Jeremy Corbyn
MP for Islington North · Your Party · United Kingdom
“In two minutes, I will do my best, Sir Desmond. I am proud to represent a very small urban area of Britain in which, over the years, we have managed to increase the number of parks and open spaces.”
“I grew up in a country area where we had a competition over who heard the first cuckoo in spring. It is that sort of change in understanding that we have to bring about if we are to win this debate on biodiversity and sustainability on our planet. The Government are pledged to the 30by30 target for the oceans.”
“We have to address the wider issue, which is the pollution emanating from our towns, cities and industries into our rivers and the water companies that do not deal with it. I have 13 seconds left, so I will simply say this: it is great that the House has come back to this issue and that so many Members want to speak today.”
“I congratulate the right hon. Member on becoming Prime Minister and on his stamina at taking questions for already even longer than the longest world cup match. He has said some helpful and useful things about housing, particularly on rough sleeping.”
“Surely the obvious answer is to bring in some kind of ceiling—a rent control of some sort—to the sector, and immediately look at not postponing the rise in the local housing allowance, but to bring real relief to people who are desperately up against it and subsidising their rent out of their benefits.”
“When the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) introduced the debate, he quite rightly drew attention to the huge work done by our constituency and parliamentary staff. It is right that we should thank them on this occasion and also thank all the parliamentary staff for what they do.”
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“I shall be very brief, because, clearly, there is a mood in the House to take the Bill forward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) on producing this Bill, and take the opportunity to thank many people over many years who have been campaigning on this. Jimmy McGovern has been mentioned as have all of those involved in Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association. I first met them with my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) about 10 years ago. As members of the Justice Committee, we were able to persuade the Committee to undertake an investigation into the case. I have never forgotten the power of the evidence that they brought forward of the effect on families. I have met many of the families affected, including those in my constituency.”
“It has been a very effective debate, and I hope the Minister will understand that those of us who support this Bill do so out of a genuine concern to ensure there is a proper and effective system of justice in which people can have confidence. In an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central, I made the point that it is too easy to get prosecutions by using the joint enterprise law. It should never be easy to get a prosecution; it should be effective to get a prosecution against somebody who has committed a crime.”
“There has to be some clarification of the law. I understand that the Minister will express some reservations about this Bill. However, I hope the Government will encourage the Bill to progress today, so that they can go into discussion with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside on the way we can take this issue forward. This is a parliamentary opportunity to right a wrong—that is what we are here for, and it is what Friday debates are all about. It is also about coming to listen to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), and I am grateful to him for his 30-minute speech—sometimes they are longer.”
“Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside offers a way to take this issue forward so that we can reform the law to ensure that each person who receives a sentence is convicted because there is evidence against them as an individual, not because of an association that they happen to have with somebody who has committed a crime. If someone lives in an inner-city area, they are likely to spend a lot of time with a lot of people, some of whom commit crimes and some of whom are criminals. It does not mean that everybody else is a criminal. We almost get into a mood of collective attack on young people because of their association with people who have done bad things, so this Bill is an important step forward. I understand what the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) was saying, and he made a very interesting and important contribution.”
“My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Looking at the make-up of the imprisoned youth population as well as the adult estate, we find a wholly disproportionate number of people who are on the autism spectrum or other spectrums, because of the complications of their lives. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) correctly pointed out, a wholly disproportionate number of young black people are taken into custody and get prison sentences as a result of the law of joint enterprise. I think everyone accepts that there is a problem here, and the Bill introduced by my hon.”
“We have been down too many cul-de-sacs before, and this is an opportunity. Let us take the opportunity to right a wrong in our criminal justice system.”
“My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. Like her, I represent a constituency where, sadly, we do experience knife crime and death by knife crime. I always visit the families that are victims of knife crime to try to share their pain at what is a horrific experience. I ask the Minister to recognise the importance of the issue and the burden of the argument that has been put forward by those of us who strongly support this Bill. I hope he will be prepared to have discussions with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside and the promoters of the Bill to see whether it is necessary to table any amendments in Committee. I do not want to hear warm words that, at some indeterminate point in the indefinite future, there will be a proposal coming forward to deal with what we all acknowledge to be a wrong.”
