Eric Joyce: I find it slightly puzzling to hear my right hon. Friend tell the Secretary of State for Defence to stay on message. Does he not think that what is going on is in fact more interesting than he suggests? There seems to be some ambivalence on the Conservative side about what we are doing in Afghanistan. It is the Opposition, from my perspective at least, who seem to be more determined to pursue...
Eric Joyce: I thank you, Mr. Howarth, for your forbearance in allowing me a couple of minutes; I also thank the Minister. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Keith Hill); at the end of a pretty salubrious parliamentary career, he made a fine speech about Iraq. That is on top of his many other fine speeches. My right hon. Friend may be best remembered for being a close aide and support...
Eric Joyce: I am very pleased to be able to follow a number of high-quality speeches. It seems to me that everyone said more or less the same thing, which is that this is much-needed legislation and that it is flawed. Some people think it should go through anyway and that if it is flawed, we will fix it later, whereas other people think that it should not. I belong to the latter group. The right hon....
Eric Joyce: My hon. Friend is correct, but I do not regard a tribunal as the same thing at all. Things are being put through in the Lords, and we have been told many times, both before tonight and, indeed, tonight, that there has been bags of scrutiny by the unelected Lords next door. Hon. Members have said that the experts have got one or two things tied up, and have talked about not having a complete...
Eric Joyce: I profoundly agree with my hon. Friend. That is precisely what most people out there would say; indeed, people are saying that. We have rather blithely ignored the fact that thousands of people-not just an élite group of people on the internet with special interests-are making these very points on various things like the #hashtags on Twitter #DEBill and #DEB and we are casually pushing them...
Eric Joyce: Indeed-they go to court. They get their day in court. Would we pass legislation saying, "Let's not bother with shoplifters going to court. We'll just have a tribunal that is heard by one quasi-judge, or judge, and he or she will make a decision"? Of course we would not accept that. We are talking about law-breaking, and such cases deserve to be tested in court. That is a pretty basic...
Eric Joyce: I completely sympathise with what my hon. Friend says about the much needed earnings of Joe Bloggs, but does he agree that enacting flawed legislation is the wrong way to proceed?
Eric Joyce: I accept that progress has been made, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is significant, to use his word, that it would still be possible for someone to be disconnected under the Bill without the matter going to a court?
Eric Joyce: I congratulate the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) on his speech. He mentioned that regional conflicts could become international conflicts, and that we need to keep a lid on them at the regional level when we can. We tend to talk about places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, which have become the focus of international attention, but the hon. Gentleman listed a...
Eric Joyce: I will not detain the House, but I think there is an opportunity to raise an issue within the terms of the debate. It relates to a different part of the world: the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A number of people from that country are members of the FDLR, which is a rebel organisation. They live in Europe, having left Rwanda or the DRC. Some of them live in Germany...
Eric Joyce: I understand that one of the accusations against Liliany Obando is that she was collecting money for terrorists, yet she had raised money from a Canadian trade union to be used for an educational project in Colombia. That accusation was condemned by the Canadian Government. I hope that the Minister will consider taking the same position today.
Eric Joyce: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson). Let me start by wishing everyone a happy Christmas and a good new year, because I am so infuriated by what I am about to talk about that I will probably forget to do it at the end. This afternoon I read an article on the BBC website that it is important to mention here. It flagged up a programme that finished...
Eric Joyce: I welcome the measures announced by my right hon. Friend, but does he not think that it is time to reflect on whether we can avoid a reduction in non-operational training, for example, by determining whether we will get good value for money from the replacement of Trident?
Eric Joyce: A large automotive company in my constituency builds vehicles. It largely Scottish-owned and its Scottish chief executive is Mr. Robertson. ADL, formerly Alexander Dennis Ltd, builds buses. We heard earlier of hybrid vehicles, many of which are built abroad, but ADL's primary product for the future is the hybrid bus. It could replace buses of the sort that run in London, which are made by the...
Eric Joyce: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the continued risking of British troops' lives in Afghanistan will be contingent on an acceptance from the obviously corrupt President Karzai of a significant dispersal of power away from him?
Eric Joyce: I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman has just said, but does he think, as he has just implied, that expenditure in the MOD should be led by the Treasury?
Eric Joyce: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) on securing this debate. The debate is timely in the light of President Obama's intention to achieve a freeze on settlement development, which has been referred to already, and Netanyahu's recent comments, which have been heavily caveated, but which are a general step in the right direction. It is clear that...
Eric Joyce: My right hon. Friend will be aware that the US Government tie US aid very tightly, in some respects, to US foreign policy objectives. Can he confirm that he has no plans to do the same in the UK when it comes to UK aid by, for example, reintegrating DFID with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office?
Eric Joyce: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what steps her Department is taking to assist older people during the recession.
Eric Joyce: That improvement seems particularly important. Around the country there are not a huge number of people affected, but we come across a surprising number of cases in which people involved in same-sex relationships have left the forces, lived with their partner for 20 or 30 years afterwards and then died, and their partner has not received any benefit from their pension. I believe that the new...
