John McDonnell
MP for Hayes and Harlington · Labour · United Kingdom
“It is not a laughing matter—I am sorry for interrupting the flow of the discussion. It would be useful if the review looked at NATS’s long-term investment plans, particularly since its partial privatisation in 2001, which I opposed. I thank the Minister for meeting Unite this morning and thanking the workers, who have worked so hard.”
“On a number of occasions, I have raised the case of Lee Cheuk-yan, who many Labour Members will remember was the general secretary of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions and founder of the Labour party in Hong Kong. He was detained during the democracy movement five years ago.”
“I thank the Minister for his statement. NATS used to be in my constituency and then moved down to Swanwick. Of course, with Heathrow in my constituency, I receive—as I mentioned yesterday—a large amount of correspondence from a whole range of other MPs’ constituents, who think I am responsible for Heathrow airport.”
“I fully agree, and let me also say that wheelchair compensation is significant in this legislation. Most of us have dealt with cases like that. Going back to accountability in the process, a number of different organisations have provided us with notes on the legislation.”
“I apologise to my right hon. Friend; I should have checked this before the debate. The proposed new section 61G refers to priorities and objectives of the Secretary of State, which include a requirement for the Secretary of State to issue a document setting out those priorities and objectives for the CAA.”
“At the moment, when people in my constituency are faced with these problems, they do not know where to go; it is as simple as that. Finally, the debate that we will have on Heathrow expansion and the new policy statement will be interesting, given that we do not know what the flight paths will be. If I was a constituent of my hon.”
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“The Government’s failure to invest in our manufacturing industry, even if only to mothball the plant until better times arrive, has meant the end of steelmaking in Teesside and immense distress to families. The Government’s refusal to invest will be embedded in this charter as it now moves on to limit all public sector borrowing.”
“Let me make some room; I will give way in due course. Voting against the charter makes someone a deficit denier; voting for it would lead to the Chancellor claiming for the next five years that we had signed up to support every one of his cuts in public services and benefits. I regret that the procedure followed today is an unamendable order—a take-it-or-leave-it order. My initial view was to use today’s debate for a bit of traditional parliamentary knockabout to ridicule the Chancellor’s performance against his own charter. I admit it: I was trying to out-Osborne Osborne. Apart from the economic analysis and professional advice I have received, what really changed my mind was a trip to Redcar last week, where I met steelworkers and their families in tears at losing their jobs, their livelihoods, their futures.”
“Neither can I support the continuing attack on disabled people, which is inherent in this fiscal mandate.”
“In the Labour party, we have a democratic process involving the shadow Cabinet and the parliamentary Labour party. In fact, it is so democratic that it is reported in the press virtually daily. This charter will be used time and again as an excuse for the Government’s refusal to intervene and invest, but the more we know about its potential use, the more my view is strengthened—it has to be vigorously opposed. It will be used to justify cutting services and support to families across the UK, including the cuts to tax credits, which are the working families’ penalty. I cannot support the cuts to tax credits for working families. These are people who have done everything asked of them: they have gone to work and looked after their children, yet because of the policy direction in this charter they are going to be hit with a £1,300 cut.”
“I will in a minute. Disabled people are already harassed—some to death—by the brutal work capability assessment and often by benefit sanctions, yet they are to lose over £30 a week. Disabled people under this Government and under the coalition have been hit 18 times harder than other citizens by the impact of cuts. I do not want the Labour party to be associated in any way with these policies, and to dissociate ourselves clearly we need to vote against them tonight.”
“The hon. Gentleman has clearly not been listening. It was professional advice. It was watching the economic headwinds grow. But, in addition to that, it was meeting families who had lost their futures in Redcar that made me decide that we need a Government who would invest and would not leave them adrift.”
“I will in due course. It is increasingly clear that the charter and the fiscal mandate are not economic instruments, but political weapons. This is not an economic debate. It is about the politics of dismantling the welfare state, the closing down of the role of the state, and the redistribution of wealth from the majority to the minority. Austerity is not an economic necessity; it is a political choice.”
