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Tag: David Davis

  • David Davis – 2024 Speech on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

    David Davis – 2024 Speech on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

    The speech made by David Davis, the Conservative MP for Goole and Pocklington, in the House of Commons on 29 November 2024.

    Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will try to keep it brief and stick with procedure.

    The decision we are taking today must be, for most Members, one of the most painful decisions. It certainly is for me. I am someone who has changed his position. I am a believer in the sanctity of life, but I am also an antagonist to torture and misery at the end of life. Accordingly, I intend to vote for the Bill on Second Reading. I say to those who have made procedural comments that Second Reading is a point of principle, not a point of conclusion. I have changed my position because since the scandal of Dr Shipman and the murders he carried out, the behaviour of the health service has changed. I have witnessed, with constituents in particular, any number of people who have died slowly and in agony beyond the reach of palliative care—the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) made the point brilliantly—so that no matter how well we do it, we cannot fix that problem.

    Secondly, I am going to disagree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse): it is not insulting to critique what others who have tried this have done. The countries that have tried this provide a wide range of examples and outcomes. If on Third Reading I think that the outcome we are heading towards is Belgium, I will vote against; and if the outcome is Canada, I will probably vote against. If it is Australia, I will vote in favour. That is what the next stage of this process is about.

    I say to both the Bill’s sponsors that it has a number of areas that they know I think they have to put right—about a dozen, in truth.

    Dr Arthur

    Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

    David Davis

    I am afraid not, as I have only five minutes.

    I will pick one of those areas, as it is technical and awkward. Clause 4(2) appears to give doctors the right to initiate the process. But after the “Do not resuscitate” scandal during the covid crisis, I do not want that at any price—I do not want the state initiating this process. That is critical for me. I am really making the point that the decision on Second Reading is about principle, not outcome.

    The hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) has said that she will work hard to make the Committee work. I am sure she will, and she may succeed. But I say this to the Government. I understand perfectly well that they are trying to maintain a route of strict neutrality, but there is a distinction between neutrality and responsibility. They need to focus on responsibility. This Bill is more important than most of the Bills in their manifesto; I am not trying to be rude. Is the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) here? He got mobbed over breakfast by people talking about this. More people in the Dog and Duck care about this than they do about most other things that we are doing, so it deserves four days on Report in Government time over the course of several weeks.

    We do not need a royal commission. The House can do this, but it needs to be given the option. I say to the Government that the path of responsibility is to give us the time to get this right. If we get it right, it will be one of the things that we can be proudest of in the coming years. I reiterate that I want the Bill to succeed. It is more important than most Bills that we handle. It cannot be dealt with in five hours here and a few hours in Committee. I will vote for it today, but I want the Government to help me be able to vote for a good Bill at the end.

  • David Davis – 2024 Speech on the Adequacy of the Scotland Act 1998

    David Davis – 2024 Speech on the Adequacy of the Scotland Act 1998

    The speech made by David Davis, the Conservative MP for Goole and Pocklington, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2024.

    Thank you for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will hesitate for just a second as the Chamber clears—my normal popularity.

    Three years ago, on 16 March 2021, I presented to the House the implications of the unlawful Scottish Government investigation and contrived criminal charges against Alex Salmond. I recommended empowering the Scottish Parliament to investigate as a Scottish court found that the Government acted illegally and engaged in a process tainted by bias against Mr Salmond. Regrettably, the investigative committee appointed by Holyrood was limited in its powers of investigation, operated without the protection of privilege and was thwarted at every turn by the delay, obfuscation and even threats from the Scottish Government and institutions of state. Three years on, that failure in democratic accountability has not been addressed.

    The investigatory powers of the Scottish Parliament could have been strengthened. Decisions about whether and who to prosecute could have been made entirely independently of Ministers in the Scottish Government. Neither of those things has happened, forcing me to raise the matter again.

    Mr Salmond has been found innocent. He previously succeeded in Scotland’s highest civil court in establishing the illegality of Scottish Government actions. He is currently suing the Scottish Government in a civil action. That has been assisted as some of those involved in constructing the case against Mr Salmond are now themselves under police investigation. I will therefore focus today on the wider failings in this sorry case and what they raise for the state of the rule of law in Scotland.

    In 2017, senior Scottish Government figures set up a procedure for dealing with sexual harassment allegations that effectively targeted Alex Salmond. I believe that, at an early stage, that was done with the knowledge of Nicola Sturgeon’s team, and potentially with their encouragement. The procedure applied retrospectively to former Ministers—Mr Salmond no longer being a Minister—but excluded civil servants. Sue Gray, then head of propriety and ethics at the Cabinet Office, expressed discomfort with the procedure. Despite that, the Scottish Government proceeded. An investigating officer was appointed. They were to have had no prior contact with complainants, yet the officer appointed, Judith Mackinnon, had in fact had extensive prior contact with the complainants.

