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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Every one of 8,612 lines we hold for Jeremy Corbyn, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 15 of 173.
“The right hon. Gentleman is making a most interesting speech. He must be aware that the laws relating to libel and so on are completely misshapen, in that it is totally a rich person’s game. Anyone without resources gets threatened with libel and is silenced immediately. They have no recourse to legal aid and no other way of dealing with the situation other than either to accept something they believe to be wrong or to make themselves bankrupt trying to defend themselves.”
“I welcome the Home Secretary to his position, and I welcome the court judgment this morning. I noticed in the Home Secretary’s statement a complete lack of empathy as to why people seek asylum in the first place—why people risk all, risk their lives, risk everything, to try to cross a dangerous channel to get to what they hope will be a place of safety. He is right to confirm that there is a massive global rise in the number of refugees. Should all Governments not work together to address the causes of that—poverty, wars, human rights abuses and all of those issues? Will he confirm that this country will not walk away from the important—although not perfect—advances made over the past decades by the European Court of Human Rights in improving human rights across Europe, including in this country?”
“There are 1,400 dead in Israel and 10,000 dead in Gaza; there is increased military activity on the west bank, increased settler violence, and now more and more children dying as this conflict goes on in Gaza. Prime Minister Netanyahu is now promising that Israel will control the Gaza strip into the indefinite future. Is it not time that the British Government joined all those other sensible and reasonable voices around the world that are doing everything they can to demand and get a ceasefire to prevent any further loss of life and to begin to work out a peaceful future for all the people in the region?”
“Before the Secretary of State moves on to what I assume will be higher education, I want to raise with her a serious problem particularly in inner-city schools in England: falling rolls and, therefore, falling income to the school, which usually means the loss of teaching assistant jobs and all sorts of other issues. This issue has affected rural areas a lot in the past, and special arrangements have been made. Is the Secretary of State aware of that? Is she considering what can be done to ameliorate this very serious problem, which damages the life chances of so many inner-city children?”
“We are watching in real time on television human life being destroyed with weapons, some of which have been in part supplied from this country. Cannot our Government just wake up to the simple humanitarian demand that millions of people in this country are making, and will be making in a peaceful march on Saturday, not in competition with the Remembrance weekend but part and parcel of it? We are remembering the horror of all those who lost their lives in two world wars and many other wars, and trying to bring an end to this ghastly conflict to save lives from being destroyed in Gaza and anywhere else in the middle east. Surely we can have that voice and make it clear from this House that we support a ceasefire now.”
“This morning on BBC Radio 4, Mr Mustafa Barghouti, an independent member of the Palestinian Authority dedicated to non-violent resistance of the occupation, spoke at length and with great heartfelt feeling of the occupation over 70 years, the settlement policy in the west bank and the continuing and increasing settler aggression towards the Palestinian people. His voice should be listened to carefully. If there is to be a long-term settlement, it must be the end of the occupation, the end of the settlement policy and justice for those hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees living in camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the diaspora all around the world. What is happening at the moment is ghastly beyond belief.”
“Some 1,400 were killed in Israel, which is utterly deplorable, and a vile act was undertaken to kill those people. We now have more than 10,000 dead in Gaza, including 4,000 children who have been killed. The statement by Netanyahu of permanent occupation in Gaza suggests to me that they are trying to expel the entire population, and a new Gaza will therefore be created in the Sinai desert. That is the prospect we face. Somehow or other, our Government were incapable of voting at the UN even for the minimal request in the Brazilian-authored resolution of a humanitarian pause at that time, and they still refuse to join the global call by a whole range of organisations for a ceasefire. That surely has to be the urgency of it.”
“I suggest the same principles should now be applied to inner-urban communities, too, because keeping a local primary school within walking distance for all children is important as part of the glue of the community, and I hope that issue can be addressed quickly. We do not have an integrated education system. We have far too much competition within the education community, and we have local authorities trying to juggle maintained schools, free schools and academies. They have great difficulty therefore in planning for future educational needs. In the couple of minutes I have left, I will reflect on the statement earlier concerning the situation in Gaza and the demand for a ceasefire, which I strongly and fully support. All deaths are deplorable.”
