Conservative Member of Parliament for Goole and Pocklington
Joined September 2014
- Tweets4.3K
- Following63
- Followers196K
- Likes37
Pinned Tweet
Today I will introduce the Military Operations Bill to Parliament.
In recent years we have subjected our brave service men and women to a slow-motion moral failure.
We have watched as our legal system imports laws written to apply to civilians in peacetime into lethal combat zones.
As a result, troops tell their commanders they no longer fear only the enemy in front of them but the lawyer behind them.
My Bill would put an end to that and ensure that those who defend us know the State stands firmly behind them.
thetimes.com/comment/columni…
Our special forces are some of the best in the world, yet their morale is being weakened and their effectiveness blunted by baseless, bogus, and pernicious lawfare.
Today, I asked the Prime Minister what he is going to do about it 👇🏻
Last weekend, @thetimes reported how, for nearly three years, the MoD police pursued our Special Forces based on bogus allegations by our enemies.
This was done while those soldiers were in the middle of operations protecting our nation. In the words of one of the soldiers, they were treated as “not members of a professional army but a criminal organisation”.
Although these cases were ultimately proven baseless, the prolonged investigations destroyed morale, and all affected soldiers have since left the regiment.
Nobody wants to put soldiers above the law, but soldiers must know that the Government has their backs when they are deployed.
thetimes.com/uk/defence/arti…
In 1987, at Loughgall, the SAS stopped eight murderous IRA killers.
The actions of the SAS that day no doubt saved innocent lives. Yet now, decades after the event, our brave veterans face relentless legal persecution.
Here's what really happened on that day in 1987👇🏻
Ahead of this week's debates on the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill I went to speak to some of our brave veterans outside Parliament.
We must ensure that those who fought to defend the peace in Northern Ireland are themselves protected from vexatious legal processes.
Today, the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill is returning to the House of Commons.
Through this Bill, Labour is putting Dublin at the heart of efforts to investigate the Troubles, despite its deeply troubling record of failures, collusion, and unanswered questions.
Meanwhile, British veterans face the prospect of investigations for the rest of their lives.
This is a grotesque inversion of justice.
The victims deserve the truth. Our veterans deserve justice. Neither should be sacrificed for political convenience.
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…
Sometimes Labour cannot even get the most straightforward things right. Their management of the UK grant scheme supporting farming - the Sustainable Farming Incentive - has been, frankly, dreadful.
Last month, applications opened for the latest round of the fund. The allocated £253 million ran out after just six hours, leaving thousands of farmers unable to access vital funds.
The Government must act to support farming in the UK and be clear with farmers and farming communities about what happens next and how it will address the issues with this round of funding.
theguardian.com/environment/…
The failures of the Sustainable Farming Incentive were entirely foreseeable.
On multiple occasions, the @Conservatives and the @NFUtweets warned the Government that the total funding was not enough to meet demand and that allocating funding on a first-come, first-served basis would shut applicants out and reduce the opportunity to deliver any sort of quality control for applications.
Passed Andy Burnham running in the park this morning.
Good to see he doesn't just do it for the cameras!
Juries are one of the most important safeguards in our justice system.
The proposal for judge-only trials in complex fraud cases relies heavily on the notoriously misunderstood Jubilee Line trial.
But that trial did not prove that juries cannot handle complex cases; it proved what happens when cases are badly managed.
We must not confuse the failure of the system with the failure of the jury.
My full piece on Substack 👇
daviddavisuk.substack.com/p/…
Another significant day in righting a major miscarriage of justice.
The Court of Appeal’s decision to quash five more Libor trader convictions confirms what we have said for years: these prosecutions were fundamentally flawed.
Individual traders were cast as scapegoats to appease public anger and turn focus away from the failings of the banks and the government.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm4g…
Labour must get a grip on the small boats crisis. Some progress has been made, but more is needed.
I made this point with Julia Hartley-Brewer on @TalkTV yesterday 👇🏻
Burnham has rightly dropped his predecessors daft policy attacking jury trials, but what he has replaced it with is still badly flawed.
For example he is going to replace juries with judge only trials for complex fraud cases. This is based on wrong analysis of a dreadfully badly managed case.
bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crq5…
That undercut the case for scrapping juries in fraud trials. s.43 was never commenced, and it was repealed in 2012.
The government seem to have forgotten this. And the Department of Justice is notoriously one of the worst run in Whitehall, with little grasp of mathematics or management.