    It has now also emerged the person deciding the case—former permanent secretary Leslie Evans—also met with complainants during the process. That information was withheld from the Court of Session in one of the many breaches of the Scottish governmental duty of candour in this case.

    Mr Salmond was informed of the complaints against him in March 2018. All were denied, and in April 2018 his legal team immediately raised concerns about the fairness and legality of the new procedure as well as concerns over Mr Salmond’s access to witnesses and documents. He offered mediation and arbitration to bring the illegality of the process into focus; it was repeatedly rejected. Messages between two civil servants in early February 2018 show how Liz Lloyd, Sturgeon’s chief of staff, was directly interfering in discussions with complainers ahead of their complaints being made. Her role—acting, we must assume, with the knowledge of her boss—was central to these events.

    Furthermore, evidence to the Holyrood inquiry from Mr Salmond’s former chief of staff, Geoff Aberdein, stated that Liz Lloyd in early March 2018 informed him that

    “there were two individual complainers”.

    Three other witnesses support that assertion. That directly contradicts her claim that she first became aware of the allegations in April 2018, yet it is a claim she doubtless felt compelled to make in order not to contradict Nicola Sturgeon’s position already given to the Scottish Parliament. Sturgeon misleading the Scottish Parliament would, of course, have led to her resignation. The same untruth was repeated on behalf of the Scottish Government during the judicial review. It is the position of Mr Salmond’s legal team that neither Lloyd nor Sturgeon was telling the truth.

    Very quickly after my previous debate on these matters, the Scottish police visited me, asking where I had got all this information. They got a nice cup of tea and a biscuit. Strangely, they had no interest whatsoever in what appears to be prima facie evidence of perjury by those holding high office. Let me say clearly today that these matters obviously require to be properly investigated by the police.

    In August 2018, ignoring the evident impropriety of the process, the permanent secretary Leslie Evans decided that some complaints against Salmond were well-founded. Salmond was told of Evans’ decision, and that a press release was to be issued at 5 pm. Salmond’s legal team was about to lodge a judicial review of the whole procedure, so it urgently sought—and received—written assurances that no press release would be issued. Despite those assurances, only hours later, the Daily Record published news of the allegations—part of the decision report had been unlawfully leaked. Other than Mr Salmond, only the Scottish Government had that report. However, I have met a witness who has made a statement that he was told by the then political editor of the Daily Record that the story was leaked by Liz Lloyd. The House should know that the prosecutor from the Information Commissioner’s Office investigating the leak concluded:

    “I have sympathy with the hypothesis that the leak came from an employee of the Scottish Government.”

    The Scottish Government fought the judicial review, at huge cost, despite their own legal advisers telling them in no uncertain terms that they would fail. They were warned:

    “it makes little sense to continue to defend the indefensible”

    and that the least worst option was to concede the case. Eventually, both the Scottish Government’s external counsel told the Government that they were in an untenable position and were suffering extreme professional embarrassment because of Government failings. They were also warned—this is important—that civil servants were deliberately misleading both them and the court. Despite these repeated warnings, the Government only conceded the judicial review after their external counsel threatened resignation.

    In January 2019, the Court of Session found that the Scottish Government had acted unlawfully, and that their actions and processes were procedurally unfair and tainted by apparent bias. Commentators often describe the investigation as “botched”. It was that, and more: it was illegal, pure and simple. Yet no one has been held accountable, and millions of pounds of taxpayer money was wasted. That is perhaps unsurprising when looking at the attitude of those at the top of the Scottish civil service.

    The same day that Salmond won his case, the permanent secretary Leslie Evans sent a message to a colleague saying that the battle was lost but not “the war”. That is hardly the language of an impartial civil servant. Senior figures at the top of the Scottish Government appear to have colluded to ensure that Salmond was reported to Police Scotland. There is evidence of contact between figures in the Scottish Government and officers of the Scottish National party. WhatsApp messages reveal that Liz Lloyd was convening a “council of war” WhatsApp group.

    A whistleblower revealed communications from Sue Ruddick, the SNP’s chief operating officer that in their words point to

    “to collusion, perjury, up to criminal conspiracy.”

    In the communications, she and the then chief executive of the SNP Peter Murrell, encouraged and coached complainants into reporting Salmond to the police. Appearing at the Holyrood inquiry in December 2020, Murrell was asked whether he was part of the so-called “council of war” WhatsApp group. Murrell denied even using WhatsApp, yet it emerged that he did have WhatsApp and had used it within weeks of the evidence session. Yet another clear lie.

    The House may wonder what the Scottish Government investigation had to do with the Scottish National party in the first place. The answer is provided by Anne Harvey, a qualified lawyer who was then a senior official for the SNP in this House, who wisely refused to have anything to do with what she characterised as a witch hunt.