“That is partly because of people moving out of urban areas, partly because of a lower birth rate and partly because of home schooling. There is a whole variety of issues, but the reality is that many schools have seriously falling rolls, and therefore are questioning their survival. Each school is asked to deal with the problem on its own, along with the local education authority where it is a maintained school. The teaching assistants go first, and the other support staff second. The teachers go third, and all along the line, the after-school activities and so on are all cut back and dealt with. Successive Governments have understandably had to deal with this issue in rural areas, and they have come to a funding arrangement that has often protected rural schools, albeit with quite low numbers.”
“They have also demanded the full funding of the pay settlement that was agreed to ensure that school budgets were not slashed. The Government then did a volte-face on that. Having accepted that they would refund the schools to pay for the settlement, they have tried to get out of that. We need a catch-up process on our teachers’ salaries. Teachers have been so badly treated by this Government. In an intervention on the Secretary of State—she kindly gave way—I raised the issue of falling school rolls. She answered that the Government are aware of and investigating the problem. In my constituency, along I suspect with those of many colleagues representing inner-urban areas, there is a problem of falling rolls.”
“I want to say a couple of things about education. In schools—certainly in England—there are deeply stressed teachers and deeply stressed students. We have a mental health crisis affecting all elements of staff within our schools and in particular young people. The mental health crisis goes right down into primary schools. At later stages, we have grotesquely indebted graduates and, in some cases, parents deeply in debt or having problems just trying to find childcare for their children to continue in work. It is not as if we are giving all our children a great start in life. The teaching unions’ strikes over the past year have been about wages, but they have also been about workload and the quality of education delivered in our schools.”
“This debate is entitled “Breaking down barriers to opportunity”, and I look at the issues facing people in my community: poverty, low wages, the disgraceful two-child policy on benefits, systematic discrimination, inadequate housing, poor air quality and so on. They affect so many inner-city and other communities across this country, and I do not see any answers in the King’s Speech. On the environmental issues that the King managed to stumble across when telling us about the new policies, we are told that, somehow or other, new oil drilling and new fracking will improve the environment, make the world sustainable and put us in line with all the conventions that the Government have signed up to over the past few years. I just think that this debate is slightly surreal in its title, and in how the Government have addressed it.”
“I compliment the hon. Gentleman on his excellent speech. He has given very good democratic, social and moral reasons for why the Bill is in deep defect. Does he not think a better process would be for the Secretary of State now to withdraw the Bill altogether?”
“My right hon. Friend will recall the days when we managed to persuade the GLC pension fund not to invest in apartheid South Africa, but, as I am sure he will agree, the fundamentals of the Bill are that it actually reduces a very large area of freedom of speech for elected local councillors. That, to me, undermines the whole principle of representative democracy within our society.”
“I just think there has to be a balance and a limit on the numbers of them. They are not cheap and therefore not necessarily completely available to everybody. For example, the lowest priced Live Nation tickets last year in Finsbury Park were £190, way beyond the likely spending power of young people in the immediate area. The problem affects my favourite local park, which I often use. It is a wonderful place and I am worried for its future, as I am worried for every other park’s future, unless we have some degree of guaranteed funding and protection of them. I can see the Minister becoming anxious, because I told him that I would say nothing he could possibly disagree with. I look forward to an intervention from him agreeing with my view.”
“There are those who want to play football, cricket or baseball; those who want to just sit around doing nothing and playing music; those who want to play informal games; those who want to have birthday parties, and all the other things. There are also those who are keen on protecting trees and improving the biodiversity and natural life of parks. Managing parks is not simple. If we throw into the mix underfunding of the park, and pressure on the relevant local authority to raise more and more money from it in order to maintain it, we end up in a self-defeating circle where we lose the use of the park in order to make money to keep the park, which we cannot use. We have lost the use of it because of the many concerts that go on. I am not against having concerts, festivals and parties in parks—absolutely not.”
