David Davis MP – 24plusnews.co.uk

Matt Kilcoyne: Vaccine certification is an idea that should be allowed to sink or swim in a free market

31 Mar

Matt Kilcoyne is Head Of Communications at the Adam Smith Institute.

Since vaccines started being approved by British regulators at the very end of last year, the country has undergone a psychological transformation unlike any in my lifetime.

From fear of an unending cycle of lockdowns and limited freedoms came news from one Kate Bingham. Her work gave purpose to the privations that were coming, helped all of us that kept faith that there would be end to this disease by human ingenuity and within time to mean our actions to save lives, avoid economic scarring and adaption to a non-normal economic situation that would then have to be readjusted to soon after at even further cost too.

Given the mortality rates we’ve seen across the world and even here with extensive curtailment of our ancient liberties, it is reasonable to say the number of lives Bingham has saved alone will number in the tens if not hundreds of thousands and given greater evidence to the rightness of the choice to retain the jobs held in stasis by Bank of England furlough scheme.

These people and jobs saved through her tight and spread-bet pre-purchase agreements and the use of Britain’s comparative advantage in legal agreements, trade credit and other forward payment mechanism, and experience dealing with and preparing for rogue states that shut down exports or expropriate private property mean I fully back calls for Bingham to be elevated to a Duchess should it please Her Majesty.

The change in the psyche and morale of the British people her decisions enabled means that Cabinet can take positive decisions of true gravitas in a time of true national and international crisis. This requires careful and assured action. It might require prompt, wide impacting, and sensitive personal and national topics.

It could, let’s say for the sake of argument, include things like vaccination certificates for Covid. The idea hits all the right buttons to rile everyone in such divergent ways that they’ll talk past one another and fail to see the issues that are being discussed, why, and what is actually being proposed.

The first thing to say is that you personally have a right to full knowledge of medical data and records that are kept on you, assuming you are of appropriate age and sound mind. The governments within the UK have a near monopoly of service provision for healthcare save for all the private GPs that actually have a local duty of care to you to hold and maintain your personal records. They also can, via their contracts of supply and commissioning of care of other services with the NHS and associated parts, pass data onto third parties with your consent.

The lack of a series of principles over the free use of data between consenting individuals and third parties, and the lack of direction even by government towards the suitability or otherwise, never mind the likely legal consequences of using the data of vaccine take up to determine suitability of access to new or existing roles.

In the space provided by a lack of determination in good time, trade associations burned by huge restrictions announced against their members’ interests and often provided with evidence after the event with the scope and scale of restrictions decided by committees rather than parliament in the primary role.

All action must now and in future, and should’ve been the case throughout the pandemic, be based upon scientifically testable hypotheses, all the reasoning deduced and relied upon and all assumptions set out.

It is telling of a lack of trust between governed and government that pubs do not trust the word of a party that prides itself as being one of business to promote policies as we get back to the business of living that would enable them as far as possible now they’ve jabbed enough arms to reduce risk of reinfection and mortality.

Laws from now should be freedom-oriented to remind Tory voters that actively value the ability to enjoy the things that make life worth living they will be able to enjoy them. Around 20 per cent of publicans say they want to access punters and staff for proof of vaccines to ensure their, their staff and all of their families’ health.

The Government’s role here is to ensure that individuals have access to the ability to consent to their records being displayed by an accredited source (whether just their GP signing and by word of their bond confirming, or a company that facilitates access that across multiple GPs in a usable format for other firms without contravening data protection rules).

We know well the issue of mission creep with ID cards a totemic Tory issue after the defeat of Tony Blair’s flagship policy and David Davis’ whole career centred around civil liberties. But this is a facilitation not a coercion or anything mandated. Even if Blair is a principle agent of the campaign to promote their use — and I share concerns about the number of meetings he has had with serious ministers and civil servants on the topic given a the financial gain any company could get from providing either national or international accreditation of such valuable information on behalf of an individual. And elsewhere yellow fever and rabies certificates are in use regularly when crossing borders. Nigeria could teach us a thing or two about digital storage and transfer of said data and forgeries still emerging.

Government can signal intent on rejection of mandate by declaring it will not check status upon leaving the country or ahead of access to existing NHS services. The areas where people will encounter officialdom most keenly.

Liberalism demands freedoms to associate and self organise, and Conservativism demands the liberties of the individual by upheld by institutions acting in their care. Vaccine certification is actually a simple idea that should be allowed to sink or swim in a free market. Let’s let them, and keep an eye on vested interests with cosy relationships benefiting friends for sure. But let’s enable anything that let’s us live our lives again.