    I recommend colleagues read again my debate on 16 March 2021. In that debate, I outlined the actions of senior officers of the SNP Peter Murrell and Sue Ruddick, and their compliance officer Ian McCann, whose interference in an ongoing police inquiry represented nothing less than an attempt to pervert the course of justice. The Police Scotland investigation was triggered by Leslie Evans, who sent the results of this internal inquiry to the Crown Agent, Mr David Harvie. The Crown Agent is responsible for overseeing all prosecutions in Scotland. Despite the subsequent police inquiry and court case, Salmond was acquitted on all charges by a majority female jury in front of a female judge.

    As a result of the Scottish Government’s unlawful handling of the allegations, the Scottish Parliament established a committee to examine how the First Minister, Scottish Government officials and special advisers dealt with complaints against Salmond. Even before the committee’s report was published, the convener said the committee was being undermined by “delay, prevarication and obfuscation” on the part of the SNP Government. When published, the report was damning. It reads:

    “Many documents were, in our view, insufficient to provide a complete picture of the events being considered by the committee and again that has hampered the committee’s work”.

    There would be uproar if a Committee of this House was impeded in such a manner, but the Scottish Government’s attempts to thwart the parliamentary inquiry did not stop there. It ignored two votes in the Scottish Parliament and waited until the very last minute to release legal advice it had received on the judicial review. That advice was only released the day before Sturgeon would give evidence, after the Opposition threatened a no confidence motion against the current First Minister, John Swinney. Even then, when released, it was not the full advice. Crucial parts were only made available after Sturgeon had appeared. Additionally, the Crown Office was threatening MSPs with prosecution due to the proceedings of the committee. Such threats would be treated in Westminster as a contempt of Parliament.

    At the instigation of the Crown Office, Police Scotland opened an investigation after WhatsApp messages given to the inquiry were made public. The messages showed Peter Murrell calling for pressure to be put on the police to investigate Salmond. Throughout this sorry business, the Crown Office has been enthusiastic in its pursuit of those who have published evidence in this case. A journalist has been jailed. Another journalist was prosecuted in a case completely dismissed by the sheriff court. The Crown Office engaged in a legal battle with The Spectator to stop the publication of evidence to the parliamentary committee. What is most troubling is that at the time, the line manager of David Harvie, the Crown Agent who oversees prosecutions in Scotland, was Leslie Evans, the Scottish Government permanent secretary. And Mr Harvie’s legal boss was the former Lord Advocate James Wolffe, who himself was advising the Scottish Government not to concede the judicial review against that same Scottish Government! That set-up is fundamentally wrong. I will outline just one example of why.

    On 2 March 2021, Mr Harvie, the Crown Agent, was at pains to tell the parliamentary committee, under oath, that he had never discussed the case with his line manager, Leslie Evans. Now, that may be true. However, what I can now tell the House is that documents show Mr Harvie had, in fact, discussed the matter with Leslie Evan’s private secretary—her representative on earth, if you like—in the days before he became involved in the case. It is fundamentally unsatisfactory that the then Crown Agent, the senior official in the administration of justice in Scotland, cannot be relied upon to tell a parliamentary committee the whole truth. I find it even more unsatisfactory when the Crown Office shows no interest in investigating these grave matters.

    In giving evidence to the inquiry, Nicola Sturgeon repeatedly failed to answer questions because she “could not recall”. In the end, the committee found, by a vote of five to four, that Nicola Sturgeon had given an “inaccurate” account of her knowledge of the allegations. In one of its clearest findings, the parliamentary committee found, unanimously, that Leslie Evans was personally as well as corporately responsible for failings that cost the Scottish taxpayer millions of pounds and led to the humiliation of the Scottish Government in the highest civil court in Scotland, due to their unlawful behaviour. Has there been any penalty for those failings? Of course not. Instead, Ms Evans’ contract was extended, along with her pension. The damage she has caused, both by her action and inaction, has been left totally unaccounted for. Something must be done to prevent these failures of accountability in public service in future, and I hope that the “duty of candour” legislation in the King’s Speech means that something finally will be done.

    Alongside the Holyrood inquiry, the lawyer James Hamilton was asked to consider whether Nicola Sturgeon had breached the ministerial code during this affair. While Mr Hamilton concluded that Sturgeon did not breach the code, his report was so heavily redacted by the Scottish Government that he, in a highly unusual move, insisted on the publication of a rather stark note along with it. Hamilton said that such redaction

    “presents an incomplete and even at times misleading version of what happened.”

    I have heard evidence that special advisers—not lawyers—appointed by Nicola Sturgeon had been directly involved in the redactions of Mr Hamilton’s report. I have pursued this point with the current permanent secretary, but I have not received a satisfactory or clear reply.

