Economic Update

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and for registering some of those issues with me. I know that he and other colleagues are speaking to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster about individual issues, and I will be sure to follow up with him later today. The hon. Gentleman will know, and I hope it is helpful, that we funded with £200 million a trader support service, which is helping businesses in Northern Ireland to adjust to the new arrangements. I think 25,000 at the last count had signed up, and I know that the response has been pretty good, but there is always more we can do, and I look forward to talking to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster later.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con) [V]]

The Treasury has done really well supporting businesses and jobs in this crisis, but directors of small limited companies are many of the people who will ultimately be paying for the Treasury’s support. What can be done, perhaps using a version of the Federation of Small Businesses’ suggestion of a directors income support scheme, to help prevent hard-working linchpins of our economy—on modest incomes taken as dividends—from falling through the cracks?

[Rishi Sunak]

We always will give fair and due consideration to any proposals that we receive. Indeed, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) has met the FSB and received the proposal, and we will go through it in detail.

Covid-19

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 11th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

May I start by welcoming very much the powerful speech from my right hon. Friend the Minister, the statement from the Prime Minister earlier and the plan published today, which I most certainly support?

I want to highlight the Nightingale hospitals. The construction and operation of them has been extraordinary —far better and far more impressive than anything we saw in Wuhan—and we need to be extremely proud of what we have achieved in respect of that part of our response. They may not have been used greatly, but as is pointed out in page 46 of the plan, we may very well have to come back here again, because this will not be the last pandemic and we need to be preparing for the next one. While I hope very much that Nightingale will not be used during this particular pandemic, we need to ensure that what we have learnt through the process on this and many, many facets of the response are not forgotten or shelved, but are there ready to be used in the future, because I fear we are going to have to come back to this again, and maybe again. It is all part of resilience and recognising that the No. 1 threat to this country is not Russia or terrorism—it is pandemic. We need to be alive to that and to prepare for it.

I very much welcome the appointment of Baroness Harding to be our tsar for test, track and trace. I sound a cautionary note, though: many of us who are potential NHS returnees have not been impressed by outsourcing. I know that this has all been done at a rush and that the options open to Ministers are very limited, but we need to be careful about choosing trusted partners with a track record of service in the public sector and make sure that we do not put up with second best.

Let me ask the Minister about the scientific basis for quarantine. It is traditional to quarantine people who are coming from high-risk countries, not those coming to high-risk countries, and we need to be selective about who we quarantine. Otherwise, it will simply completely close down our aviation industry—it will kill business stone dead—and I am afraid that it is going to hamper our economic recovery.

I am also very cautious about the R value. It is interesting, important and always beguiling, of course, to focus on a number that we can dish up on a daily basis, but it can confuse the picture. The Robert Koch Institute in Germany has been clear about this: it is a useful index but it is only one of several. I am more interested in the number of new cases a day. That particular figure has been declining but not as fast as modelling has predicted. We must expend all our energy on driving that down and make sure that we do not expend all our energy on chasing R, because I suspect that R varies greatly among communities and regions of this country, and settings in particular. It is very important to understand, as others have pointed out, that it may vary greatly among the nations of this United Kingdom. We should not let our politics get in the way of making sure that we address the pandemic in different parts of the country in ways that are suited to where we are with the virus in those settings.

I ask the Minister to focus very heavily on what is going on in care settings right now. That is actually where the action is, in terms of this dreadful virus. That is where the Government need to be focusing all their attention right now, to make sure that we drive down R at a granular level in those settings, and in so doing deal with R across our United Kingdom.

The Economy

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con) [V]]

I very much welcome the statement, particularly the news about the bounce-back loans, which will be very helpful for small businesses in my constituency. Selling milk and meat into the non-domestic market has largely stopped, as have farm diversification schemes that were necessary to cross-subsidise land-based businesses. What more can the Chancellor do, beyond that which he has announced today, to assist agricultural businesses—land-based businesses—across the country?

[Rishi Sunak]

Representing a rural constituency myself, I understand very well the comments that my right hon. Friend has made. I am in constant dialogue with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on these issues. We are making sure that all the economic interventions that we have put in place can benefit not just the agriculture sector but as many sectors as possible.