“We thank the Secretary of State for his very welcome statement, and we take the opportunity to congratulate Michelle O’Neill on becoming the First Minister and all the other parties that have managed to bring this agreement about. Does he think that this agreement will lead to an increase in all-Ireland institutions and their effectiveness—in culture, tourism, transport, health and so on—and does he agree with the point, made by the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), that ultimately it is for the people of Ireland to decide their long-term future, not anyone else?”
“It does not sound very much compared with overall Government expenditure, nor compared with the benefits that it would bring in lifting a lot of children and families out of poverty. At the moment, around 1.3 million children are affected. They come from around 400,000 households. [ Interruption. ] Is the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) trying to intervene?”
“Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) just talked about the first: the two-child benefit policy, which limits universal credit to claimants’ first two children. Like all Members, I have many constituents who are part of large families. The Somali community, the Haredi Jewish community, the Congolese community, the Bengali community and a number of others often have quite large families. Is there anything morally right in saying that the third, fourth, fifth or sixth child in a family is less valuable than the first or second? Can anyone justify that? I do not believe that they can, yet the policy persists. The cost of changing the policy would be £1.3 billion. That might sound like a lot.”
“I cannot better what the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) said about poverty in this country and we should reflect on that if we are passing social security uprating orders because the levels of poverty are an utter disgrace. One has only to spend a short time in a food bank anywhere across the country to realise the desperation of many people who are prepared to queue, often for a very long time, just to get a few packets of pasta to keep their family together for another week. The numbers accessing food banks are going up all the time. People are increasingly going to community centres to try to get food that has been donated by others. The level of poverty is huge. I will bring two specific areas to the House’s attention. The hon.”
“In lots of inner urban areas, having neither rent controls nor a sufficient level of housing benefit or local housing allowance effectively leads to an expulsion of the poorest from those communities. We need to come back to that and introduce private sector rent controls, and we need a local housing allowance that is realistic and meets people’s housing costs. Otherwise, it is often the poorest and largest families who get shifted from one private rented sector flat to another, thus damaging those children’s education and life chances. If we are to live in a society where we are proud of our welfare state, the welfare state has to work for the poorest in our community. At the moment, frankly, it does not.”
“The problem is that in constituencies such as mine, where a third of the population live in the private rented sector, housing benefit never quite catches up with the increase in rents imposed by private sector landlords. It is not just a London problem; it exists in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle—all over the country. Yes, local housing allowance is being increased in line with a perception of what the affordable rent level is within the community, but it never quite catches up. A friend of mine was helping somebody to find a flat locally. They spent days trawling through agents, and all the other places one goes to try to find a flat. They found fewer than half a dozen flats available to rent within the local housing allowance.”
“The hon. Member was looking with interest. I am grateful to him for that, and for what he said. I hope that as a result of this debate the Minister will seriously examine the poverty created by the two-child policy, and that all parties in this House will recognise that we ill serve the community if we deliberately discriminate against children in large families. Children living in poverty are less likely to achieve their full potential in school, and the jobs and careers that they want. As a result, we all lose. We all lose out on their talents because we disregarded their needs when they were at their most desperate. I hope that the Minister will recognise that. Secondly, the uprating order includes an increase in housing benefit in line with the rate of inflation that is applicable.”
“Will the Minister also tell us that, in light of the ICJ ruling, all British military aid to Israel has been suspended until such time as they abide by the ruling?”
“The ICJ ruling is highly significant all around the world, despite the Government’s opposition to South Africa even taking its case there. A few days later, when news comes out of the issues facing UNRWA, the UK Government, the US Government and others announce that they are withdrawing funding from it. I understand that the British Government’s payments are not due until April. Presumably, the US Government have suspended payments immediately. The immediate effect on the most desperate people in the world—that is, the 1 million people around Rafah who are trying to get something to eat, water to drink and medicines to be cured with—is that they are not getting the support that they desperately need. Have this Government been in touch with the Israeli Government to demand that they adhere to the ICJ ruling?”
