Defence Capability

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Peter Bone

Thursday 19th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ellwood]

No decisions have been made.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Order.

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[Wayne David]

Answer some questions.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) is not in my good books at the moment. Yelling from a sedentary position is not acceptable.

[Mr Ellwood]

The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) has successfully eaten into more of my time, so I think he had best remain seated.

To get back to the point, we are all committed—I hope even the hon. Member for Caerphilly—to working hard for our armed forces and ensuring that they have the equipment they need and that we provide support for personnel. Yes, in politically difficult times, that is tough, but we will work hard to ensure that we meet the armed forces’ requirements.

Turkey: Human Rights and the Political Situation

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Peter Bone

Thursday 9th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ellwood]

I will not give way.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

I call Joan Ryan to wind up, please.

Yemen

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Peter Bone

Monday 12th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

The hon. Lady is right; the travesty is that the length of this conflict is denying a generation, in terms not only of health but education. This is the generation that needs to rebuild the country in the longer term, which is why, as the Minister of State, Department for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), has confirmed, we are working with UNICEF specifically to make sure that we can provide the necessary nutritional meals to support those infants in the important years in the first 1,000 days of their lives.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Let me congratulate the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who asked the urgent question, as I believe the whole House would recognise that he has almost single-handedly kept the issue of Yemen before this House. May I say to the shadow Minister that it was not right to make party political points on Yemen? May I ask our excellent Minister, who has a lot of knowledge of this issue, whether I am right in thinking that the humanitarian aid problem is not the amount—the money for it—but the fact that we cannot get it through? If that is the case, how can we try to open up the blockage?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Peter Bone

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

We recognise that there are frustrations due to the lack of progress towards peace, and we share those frustrations. The peace process was launched more than two decades ago, yet we still have not achieved the two-state solution that was envisaged, but there is absolutely no justification for the sorts of attacks we have seen.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

25. Does the Minister agree that it certainly does not help that the Palestinian Authority encourages incitement against Israel?

[Mr Ellwood]

President Abbas has condemned the use of violence and reiterated the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to reaching a political solution by peaceful means. We have seen tensions spike in the past, but it does seem different this time, with young people seemingly unafraid of death and brandishing knives, knowing what the consequences will be. The pattern so far has been one of lone wolf, low-tech attacks, but the escalation and the tensions are certainly worrying.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Peter Bone

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ellwood]

Well, I ask the hon. Gentleman what is the right thing. We can only use this card once, and we need to use it sensibly. We need to bring parties back to the table. This Government share Parliament’s commitment to recognising a Palestinian state but as a contribution to a negotiated two-state solution. We are in the process of getting people back around the table. That is what John Kerry is committed to, and that is what should happen next.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I accept what the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) said about the Back-Bench debate, and I think it was unfortunate that the Government did not ask more Members to be here to express those views. I take the view myself that if we are going to get peace, the overall position is that a recognition of Palestine has to come at the same time as an overall peace agreement. Do the Government agree that that is the best way forward?

[Mr Ellwood]

I pay tribute not only to the debate that took place in this Chamber but the debate that took place yesterday called by the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) and prompted by an e-petition signed by over 100,000 constituents. We do pay attention to these issues. Bilateral recognition would not end the occupation. Without a negotiated settlement, the occupation and the problems that come with it would still continue. That is why, at the stage we are at now, we must invite people back to the table, and I hope this will happen very soon.

Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Peter Bone

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bone]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. There is no guarantee at all. I am arguing that because of the removal of the restrictions, we will break that important promise.

It is common sense for us as a country to continue the restrictions, and the only obstacle to that is the European Union. That, however, is not an arrangement that the British people signed up to. The last time the people had a vote on the European Economic Community was in 1975. Needless to say, we now have an EU. When the EEC was in existence, it was a small group of prosperous western European countries. Now, the EU takes in poorer countries in central Europe that were formerly in the communist bloc. Old EU regulations and laws that applied to the European Economic Community have become seriously out of date; as a result, the EU is forcing on us a wave of immigration that the British public do not want and did not vote for, and that will have negative repercussions for our economy and our people.

This is the time when we need to stand up to the European Union and say, “Enough is enough.” Parliament is answerable to the British people, and therefore has sovereignty over the UK’s borders. We do not need to be told by a post-democratic body what our immigration policy is. Earlier this year, the Prime Minister stated that our country should welcome only those who came here to work hard. Relaxing the current arrangements and deregulating immigration from these two countries would do exactly the opposite.