Self-employed Persons: Financial Support

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

As I see from the farmers in my own constituency, there is considerable demand from for UK-produced food. I am very happy to continue to work with the hon. Gentleman, and we have often had conversations about farming issues in the past. I am happy to continue those conversations, alongside those with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, about how we support our farmers, but I think their products will be in great demand moving forward.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

May we please have further clarity on how builders, plumbers, electricians and plasterers should be conducting themselves at work or, indeed, whether they should be at work at all? There seems to be some confusion as to whether they should be on site or in premises. A leading builders merchant contacted me this morning to say that it had to shut up shop because it feared that the collection of the builders outside its premises were failing to socially isolate, and it was concerned about what that would mean. It seems that there has been some confusion over the past 24 hours, so I wonder whether the Minister can clarify the advice for those crucial people.

[Steve Barclay]

I am very happy to draw my right hon. Friend’s concerns to the attention of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care so that precise medical guidance can be given to address the concern he raises.

Privileges

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. There needs to be more clarity about the process—clarity within the rules as they stand, and more clarity on what the powers of the House are. We have ancient powers, which in modern law cannot be enforced, and they have not been replaced with anything more suitable.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

As Chair of a Select Committee, I am sure that my hon. Friend will have shared my experience that the difficulty in getting witnesses to appear is not necessarily around private citizens, who are usually very willing to appear before a Select Committee; it is around encouraging ministerial colleagues, on occasion, and public officials to come before Select Committees. That is where the resistance is. Does my hon. Friend agree that there should be at least an equivalence of rules regarding the appearance of private citizens and elected individuals and publicly accountable individuals before Select Committees? We have not got that balance right yet.

Flybmi

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 18th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ghani]

An independent review of airline insolvency by Peter Bucks is due to report, and it will make clear what happens to airlines when difficult decisions are made. There is an interesting point to note about how airlines can continue to sell tickets when they are struggling, which is one of the peculiar things that happens in the sector. If an airline were to stop selling tickets, that would make it clear that it was about to go into administration, so airlines do keep selling tickets quite close to the point at which they are about to go into administration. The Peter Bucks review will no doubt examine that point.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister’s restated commitment to the PSO in relation to Derry and Stansted. Given this latest news, what further assessment is necessary of the long-term viability of Derry airport and of the welcome improvements to the A6 between Londonderry and Dungiven, which will increase connectivity to Belfast International airport? What further support does the Minister anticipate in the light of the Derry City and Strabane regional city deal?

[Ms Ghani]

It is good that my hon. Friend notes the importance of Derry City and Strabane District Council’s role in procuring and maintaining the contract, and it is interesting to note the council’s positivity about other airlines taking on the route. I noted over the weekend that Ryanair was offering flights for less than £10 for those who wished to travel from Belfast, although that means making another journey. We are obviously committed to supporting our regional airports, to holding the CAA to account so that it monitors what airlines are doing when they are struggling and to examining what we can do to help passengers to continue their journeys across the UK.

Duties of Customs

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that it is wrong to say that phytosanitary checks do not happen—or could not happen—at the moment? We experienced such checks clearly in 2001, at the time of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy outbreak. These things are very real and they happen from time to time. It is right that member states should be able to protect public health and animal health, and they are perfectly capable of doing so within the European Union.

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend has put the point very clearly and effectively, and nothing in this Bill acts counter to our ability to act in the way he has suggested.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Fysh]

I thank the hon. Lady. I agree that we need clarity as early as possible on all these issues, and I encourage Ministers to come forward with ideas on that.

Returning to what we heard about Ireland in various interventions on the Minister, I would like him to think about whether, in the VAT resolutions, we are confining ourselves a little too much by saying that the Government may not, through the Bill, make any amendment relating to VAT rates, exemptions and zero rating. One of the issues with the Irish border historically, and where the real problems came from when Ireland was given its independence, was the amount of smuggling, and the rates and tariffs on goods going into the UK were a major factor in that. Perhaps we could look to smoothing the feelings and the actual processes on the Irish border to make sure that, as far as possible, our VAT rates are as harmonised as they could be so that there is no temptation to smuggle there.