The 29 Conservative MPs who supported the China genocide amendment

23 Mar

Adam Afriyie
David Amess
Bob Blackman
Crispin Blunt
Peter Bone

Andrew Bridgen
Reman Chishti
Christopher Chope
David Davis
Richard Drax

Ian Duncan Smith
Mark Francois
Nusrat Ghani
Sally-Ann Hart
Philip Hollobone

Jeremy Hunt
Bernard Jenkin
Andrew Lewer
Julian Lewis
Tim Loughton

Craig Mackinlay
Kieran Mullan
Caroline Nokes
Matthew Offord
Andrew Rossindell

Bob Seely
Derek Thomas
Charles Walker
David Warburton

Henry Hill: As the election looms, the tide seems finally to be turning against the Scottish Nationalists

18 Mar

This week marked something of a watershed moment, certainly for the Salmond/Sturgeon scandal and perhaps yet for devolution too. After months of watching the Scottish Government hamstring the official Holyrood inquiry into its mishandling of allegations against Alex Salmond, Westminster stepped in.

Liam Fox prepared the way, quizzing the Prime Minister and then the Speaker about Parliament’s responsibility towards civil servants in Scotland. As part of the broader Home Civil Service, it follows that they are accountable to – and should be able to call on the support of – their most senior colleagues in London. And that there is a Minister somewhere answerable to Parliament about them.

Then David Davis stepped up, using parliamentary privilege to put into the public domain what he claimed was fresh evidence he had received from a whistle blower about the conduct of the Scottish Government – evidence his source apparently claims ‘point to collusion, perjury, up to criminal conspiracy’. I wrote up his speech in detail yesterday.

Both interventions reflect a potential new front opening up in the constitutional battle between the Union and its opponents. Where the UK Internal Market Act has seen the Government start to assert itself more in previously devolved spheres, this represents the legislature stepping up to its responsibilities.

Unionists won’t want to rock the boat too much ahead of May’s Scottish elections. But when those are over, there is an interesting debate to be had about procedural or institutional changes that could address the issues these interventions have raised – perhaps bundling privilege for MSPs with stronger lines of accountability for civil servants, or even reviving Fox’s old idea of drawing an upper house for the Scottish Parliament out of the House of Lords. I’ll be looking at this in more detail later.

In the meantime, the polls continue to show a slide in the SNP’s support. They’re still on track to hold on to power in Edinburgh, but it looks as if whatever magic insulated their public standing from the torrent of bad stories their government was generating may finally be running out of steam. When you see Nationalist ministers snarling about ‘rigged polls’, and SNP efforts to put ‘indyref2’ on the ballot paper, you know they’re spooked. The latter play is especially important because it suggests they may be falling back on their (very substantial) core vote.

There have also been a string of polls from different companies putting the Union ahead in a hypothetical second referendum. Obviously this no more represents the ‘settled will’ of the Scots than did the previous string of pro-separation results, but it will all make it easier for the Prime Minister to maintain his opposition towards a granting a re-run of 2014.

One poll, commissioned by campaign group Scotland in Union, used the EU referendums Leave/Remain framing and delivered a pro-UK share of 57 per cent – a remarkable illustration of how high the stakes would be in negotiating the question and how reckless was David Cameron to concede so much to the SNP ahead of the 2014 vote.

The story continues to develop: just two days ago, after pressure from the Conservatives, the Scottish Government have finally published their own review into the Salmond fiasco, which calls for the process to be taken out of the hands of civil servants.There will doubtless be more to come in the weeks ahead.

Unionists will struggle to oust Sturgeon as First Minister. But she has already served in that role for seven years, and is finally showing signs of political mortality. If they can do enough to let Boris Johnson kick independence into the long grass, that might very well be enough.

Davis delivers yet more evidence of shady behaviour by the SNP – but will it matter?

17 Mar

Last week, we wrote about Liam Fox’s suggestion that Parliament might have a legitimate role to play in the political drama unfolding in Scotland, because the entire Home Civil Service, of which the Civil Service in Scotland is part, is answerable to it.

Yesterday, David Davis justified his own intervention in the Salmond/Sturgeon saga on different grounds: that due to shortcomings in the way New Labour set up the Scottish Parliament in 1998, he was able to speak with the protection of parliamentary privilege where MSPs were not.