I thoroughly welcome the Government’s Immigration Bill, and the proposals to restrict the access that immigrants have to the wealth of benefits that we offer. One such proposal is for an initial three-month period before benefits can be claimed. Migration Watch UK concludes that there are “very strong financial incentives” for Bulgarians and Romanians to move to the UK, partly due to the much higher wages and living standards in the United Kingdom.

[Mr Ellwood]

I agree with my hon. Friend that EU laws are out of date, and that the income per capita is different in other countries, and that that is why people might want to move, but does he agree that rules are already in place allowing any Bulgarian or Romanian to come and gain work here? Doctors, nurses and so on can come already under the current arrangements, so my question is: who will be in the tranche of people arriving in January and February?

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[Mr Ellwood]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I listened to his contribution earlier too. I was making the point that, during the past decade, huge mistakes have been made—I will discuss them shortly—but now there are measures in place to rectify that situation.

I am honoured to represent Bournemouth East, a wonderful part of Great Britain that very much reflects the national approach to running a liberal, open, free market economy. As a seaside town, we are reliant on both domestic and overseas visitors. We are served by an international airport and we have a university that is internationally recognised as one of the best in the world for digital and creative arts. We attract international businesses. JP Morgan, a US bank, and one of the biggest banks, is the largest employer in Bournemouth; our water company is run by a Malaysian company; our Yellow Buses transport company is French-owned; and, yes, the football club is owned by a Russian. Our tourism sector is huge. We are heavily reliant on overseas workers to do the jobs many British people refuse to do, because the dog’s breakfast of our benefits system has perverse incentives, resulting in people being worse off if they gain part-time employment. That left gaps in the employment market that needed to be filled.

I worry that, unless our debate on immigration is measured, rational and, of course, resolute, the unintended consequence of leaping to solutions, such as those calls we heard today to leave the EU, will damage or possibly kill off genuine international interest in inward-investment opportunities, as well as export prospects and British influence abroad. The perception will prevail—indeed, it will be promoted by other countries that are competing against us—that Britain is not open for business.

We should not forget our heritage and who we are. We are a nation with a rich history of immigration, as my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark), who is sadly no longer in his place, articulated in a previous immigration debate. This island has been invaded, or settled in other forms, by Angles, Jutes and Norsemen in the dark ages, Normans, Jews and Huguenots in the middle ages, Italians and Irishmen in the 1800s and, more recently, people from the Caribbean and the Asian sector, as well. Our monarchy was, on more than one occasion, short of an obvious candidate for the top job, and we invited outsiders to fill that post, such as William and Mary of Orange, for example, or George I, Queen Anne having no surviving children. We need to be honest about our past.

We have also taken more than a shine to emigrating to all corners of the globe in the past 600 years. Britain has prospered, since the war, thanks to expanding trade links with Europe, and British and European security has improved, thanks to Britain championing the case for bringing nations that languished behind the iron curtain into NATO and the EU. We have been one of the strongest supporters of the single market. Naturally, our concerns about Bulgaria and Romania will be repeated when, in due course, Turkey, Ukraine and Bosnia hopefully enter the wider market. It is in our interests that the European market should grow, for all our citizens and businesses to have the opportunity to work in other European countries.

It is no coincidence that our attitude to being international now means that 80% of the cars that we produce are exported, 50% of them into the EU. That would not happen if we did not have the approach to internationalism that we have today.

[Mr Bone]

It is blatantly obvious that, when there is a £50 billion current account deficit with the EU, it will continue to trade with us and export. It is absurd to make any other argument.

[Mr Ellwood]

Again, I am invited to wander away from the debate about immigration, into the wider, albeit important, debate about the virtues of the EU. What would happen if we went down my hon. Friend’s route and left the EU? If he thinks for a second that the countries remaining in Europe would leave tariffs as they are or allow us to have similar tariffs to Switzerland, and so on, he is wrong. We would then be seen as the competition and France would be first to say, “Let’s make it tougher for Britain to participate or trade with us.” That is exactly what would happen.

There is a notion that we can somehow say no to the EU or park the matter to one side and look to the emerging markets. Let us take one huge example. We tried to sell the Eurofighter to India, a close Commonwealth country, but it went with the French Rafale aircraft instead. It is not so simple to say, “Let’s ignore the EU” and suddenly embrace the Commonwealth, which we anticipate would have closer relationships with us.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Peter Bone

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

3. What his most recent estimate is of the financial effect on businesses of the present level of regulation.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

5. What his most recent estimate is of the financial effect on businesses of the present level of regulation.