    To obtain further information on the Hamilton report, a freedom of information request was made to the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government refused to publish the requested information, claiming that they did not hold it—despite its being their report. The Information Commissioner rubbished their claim, and ordered that it be published. The Scottish Government attempted to appeal against that decision. I attended the appeal last year in Edinburgh, and noted that the Government case was not just summarily dismissed, but dismissed in a completely humiliating manner. I have brought a number of cases against Governments, and I have never seen quite such an outright humiliating dismissal. Despite these losses, the Scottish Government have still failed to publish the information requested, and now oppose the publication on other grounds.

    When I first brought these matters to the attention of the House, Nicola Sturgeon was still First Minister in all her unchallengeable pomp. She is not any more. We all know what has happened to her and the top management of the SNP since. I cannot and will not go into all that now, but that is the important backdrop to this sorry saga. My purpose today has been to concentrate on matters of fundamental principle, so we can ensure that such unlawful and shameful events cannot be repeated.

    These events have occurred under the devolution settlement secured under the Scotland Act 1998. The Holyrood parliamentary committee suffered because it did not have adequate power to hold the Scottish Government to account, which allowed it to be frustrated by the Government and threatened by the Crown Office. It is simply not appropriate for the Lord Advocate to be both the public prosecutor and the Government’s legal adviser. I put forward that position three years ago, in my Adjournment debate of 16 March 2021, and was supported by the former Member for Edinburgh South West, Joanna Cherry. Ms Cherry presented a private Member’s Bill that had cross-party support. However, despite the case being conceded in principle by the Scottish Government, no legislative action has followed.

    There is also concern about how the SNP’s leadership exerted influence over the rule of law in Scotland, in the Scottish Parliament, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, the courts, the police and the media. Nicola Sturgeon is no longer First Minister, but her successors have continued to suppress the truth about their party’s disgraceful attempts to destroy Alex Salmond, and in so doing they have continued to deny him proper redress. However, this is about more than Alex Salmond. To ensure that it never happens again, we must review the consequences for civil servants found to have acted improperly by parliamentary committees, we must strengthen the investigative powers and legal protections offered to Members of the Scottish Parliament, and we must immediately separate the powers of Scottish Law Officers from their roles in administering criminal justice and providing advice to the Scottish Government. It is time to invoke a famous phrase, often invoked in England but just as pertinent in Scotland: fiat justitia—let justice be done.

    Before I sit down, may I—in what is otherwise an incredibly serious debate—apologise to the Minister for the fact that my action today forced her to make her maiden speech at such short notice? If I may say so, she carried that off brilliantly, and deserves double points for it.

  • David Davis – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    David Davis – 2023 Speech on the Loyal Address

    The speech made by David Davis, the Conservative MP for Haltemprice and Howden, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2023.

    It is a privilege to follow the Public Accounts Committee Chairman. She will understand that I have a certain affection for her in these debates because of her position.

    The hon. Lady made a comment about looking forward 30 years. The whole western world faces a paradox that goes back 30 years. In the 1990s, three massive things happened in the world: first, there was a dramatic reduction in tariffs, which led to a huge increase in global trade; secondly, there was the collapse of the Soviet empire; and finally, there was a dramatic acceleration in the creation and adoption of new technology. All those things raised well over 2 billion people out of oppression by starvation and out of political oppression. They changed the world dramatically for the better, but those dramatic changes have had a number of effects.

    Today, we face a series of challenges in the western world, not just in Britain, that are more complex and more difficult to deal with than any I can remember since 1979, whether it is Ukraine and the series of wars that are breaking out, whether it is the migration that results from that, whether it is domestic challenges such as the impact on the wages of the western working class—much of the impetus for Brexit was the result of working-class wages across the west being depressed by competition with the rest of the world—whether it is the impact on public finances, which derives partly from that, or whether it is the impact on public services, which are failing not just in Britain but in many countries, to some extent for the same reasons.

    That is why, unlike the hon. Lady, I welcome what I think of as the common sense in the King’s Speech. There are a number of sensible measures, including on crime and justice to promote safety, justice and closure for victims, which is important, and on net zero, where the approach is intelligent and measured, rather than headline driven. That is important—the old net zero strategy would not have survived the public reaction. Like the hon. Lady, I vehemently welcome the policy on smoking. We have done far too little for many decades to focus on public health, rather than patching people up in the last three years of their life, which is what our national health service has been reduced to doing. In education, we are building on some of our successes, including in PISA—the programme for international student assessment—and our international competitiveness. There is much to recommend in the proposals in the King’s Speech, particularly with respect to apprenticeships and vocational education. The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education is brilliant and is making a great difference.