[Dr Murrison]

My hon. Friend makes some extremely important points. In connection with the Irish border, a derogation already exists, potentially, between the European Union and its neighbouring states through EC regulation 1931/2006, which allows, particularly within a certain distance of the border, small and medium-sized enterprises legally to avoid duties and customs, thus ensuring and promoting cross-border trade. Does he agree that that model could be appropriate on the island of Ireland?

[Mr Fysh]

I thank my hon. Friend. That is a very interesting point, and I am sure that Ministers will look at it.

The Irish economy probably has more to lose than any other party in the negotiations between us and the EU. We have been talking in our papers about wanting to maintain the common transit convention, and that is probably right. Ireland is incredibly dependent on that because 80% of its trade with the mainland EU goes via our UK land bridge. There are many issues with that, not least the licensing of drivers who currently drive these goods across the borders in a seamless fashion. We need to make sure that we focus on enabling that if we want—

--- Later in debate ---

[Kirsty Blackman]

I absolutely agree.

Monique Ebell from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has written a report that compares participation in very comprehensive free trade agreements with membership of an organisation such as the single market, which is pretty much unparalleled in its encouragement of cross-border trade. Being part of a very close free trade arrangement does not give the same access to trade in services or goods as membership of the single market. Even if we had a comprehensive free trade agreement with every country in the world, we would still lose out as a result of Brexit.

[Dr Murrison]

I am listening with a great deal of interest to what the hon. Lady has to say. The amendments she tabled express commendable encouragement to the European Union, which does her great credit. However, in the interests of being balanced and fair, is she also concerned for much of Africa and South America? At the moment, they suffer the whip end of the customs union, as it makes the export of raw food products to Europe virtually impossible for many of them. Would she like to comment on that, since I am sure that the SNP is very concerned to promote the wellbeing of people in those countries?

[Kirsty Blackman]

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting case. I have not looked into all the impacts, but the WTO gives developing countries tariff protection, for example. It is likely that some of these things balance out, but I have not looked into the exact details. I am aware that some Brexit supporters are suddenly concerned about how developing countries will cope with international trade, although they were not particularly worried about that before.

I want to move on to talk specifically about some of the impacts of the proposed changes. I have mentioned the problems that people sending and receiving parcels might face. The Government’s “Future customs” paper states:

“Trade is a key driver of growth and prosperity. It stimulates greater business efficiency and higher productivity, sharing knowledge and innovation across the globe.”

It goes on to say that trade

“provides a foundation for stronger and more prosperous communities. It ensures more people can access a wider choice of goods at lower cost”.

Those are all arguments for staying in the customs union, not leaving it.

All the Government’s papers refer to consulting businesses. In all our conversations, the Government have said that they have spoken to businesses. The problem is that although businesses are lobbying the Government as loudly as they possibly can about the impacts of Brexit, the Government are not listening. The Government have an aspirational picture of how wonderful Brexit is going to be and no matter how much evidence to the contrary they are provided with, they continue to push on. Even Conservative Members who supported remain are suggesting, in the main, that we will have benefits from Brexit. In my eyes, that is not right.

The customs declaration service was mentioned by the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Fysh). The Minister is generally very good at explaining such things. He has said that he hopes to have pilots soon, with the service up and running by January 2019, but three months is not enough to test a customs declaration service fully. It is not enough to allow businesses to iron out all the problems that might arise or to get used to the red tape.

I want to go back to the issues raised by some of the Government’s aspirations and ideas that are, honestly, unworkable. One of the nine principles they have set out for what they expect to do to deal with trade between Northern Ireland and Ireland is:

“Consider how best to protect the integrity of both the EU Customs Union, Single Market and trade policy, and the new independent UK customs regime, internal market and trade policy, in the context of finding flexible and imaginative solutions, while recognising that the solution will need to go beyond any previous precedents.”

That is an aspiration without a solution. They are not putting forward a potential solution. They cannot even think of anything to square this circle, fix this problem or dig themselves out of the hole into which they have fallen.

