Speeches by Lewis.

“Will my right hon. Friend explain to the House who actually does the research that leads to people being identified for sanctioning, whether there is resistance in such places as the City of London, which no doubt could make enormous financial profits from having illicit money deposited there, and whether such places a…”

“The Minister mentioned the UN Security Council, and we heard earlier from the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) about what he perceives to be a potential weakness in the regime, which is being propped up by outside forces. Is it true that Russia has been most supportive of the regime, has supplied most of …”

“Do the Government accept that if you will the ends, you must will the means? The end of the cold war has been mentioned a number of times. It is a fact that at the end of the cold war, we were spending 4.3% of GDP on defence—that was 3.5% under the old way of calculating it—and in the early years of the cold war we wer…”

“I would like to say, in support of what the hon. Lady has been saying, that surely a distinction of which we need to be aware is that, whereas the judge is a specialist in deciding what the law says and how it should be applied, he or she is not a specialist in deciding whether someone is telling the truth or not; and …”

“I do not think I heard the Minister mention anything about the risk of cyber-attacks on local government. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is another potentially juicy target for people who wish to cause major mischief?”

“I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way. On the point about regulators, the industry has issued a brief, which points out, quite sensibly, that these regulators are going to have a lot of extra duties to perform and they will therefore need extra resources to be able to perform those duties, but the extr…”

“Has my hon. Friend and his Committee considered whether anything can be done to encourage more media interest in the subject of the debates that his Committee grants? I have in mind a particularly outstanding debate on Ukraine, which was initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Je…”

“Can I explain to the Minister why this U-turn is worrying? She said that there would have to be strong reasons for elections to be cancelled, and then cancelled them on the basis of not very strong reasons. Her predecessor said that there would have to be very strong reasons why boundary changes might happen during loc…”

“May I endorse what the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) and the Minister have said about Lance Corporal George Hooley, who sounds as if he was a fine individual and a great soldier? On 29 December, it will be the 85th anniversary of President Roosevelt’s famous fireside chat radio broadcast, in which he…”

“The Secretary of State deserves our sympathy for having to negotiate such an ethical minefield. Will he tell us whether the data exists from all the people who had puberty blockers under the old regime? He mentioned having met one person for whom they had worked well and one person for whom they were a disaster. Surely…”

“May I thank the Minister for the work he did in another capacity on behalf of the victims, and the relatives of the victims, of the infected blood scandal? He did a very good job, and he reached out to us in a much-appreciated, non-partisan way. This statement is entitled “UK-EU Common Understanding Negotiations”. Is i…”

“May I ask the Secretary of State to clarify whether his earlier remarks mean what I think they do, which is that even if it had not been for the guidance of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Government would have wanted anyway to have repealed the legislation of the legacy Act? It is a political decision. Given …”

“Is, in the Government’s opinion, Mauritius a free society, and what is the Government’s assessment of the nature of its relationship with communist China?”

“Following on directly from that, what can the Minister tell us about any military advice or assistance that our experts in counter-insurgency are giving to the Governments of friendly Commonwealth countries like Nigeria that face vicious jihadist extremist attack from organisations such as Boko Haram?”

“I hope that the Rycroft review will take account of the fact that the giving of money is by no means the worst aspect, or the main aspect, of treacherous behaviour, because very often these people do what they do out of a genuine belief in a potential enemy’s point of view. It would be interesting to know whether the c…”

“Is the strategy going to emphasise in any way the role of parents in trying to protect their sons from a torrent of online violent abuse of women, which inevitably is going to distort their attitude to relationships? Schools can do some things, but some things, surely, have to be done within the family?”

“Like every other communist regime that has ever existed, the Chinese Government behave with ruthlessness, impunity and unmitigated mendacity. I therefore welcome the strong words in the statement from the Foreign Secretary, but what Members on both sides of the House wish to see is stronger actions. It is not so much a…”

“Having sat through the debate on Ukraine on 4 December, has the Minister taken on board the important message for our NATO colleagues that if there is a forced division of Ukraine, just as there was of occupied Germany at the end of the war, it will be essential that unoccupied western Ukraine is fully manned with dete…”

“I welcome the Government’s commitment ultimately to spend 5% of GDP on defence—as we used to do in the cold war years of the 1980s—but not the target date of 2035. Do the Government really believe that there is no threat of attack from Russia on a NATO country for the next 10 years?”

“I hope that the Secretary of State will give a little more consideration to the rather important point raised by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) about 16 and 17-year-olds not being able to be vaccinated. If any junior doctor—whether or not a member of the BMA, but particularly if a member of the BMA—decides…”