“I hope that, in future, we do not come back to this kind of debate, but instead start to look at the issues of human rights abuse, victims of war, victims of environmental disaster and the needs of those people to be cared for on this planet as fellow human beings, rather than making them out to be the enemies that they certainly are not. Desperate people are looking for a place of safety. Surely it is our obligation— [Interruption.] The Home Secretary is getting very excited, but it is his obligation to try to make sure that they do have a place of safety in which to survive for the rest of their lives.”
“The Bill blames those people for being victims and plays into the narrative of the most backward, horrible remarks made in our national media and newspapers about asylum seekers, without ever recognising that those people who have sought asylum legally in this country—it is always legal to seek asylum; that is there in treaty—will eventually be our doctors, lawyers, teachers and engineers of tomorrow, as they are all over Europe. The Bill plays into this racist trope against refugees all over the world, and attacks refugees because of where they come from. I hope that the House tonight rejects this Bill.”
“The Government are now claiming that the only way to deal with the issue is to attack what they euphemistically call “a foreign court”, when in reality that court is the European Court of Human Rights, which is part of our judicial system. They are trying to offshore their obligations under international law and treaties. On the global stage, it is the wealthy countries, such as Australia and Britain, that want to offshore issues surrounding asylum and the rights of people to seek asylum, and pretend that somehow or other they are doing the world a favour. We have to work with other countries to deal with the issue of the desperation of so many refugees in Europe, and far more in other parts of the world.”
“I was first elected to this House on the same day as Tony Lloyd in 1983. He was a brilliant friend and comrade who voted against the Iraq war, student tuition fees and the renewal of Trident, and he was a brilliant shadow Northern Ireland Secretary. He will be much missed by many good people all over this country. This Bill is an appalling piece of legislation. It fails to take any account of the human suffering of people who are forced, through lack of any other alternative, to try to make a very dangerous crossing of the channel. I have met people in Calais who are desperate, poor and confused, and have travelled from Afghanistan and other places. They are victims of war, human rights abuse, poverty and so much else.”
“Some 17 million people in the region are living in hunger and food shortage, the people of Yemen have been bombarded by weapons supplied by Britain from Saudi Arabia for years, and we have a dreadful conflict going on in Gaza, where there are 30,000 people dead or missing. Where is the comprehensive plan by the western nations to try to bring about a comprehensive peace across the whole region, rather than pumping more and more weapons and money into more and more conflicts that will get worse? Does the Prime Minister have any hope for the future that there will be a lessening of conflict, rather than the present, very rapid increase in it?”
“Does my right hon. Friend agree that instead of spending this vast amount of money on a failed Rwanda scheme, Britain and the other European Governments ought to be thinking about the numbers of people, many from Afghanistan, who are leading a marginal existence, in desperate poverty and freezing to death, on the streets of Calais and other cities around Europe? They are the victims of human rights violations and war all around the world. Should we not be thinking about them and helping them rather than pouring money into the Rwandan Government, which has achieved absolutely nothing?”
“The statement we have just heard really does not measure up to the needs of the occasion: 22,000 people already killed; 1.9 million displaced; thousands dying in the rubble; thousands of children dying because of a lack of medical care and food; and people dying of starvation, thirst and hunger in the Gaza strip at the present time. Can the Government not understand the anger around the world when they watch this happening in real time, and why so many people are very pleased that the Government of South Africa have taken the initiative by going to the International Court of Justice to hold Israel to account for the deaths of so many wholly innocent people in Gaza? Can the Government not understand that and at least support the South African process?”
“We must have the start of a long-term process that brings about real justice for the Palestinian people, or we will be back here again with more war crimes, more deaths, more destruction, and the horrors for decades to come.”