This is an unmitigated disaster. The changes that the Government propose, particularly the customs duties that will be put on goods coming from the EU, or leaving the UK to go to the EU, are a disaster for businesses and for people at home. Some of those goods cross the border several times. For organisations such as car manufacturers or aerospace companies, sometimes the widgets—for want of a better word—cross from the UK to the EU and back many times before there is a finished product. If there has to be a customs declaration each time, and if there is an increase of even a few minutes in the time taken on each occasion, real problems will be caused to a huge number of businesses.

Businesses are speaking to the Government and raising concerns, but the Government are not listening. They now need to give businesses a clear direction. They need to make it absolutely clear today that their intention is that we will not have customs duties between the UK and the EU, so they should support the amendments.

Class 4 National Insurance Contributions

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I set out the basis on which we made the difficult decision to proceed with changes to class 4 national insurance, packaged with the abolition of class 2 national insurance, to try to make the system a little bit fairer. We listened to our hon. Friends and decided to withdraw the proposals, conduct a wide-ranging review and set out to Parliament later in the year how we intend to proceed.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement, and warmly thank him for listening to colleagues and their constituents. Notwithstanding his comments to my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Ben Howlett), may I invite him to look afresh at the possibility of hypothecating national insurance contributions, so that contributors to NICs, employers and the public can see a clearer link between their contributions and the services they receive?

[Mr Hammond]

There is a soft hypothecation around national insurance contributions: 20% of the fund goes to the national health service. They fund the state pension to which self-employed people now have full access for the first time—an extraordinary enhancement in the entitlement. I am told that, for a 45-year-old man, the enhanced pension in retirement, £1,800 or more a year, would cost about £50,000 as a capital sum to purchase an annuity in the marketplace. That is an extraordinary expansion of the entitlement offered to the self-employed.

House of Lords Reform and Size of the House of Commons

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I thoroughly agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I am grateful for his support. I will come on to the reduction in the number of Members of Parliament in this House, because it is important. I thought it was important to link the issues of us growing an unelected House while shrinking the number of representatives of the people. It is right that those issues are linked, because they are going on concurrently. The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

May I make a bit of progress, if that is all right? I have been very generous in giving way. I will try to give way later.

I want to speak about one of the other major features of the House of Lords: the deference—all the forelock-tugging to all these lords and ladies, and this idea of the high and mighty. We still have this political culture in the 21st century of showing deference to these people in ermine and of knowing your place and respecting your betters. Imagine designing a Chamber where that was still a feature of how we conducted our parliamentary debates.

I actually looked for the House of Lords TV channel the other day, and I came across the fantasy adventure “Game of Thrones” instead. I was listening to some of the language being used, and it struck me that the House of Lords is so like “Game of Thrones”, but without the dragons, beheadings and the proper bending of the knee— that is how ridiculous that institution down the road is. One of the first things we have to do is get rid of all this 13th-century, medieval deference and create a modern, 21st-century establishment, to make sure that we get proper representation in the second Chamber.

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes a good point. I would love to see that place as a tourist attraction. We could stuff some of its Members so that we could see them. They are all dressed like a demented Santa Claus. It would be fantastic: maybe we could have a Christmas fantasy or something as a feature of a visitor attraction. That is where we are, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point.

What is the Government’s intention when it comes to the House of Lords? Well, there seems to be only one ambition, and that is to stuff it full with even more cronies and donors. We have seen the latest additions. I do not know whether this is the Government’s intention—perhaps the Minister could clarify—but I get the impression they are trying to secure a majority in the House of Lords, because they are unhappy with the defeats they have experienced at its hands in the past few months. I have not done my sums properly on that, but I suspect that it would still involve another 30 to 50 new Members, taking its membership up to 900. That would bring it very close to overtaking the People’s Congress of China. Is that what the Government really intend to do?

At the same time—this is the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty)—the Government seek to reduce the number of elected Members of this House. This House—this nation—should be appalled at that prospect; we should be demanding that it is addressed and reversed. How on earth can we, as a Chamber, agree to the idea of stuffing that place even fuller, while the Government reduce the number of representatives of the people—us, the directly elected Members of Parliament.