“The most recent figure I could find on the council’s income from concerts was £1.2 million for one year, which is a great deal of money. That involves a very substantial part of the park being taken over for several weeks on end, which causes a great deal of resentment. I am a patron of the Friends of Finsbury Park. Some time ago, a legal action was taken against Haringey Council to require it to spend the benefits of the concerts on the park, rather than on the generality of council expenditure. Although that action was successful, the park is still denied to a lot of people for quite a long time. Managing the use of parks is always complicated and difficult; there are many demands, and it means trying to work out everybody’s life in a park.”
“Finsbury Park, which was established 150 years ago by the Metropolitan Board of Works, was designed to be very much bigger, but the board gave up on its expansion and sold some of the land for housing. It is still a substantial park, and a vital open space. After its development by the Metropolitan Board of Works, the park was taken over by the London County Council, and then by the Greater London Council, which actually ran it very well. The history of the park shows all kinds of things, from balloons taking off to anti-aircraft guns during the second world war and peace demonstrations in 1914. It has been a place for people all that time. Like every other council, Haringey has funding problems, and it frequently lets out large parts of the park for concerts and entertainment and so on.”
“I spoke to many of them, and I would guess that more than half of them have no open space of their own. They have no gardens or balconies—no open space whatsoever. The park is their lung. We have to remember that parks are there for everybody. We in this Chamber may have our own gardens at home, which we probably enjoy and love, but the vast majority of my constituents do not. Their only open space is the street or the park. They have no open space of their own. We should think very hard about that. I was encouraged to seek this debate by the issues surrounding Finsbury Park, which is in the Tottenham constituency, just outside mine; I let the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) know that I would be raising it.”
“] I have been here a long time, you see. At the time, Gillespie Park was a disused railway sidings. British Rail wanted to sell it, and there was a huge debate and campaign locally. Eventually, it won recognition as an open space, partly because British Rail made the fundamental public relations error of allowing people to use it on a temporary basis. Once people have been allowed to use a public open space temporarily, they are not going to give it up—and they did not give up Gillespie Park. I was at the park on Sunday. It is beautiful: it is heavily wooded, with an amazing variety of bird and plant life, as well as fish life in the pond. We are very proud of it. There was an “apple day” on Sunday; hundreds of people came to enjoy different varieties of apple.”
“There is a school next to my office that once had houses in what is now the school’s garden. Those houses were bought by the Inner London Education Authority and demolished to make a garden for the school. That is an incredibly brave thing for any public authority to do. Now, we would not even think about buying houses in order to create a park or open space because of the costs involved. We have to remember that some of this work was done by very far-sighted people. We have nearly always achieved parks through a combination of wealthy benefactors—in some cases big charities, or even big landowners—and campaigns by ordinary people who just want something decent and to create more open space. One of my favourite parks in my constituency is Gillespie Park. I even led an Adjournment debate on it in the 1980s— [ Laughter.”
“In other words, there was no open space for many people in many parts of London. Abercrombie’s proposal, which has not totally been realised, was that London should aspire to have 4 acres of open space per 1,000 population. He realised that that would be very difficult, so he proposed a series of green routes that would link large open spaces in different parts of the city. Most of the parks in my borough have been developed since 1945; some have been developed very recently. I have an aerial photograph in my office of a place called Wray Crescent, which, as the name indicates, is a crescent of housing; the picture shows the houses and gardens and so on. It is not there any more. The houses were all bought by the local authority and demolished, and a park was created in that space.”
“Until the end of the second world war in 1945, the only real open space in my constituency was Highbury Fields—there was Arsenal football ground as well, if we want to call that a public open space—in the south of the borough, on the edge of the City of London. In 1945, something interesting happened across London and the other cities. The Abercrombie report, which was written during the war and was a planning idea for how London would develop after the war, was an incredibly far-sighted document. I might disagree with some of it—it was too keen on road building and not keen enough on other forms of transport—but it had a real vision for greening cities and enabling people to live with nature and have public open space near them. At that time, in some parts of London there was less than 0.1 acres of open space per 1,000 people.”