    Broadly, the proposals are sensible, but the House would be surprised and disappointed if I did not find something to criticise in the Home Office proposals. I will not surprise the House—I am going to pick up on something that I think is a fundamental mistake. I hope that Ministers will think hard before they introduce the proposal, which has been aired in briefings in the last day or two, to allow the police to search homes without a warrant. This is one of the fundamental foundation stones of a free British society, along with jury trials and the presumption of innocence. The right not to have the state kick your door down and search your house without judicial approval is a massively important British value. If anybody has any doubt about that, I have two words to say to them: “Damian Green”. They should go back and look at what happened with the Metropolitan police’s handling of the case, as it were, of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green). The Leader of the Opposition was then the Director of Public Prosecutions, and he in effect struck down the Metropolitan police’s behaviour. We have to think about that very hard indeed, because the judicial control of the police is vital and must be preserved.

    Beyond that, the education measures are good as far as they go—as I have said, particularly on skills—but I would go further, as I will explain in a moment. Indeed, all King’s Speeches are basically just frameworks, not the whole agenda for the coming year, and this one is the same. As a result, the last line of every King’s Speech is always the same:

    “other measures will be laid before you.”

    I want to talk about what I think those other measures ought to be.

    What should those measures be? I think most of them should be in areas where the state is struggling to cope with the worldwide problem I have talked about arising over the last 30 years. By the way, it is not an accident that I say “30 years”; that covers Governments of both persuasions, and neither have managed—in some cases, I might say they have failed—to solve the things I am going to talk about. The one advantage we have when it comes to the problems I am about to lay out in education, health and housing—the three critical areas on which we need to go further—is that for the first two, technology may come to our aid to some extent. I, like the Public Accounts Committee Chairman, welcome the move on AI. I thought it was quite risky to have that conference, but it worked diplomatically. It has not got a solution yet, but that has got us on the first step.

    Let me talk about health for a second. All parties have taken the approach for my entire lifetime, which is much the same as the lifetime of the health service, of putting more and more money into the health service. We are now talking about a huge amount of money; it swallows the entire amount of national insurance contributions, and what was supposed to cover health and pensions now simply covers health. We spend more money than the OECD average on health—that in itself is quite extraordinary—but it does not deliver. We can put all sorts of excuses in the way, but this is more about management than it is about money. Before we got to covid, from 2017-18 to 2018-19 we put about £3 billion extra into health in real terms—and what happened? Productivity went down by 0.75%. The next year, we put in £7 billion, and productivity went down by over 2%. That was before covid started.

    Those dry numbers sound bad, but they do not quite carry the terror of the actual effect, and I am going to give an example from my own constituency to explain what I mean. I had a constituent whose name was Richard. He had had cancer, and had been operated on and cured, and as a result he had regular six-monthly check-ups thereafter to watch for any outbreak. But through administrative failure, he did not get the check-ups, so was at least six months behind the timetable. We all know that the later we diagnose a cancer, the more difficult it is to solve. The operation he was supposed to have was then delayed as well, and it got to the point where basically there was no chance of recovery for Richard. He came into my life, as it were, as I was his constituency MP and his family wanted him out of hospital for Christmas so that he could die among his friends and family rather than surrounded by strangers. That is what we are talking about thousands and thousands of times over. That is the impact of this failure. I think there are a lot of things we can with respect to the re-management of the health service, but I will talk about one.

    John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)

    Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Office for National Statistics published figures for the three years from 2020 to 2022, which state that public service productivity in general fell by an unprecedented 7.5%? That means that we needed to put roughly £30 billion extra into public services to achieve the same thing.

    Mr Davis

    My right hon. Friend is right: it is a systemic problem. It does not just affect Britain or the health service. Indeed, I think that numbers for those years for the health service were about 25%—so huge, huge numbers. I bring this back to the reality of the individual. If we delay diagnosis and treatment, we sentence people to death. It is as harsh as that.

    I would like us dramatically to increase the amount of diagnostic capacity we have. If we look at OECD numbers on CT scans, I think we are third from worst. This is why I say it is not a single Government problem—we do not get to be third from worst in one term; it happened over the course of the whole 30 years. On MRI scans, we are the worst in the OECD. How on earth a country such as ours gets to that position is astonishing.

    Dame Meg Hillier rose—

    Mr Davis

    I give way to the PAC Chairman.

    Dame Meg Hillier

    The right hon. Gentleman is making some interesting points, and the total amount of Whitehall day-to-day spending on health is phenomenal. On the point about scanners, I am afraid that lies directly at the door of his Government—well, I am not afraid; it does. The lack of capital investment in the big bits of kit has led to deterioration and lack of availability. Such investment would have saved money, and been better for the patient and better generally for the health of the nation.

    Mr Davis

    I agree with the hon. Lady on the saving money element, and I will come back to that in a second. The truth is that this Government have poured more money into the health service than anybody ever predicted, and more money than they intended over time, but decisions within the health service—I come back to management rather than money—led to some of those decisions. The hon. Lady is dead right that it is a waste of money not to do the diagnosis. I am talking about MRI and CT scans, blood tests, and all the other things that help us get ahead of the disease.

