Matt Warman

By Matt Warman Boston & Skegness MP

Parliament returned from recess this week planning to talk about the misuse of laser pens, but instead the House of Commons Chamber was packed to the rafters to talk about the recent military action Britain took with the USA and France in Syria.

Theresa May’s opening statement on the issue made clear that it was one not taken lightly – no Prime Minister could ever put British service men and women’s lives in danger lightly. But she also made a case that was described across the House as compelling.

The actions of President Bashar al-Assad have shocked the world – repeatedly he has used chemical weapons on his own people, gassing children who have died horrible, unnecessary deaths in a civil war that the Assad regime is winning anyway.

It was to stop this behaviour, that makes the use of illegal chemical weapons a normal part of conflict, that Britain, France and America launched overnight attacks on facilities that research or enable their use.

Allowing such international norms to be degraded would put Britain in clear danger. We’ve already seen the attempted murder of the Skripals in Salisbury using a chemical nerve agent – that crime was on a far smaller scale than the atrocities in Syria, but the comparison is a clear one.

It is in all our interests to live in a world that is free from chemical weapons.

When President Assad used them previously, Russia said they would steward the destruction of all stocks, but have not done so.

Russia has also vetoed UN resolutions that would condemn Syria, and effectively is vetoing the usual methods of global condemnation that can be used to back military action.

In short, Syria is behaving in a way that is clearly illegal, and Russia has a veto on internationally accredited action. Britain has placed itself firmly on the side of helpless men, women and children in Syria in a limited, targeted military strike with our allies; Russia has placed itself firmly on a very different plain.

This was very much the mood in Parliament, where a vote on the issue was won by a majority of several hundred. As one Labour MP put it, had the Prime Minister recalled Parliament early and asked for her vote, “she would have had it”. And that question of recalling Parliament over a small-scale, surgical use of eight of our missiles is surely redundant: anyone who understands such tactics knows that a country must be able to behave in secret rather than give up information that could compromise our troops’ safety. To suggest otherwise is wilfully naïve.

What Parliament did have was the chance, after the fact, to hold the Prime Minister to account. MPs were able to assess evidence that has convinced dozens of global leaders and international organisations, and to see more of that evidence than would have been safely possible before the action was taken.

Some people have chosen to support the conspiracy theories promoted ultimately by the Kremlin. To do so is to ignore the facts, and the uniquely precise nature of the action Theresa May chose to take to safeguard global security and the lives of innocent civilians.

Matt Warman is the Conservative MP for the Boston and Skegness constituency.

By Matt Warman Boston & Skegness MP

Just a few years ago any talk of data protection was of precious little relevance to most people – it was something taken care of by hospitals and doctors, by banks and building societies. Today, every person online is keenly aware that their data is always at risk from hackers and that their data is also the currency with which they pay for services such as Facebook and Google.

So as I’ve spent this last week on the committee of MPs examining the new Data Protection Bill line by line, I’ve been struck by just how vital this new piece of legislation is, and by how relevant it is to every single constituent.

The ‘Committee Stage’ of a bill is the vitally important part where, after an initial debate on the broad subject, a small group of MPs, in proportion to the political make up of the House, goes line by line through every single clause of a proposed Act of Parliament. Not each one will necessarily require debate, and it reveals that there is very often far more cross-party consensus on most issues than most would think there might be. But it is above all a chance for the opposition to put forward their case and for the government to either accept or reject those ideas.

Sometimes amendments are put forward simply to probe the government position, and at other points those amendments are put to a formal vote. The result is usually a bill that goes back to the House of Commons for a further debate in largely unamended form, but which still has the opportunity for further changes before it finally goes to the Queen for Royal Assent.

On the Data Protection Bill, there are a host of challenges and opportunities – as data flows across borders, it’s important that the UK maintains a regime of data protection that means our regulations are compatible with those in the EU, but they don’t necessarily have to be identical.

As we leave the EU, a balance between divergence and alignment makes decent sense. Likewise, however, this is legislation that increasingly has an impact on every organisation large and small: parish councils, micro-businesses and small charities all need to have control of data to be efficient and it’s right that Parliament ensures that the individual and other organisations are protected.

The bill also, however, is subject to a host of amendments that seek to tack unrelated issues onto it, including press regulation. The government has already rejected these, and indeed such rejection was also in the Conservative manifesto – that’s not to say that they shouldn’t be debated again, but it demonstrates that some politicians, in this case in the House of Lords, will seek novel ways to put their views across. This piece of legislation doesn’t have such things in its scope, quite rightly.

By the end of several long days, the 208 (at time of writing!) clauses of the bill will have been debated at length – all, in all likelihood, with barely a word reported in the mainstream media. Parliament’s work on almost all legislation is scrupulous, but seldom conspicuous.

Matt Warman is the Conservative MP for the Boston and Skegness constituency.