Israel and Gaza

Matt Warman Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I must gently point out to the hon. Lady that it is not Israel that is deliberately targeting civilians in Gaza; it is Hamas who are enmeshing themselves in the civilian population and using people as human shields. She talks about people moving but, again, Israel is attempting to minimise the impact on civilians by asking people to leave northern Gaza, and it is Hamas who are telling people to stay and using them as human shields.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

We should all have no time for those who express sympathy for the terrorists of Hamas, and we should have no time for those who amplify their horrible messages either. Will the Prime Minister join me in welcoming the actions of the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology in trying to call the social media giants to account, and will he join me in encouraging them both to co-operate with the police in this country in their investigations and to do the same to try to minimise their impact abroad?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent point. More broadly, I want to make the point that online offending is as serious as offline offending. We have robust legislation in place to deal with threatening and abusive behaviour or behaviour that is intended or likely to stir up hatred, and it applies whether the behaviour takes place online or offline. We are working closely with the police and the internet companies to make sure that those who break those rules meet the full force of the law.

G20 Summit

Matt Warman Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have just been over how our leadership on these matters is unquestioned. We are an active and engaged member at the G20. In just a couple of weeks, I will be at the European Political Community summit as well. Let me gently point out something to the hon. Lady about the UN General Assembly: as far as I can tell from looking back at the records, on the vast majority of occasions under the Labour Government it was not the Labour Prime Minister who attended either.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

The leaders’ declaration expresses the optimism about AI that I know the Prime Minister and I share. It talks about the importance of “international governance” and “international co-operation”. How optimistic is he that all the countries at the G20 can sign up to those sorts of principles, just as they signed up to the joint declaration?

Security Update

Matt Warman Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We have been totally clear-eyed about the threats represented by China, and have been robust in the action we have taken. The hon. Lady talks about higher education: we have passed legislation in respect of higher education, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023. That Act requires greater transparency about higher education institutions’ sources of funding, including from overseas states and hostile states. We are taking exactly the kind of action that she requests.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

At what was then the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, I saw at first hand the now Deputy Prime Minister oversee an increasingly robust attitude to China in terms of economic security, and telecoms security in particular. To some extent, I wonder if that is why we see this growth in unwelcome attention from China. However, can the Deputy Prime Minister reassure the House that we will continue to take that increasingly robust approach, particularly when it comes to emergent technologies such as artificial intelligence and some of the other increasingly high-tech areas where Britain excels in the world, and where we will continue to attract even more interest from unfriendly states?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend has a great deal of experience from his time as a Minister, and we worked together on these issues. Telecoms security is precisely an example of the approach. First, we put national security before economic security. On a purely economic interest basis, we should not have removed Huawei’s equipment from our networks. We put national security first, and I was transparent with the House about that. We also took the powers in the Telecommunications (Security) Act 2021, which is the legislation required to provide that protection of our national security. That is yet more evidence of how the Government are taking a more robust approach and increasing the amount of activity with every passing month and year.

G7 Summit

Matt Warman Excerpts

Monday 22nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Look, of course on this issue we will disagree with the Scottish nationalist party, but we remain committed to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, to which we are a signatory along with 190 other countries. That offers us the best tool available to bring about eventual global disarmament, but it will have to be step by step and it will have to be a negotiated approach, because we have to recognise the escalating security threats that we face and the role that our nuclear deterrent plays in keeping us safe.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

Qualcomm, Graphcore and Arm are among the major semiconductor manufacturers that welcomed the UK’s semiconductor strategy. The Prime Minister is right to focus on where we are best and where we can play an outsize role in this industry. At its heart, however, this is also about lessening our semiconductor dependence on Taiwan. Will the Prime Minister assure me and the House that that will not come with greater risk of seeing a decrease in relations between China and Taiwan?

Security of Government Devices

Matt Warman Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

Perhaps the Secretary of State is more au fait with social media than me, but I am confident that he will adhere to the guidance that he will receive as a Minister and that sensitive Government documents will be dealt with not on his personal device but on his corporate communications devices.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

I welcome the continuation of the robust approach that the Minister took with Huawei and its application to TikTok. That is something that we should all welcome. He mentioned Government agencies. Does he agree that some of the most sensitive Government data is held by agencies, arm’s length bodies and, indeed, local government. Does he agree that they should all heed the advice that he has issued today?

[Oliver Dowden]

The short answer is yes. What falls directly within my purview is Government Departments and arm’s length bodies. I have written to my colleagues in the devolved Administrations and I will be writing to relevant local authorities as well.

