China Spying Case
Debate between Andrew Murrison and Alex Burghart(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Alex Burghart
My right hon. Friend makes a very pertinent point and is personally very experienced in such things. It has been reported that the National Security Adviser chaired that meeting. That is to say that he was taking a very active role in what was going on. That is why it is incredibly important that the Government come clean with us about what happened in that meeting, who attended and what was decided there.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
The National Security Adviser has spent a great deal of time visiting various Chinese entities before and after his appointment. One appointment that he does not appear very keen on taking up is with the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, which has requested—quite legitimately, under the Osmotherly rules—that he appears before it, but Ministers appear to be blocking that. Why does my hon. Friend think that is?
Alex Burghart
My right hon. Friend is right: the National Security Adviser showed a great reluctance to attend. I understand that he has now agreed to attend, although the report I read said that he was going to attend in camera. If that report is correct—the Minister has the opportunity to say it is not true—I am not sure that that is the best level of transparency that this House might expect.
The second instance of inconsistency and inaccuracy that we draw attention to is from 7 October, when the Prime Minister told journalists that what mattered in this case was the designation of China as it had been in 2023, when the offences were alleged to have occurred. However, last week, on 24 October, the Director of Public Prosecutions said that that was categorically not the case. He said:
“The test was…positively not what the then Government was prepared to, or did, say in public about China…but rather whether China was—as a matter of fact—an active threat to national security.”
This is a most important point, and one that was revisited yesterday. There is a very serious question about why the deputy National Security Adviser believed that he would
“need to be in line with government policy at the time”,
when the Crown Prosecution Service said that it did not need to know about policy, but about the facts. The Minister should explain to the House why the deputy National Security Adviser chose to ignore the CPS in this case. He should also tell us whether he thinks the deputy National Security Adviser complied with civil procedure rule 35, which requires him to assist the court and overrides any other obligation.
UK-EU Summit
Debate between Andrew Murrison and Alex Burghart(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Alex Burghart
My hon. Friend’s experience in these matters speaks volumes. The truth is that we must be absolutely certain that this will not be just another scheme for funnelling money into French defence companies while keeping it away from defence companies in other jurisdictions.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend share my hope that in next week’s negotiations the Government will make it abundantly clear to our European partners that for decades this country’s contribution to our collective defence has been well above the level that our economy, our population or our size would dictate, and that Europe has benefited from that? While I am in no way recommending a Trumpian approach to these matters, it is nevertheless important for the Government to make clear to our interlocutors the scale of our contribution to collective defence.
Alex Burghart
I fully agree with my hon. Friend. The fact is that the UK has made a disproportionate, but necessary, contribution to European defence for many decades. I think that we were right to do so, and I would support our doing so into the future, but it is only right for our friends to recognise that contribution and to treat us not as an external power coming to parlay, but rather as a close and long-term friend whose loyalty has already been proved many times over.
It would also be good today to have clarification from the Government of their position on EU lawmaking. I was lucky enough to have a call with my friend Sir William Cash this morning. It was an unusually brief call, lasting only 20 minutes. [Laughter.] Sir Bill put it very clearly to me: he said that in any new arrangement with the EU it was important for us to see no EU lawmaking, no jurisdiction for the European Court of Justice and no attempt to reapply the principles of EU law in our courts, because one principle of our departure from the EU was that we would take back control of our money, our borders and our laws.