“It was not the teachers, the nurses, the doctors and the police officers whom Labour recruited who caused the economic crisis; it was the recklessness of the bankers speculating in the City, and the failure of successive Governments to ensure effective regulation. In opposition, this Chancellor and his colleagues wanted even less regulation of the banking sector that crashed our economy. The deficit was not the cause of the economic crisis, but the result of the economic crisis.”
“No. This is a limited debate, so I need to press on. Over the last five years, the focus of the economic debate on the deficit has reflected the capture of the economic narrative by the right since the crisis in 2008. Over six years, the Conservatives have managed to convince many people that the economic crisis and the deficit were caused by Labour Government spending. It has been one of the most successful exercises in mass public persuasion and the rewriting of history in recent times. Today I am going to correct the record. The facts speak for themselves. The Conservatives backed every single penny of Labour’s spending until Northern Rock crashed. The average level of spending under Labour was less than it was under Mrs Thatcher.”
“Osborne’s proposals are not fit for the complexity of a modern 21st-century economy and, as such, they risk a liquidity crisis that could also trigger banking problems, a fall in GDP, a crash, or all three.” They go on to say that if the Government “chooses to try to inflexibly run surpluses…Households, consumers and businesses may have to borrow more overall, and the risk of a personal debt crisis to rival 2008 could be very real indeed.””
“The fact that he missed most of his targets was irrelevant to him; what was more valuable was that charters could be picked up whenever needed and prayed in aid to excuse any attack on the welfare state and any cut in benefits, and provide a means to redistribute wealth upwards. The charter before us today also has little basis in economics. Let me quote Dr Ha-Joon Chang, Professor Thomas Piketty, Professor David Blanchflower, Mariana Mazzucato and Simon Wren-Lewis. Those eminent economists in our society said that it has “no basis in economics.”
“They have skilfully used their narrative of the deficit to enable them to cut public services, slash benefits, and give tax cuts to the rich and corporations. Successive charters and fiscal mandates brought before this House have been cynically used as a weapon in that cause. The purpose of the original Fiscal Responsibility Act 2010, brought in by Labour, was to bolster the then Government’s economic credibility. I recall what the current Chancellor said. He described it as little more than a political stunt. But he soon learned what a useful tool charters and mandates can be, and immediately upon the coalition’s election, he introduced his own.”
“And when that expenditure was being determined in the House, the Opposition supported it, and never objected. The right hon. and learned Gentleman may well have rejected it, but I remember his Budgets. His Budgets balanced, but when they balanced, there were 40,000 homeless families in London. People were dying on waiting lists before they got their operations. Those were the consequences of his economic policies. Focusing on the deficit continues to mask the underlying weaknesses and failures of our unreformed economic system. We are witnessing a recovery based on rising house prices, growing consumer credit, a ballooning current account deficit and still inadequate reform of the finance sector. I worry that some of the warning signs are reappearing. But the Conservatives have adhered to their dictum: never let a crisis go to waste.”
“May I just say to the hon. Gentleman that it is always best before making an intervention to have listened to the debate so far and it is always best to make a calculation as to whether he is going to add to the sum of human knowledge by the intervention? [Hon. Members: “Ooh!”] All right, I was a bit harsh. Sorry about that. Mr Speaker, I am not usually so undiplomatic, am I? May I press on? The Chancellor may not appreciate the economic points that have been made, but—”
“May I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, as I was too harsh? I certainly do not want to be with the hon. and learned Lady, but if she could just keep up it would be really helpful. I have tried to reiterate three times—I have said it three times. [ Interruption .]”
“It is a false economy, ironically, that when this Government came to office there were 70,000 people at HMRC and within the next year that is planned to fall to 52,000—a cut of more than 25% in the number of tax-collecting staff, when HMRC says that tax evasion is as high as £10 billion a year. But the worst—”
“I could not have said it better myself. Can we move on? The Chancellor may not appreciate these economic points, but I believe many of his advisers do. That is why there is a sizeable get-out clause for the charter rules not to apply outside normal times when there is a significant negative shock to the UK economy. Not only are the social consequences of this programme devastating, but the scale of the cuts we are witnessing represents a false economy. They jeopardise the long-term economic prosperity of our country. It is a false economy to cut adult social care when the burden is shifted on to hospitals and accident and emergency departments. It is a false economy to pursue an ideological sell-off of council housing eventually to put up the rents and eventually increase housing benefit.”