Alex Massie dismisses his calls for an even more powerful Scottish Parliament as ‘concern trolling’, and one must hope so. But regardless of his motives, his speech touched on several different dimensions of this complex and confusing story. What did he say?

Initial complaints

For the benefit of those who haven’t been following the story in granular detail, Davis set out just how the Scottish Government first botched the investigation of allegations of sexual misconduct against Alex Salmond.

He highlighted how the former First Minister was investigated under a brand-new set of procedures. That these new system was lopsided, as it applied retro-actively to politicians but not to civil servants. How the Head of Propriety and Ethics in Whitehall “expressed discomfort” at this, but received no reply. But most importantly:

“However, the Scottish Government also ignored its own policy, the new policy and appointed an Investigating Officer who it emerged had had prior contact with the complainants. And not just any contact. A potential complainant was asked for their input on the draft procedure before they had formally made their complaint.”

One does not need to buy Salmond’s allegations of a conspiracy to see why he might be suspicious of a stitch-up.

Legal challenge

As we know, the former First Minister then brought a judicial review against the policy. He won, and was awarded costs “at a punitive level reserved for defences conducted ‘incompetently or unreasonably’, in Davis’ words.

When the Scottish Government was finally compelled, by the threat of a vote of no confidence in John Swinney, to publish its legal advice on the case, it emerged that it had insisted on fighting on for months against the advice of its own lawyers. Indeed, that it appeared to have actually misled its counsel, and caused them “extreme professional embarrassment” in the process. Davis:

“This was a government that actively withheld important, relevant information. In one case a critically relevant email was actively removed from an information bundle that was going to the court and which had already been approved by government counsel.”

The Scottish Government has yet to provide a compelling explanation for why the decision was made to fight on, at such huge public expense, when the lawyers insisted their case was doomed. The meetings where the decisions were taken were allegedly, and remarkably, not minuted. So again, one can see why Salmond might think they were hoping to string things out long enough that events overtook it and the story was eclipsed by his criminal trial.

The role of the Lord Advocate

Davis zeroed in on the role of the Lord Advocate, the Scottish equivalent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who heads the Crown Office. Conspiracists have focused on the fact that the Lord Advocate sits in the Scottish Cabinet, and Davis too played up ‘separation of powers’ concerns. First, in relation to the above-mentioned court case:

“In one case a critically relevant email was actively removed from an information bundle that was going to the court and which had already been approved by government counsel. I don’t know who took that email out – I have it here. I don’t know who took it out, I don’t know who gave the instruction. But in my view the removal of that document would be a summary dismissal offence, and possibly a criminal offence. At the very least it would be in contempt of court. And yet over his three evidence sessions the Lord Advocate, the Chief Law Officer of Scotland, did not see fit to mention this crucial incident to a Parliamentary committee trying to get to the truth.”

Second, he highlighted how the Crown Office intervened to censor evidence being given to the Holyrood committee investigating the Scottish Government’s mishandling of the initial complaints. This was allegedly to protect the identity of the complainants, yet when the Spectator published the evidence online it revealed that the redacted passages referred instead to allegations that Nicola Sturgeon broke the ministerial code:

“But when The Spectator went to court to secure the publication of that evidence, the Crown Office made no objection whatsoever to the paragraphs it bullied the Holyrood inquiry to redact. This leaves an absurd situation where the inquiry cannot speak about evidence that is freely available to anyone with an internet connection. The redactions are clearly therefore not designed to protect the complainants. They are designed to protect the First Minister from accountability to the inquiry.”

The Crown Office’s intervention meant MSPs could not question witnesses about the contents, even though they were publicly available online.

The SNP

Perhaps the most serious allegation, however, was Davis’ claim to have new evidence, passed to him by a whistleblower, that senior figures in the Scottish National Party seem to have been playing an active role in trying to create a case against Salmond:

“…these texts show that there was a concerted effort by senior members of the SNP to encourage complaints. The messages suggest that SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell coordinated Ruddick and Iain McCann, the SNP’s Compliance Officer, in the handling of specific complainants. On the 28^th September, a month after the police started their investigation of the criminal case, McCann expressed great disappointment to Ruddick that someone who had promised to deliver five complainants to him by the end of the week had come empty or ‘overreached’ as he put it.”