[Dr Murrison]

I am listening carefully to what the hon. Gentleman has to say. I quite like his motion, as it happens; it certainly has the virtue of being better than the previous one we debated. He has hit on exactly the point, which is the oversized nature of the House of Lords. It is a serious point. Does he agree that, in the context of the diminution of the expertise that appointees to the House of Lords are able to bring, there is nothing more “ex” than an ex-expert? Does he agree, furthermore, that one way of dealing with that lack of contemporaneous knowledge and understanding that the Lords bring is to limit their term of office? As a short-term measure, we could create something called a “term peer”, which would reduce the numbers and make sure that those in the House of Lords are actually contemporary.

[Pete Wishart]

There is very little about that that I cannot agree with—it is a very good suggestion. The reason we brought this motion to the House was to invite such contributions from Members.

I know that lots of Conservative Members will not support our motion, but—I am taking this as a positive—I am beginning to sense a desire to address this, and we should work together as a House to do so. We first have to accept that there is something drastically wrong with the second Chamber—that it is not working and is starting to embarrass us. In the past, Conservative Members have always said that it is not an issue for them—“Why touch something that people are not concerned about?”—but I am beginning to sense a turnaround in that sentiment. A number of national newspapers have taken this up as a campaigning issue that they want to have addressed. As I have seen in my mailbag, more and more people are concerned about the quality of our democracy. If we allow a political circus like this to stand, we diminish our own role as the nation’s representatives. We are allowing it to continue as a feature of our democracy when we should be tackling it. I encourage hon. Members, even if they are not going to support us tonight, to look seriously at how we start to do so.

I was in the House when we previously looked at this—I am going back about 10 years now—and I voted for all the proposals that suggested replacing the Lords with a majority of elected Members. There was another failed attempt to address it at the time of the coalition Government. It is now incumbent on the Leader of the House—I am glad that he has joined us—to come forward with solid proposals on how we address this, because we have to do it: we cannot let it stand.

Today I, along with all my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), who has left us, found out about our new constituencies. The Government intend to reduce the number of Scottish Members of Parliament from 59 to 53—six will be lost under their proposals to reduce the number of constituencies from 650 to 600. I had a little look to see how many Scottish Lords there are. I found 61 who have registered addresses in Scotland, and that is apart from the aristocrats and landed gentry who have lands and estates in my country. The number of Members of Parliament in Scotland has been cut from 72, when I was first elected, to 53, so we now have more Scottish peers than Scottish Members of Parliament.

Centenary of the Battle of the Somme

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the centenary of the Battle of the Somme.

The motion was tabled in my name and that of the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis).

On 12 August 1916, a young German officer called Friedrich Steinbrecher wrote home, saying:

“Somme. The whole history of the world cannot contain a more ghastly word.”

Somme is seared into the national consciousness like no other battle before or since.

On Friday, in Manchester, at Thiepval, in London and across the country, we will unite to mark the first day of the centenary of the Somme. Soldiers are often glorious, but war never is—and anyone saying otherwise is a complete fool. War is sheer, bloody reeking hell on earth, and we politicians must do everything in our power to avoid it. More than 1 million men lost their lives during the 141 days of the Somme offensive, many of them reduced to unrecognisable scraps of flesh and bits of gristle. Most, of course, survived but so many were left with physical and mental scars that they would take with them to the grave.

For the record, I should declare an interest: since November 2011, I have been the Prime Minister’s special representative for the commemoration of the centenary of the Great War and thus involved with the national arrangements that I suspect my right hon. Friend the Minister will shortly discuss. All I will say, sparing his departmental blushes, is that his officials and the associated arm’s-length bodies have done a truly fantastic job, and continue to attract admiration from our international partners. I would also like to pay particular tribute to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Royal British Legion and the Imperial War Museum, which have all worked tirelessly, and to the BBC whose coverage has been in the very best traditions of public service broadcasting.