Tributes to Her Late Majesty the Queen

Matt Warman Excerpts

Saturday 10th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

In 2012, prior to the diamond jubilee, the Queen hosted a reception at Buckingham Palace for national newspaper editors, the usual great and the good, and, to my surprise, technology editors as well. That induced the unique, gut-wrenching dual anxiety of having to meet Her Majesty, and having to do so with my boss. Thankfully, the Duke of Edinburgh said that technologists, such as myself, were there because people like us knew “what was going on”. That put me at ease, at least for the seconds before I realised he had just said explicitly something that I had only ever optimistically inferred from working with my bosses.

Perhaps surprisingly, the digital jubilee reception was not a novel concept. The Queen understood that she had to be seen to be believed. We knew her first in the ’40s and ’50s via black and white photos, the wireless and that scratchily televised coronation, which was so many people’s first experience of television. By the 2020s, it was ultra-high definition video, and in the lockdown of 2020 it was Zoom. She moved with the times, and the times moved with her. She was present in our lives in a way that moved even places like Boston and Skegness, which she never visited, to hold street parties in her honour, and that now moves many there to tears.

I met His Majesty King Charles at a reception for Roberts Radio, which is a long-standing warrant holder. He, too, knows that technology can make his family’s warmth and service palpable around the world. He used the opportunity to do an impression from “The Goon Show”, which only time sadly precludes me from recreating in the House. With TV cameras in the Accession Council, we have already seen more of what it is to be a monarch than we could ever have done previously, and long may that continue. It is familiarity and closeness that fosters hope and togetherness with our sovereign.

I said that we first saw Her Majesty in black and white, and later on Zoom. I should, of course, have said that we are unlikely to see such a lengthy reign again, with its diligence, humility and uplifting love. Thanks to the times in which she lived, we are blessed to have felt uniquely close to so much of it. That makes her absence feel so personal and acute. Grief is the price we pay for love. God save the King.

Parole System: Public Protection

Matt Warman Excerpts

Wednesday 30th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her tenacious campaign and say that I know how difficult that must be for her. None the less, it is very important, and she brings a huge amount of experience, particularly personal experience, to the Chamber and to the changes that we are making. I agree with what she has said. I have set out for the House the changes that we are making for victims in relation to the parole decision-making process, but they are only one element of a much broader strategy, and we will, of course, be introducing a victims’ law. Again, I hope the whole House can rally around that, so that victims feel that they are front and centre of this, that they are listened to, that they are taken into account, and that they are part of the criminal justice system, not an appendix to it.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

When Paul Robson escaped from the North Sea Camp open prison in my constituency, the sudden presence of this violent rapist in the community was deeply traumatic not just for his victims, but for all those people who live in and around the area that the prison occupies. By definition, although the Parole Board does immensely difficult work, the fact that he absconded means that he was in the wrong place. Will my right hon. Friend reassure me that what he has announced today makes it far less likely for a convict such as Paul Robson to be in those conditions and to place the public at risk in the way that he did when he absconded?

[Dominic Raab]

I can reassure my hon. Friend on that. The changes that we made in December should give him some reassurance. There is no risk-free approach here. What we do is try to create safeguards to mitigate as best we can while maintaining a free society. I also note that, under successive Conservative Governments, the number of absconds has fallen, from 296 in 2009-10 to 101 in 2020-21—a third of the level. We have the security right, but we will continue to make sure that we reinforce it.

Living with Covid-19

Matt Warman Excerpts

Monday 21st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

That is exactly what the ONS survey does.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

It is the vaccination programme led by this Prime Minister that got us to the position we are in now, and it is the vaccination programme that will keep us out of lockdown, but what we know from the pandemic is that online misinformation about the vaccines costs lives. The Prime Minister took a very strong line on this early in the pandemic. As we continue to rely on vaccines, can he reassure me that we will not suffer online misinformation about vaccines that will continue to save lives?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes. One of the things that the online harms Bill does is try to tackle that kind of pernicious online disinformation.

European Council

Matt Warman Excerpts

Thursday 11th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

Some 76% of my constituents voted to leave the European Union, and every day that Parliament fails to deliver on that is another day that their faith in democracy is diminished. This is about more than Brexit: a second referendum would be a hammer blow to that faith in democracy and we cannot let that happen.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend speaks powerfully on this issue. As I have indicated in answer to a number of questions, I believe the House has a duty to deliver on the vote of the British people and to deliver Brexit for them.

General Election (Leaders’ Debate) Bill

Matt Warman Excerpts

Friday 15th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, but if I remember correctly the campaign for the last general election, the snap election, lasted seven weeks, in which time there were no Prime Minister’s questions.

The commission should be set up as soon as practicable. It would be fully independent and we would need some time to appoint the right people, so I would expect it to be set up within six months of the Bill becoming an Act of Parliament.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

Would the commission consider what sanctions would be applied if leaders did not take part in these compulsory debates? I know my hon. Friend has had an up-and-down relationship with our current Prime Minister, but he is surely not suggesting she would need to go to prison if she said no.