    I talked to Randox, one of the diagnostic companies, which is based in Northern Ireland, and asked about this issue. It has technology that it says will reduce a seven-day analysis of blood samples, for example, to 30 minutes. My view is that we should break clear of the ideology and look dramatically to increase the amount of scans and diagnostic procedures—when I say “dramatically”, I mean a multiple of what we currently do—and we should use the private sector to do it. I know that causes a bridling and a backing off, but the only way we can do this fast enough is to do that. That would save about £3 billion and reduce waiting lists for millions of people. Most importantly of all, it would save thousands of lives. If there were one thing I would do within healthcare, that would be it; there would be other things, but that would be that.

    Jim Shannon

    The right hon. Gentleman is talking a lot of sense in relation to cancer diagnosis and better treatment. One way of doing that is through research and development. For example, there have been advances in prostate cancer at Queen’s University, with that centre of excellence in Belfast, and news today of pills that can reduce the risk of breast cancer. Those are just two examples. Does the right hon. Gentleman feel that research and development is key to advancing and saving lives, and getting better results for cancer patients?

    Mr Davis

    That is exactly right, which brings me to my other health topic, and the whole question of national health service data and the use of data. It is widely accepted that we have one of the greatest information treasure troves in the world in the form of national health service data—data about all our citizens. There have been two or three attempts—certainly two in my memory—to bring that data together and manage it in one block, so that it is available for managing the treatment of patients and for research. A third attempt is happening right now, with contracts out to introduce a new data management system for the whole health service. The two previous attempts failed because the national health service executive and management do not understand the importance of privacy. Each time they tried to do it, the reaction from GPs and patients was, “We are not going to co-operate with this.” There was a vast waste of money, and the projects crashed and were over. More importantly than the money, we missed the opportunity to do exactly what the hon. Gentleman says: use that data for research to advance this country to the front of the world.

    The Government are doing the same again this time, because the contract has gone out, and it looks likely that the company that will win it is Palantir. For those who do not know Palantir, it started, I think, with an investment from the CIA. Its history is largely in supporting the National Security Agency in America. Bluntly, it is the wrong company to put in charge of our precious data resource; even if it behaved perfectly, nobody would trust it. The thing that destroyed the last two attempts will destroy this one: people will not sign up and join up. The health service has got to get its act together on this. If it does, and privacy is protected, we can do things like having a complete nationwide DNA database. If privacy is not protected, that will not happen. There is an opportunity there, and the Government should grasp it, not drop it.

    Technology also has a large possible application to education. I was lucky that when I was a teenager, social mobility in Britain was probably as great as it ever has been, for a variety of reasons, ranging from grammar schools, which I know are controversial, through to the fact that post war, there was huge growth in the middle classes, which expanded opportunities. Those combinations together created a massive social mobility advantage for people like me. I was very lucky in that respect. Today, while I think we are about No. 10 or 11 in the PISA—the programme for international student assessment—tables, we are No. 21 in the social mobility tables, and we should not be that far down.

    We need to do something about that issue. One reason it happens is that 35% of children by the age of 11—children going through their primary education—are unable to cope with their maths and English sufficiently to make progress in other subjects. In essence, they are failed by the age of 11. For free school meal kids—I am looking at my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) —it is 50%. Half of children on free school meals have been failed by the state by the time they are 11, and there are all sorts of reasons why. Even with vast amounts of effort, with committed teachers, headteachers and so on putting all their effort in, it still comes apart.

    One thing we can do about it—and the Department has begun to talk about it—is to start to use AI in the classroom, so that children can have tailored teaching. A kid who is falling behind gets diagnostic responses from AI, which then generates appropriate teaching patterns to pull them back up. We already have such technology. In fact, a British firm called Century Tech does exactly that. I saw it in action in Springhead Primary School in my constituency, where there was an intervention class for children who were falling behind, and they were pulled back up using this technology. If we applied such technology right across the board, it would raise the average performance in our schools by one grade per subject. That is an enormous change. That is my judgment, not anybody else’s. If we did that, our competitive advantage and our social mobility advantage would be enormous.

    We have to think very hard. The Department for Education has to be a lot more imaginative than it has been so far in this area, and it has to look hard at improving the options for all those children we currently let down. That is not because the Government intend it, or because this Government or previous ones have fallen down on it; this statistic has been going on for a long time.

