Contact in Care Settings

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Nigel Evans

Thursday 27th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I made a speech in the previous debate on the national food strategy and food security and I inadvertently forgot to declare my interest in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a farmer and a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, for which I wish to apologise to this House and to put the record straight.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the hon. Member for his point of order and for making it at the earliest possible opportunity. That is now on the record.

National Food Strategy and Food Security

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Nigel Evans

Thursday 27th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I hesitate to correct my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey), but she referred to my old constituency of Cirencester and Tewkesbury. It is of course now The Cotswolds.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Wonderful—two corrections for Hansard.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House recognises that food security is a major concern to the British public and that the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, the cost of living crisis and the conflict in Ukraine has made UK food security more important than ever before; further recognises the strain on the farming sector due to rising farming and energy costs; supports the Government’s ambition to produce a National Food Strategy white paper and recognises the urgent need for its publication; notes that the UK food system needs to become more sustainable; and calls on the Government to recognise and promote alternative proteins in the National Food Strategy, invest in homegrown opportunities for food innovation, back British businesses and help future-proof British farming.

Environment Bill

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Nigel Evans

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

The four-minute limit is now imposed again for all further Back-Bench contributions.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con) [V]]

I will speak to my amendment 4. The precautionary principle is a whole new way for the Government to legislate on environmental matters which can be applied to a huge range of environmental principles. It could be used in the extreme—for example, to introduce policies such as stopping people from driving motor cars on the basis that they damage the environment. In an increasingly legislative field, my amendment is so important in ensuring that the Government can clearly define the purposes for use of the precautionary principle, beyond those in the mere principles statements outlined in clauses 16 to 18.

The Minister said in a letter to me this morning: “I can confirm that Ministers of the Crown are only required to have due regard to the policy statement when making policy by virtue of clause 18(1). The environmental principles duty is not designed to apply to individual decisions or other public bodies.” In other words, the statement of principles is pretty nearly toothless.

My amendment would clearly constrain when and where the precautionary principle can be used. I ask the Minister, when she sums up, to go further than just going into the principles; I ask her to include some of my amendment in the Bill. A particularly important part is subsection (3C), which says:

“The precautionary principle should only apply in response to risks that are…more than hypothetical in nature; and…serious and irreversible.”

I cannot see any reason at all why that should not be in the Bill. If the Minister is not inclined to include it, I hope that their lordships will pick it up when the Bill goes to the House of Lords.

The precautionary principle is not consistently applied to different activity; it is frequently used to constrain certain activities where any impacts are deemed to be unacceptable. For example, Natural England is currently seeking to restrict game shooting around European protected sites. Due to evidence of damage in only five—a mere 1.5% of all sites—it wants to introduce a licensing system.

In summing up, can the Minister please bear in mind all the constraints that are in my amendments? Otherwise, this principle could well become oppressive to people’s freedom in the future, and we may well rue the day that we put the provision in the Bill. I am looking to the Minister to tell me why some or all of my constraints cannot be included in the Bill, because that is where they should be. The statement of principles, as written in the Bill, is pretty nearly toothless, and the precautionary principle gives the Minister, or any future Minister, a huge overwhelming power, which we may well live to regret.

Syria

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Nigel Evans

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) on securing this debate.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) recalled the dreadful events in the battle of Ypres in 1915, which led in 1925 to the Geneva protocol, under which no country was allowed to use chemical weapons.

In 2013, Syria signed up to the chemical weapons convention. In 2014, the Russians signed an agreement with the OPCW that guaranteed that all Syria’s chemical weapons would be destroyed. Russia has vetoed resolutions in the Security Council 12 times since 2011, so I agree with the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) that the UN resolution mechanism is not working.

Syria is one of the most persecuted countries on the planet. It will be one of the worst human catastrophes in the world in the 21st century. If the world does not stand up to the use of chemical weapons, as foreshadowed by the battle of Ypres, the world will have lost its moral compass. If we allow one or two dictators with warped minds to continue to use chemical weapons, the world will be a much poorer place. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was therefore absolutely right to send a signal with our allies last weekend by taking part in joint actions.

As I said, Syria is one of the most persecuted countries on the planet. The good Samaritan, all those centuries ago, did not walk by; he stopped to help that persecuted person. The world should be helping Syria; it has 6.3 million internally displaced people and 4.8 million externally displaced people. I have been to Nizip 2 refugee camp, and it is a pitiful sight.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

I have seen Syrian children being educated in the Lebanon, and I have seen Syrian children looking absolutely bewildered in camps in Jordan by what they have witnessed. Does my hon. Friend not agree that the international community should be stepping up to ensure that more money is made available to assist these Syrian refugees?

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He, like me, has been to refugee camps—he in Jordan, I in Turkey—and we have seen the very difficult conditions these refugees live in. I am proud that our country and our Government, under the excellent leadership of our Prime Minister, is one of the largest donors in the world, helping make life just a little better in these camps.

In the last bit of my speech, I want to focus on one issue. A lot of people in this debate have said, “Well, we should do something,” but nobody has actually come up with what we should be doing. If the United Nations system is not working, we have to find another mechanism, and it seems to me that the only other mechanism at the moment is the Geneva peace process. The problem with the Geneva peace process, which has been going for at least five years and probably longer, is that the Americans, the Europeans and the west in general cannot make up their minds whether they want to see Assad continue in power or whether they want to see Assad go—whether he should be part of an interim Government or whether he should not.

We should learn the lessons of Iraq. We deposed Saddam Hussein and all the Ba’athists who knew how to govern Iraq. We must not make the same mistake in Syria. If we depose Bashar al-Assad, we must not get rid of the Alawites. If we do, we will lose the ability of those who know how to govern this very difficult country, which is composed of a lot of ethnic minorities. If it is to succeed and we are to come up with any sort of peaceful solution, the Alawites have to be a part of it.