I think we have had a pretty divisive few weeks. Now is the time for unity, as we come together to remember one of the bloodiest battles in our history—a battle that touched everyone from Lerwick to Londonderry to Land’s End. In all our communities, it still casts a long shadow. If a battle divides, its centenary has the power to unite. That was vividly shown last month when we marked the centenary of the Battle of Jutland, shoulder to shoulder with Germany in the grand panorama of Scapa Flow and on the Jutland Bank.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The Somme was obviously the major battle of the first world war, but we should not forget all the other battles of that war, in which so many men lost their lives or were badly maimed. My grandfather, for example, was badly wounded at the battle of Loos.

[Dr Murrison]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I suspect he will have closely followed the programme over the past two years and will continue to monitor it closely over the next two years, leading up to armistice in 2018.

As I was gazing over Scapa Flow a few weeks ago, I wondered how many seamen in Jellicoe’s grand fleet, or in Scheer’s high seas fleet, would have guessed that their countrymen would be spending most of the ensuing 100 years as the closest of allies, united in the most powerful alliance that the world has ever seen. On Friday, we will be standing shoulder to shoulder with another friend and ally at a very special Anglo-French place, the Thiepval monument on the Somme, in the lee of which there are 300 French and 300 British graves. It is a special place; a haunting place. It was Lutyens’s great triumph—a monument to the missing, but more than that: an enduring monument to the unity, I think, of Europeans, and particularly our unity with our closest continental neighbours.

At this time of historic opportunity and risk, let us make the centenary’s legacy one of amity and concord in our European neighbourhood. Here at home, too, we are desperately in need of a coming-together moment. The Somme vigil on Thursday night, and the silence at 7.30 on Friday morning, will, I hope, facilitate such moments of quiet reflection.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, which is worthy of this occasion. Does he agree that one of the most encouraging developments of the last few years is the greater respect that is shown to our armed forces, and, in particular, the armed forces covenant? Is our country not coming together to a greater extent than ever to mark the dedication and service of our armed forces?

[Dr Murrison]

I agree with my hon. Friend. One of the things that has struck me while I have been doing this work is how much added value there is in the presence of a serviceman from today’s Army on the battlefield tours that we have been running, and in seeing the faces of the young people for whom the tours were principally designed. One understands that they get it—in that moment, they get it—and there is a bridge between today’s servicemen and those who served 100 years ago. That is very powerful.

I am very pleased to see that so many colleagues from Northern Ireland are present. As I was preparing my speech, I asked myself, “Who can I reasonably expect to see in the House during this debate?” I am not surprised, and I am not disappointed. May I pre-empt some of the remarks of Northern Ireland Members by saying that there is nowhere in these islands where the force of the Great War is more keenly felt, or, indeed, where I have felt that more value has been extracted as a result of this centenary commemoration? The way in which communities have been pulled together by sharing history that is so often complex and nuanced has been a joy to behold.

When prominent republicans feel comfortable telling us about their relatives’ wartime service in the British Army, when members of the nationalist community—as guests of the Somme Association at the Somme Museum in County Down—proudly show us their grandfathers’ Great War medals, when the Irish Ambassador lays a wreath at the Cenotaph for the first time, and when the Commonwealth War Graves Commission unveils a Cross of Sacrifice in Glasnevin cemetery in the shadow of Daniel O’Connell’s tomb, we know that something good is afoot. If this is a centenary looking for a legacy, it need look no further. We should remember that a Somme that saw the Ulstermen’s heroic storming of the Schwaben Redoubt also saw the 16th (Irish) Division’s Guillemont and Ginchy. The Somme narrative, once heavily partisan, is now becoming a shared history. On Friday, President Higgins will occupy a place of honour before the Thiepval monument, which carries the names of so many from what were, by the time it was built, two separate polities on the island of Ireland.

Remembrance is hard-wired into the four-year centenary, but what does remembrance of the Somme actually mean now, today, given that its participants would have been long since deceased in any event? I look forward to hearing the views of young people the length and breadth of the country who will be taking part in the series of Great War school debates that were successfully opened last night in Manchester.