    The last thing I want to talk about is not technology, but bricks and mortar. I have some sympathy with the comments of the PAC Chairman, in that it is as plain as a pikestaff that we have a supply problem, however we analyse it and whoever we blame for it. Our population has grown by about 10%— 6 million or 7 million—over a couple of decades, for all sorts of reasons; we can get into controversy on that, but the truth is that housing has not grown to match. One of the problems—I guess the primary problem—is the planning system. This is not the first time the country has faced this problem. We faced it after both the world wars, when “Homes fit for heroes” and so on were the slogans of the day. How did we deal with it? We had a movement to create well-designed and well-created garden towns and cities in the right places, not by trying to tack on 100 houses to this village, 100 houses to that village and 100 houses over there, in each case overwhelming the schooling, transport arrangements or whatever. We need to look hard at cutting this Gordian knot, and it seems to me that the only way we will do that is by creating well-designed, well-financed garden towns and villages, not by going through the mechanism we have been pursuing so far.

    Health, education and housing: if we add those to what we have now, we have a winning King’s Speech.

  • David Davis – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    David Davis – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by David Davis, the Conservative MP for Haltemprice and Howden, in the House of Commons on 20 March 2023.

    I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

    Like two of the previous speakers, I am also a science graduate, although I do not compare myself with the Conservative party’s most famous science graduate. I had intended to make my speech essentially about science and technology, because they are massively important and, as the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) pointed out, we have fantastic competitive advantages in those fields. That will be a major part of growth.

    Since last Tuesday, however, dramatic events have unfolded in the banking sector—particularly over the weekend. Back in 2009-10, the then Chair of the Treasury Committee, Lord McFall, asked me to chair the Future of Banking Commission. The last week has, unfortunately, brought back some memories. One of the characteristic problems of the banking sector is its short memory, particularly when it is Wall Street that we are talking about. I hope that the House will indulge me if I remind it of the lessons of the major banking crashes of the past half century.

    Back in 1933, after the great depression, the Americans passed the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated banks out into risky investment banks and straightforward commercial banks. That gave us about seven decades of stability until 1999, when President Clinton—under pressure from unwise and greedy Wall Street lobbyists—essentially removed Glass-Steagall. What followed was the collapse of several banks, including Lehman Brothers—probably precipitated by the new mark-to-market rules—in the great crisis that we saw in 2008.

    In 2009, because of the crash, America passed Dodd-Frank, which required banks with more than $50 billion in assets to be subject to tight regulation. Again, under pressure from Wall Street, President Trump relaxed those regulations in 2019. I talk about Wall Street, but the whole world followed. Of course, after that relaxation, banks assumed that they had an infinite period of low interest rates and that they could borrow ad nauseam. When global interest rates sharply increased by three, four or five times, the shock destabilised a number of those banks. One such bank was Silicon Valley Bank, which had been taken out of regulation by the Trump changes.

    There is a lesson for us in all that. It has caused an instability in the financial system. Chancellors, central bank governors, financial secretaries in the States and regulators have no chance but to claim that the system is robust. I am not so sure. We will not know for a while whether it is actually robust, because of the complexity of the system. Of the three major banks that have failed so far, each has failed for different reasons, and we have no clear insight into what risks other banks have taken, partly because of the deregulation under Trump and his predecessors. In that respect, we in this country are probably in a better place than either the Americans or the Europeans, but I am keeping my fingers crossed as I say that so as not to tempt fate.

    There is one lesson that we should learn. A big issue on which the world is hanging at the moment is whether the takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS is a success. I draw people’s minds back to Lloyds taking over HBOS, which was done under pressure from the Government of the day—from Gordon Brown—and Lloyds itself nearly collapsing the very next year. I hope that UBS will not do the same. The point of this story is that we are in a period of extraordinary global financial instability.

    I am a low-tax Tory—I would have loved the Chancellor to have had a lower-tax strategy—but I have to say that the events of the past week have demonstrated that a very small-c conservative strategy is wise under these circumstances. The more confident the markets in the Government, the better our prospects for the future. That said, I would be completely unsurprised if we had to have another Budget in the autumn owing to the nature of the transitions and changes that are now happening.

    If that happens, I would ask the Chancellor, “Could you please look again at bringing back your super-deduction?” That will attract investment here in a way that will not happen with the 25% rate. I would ask, “Will you look at doing away with IR35 and at other concerns that will improve prospects for small businesses?” In my view, it will be incredibly difficult for the banks to get right the balance between inflation and growth now that their hands are tied by the instability of the banking sector. My one line to the Chancellor is this: please look, for the next Budget, at much more growth.

  • David Davis – 2023 Speech on Saudi Arabia’s Execution of Hussein Abo al-Kheir

    David Davis – 2023 Speech on Saudi Arabia’s Execution of Hussein Abo al-Kheir

    The speech made by David Davis, the Conservative MP for Haltemprice and Howden, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    Hussein Abo al-Kheir had been on death row since 2015. He had been tortured into a false confession and always maintained his innocence. When I was told this weekend that his execution was imminent, I urgently wrote to the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the junior Minister, Lord Ahmad, the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia and the Saudi ambassador to the UK, calling for intervention to prevent Hussein’s execution—I received no formal reply, although I understand that a letter has arrived in my office since I have been in the Chamber. Hussein was subsequently executed. A response given on Tuesday to questions from the Father of the House appeared to suggest that, despite my representations, only low-level attempts were made to talk to the Saudis over the weekend. In 2015, the Foreign Secretary’s predecessor, Philip Hammond, intervened himself, successfully, to prevent the execution of a Saudi youth activist, and he prevented many more executions by so doing; that intervention saved Ali’s life. I firmly believe that a stronger intervention over the weekend could have saved Hussein’s life and perhaps more to come.