“This Chancellor’s strategy has given us investment as a share of GDP lower than all the other G7 countries, falling even further behind the G7 average in recent years. That is why business leaders, trade unions and a host of others are calling for investment. It is incomprehensible for the Chancellor to rule out the Government playing a role in building our future. For him to constrain himself from doing so in the future, no matter what the business case for a project, has no basis in economic theory or experience. We also face an uncertain medium-term future for the global economy. In recent weeks there has been mounting evidence of a decline in global demand, particularly in the emerging markets.”
“If the hon. Lady does not mind, I have taken a large number of interventions. The debate is time-limited. If she has any points that she would like to raise with me, I am happy to meet her separately or write to her. [Interruption.] I am doing my best to be nice. It is the new politics of the Labour party. The worst false economy is the failure to invest. This will be a direct result of Government policy embedded in this charter, with its limits on all public sector borrowing. Economists from across the spectrum have written and commented on the need for investment for the future. The World Economic Forum ranks the UK 10th for the quality of our infrastructure, behind Germany, France, the Netherlands and Spain.”
“We will use smart Government institutions to strategically invest in the key areas that increase GDP in the future: education, health, research, technology, human capital formation and training—a progressive economic agenda that recognises that wealth creation is a collective process, working in partnership with businesses, workers, public institutions, and civil society organisations that create wealth in this country.”
“We will balance day-to-day spending and invest for future growth, so that the debt to GDP ratio falls, paying down our debts. We will do this, first, by ending this Government’s programme of tax cuts to the wealthiest in our society. This winter, when the letters go through the letterboxes telling working families how much they will lose in tax credits, we will be reminding them that their tax credit cut has paid for a cut of billions of pounds in the inheritance taxes of the richest families in this country. Secondly, we will give HMRC the resources and powers to tackle tax evasion and avoidance—no more Facebooks paying less than £5,000 in tax despite £35 million in bonuses and total global profits of £1.9 billion—but above all else we will grow our economy.”
“Yes, the deficit is vitally important, but we need a paradigm shift to open up the wider debate on what makes a healthy economy, a prosperous economy, in which everybody shares in that prosperity and in which everybody is secure, not just the wealthy few, where everybody has a decent home in a sustainable environment, is able to develop their talents to the full, has secure, stable, well-paid and rewarding employment, and support when they fall on hard times. We will tackle the deficit, yes, but we will not tackle— [Interruption.] Hon. Members should listen and they will hear. We will not tackle the deficit on the backs of middle and low earners, and especially not on the backs of the poorest in our society. We will tackle the deficit, but we will do it fairly and to a timescale that does not jeopardise sustainable growth in our economy.”
“I will press on, if hon. Members do not mind, as time is short. Economists have warned of the potential for a future slowdown in western economies as a result. Former chief economist at the World Bank, Larry Summers, wrote last week that the dangers facing the global economy are more severe than at any time since the height of the crisis. Faced with these potential challenges, it makes no sense to close down the fiscal options available, especially when there is a possibility that monetary policy options may also be constrained. I want to break the stranglehold that the focus on deficits has had on the economic debate in this country in recent years.”
“We are seeking the widest public engagement in our economic policy discussions. The dividing lines between us and the Government are not just on how to tackle the deficit and who pays for the crisis. They are more fundamental. It is about for whom the economy works and the role of the strategic state in this process. So today we will oppose this charter as an instrument for imposing austerity on our community unnecessarily. We are bringing to an end the petty game playing and moving on to a more serious debate of how the economy can work for everybody.”