The perspective of youth on the causes, conduct and consequences of conflict is so important to our future, but for me remembrance means reflecting on loss and missed opportunity. Our society now is the poorer for the fallen not having enriched the last century through arts, science, medicine, business, even politics. We lost the famous men honoured in their generation, the glory of their time, cited in “Ecclesiasticus”, which many of us will have read out on Remembrance Sunday. Society is the poorer also for the loss of men who would otherwise have lived out their lives in relative obscurity. “Ecclesiasticus” mentions them too. It is the poorer because of the children who were never born to all those great uncles, children whose names were never etched in stone and whose number was never counted among the casualties. In all that hopeful, bright, missed opportunity, how bitterly ironic that one participant in the battle survived—the very distillation of evil, a corporal in the Bavarian army who would march the world to an even greater war of misery two decades later, a war that history will judge to be inseparable from the first.

Steinbrecher was right. The Somme has become a byword for tragedy, pointlessness and waste, but we should never lose sight of the achievements of our predecessors. Be proud of them. Be proud of Britain’s first citizen army. The butcher’s bill may have turned out to be impossibly high, but they were doing the right thing in a just cause. That they were acting against Europe’s then general disturber of the peace was nobly and magnanimously acknowledged at the start of the centenary by the President of Germany, a modern, forward-looking country still tortured by its past.

What was going on in the heads of Kitchener’s young men? In 1916, many of them would not have had the vote. Their families would not have enjoyed the equity in a rich country or public goods that today we assume as our birthright. What then motivated them? If the rallying cry in 1916 was “King and Country” or “Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland”, the glue was loyalty to your mates. If love for country was the headline, the text was written in pride—pride for town, for village, for neighbourhood and for family. But above all it was the ultimate team spirit, the instinct to do the right thing by fellow creatures united in adversity and a common cause. That is why men went over the top in July 1916. That is why they endured unspeakable horrors. That is why they fought and died on the Somme on a truly industrial scale. But ask those who have served in the wars of the 21st century, the sort of conflict that we will be debating, again and at last, next week. They will say the same. A gentler age would have called it love for your oppo. In today’s terms, it is loyalty to your mates.

Nowhere is that better shown than in the Pals battalions of Kitchener’s volunteer army, a phenomenon that is a byword for the pathos of the Somme. That magisterial work, “The First World War” by my late constituent and near neighbour Sir John Keegan, ends with this:

“Men whom the trenches cast into intimacy entered into bonds of mutual dependency and sacrifice of self stronger than any of the friendships made in peace and better times. That is the ultimate mystery of the First World War. If we could understand its loves, as well as its hates, we would be nearer understanding the mystery of human life.”

Steinbrecher survived the Somme, but was killed in action the following year. By then, with the Americans entering the war, the tide had turned. Another German officer, Captain von Hentig, described the Somme as

“the muddy grave of the German field army”

and so it was. But peace came, and Europe’s politicians failed, a betrayal of the fallen and a reminder of our heavy responsibility.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Murrison]

We have had a debate of superlative quality this evening, with 20 right hon. and hon. Members speaking extremely movingly on this the eve of the centenary of the bloodiest day in British military history.

The 19th century French army officer and author, Alfred de Vigny, spoke in his book “The Servitude and Grandeur of Arms” of military service as the most fearsome of contracts. It was true then; it was true in 1916; it was true in 1982, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) so movingly reminded us; and it remains true today.

The hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) quoted AJP Taylor and disagreed with him. I think the hon. Gentleman is allowed to disagree with him; I am not sure that I am. Nevertheless, I hope he will allow me the indulgence on this occasion, because I, too, disagree with him. It is certainly the case that idealism did not die on the Somme; neither did the lights entirely go out across Europe.

If we are to avoid the loss of our 21st century lives and loves in the mud and blood of continental Europe, we need to ensure that we have eternal vigilance across all the Parliaments and Assemblies of our continent. I think that should be our tribute to the fallen this evening—lest we forget.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I am sure that the Minister wanted to point out that Chorley’s own celebration will take place at 10 o’clock tomorrow night and Friday morning, and that the 3 Medical Regiment will take the freedom of the town in Chorley, with the dedication of the cenotaph taking place on Saturday.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the centenary of the Battle of the Somme.