people are still waiting to begin their claims. That includes infected people not previously on a support scheme and affected people—namely, the partners and family members of those who are sadly no longer with us. We have heard concern from the community that progress has slowed while IBCA works out how to grapple with these categories of claims in a process that it calls test and learn. Every month of delay matters, because many infected and affected people are elderly or seriously ill. We would like to know from the Minister his latest assessment of the timescale by which IBCA will compensate each of the categories of claimant. IBCA’s latest figures show that just 30 affected people have been paid compensation so far. Over 14,000 affected people are waiting to start their claim. At what point does the Minister expect IBCA to truly start making a dent in those very large numbers? In particular, we would like to know what specific steps are being taken to accelerate compensation payments over the next 12 months. Finally, there is an issue to do with claims that relate to the estates of those who died before the scheme commenced. Those who survived until the scheme commencement are rightly entitled to financial loss compensation from the date of their infection right up to the national age of healthy life expectancy that they should have had. In contrast, those who died before the scheme started have their financial loss calculated only from the date of their infection until the date of their death, which may have been a lot earlier than the normal expectation of a term of life that would have been their lot had this catastrophe not befallen them. There can be no doubt that this creates a stark and unjust two-tier system. Those who died earlier will often have suffered the same or worse than those who died later, and the financial loss to their estate is clear, yet the Government’s position seems to be that those killed by their infections the soonest deserve less compensation and recognition than those who survived for longer. In many cases, this amounts to a very substantial reduction in compensation—potentially decades of lost earnings. Bereaved families should not receive lesser justice because their loved one died before the scheme was established. The result is that timing, not harm, is determining value, meaning that compensation depends on whether someone survived long enough to see the scheme introduced. As I said, this is about avoiding a two-tier compensation system. In conclusion, I would like the Minister to explain how it can be in accordance with natural justice for those who died earlier due to their infection to receive less compensation than those who died later from a similar infection. Will the Government commit to reviewing their position on estate claims, to ensure families are not disadvantaged because their relative died earlier?

• 17 Jun 2026 · Steel Tariffs · Hansard source

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  The Minister says that the concerns about fabricated steel are being taken into account. Can he be a bit more specific about why other countries have protections for fabricated steel in their economies, but we do not yet have any in ours?

• 16 Jun 2026 · Thames Water · Hansard source

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  It is tempting to say that there is a particularly bad smell about this company, but that would be a statement of the obvious. Although I am not normally a friend of nationalisation, I have a feeling that this company is on a one-way journey to bankruptcy. Am I right in presuming that if that point ever arose, there would be no question of compensating shareholders for a bankrupt company that eventually had to be taken over by the state?

• 15 Jun 2026 · Social Media Ban for Under-16s · Hansard source

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  This has definitely been the Secretary of State’s finest hour. I am only slightly disappointed that, for reasons of his own, the Prime Minister chose to upstage it in Downing Street. Can she tell the House what the main reasons are in Australia for reports—admittedly according to AI—that as many as 61% of young people are getting around the restrictions? Will she be working jointly with the Australians to try to get that down to a more acceptable level?

• 15 Jun 2026 · Russian Shadow Fleet · Hansard source

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  May I wish the new Secretary of State the best of luck in his new post and express the hope that the appearance of the Chancellor of the Exchequer alongside him on his first outing is not too symbolic of what has perhaps been going on in backrooms behind the Treasury? On the question of the seizure of the ships, does the Secretary of State agree that there is a possibility that Russia may in response start to think about escorting such ships by means of warships? This would, of course, expose Russia’s hand very much more clearly, but it does bring a whole element of possible escalation into play, including the possibility of Ukrainian strikes against those ships. We all know how successful Ukraine has been in the Black sea, and it might end up doing something similar in the Baltic sea and beyond.