“We should all thank the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for her steadfastness and for securing this urgent question. Eighteen thousand people have now died across the Gaza strip, and Israel is using food, water and medicine as weapons of war against a civilian population. There are 8,000 missing people under the rubble. As she said, a political solution is required, not a military one. Can the Minister assure the House that the vote today will bring about a ceasefire, and that it will stop the escalation of the war into the Red sea and the Mediterranean, and start to address the underlying issue, which is of course Israel’s occupation of the west bank, the refugees all around the world, and the continued siege of Gaza, which has gone on for decades?”
“My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Is she aware that only two weeks ago in the House the Secretary of State for Defence claimed that arms sales to Israel in the past year were less than £50 million? The figures she has given suggest that he had misinformed himself before he made that statement. Does she have a credible figure for how much is sold to Israel, as well as for the value of Elbit Systems sales and how many of those sales are made internally within Elbit Systems back to Israel itself?”
“Does my right hon. Friend think an additional question might be what is carried in the RAF planes that are leaving RAF Akrotiri and apparently flying directly to Israel?”
“The hon. Member is making an excellent speech and bringing real humanity to the debate. Is she aware that the people in Calais who are trying to cross the channel are homeless, poor, desperate, and often victims of war and human rights abuses, and that walking away from international law and international conventions will not offer protection to them or to any other desperate people in the world and will send a terrible message to the rest of the world that this country is turning its back on the international law that it established in 1948?”
“Is it not very obvious that Israel is herding the entire population of Gaza, in a state of utter desperation and poverty, with a lack of food, medicine and water, and with serious injuries that cannot be treated, and that its ultimate aim is to expel the population of Gaza and to reoccupy it? Does the Minister not think it is time that we supported the call for a ceasefire, as every other nation in the world has done, and stopped being isolated in this ridiculous approach of saying that somehow a ceasefire cannot work? We have to start somewhere to save life. We have to start somewhere to prevent this catastrophe from getting even worse, on top of the 18,000 already killed in Gaza.”
“I went to Sri Lanka on a delegation in 1984, when I raised with the then President Jayewardene the issue of the human rights system, the abuse of human rights and the use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. I have met many Sri Lankan families who have people missing from that period on. Unless they get closure and an understanding of what has happened to them, the horror for individual families will just go on and on. I am sure that my right hon. Friend, who represents many Tamil people, would endorse the need for us to get an open book on everything that has happened to every person who disappeared.”
“I want to get an assurance from the Minister that the British Government’s relationship with Sri Lanka will ensure that there is always unfettered access for UN human rights monitors and inspectors in Sri Lanka, because there has been, at times, more than reticence—indeed, obstruction—towards their inspection and it is obviously necessary to get an independent view of the situation.”
“The Secretary of State needs to be very clear with the House: 15,000 people have already died in Gaza, and 1,200 have died in Israel. Israel is clearly pushing the entire population southwards, if not out of the Gaza strip altogether. Is Britain involved in the military actions that Israel has taken, either physically or by providing information in support of those military activities? I think the House needs to be told. What is the long-term aim of British military involvement in Gaza?”
“Israel is clearly undertaking an act of cleansing of the entire population of Gaza. It is illegal in international law and in no way is it a proportionate response to the appalling events of 7 October. What does the Minister think is Israel’s long-term objective? Is it to expel the entire population of Gaza into Egypt? What is the role, purpose and military objective of British military participation in the whole area? Can he assure us that there are no British soldiers on the ground in Gaza?”
“After the last COP, the Prime Minister at the time, Boris Johnson, assured the House that there would be no funding whatsoever from British sources for fossil fuel developments anywhere in the world. Since then, the UK Government have announced their own fossil fuel developments with oil and gas extraction, so how on earth does the Minister expect to be taken seriously at COP when Britain itself is investing more in fossil fuels and then lecturing the rest of the world that they should not do so? Can she assure us that this COP is not just going to be an exercise in greenwash with a sideshow of oil dealing, and that it is going to be a serious attempt to deal with the serious, fundamental issues that this planet faces?”