Davis noted that one complainant said she felt “pressured, rather than supported”. That this process of ‘fishing’ – in the words of Sue Ruddick, the SNP’s Chief Operating Officer – continued after the criminal investigation into Salmond had begun. That other SNP members knew about this ‘witch hunt’ in the words of one, since 2018. That Peter Murrell’s claim that his texts about ‘pressurising’ the detectives investigating the case were out of character no longer stacks up.

Furthermore, Davis then claimed to have it “on good authority” that civil servants investigating the allegations against Salmond were complaining about ‘v bad’ interference from Liz Lloyd, Sturgeon’s Chief of Staff, in February 2018. The Scottish Government says: “The comment read out by Mr Davis in relation to the chief of staff does not relate to Ms A or Ms B and, at that time, she was not aware that there was any connection to the former first minister”.

But if so, why was Lloyd interfering? And if not, it shows that she knew of the Salmond case months before she told the Scottish Parliament she did.

So what?

This is a story with so many moving parts that it can be hard to pin down what’s important. Salmond’s wilder allegations of a grand conspiracy only muddy the waters further – and nothing that comes out as this story develops will erase the fact that the allegations against him were made, and the police felt them serious enough to take them to court.

Likewise, we should treat the claim of Davis’ whistleblower that the new evidence ‘point to collusion, perjury, up to criminal conspiracy’ with caution. It might, but leaks can serve agendas just as cover-ups do.

Sturgeon’s opponents have focused on the question of what the First Minister knew and when. It seems extremely unlikely that all of this could have been going on inside so centralised a party as the SNP without the leader of that party being informed. But if she did know, then Sturgeon misled the Scottish Parliament. In another universe, that might be a resigning issue. As might burning half a million pounds of taxpayers’ money losing a legal challenge one had to mislead one’s lawyers to fight at all.

But by drawing this out as long as it has, the Scottish Government may have got close enough to the upcoming Holyrood elections to stave off calls for the First Minister’s resignation. Sturgeon can simply say that it is for the Scottish electorate to judge her. (As Ian Smart points out, she appears to have neutered James Hamilton QC’s investigation into whether or not she broke the Ministerial Code in a like fashion.)

But Davis’ revelations will, alongside other developments only deepen the shadows this affair will cast over the SNP’s re-election campaign, just as polling suggests the scandal is finally starting to undermine the Nationalists’ position with the voters. And it may yet be that MPs at Westminster can uncover the smoking gun their colleagues at Holyrood have failed to turn up.

Andrew Lewer: It’s time to turn the taxpayer funding of left-wing student union campaigning

20 Jan

Andrew Lewer is MP for Northampton South. He is founder and Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Independent Education,

Together with twenty other Conservative Members of Parliament I have written to the Prime Minister urging him to tackle the problem of student union political activism. While successive Conservative Governments have tackled the problems posed by trade union radicalism, student union leftist activism has been left relatively untouched.

Student unions are now at the forefront of the so-called culture wars, pursuing a narrow ‘social justice’ political agenda focused on tackling alleged ‘structural oppression’ in society.

Moreover, they seek to limit free speech on campus, variously by blocking the sale of certain publications, barring speakers or seeking to approve their speeches in advance, blocking the formation of free speech societies, preventing certain groups from participating in freshers’ fairs, and imposing excessive red tape to make it difficult to invite speakers of whom they disapprove.

Reform of student unions is central to implementing the Conservative Manifesto commitment to strengthen free speech in universities. Why this matters so much was underlined in a superb speech from David Davis on the crucial nature of free speech in universities in a Ten Minute Rule Bill earlier this week, citing Voltaire and the Bill of Rights.

Students themselves are alienated from student unions. Research shows that only around ten per cent of students vote in student union elections, with less than three per cent of students electing delegates to the National Union of Students (NUS), demonstrating the unrepresentative nature of that left-wing activist body. Judging by its social media activity, NUS’s main current focus is ‘decolonising the curriculum’.

Of course, in some cases a higher turnout is achieved. For example a truly magnificent four per cent of students participated in last November’s election of NUS delegates at Cambridge University. It is abundantly clear that the vast majority of students have no interest in either the NUS or activist/political student unions, and resent being bullied and hectored by leftist student politicos.

It is inappropriate for taxpayers to have to foot half the £165 million bill for student unions, and for students themselves to be forced to pay the other half, given this kind of activity.

We should adopt a similar approach to that applied to trade union reform. Students should have to actively opt-in to become members of student unions and the NUS, and just like the strike ballot threshold, consideration should be given to a membership and election turnout threshold, which student unions should be required to reach before they can play any part in university governance.