“That is why we are reviewing every aspect of economic policy and systematically assessing our economic institutions, the Bank of England, HMRC and the Treasury. Today I can announce that I have appointed a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee, Professor David Blanchflower, to lead a review into whether the Monetary Policy Committee should be given a broader mandate. He is joined by Lord McFall, the former Chair of the Treasury Committee. This is Labour’s radical project. It is based upon the sound advice of some of the best economic brains in the country. We will be testing our policies and economic instruments and we will be asking the Chancellor to give us access to the resources of the Office for Budget Responsibility to model our proposals. I am asking the same of the Governor of the Bank of England.”
“I have given way a number of times and this is a time-limited debate; I apologise. That is why we will establish a national investment bank to invest in innovation across the entire supply chain, from the infrastructure we need to the applied research and early stage financing of companies. To tackle the growing skills shortages we will prioritise education in schools and universities along with a clear strategy for construction, manufacturing, and engineering skills to build and maintain sustainable economic growth. The proceeds of that growth will reach all sections of our society. So we are launching the debate on the economy we need and the economic instruments and policies needed to achieve that prosperous and sustainable growth.”
“Is it not true that the proposals that the Scottish National party have now brought forward are actually Labour’s proposals from six months ago?”
“I am pleased we no longer have children in the full detention centres, but we still detain children. I give this warning: if the detention centres are not closed, there will be more self-harming and more suicides. Harmondsworth has been burned down twice as a result of rioting. The hunger strikes go on, as we speak, on a regular basis. The riots will come back. This is no way to treat our fellow human beings. We have to find another way. Yes, let us accept the recommendations today, but in the long run let us close these establishments, which have so significantly failed to respect the human rights of those detained.”
“I pay tribute to the monitoring board visiting the detention centres in my area. It monitors the system voluntarily, produces reports and exposes such scandals. I accept all the recommendations from the all-party groups and commend the work they have done. Sarah Teather, who is no longer a Member, did fantastic work on this, both as a Minister and as a Back Bencher. I accept all the recommendations, but I want the detention centres closed. There are alternatives within the community, such as those my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) raised. There must be a more civilised way of dealing with people. I used to visit children in Harmondsworth, and I raised the matter time and again with the then Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.”
“The paperwork is chaotic—we all know that—partly because of staff cuts in the department dealing with these cases. In addition, the access to legal assistance and advice is largely non-existent, except for the wonderful people providing volunteer services in the detention centres. People do not know whether they will be there a week, a fortnight, a year or longer. The indefinite detention is the worst thing possible and it undermines individuals’ psychological wellbeing, because they do not know their future either way. That results in self-harming. I have had suicides in Harmondsworth. The case of the 83-year-old man who was handcuffed was from my detention centre in Harmondsworth. An 83-year-old man on his deathbed was put in chains and handcuffs. It was a scandal.”
“My number is scrawled on the walls of the detention centres, and those detained contact my constituency office. My caseload is enormous. I do not know how my staff get through it, to be frank. It is so distressing, I wonder how they get through it emotionally as well. The pleas we receive are desperate, because of the system itself, not just the issue of deportation or removal; it is about how people have been treated up to that point. Often, someone will report as normal to the Home Office on a weekly or monthly basis and will get swept in, or it is as a result of a raid. Years ago in my constituency, we had dawn raids, with white vans and so on. They have gone now, but more raids are happening at workplaces now, so the white van system is returning. People are dragged traumatised into a detention centre.”
“I apologise for coming late to the debate, after the first half hour, and missing the earlier contributions. It is interesting that no one is defending the system overall, which is a significant breakthrough. I do not think we would have had this debate five or six years ago, but people have learned a lot of lessons. I have two detention centres in my constituency because I have Heathrow airport: Harmondsworth and Colnbrook. Thirty years ago as a local councillor, I used to visit Harmondsworth. Back then, it was a Nissen hut with no more than a dozen people in it. I now have two detention centres with a combined population of 1,000 detainees, and the system is absolutely brutal. As I have Heathrow in my constituency, I am almost the last resort MP before deportation.”