“Can I bring the hon. Member slightly more up to date? Could he cast his mind back to the 1970s, when industrial relations legislation introduced by the Heath Government ended up with five dockers being put in prison? They were then released. It was a headlong clash with the trade union movement, and it resulted in mass strikes all over the country.”
“The pause is obviously welcome because it will save lives. The horror of 7 October has not gone away. The disaster of the killing of 14,000 people in Gaza has not gone away. There has to be a recognition, as António Guterres has pointed out, of the underlying issue, which is the occupation of the west bank and the settlement policy, and the violence that so many Palestinians have had to put up with for decades and decades. Does the Minister believe there is a role now for the United Nations to do more to try to bring about not just a ceasefire, but a long-term peace that will involve the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Palestine?”
“There seems to be an excessive amount of advertising on commercial programmes aimed at young children, to the extent that it sometimes seems almost subliminal within the programme. Does my hon. Friend think that area needs to be looked at, because those programmes are using children as a commercial pressure on their parents or guardians?”
“I would also like to put it on record that we should reflect quite seriously on the situation facing one of the world’s best-known investigative journalists—that of Julian Assange, who has now spent almost five years in a maximum security prison for revealing uncomfortable truths about Iraq and other places. Journalism at its best tells us the truth. At its worst, it is propaganda for somebody else and somebody very, very powerful.”
“Some of them are very good, and some of them less so, but we must be aware of that and the need in the longer term for further regulation and control of the behaviour of algorithms and how they can influence opinion—politically, socially and commercially—and everything else in our lives. We should just take a moment to think of the bravery of many journalists around the world, including those who have been killed in Gaza over the past few weeks; those who are in prison in Egypt, in Russia and in a number of other countries; and those who risk everything in order to try to get the news out. They need support and protection in every way possible.”
“We are all driven in social media by various algorithms, some of which are owned by people far away, who have patented those algorithms. They follow us, they follow our interests and they decide what news we ought to have. It is hardly a free media when we are directed to the news that somebody wants us to hear. It is not simple. It is not simple to regulate on what algorithms do, but we should be extremely well aware of it. We should also be aware that it is possible to set up a radio station—unless I am wrong about this Bill—that is purely online. There is no regulation of it whatsoever, other than the basics of libel law and things such as that. That is an area that will grow. It is an area that is increasing, and some of the online radio stations have very large audiences indeed.”
“It is important for people growing up in bilingual communities to be able to listen to things in their own language, and for young people to feel that sense of belonging to the Greek, to the Turkish, to the Somali or to any other community, as well as being able to communicate in English. That to me is the great value of local radio stations. My final point is about social media. When I go to meetings, I often ask people how many of them ever buy a newspaper. If the audience has nobody in it over the age of 50, no hand goes up. Younger people simply do not buy newspapers at all—they have no relationship with them. They rely completely on social media for their news, information and ideas. We all access social media.”
“Having newspapers and radio stations that cover all languages is also very important. We have talked about Scotland and Wales, but there is also a plethora of communities in this country who want to hear stuff in their own language. I remember speaking in this House, probably from this very spot, in the 1980s, trying to defend London Greek Radio, which was set up as an independent Greek-speaking radio station. It was raided 74 times by the Post Office and all its broadcasting equipment was taken away—goodness knows what happened to the 74 items of broadcasting equipment. Eventually the station was given a licence, and it is now a very successful Greek language radio station. There are many other language radio stations all across the country, which is important.”
“There was a very serious determination by those who set it up to ensure that it was a genuinely independent paper that covered a huge part of Scotland and that was able to build community strengths and links with it, and I think that the paper has been very successful in doing that. A long distance away and in a completely different kind of community, the Camden New Journal group, which also includes the Islington Tribune and other enterprises , is, again, a wholly independent group set up by the journalists who worked on the paper when the previous owners essentially walked away from it. It is independent, it is local, and it is co-operatively run. It is also very, very successful, because it concentrates completely on the news and stories within the local community and tries to bring them forward.”