There is a strong case for student unions being limited to supporting social and sports activities, as well as academic representation. Meanwhile, if any students wish to fund political activism or join the NUS they should of course be free to do so, but at their own expense and paying any subscriptions from their own pockets.

Students need to be freed from student unions and allowed to get on and enjoy their time at university without suffering constant political harassment. We very much hope that action will be taken by the Government as soon as Covid permits its attention to return to the domestic reform agenda.

The 33 Conservative MPs who rebelled over the Genocide Amendment

19 Jan

Ahmad Khan, Imran
Amess, David
Blackman, Bob
Blunt, Crispin
Bridgen, Andrew

Crouch, Tracey
Davis, David
Djanogly, Jonathan
Duncan Smith, Iain
Ellwood, Tobias

Francois, Mark
Ghani, Nusrat
Gillan, Cheryl
Gray, James
Green, Damian

Hart, Sally-Anne (pictured)
Hoare, Simon
Hollobone, Philip
Jenkin, Bernard
Latham, Pauline

Lewer, Andrew
Lewis, Julian
Loughton, Tim
Mackinlay, Craig
Nokes, Caroline

Richards, Nicola
Rossindell, Andrew
Seely, Bob
Tugendhat, Tom
Wakeford, Christian

Walker, Charles
Warburton, David
Wragg, William

–

Today’s genocide amendment had no relation whatsoever to recent votes on Covid – or other major rebellions that this site has been chronicling.

But there is considerable overlap between the rebels on those lists and on this one. And even newcomers to our records such as Sally-Ann Hart and Nicola Richards have voted against the Government previously (though rarely).

Regardless of the merits or otherwise of the amendment, lists of those defying the whips now have a certain predictability.

Andrew Rosindell: How close we came to waking up in the backstop

8 Jan

Andrew Rosindell is the MP for Romford.

How close we came to waking up on January 1 trapped in the backstop. That misery would have been quickly overtaken by the new national lockdown announced on Monday night. But this would in no way have diminished in the longer-term the ramifications of being trapped in a customs union with no way out.

To the true Brexiteers, the sensible outcome to the Brexit process was always a Canada-style free trade agreement which took back control of our laws, money, borders and waters, while still allowing both the UK and the EU to trade together as equal partners on mutually-beneficial terms.

Unfortunately the EU spent the next few years in a desperate and arrogant attempt to punish our nation for the Brexit vote. It tried to trap our nation in a customs union, demanded tens of billions in exit fees, demanded a continuing role for its courts in UK affairs and made blood-curdling threats of economic punishment.

In a way it showed self-awareness. Because it is only with threats and traps – much in the fashion of the Chinese Communist regime (with whom the EU is now engaging in a nauseating romance) – does EU membership become preferable to the freedom of being a sovereign, independent nation.

All told, the EU generally appeared aghast at the affirmations by the British people of their democratic right to decide their future. To me this demonstrated that the only way out was a completely clean break: to walk away, for good if necessary.

It is why I and my Spartan colleagues voted on three separate occasions against Theresa May’s Brexit deal. If we hadn’t held out against the pleas of our colleagues, from both the Remain and Brexit wings of the party, then we would have woken up on New Year’s Day trapped in the backstop. What should have been a moment of restored sovereignty would simply be a new future paralysed by the EU’s protectionist trading bloc.

The Prime Minister voted for that deal, at the third attempt. I believe he feared for Brexit if the deal wasn’t passed. Fortunately for him, the Spartans gave Brexit a chance. And once Boris was at the reigns he was always ready to walk away. He realised no deal really is better than a bad deal.

With this strategy he was able to bring before the House of Commons an agreement which facilitates free trade with zero quotas and tariffs, without the UK being part of the Single Market or Customs Union and with no control over us by the European Court of Justice.

It will give us the freedom to chart our own course. It will mean the establishment of freeports and new enterprise zones to turbocharge the regions. It means we can change our VAT policy, for example on home insulation products as my friend and colleague John Redwood has noted.

It means we can revitalise nationally important industries with targeted support, such as shipbuilding. It means we can sign free trade deals with our closest friends and allies in the Commonwealth, and improve economic ties with some of the fastest growing economies.

Liz Truss, the Secretary of State for International Trade, has already negotiated trade deals with 61 countries, including one deal, the UK-Japan FTA which goes beyond the existing EU-Japan agreement, particularly on data and digital matters. The backstop would have precluded much of this.

