Debate on the Address — House of Commons, 2017-06-21
Topic: Law and Crime
Nigel Martin Evans (Conservative, Centre-right): When the news came in of the attack on the Manchester Arena, the election campaign was rightly suspended. This cowardly attack robbed many people of their loved ones and hospitalised many others. I discovered that one of my own constituents, Michelle Kiss, was killed. She was the young mum of three lovely children, and she was a loving mother and the loving wife of Tony Kiss. I went to the vigil in Whalley, where the community stood together, embracing one another and showing solidarity for the family, who were in deep shock and were grieving. We all stood with them. Nothing better personified the community coming together than that concert in Manchester, where people stood shoulder to shoulder and enjoyed the singing of Ariana Grande. It was incredibly moving, and fantastic weather as well Whatever the intention was of the terrorist that day—it mystifies me—it brought people together. It robbed people of a loved one, and it hospitalised others, but for what? I will support any new measures to prevent the radicalisation of people in this country, to track down the terrorists and ensure that they cannot spread their hatred on the internet or anywhere else, and to ensure that the Prevent strategy is completely reinvigorated and that the police are given the support they need to do the job they need to do. Of course, since that atrocity, we have seen other terrorist attacks as well The Grenfell Tower tragedy was another appalling incident with a massive loss of life, and clearly we need to do what we can to ensure that whatever steps are necessary are taken to make tower blocks safe. The lack of money should not be used as an excuse for not doing anything. We know just by looking at it that the retrofitting of sprinklers and the use of second exits from tower blocks and proper alarm systems have to happen, irrespective of how much that costs. As has been said, there will be people living in such tower blocks tonight who are fearful about spending a night in what have to be deemed unsafe conditions. We must do what is necessary The election came as a surprise to me. The bigger surprise was the result. I am sure that we all held our breath as we waited for the exit poll, which was—sadly, as far as I am concerned—accurate once again. If only the Queen’s Speech we heard today had been the Conservative manifesto, I think we would be a lot happier on the Government Benches. The Queen’s Speech was the Conservative manifesto stripped of all the toxic rubbish we allowed to appear in it Taking school lunches away from children and replacing them with a bowl of Rice Krispies or an egg simply was not good enough. Foxhunting was seen as completely irrelevant to the people I spoke to, and I represent a rural constituency. The triple assault on senior citizens was awful, and we could not tell people whether they were going to lose winter weather payments or not. We said only that the rich would lose them, but what is rich? We could not say with any authority who they were. As far as the triple lock was concerned, people were fearful that they were going to lose money, and the so-called dementia tax—irrespective of whether it was or was not, that was how people perceived it—was appallingly sold without a proper ceiling. The fact is that that has all been stripped out—but it cost us an election. I am delighted that some of the people involved in putting those things in the manifesto are no longer working at 10 Downing Street and that there is now a change in style of governance. It did not start with the current Prime Minister, but with Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, and probably people before them, and it has just built up. I am delighted that Cabinet governance is back in this country, alive and well. At least this has all served one purpose. The fact is that, yes, we now have to rely on the votes of other people in this House to get the legislative programme through I am a Brexiteer, and I am delighted that we are going to leave the European Union, but we must ensure that the new opportunities of trade are realised, whether that is with the United States of America or, indeed, with the European Union. When we import £80 billion more than we export, the European side has clear interests in trading with us. Getting controls on immigration means that we cannot be in the customs union. We cannot be a member of the single market, but we will trade with it. All of that has to happen, and—this is exciting for me—Parliament will be the Parliament of an independent country where we govern ourselves with our legislation It is a mistake to go down from 650 to 600 Members of Parliament. We should look again at 650 Members of Parliament on equal boundaries, because when the legislation comes back from Brussels we will have a lot of work to do. People do not realise how much work there is. I have seen the workload disappear since 1992 when I was first elected. It is all coming back. Brace yourselves, everyone, because we will have to do a lot of work. I am grateful for the Gracious Speech today