“In some cases there are more parks in suburban parts of our cities than in the centre because of the way industrial development happened. In a sense, the parks came into their own in this country during the covid pandemic. When we were locked down, people could recreate in parks. I have a bizarre memory of a man riding around Finsbury Park on a bicycle with a loudspeaker telling people to go home because it was too full. I could, of course, see his point, but I could feel the sadness of people who wanted to be outside enjoying a bit of urban space. It is inner urban open space that I want to say the most about. My borough, Islington, is geographically quite small. It is one of the most densely populated boroughs in the country, if not the most densely populated.”
“So from Birkenhead we get San Francisco and the whole process of developing parks and open spaces. The park was an amazing achievement, and Paxton was, of course, the one who designed the Crystal Palace, which was built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition. Throughout the 19th century there was big development of parks, as benefactors provided money for them. There were redoubtable fighters for public open space in every city who were concerned about growing industrialisation and people’s loss of amenity and contact with nature. Hampstead Heath came from that process. In some cases, parks were developed from what had previously been common land. Sadly, in many other places, they were not, and we became a country of very densely populated urban areas. The demand for parks grew. In some cases they were developed.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered funding for parks. It is a pleasure to be in the Chamber with you, Mr Pritchard, a fellow Shropshire person and product of the open spaces of Shropshire. I will speak generally about parks and then in more detail about the problems faced by our parks and open spaces. Parks are a major feature of our lives, providing opportunities to recreate, play games and observe nature, and for children to grow up. They are wonderful spaces. The oldest public park in Britain is in Birkenhead. Conceived in 1843 by Joseph Paxton, it developed into a wonderful open space—it is one of the largest parks in the country—and became iconic. It inspired Central Park in New York, which then inspired Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.”
“What people forget in that short-sighted view of things is that we can help to alleviate the mental health crisis with the provision of open spaces.”
“Covid had come, which enhanced the importance of parks but also led to a new round of funding problems for local authorities—£330 million less than in 2010 is now being spent on parks. The cuts in park expenditure have gone on and on. It is not clear what level of urban uplift is going to go on parks. In a reply to a request from the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Minister said that he thought local authorities were best placed to decide how money is spent. Yes, that is absolutely true, but unless there is overall protection for the level of expenditure on parks they will obviously be a place where cuts are made. If a councillor is faced with a massive bill on social care, or other aspects of key services, people will say that the parks do not matter, so they can be cut a bit more.”
“The Government have said that they want money to be put aside for the development of new parks, and they have done that through the levelling-up fund. The number of new parks proposed is not very many—I think it was 100. Unless I have misunderstood the information that I have read in the various reports, only £9 million has been set aside for them. Well, we cannot develop even one park with £9 million, so I think that needs to be looked at carefully. If we want new parks, they have to be funded from somewhere, which I will come on to in a moment. The Communities and Local Government Committee inquiry in 2016-17 was an important one, and it was revisited by the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee and by the Government in 2022. Clearly, a lot had changed in those five years.”
“We need to look again at the strength of legislation protecting public open spaces from development and from sale by local authorities so that that option is simply not available to local authorities. I am not saying that most local authorities want to sell parks—they do not—but we have to make sure parks are protected for all time. Fields in Trust has produced some interesting information. Between 2010 and 2021, there was a loss of £690 million in park funding across the whole country. Some 32% of parks have recorded a loss of frontline staff and 41% a loss of management; 23% have cut their development plans for any park; and 62% of local authorities—this is the saddest figure of all—expect to see the quality and appearance of their parks decline in the coming years.”