The new agreement with the EU is not perfect. There are flaws in the deal. The transition period for fisheries is too long, the Northern Ireland protocol threatens to divide our country and I am nervous of the separate deal on Gibraltar, given Spain’s record.

Finally, I was disappointed that our British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies did not seem to be fully included. I also share David Davis’s comments on this website, where he highlights how far ahead of the EU we are in many areas of regulation, particularly animal welfare, but also on energy and labour law. Any arbitration panel which rules on deviations from the “level playing field” must recognise that there is no “level playing field” at present. It is the EU undercutting the UK in many ways.

There are problems, then. However, I and my colleagues have come to the conclusion that this is still a good agreement: it restores our sovereignty, avoids temporary disruption of ‘no deal’ and avoids the acrimony which would define UK-EU relations going forward if no agreement had been reached.

There is nothing in the agreement which compromises our sovereignty in the manner of the backstop. Yet where there are flaws, there are fights still to be had. I have demonstrated that I am ready for these battles, as have my fellow Spartans.

For now, let’s celebrate the restoration of sovereignty to these islands and move onto the next challenge: getting the country vaccinated, lifting these Covid-19 restrictions, and revving up the UK economy for a new, better, more prosperous and, I hope, a more united decade.

The forty-two Conservative MPs who voted against the Government on the 10pm curfew

13 Oct

Ahmad Khan, Imran
Amess, David
Baker, Steve
Baldwin, Harriett
Blackman, Bob

Blunt, Crispin
Bone, Peter
Brady, Graham
Chope, Christopher
Clifton-Brown, Sir Geoffrey

Daly, James
Davies, Philip
Davis, David
Davison, Dehenna
Doyle-Price, Jackie

Drax, Richard
Fysh, Marcus
Ghani, Nusrat
Green, Chris (pictured)
Hunt, Tom

Latham, Mrs Pauline
Loder, Chris
Loughton, Tim
Mangnall, Anthony
McCartney, Karl

McVey, Esther
Merriman, Huw
Morris, Anne Marie
Redwood, rh John
Rosindell, Andrew

Sambrook, Gary
Seely, Bob
Smith, Henry
Swayne, rh Sir Desmond
Syms, Sir Robert

Thomas, Derek
Tracey, Craig
Vickers, Matt
Wakeford, Christian
Walker, Sir Charles

Watling, Giles
Wragg, William

Plus two tellers – Philip Hollobone and Craig Mackinlay.

– – –

Seven Tory MPs voted against the Government on renewing the Coronavirus Act.
Twelve voted against the Government over the rule of six.
Now we have 42 this evening – enough to imperil the Government’s majority in the event of all opposition parties that attend Westminster voting against it too.
Fifty-six signed the Brady amendment, but it was never voted on, and wasn’t a measure related directly to Government policy on the virus.
We wrote last week that Conservative backbench protests would gain “volume and velocity”, and so it is proving.
There’s a strong though not total overlap between these lockdown sceptics and Eurosceptics.
We count eight members from the 2019 intake – and a big tranche from pre-2010 intakes.
Chris Green resigned as a PPS to vote against the measure.
He’s a Bolton MP and there’s clearly unhappiness there about these latest restrictions.

David Gauke: Johnson’s Covid policy – and why it’s opening up a rift between him and his traditional Tory supporters

26 Sep

David Gauke is a former Justice Secretary, and was an independent candidate in South-West Hertfordshire at last year’s general election.

For an amendment of no legal force that may not even be called, Graham Brady’s proposal that there should approve in advance any Covid-19 restrictions is of real significance.

On the face of it, it is an amendment that is more about process than substance – the extent to which Parliament, rather than just the executive, has a say on future restrictions. But in reality, it also exposes the divide between the position of the Government – and the Prime Minister in particular – and many of his Parliamentary colleagues on how far we should go in attempting to stop the spread of the virus. For the first time in many years, Boris Johnson’s position puts him at odds with the instincts of many on the right of the Conservative Party. What is more, his position appears to put him at odds with his own instincts.

The Coronavirus crisis has been immensely difficult for the Prime Minister. In part, that has been due to his own ill-health that took him out of action at the peak of the virus, and from which he has made a slow and painful recovery (although, from what I hear, he is now physically in good shape).

t has also been a crisis that has exposed his longstanding inability to grasp detail. A Prime Minister was needed to get Whitehall focused on the virus in February, identify and prioritise testing and tracing and spot that the Department for Education was heading for a fall with its approach to exam results. On all these issues, he appears to have been absent.