    Saudi Arabia continues to be one of the most prolific users of the death penalty, killing more than 130 individuals in 2022. Since 1 March this year, the Kingdom has executed 11 people, including for non-violent drug offences. That goes against Saudi Arabia’s informal moratorium on the use of the death penalty for drug-related offences. Being soft with totalitarian states comes back to bite us, as we know from the Russian example. We must make it clear to our ally that it must abide by international standards of civilised behaviour; doing so might just save the lives of those who remain on death row.

    Leo Docherty

    I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for describing the number of letters he has sent and pointing out that a response has been had. I am pleased that that is the case. I assure him that a range of interventions were made, as I described, at the most senior level by Lord Ahmad. That describes the energy with which he has made these representations, so we can be confident that a great deal of energy was expended in that effort. Of course, we cannot speculate as to the particulars of the case. My right hon. Friend mentioned the apparent spike in cases. Again, it might not be useful to speculate, but it might be that a pre-Ramadan surge of cases is adding to the apparent uptick. I understand that the moratorium relates to drug use rather than drug smuggling, and this case pertained to an allegation of and conviction for smuggling rather than use, which I think is relevant. It is not useful to speculate further on the particulars of this case, but we do make clear our continued opposition to the use of the death penalty, and our close working relationship with the Saudi authorities allows us to do just that in a way that allows us to appeal for clemency.

  • David Davis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

    David Davis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Davis on 2016-01-26.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his Statement of 20 July 2015, Official Report, columns 1233-4, on Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy, if he will publish the location of UK personnel, other than special forces, embedded in other nations’ armed forces on a monthly basis.

    Michael Fallon

    I refer my right hon. Friend to my Written Ministerial Statement of 17 December 2015 (Official Report, column WS431).

    For operational security reasons we will not routinely identify units, location or dates.

  • David Davis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    David Davis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Davis on 2016-03-03.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the methodology and data sources set out in his Department’s paper, Benefit claims by EEA nationals, published in November 2015, how many individuals are recorded in government computer systems who were nationals of a non-EEA member country at time of registration for a National Insurance number and are recorded as having arrived in 2004-05 using the earlier of (a) arrival date or (b) NINO registration date and have either (i) paid National Insurance contributions over the previous year, (ii) paid PAYE income tax over the previous year, (iii) registered any other form of activity in the relevant systems, including payments of other tax or tax in respect of self-employment or (iv) claimed benefits or tax credits over the previous year and these; and how many such people (A) claimed benefits or tax credits only and (B) paid NI or PAYE or self-assessment tax only in each year from 2004-05 to 2014-15.

    Priti Patel

    The information requested is not available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

  • David Davis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

    David Davis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Davis on 2016-06-07.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether any RAF personnel have carried out airstrikes outside the coalition mission in the Iraq and Syria conflict zone since 2 December 2015.

    Penny Mordaunt

    RAF personnel have not carried out airstrikes outside the coalition mission in the Iraq and Syria conflict zone since 2 December 2015.

  • David Davis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

    David Davis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Davis on 2016-01-26.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will place in the Library a copy of the UK red card policy for personnel embedded in other nations’ armed forces.

    Michael Fallon

    There is no single red card policy for UK personnel embedded in other nations’ armed forces as their permissions will be specific to the operation in which they will be deployed. It is long-standing Government policy that we do not release details of our Rules of Engagement; to do so would give our enemies detail that would put our Armed Forces at greater risk.

  • David Davis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    David Davis – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Davis on 2016-03-03.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the methodology and data sources set out in his Department’s paper, Benefit claims by EEA nationals, published in November 2015, how many individuals are recorded in government computer systems who were nationals of an EEA member country, other than the UK at time of registration for a National Insurance number and are recorded as having arrived in 2004-05 using the earlier of (a) arrival date or (b) NINO registration date and have either (i) paid National Insurance contributions over the previous year, (ii) paid PAYE income tax over the previous year, (iii) registered any other form of activity in the relevant systems, including payments of other tax or tax in respect of self-employment or (iv) claimed benefits or tax credits over the previous year and these; and how many such people (A) claimed benefits or tax credits only and (B) paid NI or PAYE or self-assessment tax only in each year from 2004-05 to 2014-15.

    Priti Patel

    The information requested is not available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.