“I am not intervening simply to demonstrate that there is a McDonnell, as well as McDonalds, in the Chamber. I apologise that I cannot remain in the debate—bizarrely, I have a meeting with the current prisons Minister at 10 o’clock. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that our Government’s co-operation with the Saudi Government, and the fact that they have not condemned the case but only expressed concern about it, are interpreted by the Saudis as Britain condoning their behaviour?”
“Just over a year ago, 130,000 people signed a petition and there was a debate in the House calling for a cumulative impact assessment by the Government of the welfare changes on people with disabilities. These data are just one element of that. The House decided without opposition that the Government should undertake that exercise. Are they giving any consideration to conducting a cumulative impact assessment?”
“As part of his campaign to tackle extremism, the Prime Minister is quite rightly promoting the values of democracy, in particular parliamentary democracy. Does the Secretary of State agree that essential to the operation of parliamentary democracy is respect for the decisions of Parliament and honesty by Ministers?”
“My right hon. Friend is, like me, a London MP. The driver of child poverty in my constituency is a combination of low pay and high private rents. When the cap was introduced, the Prime Minister advocated—there was an element of logic in this—the idea that it would reduce rents in the private rented sector. That has failed in my area and right across London; rents have increased significantly. Have the Government produced any evidence to prove that the cap reduced rents in the private sector at all?”
“We need a proper debate about how we go forward investing in housing, lifting wages, restoring trade union rights and ensuring that we get people back to work and do not have high pockets of deprivation in areas such as mine and around the country. Tonight the debate has not served the House of Commons well, but I say to Labour Members that people out there do not understand reasoned amendments; they want to know whether we voted for or against the Bill. Tonight I will vote against it.”
“We are about to ensure that we push some of the poorest children in our society into further poverty. We need an honest discussion about the reasons for that poverty and how we can invest to ensure that we lift people out of poverty. It is about some of the things that have been mentioned tonight, such as lifting wages. To come along and describe a derisory increase in the minimum wage as a living wage—we know that a living wage in this country is at least £10 an hour—is a disgrace to English rhetoric if nothing else. It is also rubbing it into the faces of the poor. Tonight we have seen yet another way in which we blame the individual for the failings of our society.”
“Parents choose whether they or their children eat, and the Bill will take £6 a week from every one of those families. The other reason for poverty in my constituency is that people have disabilities—they struggle to work but cannot do it. The Bill will take £30 a week from people with disabilities who are in the work support group and desperately trying to get work. Those are the reasons for poverty in my constituency, and I find it appalling that we sit here—in, to be frank, relative wealth—and are willing to vote for increased poverty for people back in our constituencies. Some of the benefit cuts will be appalling. One measure not in the Bill but being sneaked through by the Government is a 30% cut in support allowances for asylum-seeker children.”
“Unemployment is so high because we have failed to invest in our economy, and we have allowed the deindustrialisation of the north, Scotland and elsewhere. That is why the welfare bill is so high, and the Bill does as all other welfare reform Bills in recent years have done and blames the poor for their own poverty, not the system. On Friday I brought together at a poverty seminar welfare advice agencies, local churches and religious groups to talk about why people in my constituency are poor. They are poor because rents are so high. People struggle to keep a roof over their heads. The welfare cap in the Bill will remove £63 a week from those families who are simply trying to keep a decent home over their children’s heads. The second reason people are poor is low pay. People in my constituency depend on tax credits to live.”
“I make this clear: I would swim through vomit to vote against the Bill, and listening to some of the nauseating speeches tonight, I think we might have to. Poverty in my constituency is not a lifestyle choice; it is imposed on people. We hear lots about how high the welfare bill is, but let us understand why that is the case. The housing benefit bill is so high because for generations we have failed to build council houses, we have failed to control rents and we have done nothing about the 300,000 properties that stand empty in this country. Tax credits are so high because pay is so low. The reason pay is so low is that employers have exploited workers and we have removed the trade union rights that enabled people to be protected at work. Fewer than a third of our workers are now covered by collective bargaining agreements.”