However, I suspect that the most challenging aspect of recent months for Johnson is that he has felt compelled to do things that alien to his normal approach to life. By restricting the freedoms of his fellow citizens, he is not acting like the great admirer of Mayor of Amity Island, the foe of the doomsters and gloomsters, the critic of pettifogging bureaucrats, the ‘freedom-loving, twinkly-eyed, Rabelaisian character’ for whom Toby Young – and many others – voted.

Why has this happened? His own experience of the virus may be a factor, but one can only conclude that he has been convinced that there is a real risk that, without further action, the virus will spread more widely – including to the vulnerable, and that this will result in very large numbers of deaths. Given the widely-held view that we locked down too late in March, this would not just be a health disaster but a political one as well.

His libertarian critics argue that these measures are panicked and unnecessary. There is anger over the projections of a weekly doubling of cases (a much worse trajectory than France and Spain have followed). Some point to Sweden or Brazil – countries that have been hit hard, but now have falling or stable levels of infection – to argue that herd immunity comes quicker than we previously thought, perhaps because of T cell immunity.

Maybe these critics are right; I certainly hope that they are. There are reputable scientists who are making the case, and we all want to believe those that are telling us that it is all going to be alright. But there are also reputable scientists who are making the opposite case, who are arguing that we should be tightening up further and faster (a view, incidentally, that has a lot of public support).

This is where the job of Prime Minister is a difficult and lonely one. I think we all know where Johnson would stand on this issue if he were still a Daily Telegraph columnist. We can also take a good guess as to his approach if someone else was Prime Minister, and he was an ambitious backbencher with a desire to free the ball from the back of the scrum.

But he is not a columnist nor a backbencher but the person who has t person who has to make the decision. And unlike some decisions that a Prime Minister might make, if he gets it wrong the consequences will be both enormous and very quickly apparent to all.

So when faced with advice that the virus was now spreading strongly and that, without intervention, deaths would soon rise substantially, Johnson acted in much the same way as any recent Prime Minister would have done. Maybe his libertarian instincts softened some of the new restrictions, but essentially he has made a decision to be risk averse; to be conventional.

This is not the first time during the pandemic that he has reached that conclusion. But it has also been obvious that this sits uneasily with him. He does not like restricting people’s liberties (not a bad quality, by and large) and he likes to tell people good news. He has promised we would have this licked by July and then by Christmas. He has urged us back to our offices when it was predictable (indeed, predicted that he would soon have to reverse that advice. Even on Tuesday, he seemed to consider it a matter of national pride that we, as a great freedom-loving people, have not been following the rules. The old Johnsom instinct is hard to suppress.

The consequence of this internal conflict is inconsistency and muddled messages. His natural supporters – those who value freedom and independence from the State and are most sceptical about the advice of experts – are in revolt. This has manifested itself in signatures for the Brady amendment. There are signatories from across the Conservative Party spectrum, but they notably include big Brexiteer beasts such as David Davis, Iain Duncan Smith, Steve Baker and Bernard Jenkin. These could be dangerous opponents.

Of course, Covid is not the only issue where the Prime Minister is going to have to make a big choice in the next few weeks. Does he make the necessary concessions in order to conclude a Free Trade Agreement with the EU before the end of the transition period? Yesterday, James Forsyth suggested that a deal was close and that the UK might take a more flexible approach to the negotiations, choosing to fight some battles in the future (‘you have to make it through the short term to get to the long term’ says James, using language that will sound very familiar to anyone who served in Cabinet with Michael Gove in 2018-19).

The piece suggests that the Prime Minister is ‘totally focused on Covid’. But he will soon have to make a choice. On the one hand, he will be receiving advice from officials that the adverse consequences of No Deal are very significant, especially for a fragile economy. On the other hand, his instincts presumably tell him that this is all over-stated gloomsterism.

The Prime Minister knows that the instinct to take a risk, to chance it, to tell the experts to go to hell, is very strong both within himself and amongst many of his Parliamentary colleagues. He is already defying those instincts on one issue. If he is to take the necessary steps to get a Brexit deal (and I hope he does), he is going to have to defy those instincts on a second issue, too. Given that he is already in danger of losing his hold over his traditional allies, it is not obvious that he will.