• 15 Jun 2026 · Defence Investment Plan · Hansard source

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  I know the Minister accepts that I have criticised successive Governments for not spending anything like the 4.5% that Margaret Thatcher used to spend on defence at the height of the cold war throughout the 1980s, but does he accept that the service chiefs have made an objective assessment of the Government’s own strategic defence review, and have arrived at the conclusion that the sum of £28 billion is necessary to implement it over, I believe, a four-year period? If he accepts that, how can he possibly go along with an offer from the Treasury of less than half the total needed?

• 15 Jun 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  How can it be justified for a unitary authority to be formed that rips the waterside away from the New Forest, and places it under the control of Labour-dominated Southampton, when the building blocks of the new unitary authorities were stated by the Government to be the existing areas covered by district and borough councils?

• 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 · Defence Investment Plan · Hansard source

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  May I offer some advice to Defence Ministers in their bare-knuckle fight with the Treasury for adequate defence funding? They really should move away from this glib spin doctor’s line about defence expenditure rising faster now than at any time since the end of the cold war. The situation we are in now is as dangerous as any that took place not at the end of the cold war, when defence expenditure was declining, but at its height, when Conservative Governments—with, I think, Opposition approval—regularly spent between 4.5% and 5% of GDP on defence. Please, Minister, do not parrot a line that goes way below what we need in the circumstances that we face today.

• 10 Jun 2026 · Belfast: Violent Disorder · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister share my concern that, irrespective of the personal motivation of the perpetrator, the circumstances by which he came into this country send a signal to those ideological movements abroad that wish us harm that there is a very easy back door by which they can infiltrate this country? If an operation of that sort is mounted in the future, what sort of violent response will there be to a spectacular terrorist attack that could and should have been prevented by secure borders?

• 10 Jun 2026 · Local Government Reform · Hansard source

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  There is one point that I should perhaps have mentioned to emphasise how united the community is. When I wrote initially to the Minister’s predecessor, the letter was co-signed by the leaders not just of the Conservative group on New Forest district council, but of the Lib Dem group, the independent group and the Green group. When there was a vote on supporting the New Forest Together campaign, every single member, including the sole Labour member of New Forest district council, voted in favour. This is a unified community howl of protest against what is being imposed on us.

• 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.

• 9 Jun 2026 · North Belfast: Violent Attack · Hansard source

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  While I agree with virtually everything the Secretary of State said in his opening response, I really am baffled by his refusal to share with the House a piece of simple information. Did this person come legally into this country and have a five-year visa because he came legally, or was he given the visa after entering the country illegally? The information will come out sooner or later, and we have learned from similar terrible incidents that the longer it is withheld, the worse the rumour mill goes into action.

• 9 Jun 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  Does the Foreign Secretary accept that repeatedly saying that a terrorist group must do something does not make it happen? When she says that Hezbollah “must end these dangerous attacks and disarm”, does she expect this to happen voluntarily, and if not, how does she expect it to be brought about?

• 8 Jun 2026 · Water Companies · Hansard source

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  I would like to record my appreciation of the consistent campaign waged by the hon. and gallant Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), which included bringing the real-life activists on whom the “Dirty Business” docudrama series was based to the House of Commons where we could meet them. I noted what the Minister said in her reply to him about no new reservoirs being built. Does she think any new reservoirs could ever be built without direct Government intervention?

• 8 Jun 2026 · Digital Safety: Children · Hansard source

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  As long as children are given access to social media I very much doubt that it will be possible to prevent them from seeing harmful content. Given the strong assurances from the Minister that he will certainly be taking action to prevent them from seeing extreme content, can he explain to the House what sanctions will be available effectively to punish those social media companies that defy the legislation?

• 8 Jun 2026 · Cuba: Humanitarian Situation · Hansard source

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  I entirely agree with the Minister when he says that the future of Cuba should be decided by the Cuban people. What assessment have the Government made of the likelihood of the Cuban Government ever allowing the Cuban people to take those decisions?

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

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  For the sake of completeness, will my right hon. and learned Friend explain whether the Committee saw the third category of documents—those redacted or withheld because of the police inquiry—or whether the Committee labours under the same degree of ignorance as the rest of us?