“I once worked in a genuinely local paper—it was printed on the same site where we wrote the stories and it was part of the community. It then became part of a bigger group, then another bigger group and then an even bigger group. Local papers across the country are actually not local at all. They are owned by a media group in a distant place and, if they are lucky, there are one or two journalists in the town in question and they live largely by press releases. My friend, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), quite rightly commended the West Highland Free Press for its work. I remember that it was set up because of a lack of local reporting.”
“Commercial media is driven by the need to make money to survive, so it has no great incentive to do anything other than entertainment, because that is what brings in the audience and advertising. It does not necessarily provide information and education for the population. I realise Ofcom has to do a difficult balancing act, but we should be aware that the majority of the population no longer looks at the two alternatives most of us in the Chamber grew up with—the BBC and ITV—but at a whole plethora of different news outlets. Therefore, those people have a wide variety of news issues thrown at them. A number of colleagues have raised issues about local journalism and local papers, which also appear heavily online.”
“The problems of, say, indigenous communities in Ecuador receive no coverage either. We need to think about how we can encourage all our media to have a more global view when they report globally. The BBC has cut back on its global coverage significantly. It cannot afford to have journalists all around the world, so it puts them in the best known places—Brussels, Washington and so on—and has cut back on many other places. The only global channel that currently tries to report on the whole world is al-Jazeera, which is funded entirely by the Qatar Government and royal family. We need diversity in broadcasting as well as in the way in which the news is chosen. That applies to many other issues as well, including the reporting of environmental affairs and debates about global warming.”
“The Bill does not pretend to give an answer to that. I am not sure there is a simple answer, but we should recognise that a growing proportion of the population—not huge, but significant—often loses out on all kinds of information as a result. I will briefly address the question of news values. I believe there is a high degree of bias in the way that a lot of news is reported in our media, notably international reporting on global affairs. If something happens in the USA, Europe or whatever war is being followed at that time, be it the horrors of Gaza or Ukraine, that is news, but if something happens in much of Africa, Latin America or south Asia, it is simply not reported at all. The huge conflict going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo receives almost zero coverage in any of our written or broadcast media.”
“All of those are now essentially merged into one, in some way or another: radio interviews are televised and newspaper articles appear on websites, often with videos. That is not a bad thing—it is often a good thing—but there is a universality to the media, and many people get their information from online sources. However, we should be slightly cautious because we, in this Chamber, are all media obsessives, I suppose. We probably read newspapers and listen to current affairs programmes more than anybody else in our society, so it is easy to forget that a significant proportion of the population does not watch very much television, has no access to smart phones, does not know how to use a computer and is completely lost in a digital divide. Those people are increasingly isolated and left behind.”
“I am particularly pleased that Gaelic and Welsh-language stations are not only protected but supported by the Bill, as they have greatly increased the speaking of Gaelic and Welsh, enhancing and developing the culture of both Scotland and Wales. Many of us often criticise journalists, but we very much value the idea of a free press and a free media, which we do not always appear to have. We should think a little more about the multiple ownership of different media outlets across TV, newspapers, radio and so on. The Bill is also about trying to keep up with changing technology and a changing media landscape. There was a time when radio was one thing, television was another, social media had not been invented and newspapers were completely separate from all of them.”
“I welcome this debate, and I strongly welcome the departure from the idea of selling off and privatising Channel 4. It has been a very good channel that continues to do a lot of innovative things. That it can develop its own content can only be a good thing, as it shows the importance of public service broadcasting. We should reflect that the Bill is going in the direction of proper regulation of the media, while recognising the value and importance of public service broadcasting. We should compare that with the United States, which, since the second world war, has systematically defunded public service broadcasting and has ended up with news values essentially dominated by Fox News and nothing else. We should value the principle of public service broadcasting.”