Benedict Rogers: It’s time for Raab to bring Magnitsky sanctions to bear on those oppressing Hong Kong

25 Aug

Benedict Rogers is co-founder and Chair of Hong Kong Watch, co-founder and Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.

It is not often that one sees Iain Duncan Smith, John McDonnell, Natalie Bennett, Andrew Adonis, Alistair Carmichael and the Scottish Nationalists on the same page.

Bringing the former Conservative Party leader and Brexiteer together with the former Labour Shadow Chancellor, the former Green Party leader, the former Labour minister and leading Remainer, the Liberal Democrats foreign affairs spokesperson, and two SNP MPs is an achievement – and as far as I can see it is Carrie Lam’s, the Hong Kong Chief Executive, only achievement.

Last week these politicians, together with David Davis, the former Brexit Secretary, Helena Kennedy, a leading human rights barrister and Labour peer, and 12 other Parliamentarians, wrote to the Foreign Secretary in support of calls for the imposition of targeted Magnitsky sanctions against Hong Kong and Chinese government officials responsible for grave human rights violations and a flagrant breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

Their letter follows a personal appeal to Dominic Raab by Nathan Law, the highest-profile pro-democracy activist to escape Hong Kong since the imposition of the new draconian national security law on 1 July.

In 2016, Law was elected Hong Kong’s youngest ever legislator, at the age of 23, but was disqualified the following year for quoting Mahatma Gandhi when he took his oath of office. He was then sentenced to eight months in jail for his role in leading the 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement protests. In his letter, Law writes:

“As a party to the legally binding Sino British Joint Declaration, the United Kingdom holds a unique position in advocating for Hong Kong. I earnestly hope that the UK government would take the important step to sanction Ms Carrie Lam and other officials involved, so to send a clear signal –– not just to Beijing, but also to other countries in the free world that we ought to stand firm against an oppressive regime which disrespects both their citizens’ rights and the international norms. Please safeguard our shared belief in freedom and human rights as well as the pursuit of democracy in Hong Kong. Please stand with Hong Kong.”

Since the imposition of the national security law on Hong Kong by Beijing, Britain has responded robustly, by announcing a generous package to allow Hong Kongers who hold British National Overseas (BNO) passports to come to the UK on a “pathway to citizenship”, and by suspending our extradition agreement with Hong Kong. These are very welcome steps, but there is much more than needs to be done.

Although the new law has only been in place for less than two months, we are already seeing its dramatic impact on Hong Kong. The arrest of several prominent activists, particularly the entrepreneur and media proprieter Jimmy Lai, the police raid on his pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, and the arrest of Law’s colleague Agnes Chow and ITN reporter Wilson Li; the issuing of arrest warrants for six Hong Kong activists outside Hong Kong, including Law; and the banning of slogans, the withdrawal of pro-democracy books from libraries and the censorship of school textbooks; all indicate the end of Hong Kong’s autonomy under “one country, two systems” and the destruction of the city’s fundamental rights and freedoms.

It is right for the British Government to respond to events proportionately, and with a staggered approach. There is no point in firing all our ammunition in one go, and then having nothing left to deploy. But the events in Hong Kong in recent weeks require a response that goes beyond rhetoric. That’s why it is time for targeted sanctions.

The United States has already imposed its Magnitsky sanctions on Lam and other officials, but it is vital that the international community act in as united and co-ordinated a way as possible. Hong Kong must not become – or even be perceived to be – a pawn in a US-China fight, but rather as the front line in the fight for freedom and the international rules-based order.

For that reason, the rest of the free world has a duty to act, and as the co-signatory of the Joint Declaration guaranteeing Hong Kong’s continued autonomy, it is right that Britain should lead the way.

Our Magnitsky sanctions legislation is now in place, and so far 49 individuals from Russia, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and Burma are on the list. Raab is one of the architects of this legislation – dating back to his days on the backbenches when he championed the idea – and he is said to regard it as a legacy issue. So he has every interest in ensuring that this sanctions regime is meaningful.

To do that, those responsible for dismantling freedoms in Hong Kong, once one of Asia’s most open cities, and the violation of an international treaty – as well as those perpetrating some of the 21st Century’s most egregious atrocity crimes against the Uyghurs – must be held to account. If Lam cannot be sanctioned for presiding over a year of shocking police brutality and repression, who can?

So the 19 Parliamentarians who signed this letter are right to declare: “We stand with Nathan in this appeal.” I do too, and I hope that the Foreign Secretary will act soon.