“Today the Home Secretary has published the terms of reference of the Pitchford inquiry into undercover policing. To be frank, I expected an oral statement, not a written statement, given its significance. The purpose is to investigate to what “extent and effect undercover police operations have targeted political and social justice campaigners.” Some months ago, we revealed in the House the extent of undercover police surveillance of trade unionists, but there is no explicit mention of trade unionists in the terms of reference, which we expected there to be. Will the Leader of the House seek clarification from the Home Secretary that trade unionists who have been under surveillance will be included in the inquiry’s terms of reference?”
“In his statement, the Secretary of State did not make a single reference to the BBC’s staff. I find that surprising, given the concerns that he expressed in his previous role. The staff are now extremely anxious about their future because of the resettlement fee, and this will not reassure them. Will the Secretary of State tell us how he will ensure that they are involved more thoroughly in the consultation process?”
“The regulatory procedures are not working. Ten years ago, our late colleague Frank Cook introduced a ten-minute rule Bill calling for regulatory reform, and I reintroduced that Bill three years ago. The Keogh report called for regulatory reform two and a half years ago, and nothing has happened. People are losing their eyesight as a result of some of the companies operating in this field. Will the Minister meet me and the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) to talk about progress in this field?”
“The Secretary of State started his statement by outlining the history, beginning with the Davies commission. There was a stage before that, however, when the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron)—now the Prime Minister—said to my constituents, “No ifs, no buts, there will be no third runway.” Now, 10,000 of them are at risk of losing their homes, their local community centres, their schools and their places of worship. Today the air pollution levels were double the EU legal limits. If the runway goes ahead, the noise will extend to 1.5 million people. Does the Secretary of State think the onus is now on the Prime Minister to come to my constituency and meet my constituents whose homes and whole community are now at risk?”
“Is it not ironic that the institutions that turned a blind eye to Greece’s economic situation when it joined the euro and then did nothing about profiteering through speculative lending to the Greeks throughout the period afterwards are the same organisations that are now withdrawing liquidity before the result of the referendum and therefore before the Greek people have made their decision? We are not members of the eurozone, but we are supporters of the International Monetary Fund. Therefore, was the Chancellor consulted about the timing of the withdrawal of liquidity in advance of the referendum and, if so, what view did he express?”
“I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am the chair of the RMT parliamentary group. I assume from his statement that the Secretary of State has resisted some of the calls from the wider elements of his party for the breaking up and privatisation of Network Rail. The fourth point that he made in his statement was, “it is important that we understand what can be done better in future investment programmes.” May I suggest to him that one of the key elements of that would be to start listening to some of the workers on the front line? May I also suggest that Dame Colette Bowe’s review should include a mechanism for ongoing consultation with the trade unions about how those programmes can be improved?”
“Again, the NUJ would welcome access to officials to commence those discussions in advance of the publication of any such guidance.”
“He clearly states that the designated person “should be obliged either to refuse the request”— when it comes to identifying a journalist’s information or confidential source, and then automatically— “refer the matter to ISIC for a Judicial Commissioner to decide”. The NUJ welcomes that process, but I speak briefly to make a couple of appeals on the matter. Anderson recommends that there is a code of practice or ISIC guidance that specifies: “the rare circumstances in which it may be acceptable to seek communications data for such a purpose, and…the circumstances in which such requests should be referred to ISIC.” I say to the Minister that it would be really helpful, if the Government are going down the route of further guidance, to start the consultation process now.”
“Throughout the continuing theme was the same as in today’s debate—that there was a need to rationalise the legislation, so that not only was it effective and understandable, but that it had protections in place for those with privileged or confidential information. Anderson has been welcomed by the NUJ and others, because it goes some way towards doing that. The NUJ’s position was straightforward: it wanted an independent judicial process. In addition, it wanted automatic and mandatory prior notification of requests for accessing information, and it wanted mechanisms to challenge an application with the right of appeal. Anderson goes some way towards doing the first, and in recommendations 67 to 69, he makes special consideration with regard to journalists.”