“I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. Stanley park is a wonderful park and a great place. Many other parks around the country are iconic and beautiful and all are at risk because of the danger of local authorities agreeing to a planning rule change that would allow parts of parks to be sold off. It all seems very attractive at the time. Somebody in the council says, “Okay, we will sell off this bit of the park and get x million for this piece of land, and that will enable us to plug a spending gap somewhere else.” It is always a very attractive option. The problem is we will never, ever get the park back. Once it is gone, it is gone. It will not return. That is why I look forward to the Minister’s response and to the response to the Select Committee report.”
“When dealing with overall planning, it is important to protect our green belt but also to protect our public open spaces and parks. We should also ensure that, with every major planning operation, there is improvement in the amount of open space and the creation of allotments and community growing spaces. Our children need to be brought up to understand that we have to live with nature, not on top of nature. That creates a better understanding and more support for progressive environmental policies in future. I put this forward today because I hope it will provide an opportunity for the Opposition and the Government to give their proposals for the funding of our beautiful parks all over the country.”
“My fundamental point is that the lesson from my lovely local park, Finsbury Park, is that, while we love that park, it needs to be properly funded so that it does not have to give up so much space every year for expensive concerts. The same thing applies elsewhere. Hyde Park is taken over by Winter Wonderland for several weeks. It is fine that people enjoy Winter Wonderland, but what about people who just want to go to Hyde park to walk about? They cannot do it because of that. The same applies in many other places, so we need balance. I hope the Government will look again at the two Committee interventions on this issue, which were helpful and designed to improve parks and open spaces, and realise their value. I hope the Government will say that they are prepared to ensure there is guaranteed funding.”
“One suggestion in the Committee report was that every local authority should be required to try and achieve the green flag standard in their parks. Many councils try and do that anyway because they want to—which is good—but they need to do it more. The funding of parks improved a bit when the lottery was introduced, which put quite a lot of money into the improvement of some parks. Lottery funding, like charity funding and donations for parks, is welcome, as that it can be used to improve sports facilities, planting and maybe bring in allotments and growing spaces. What gifts never do, however, is take into account the longer-term requirements of funding, such as the need for staff and the need to keep the thing going. That is where central Government expenditure and their relationship with local authorities is so important.”
“The hon. Member is quite correct. There are numbers of people who are going through a mental health crisis who feel that it is alleviated to some extent by going to a park. I have met people with mental health conditions who are going through group therapy who meet and walk around a park together; they feel that that is a way of coming together in a calm atmosphere. We should never underestimate the value of parks to all of us, in every way. They are a place for nature, recreation, sport, and a place to give us a sense of calm in our lives. There is an inequality of park provision, however, around the country. We need to look at that. We need to look at protecting funding by central Government to local government so that it can be ringfenced for parks.”
“I thank the Minister for what he is saying. Does he think that there should be guidance from central Government about the amount of time that a park can be exclusively used for private interests or private commercial interests, in order to protect the generality of public access to what is valuable open space?”
“Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), for what they said, and I thank the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke). We value our parks; we love our parks, and they are the only open space that so many of our people ever get access to. We should value them. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered funding for parks.”
“I am pleased that we had this debate today; it gave us the chance to set out the issues facing us. I understand what the Minister said about the use of parks for mental health recuperation and the generality of people’s needs, and I fully support that. I hope that we will recognise that increasing pressure on local authorities to get an income from parks can be detrimental to the basic needs of parks. I look to the Government to at least set out guidelines on the amount of time that a park, or even part of it, should be taken out of public use and into exclusive private use, because I see a trend that is rather worrying—to me in my own area and, I suspect, to people all over the country. I thank the Minister and the Opposition spokesperson, the hon.”
“The killings on 7 October were appalling and have to be totally condemned, as everyone has today. However, the loss of 5,000 Palestinian lives in Gaza is continuing and getting worse. The question is: why did the Prime Minister instruct Britain’s representative to the UN not to support the call for a very minimal thing, which is a humanitarian pause to allow aid to go in and a ceasefire to take place, to start to bring about a process of peace? Ultimately, that is the only way forward. Ultimately, the only way forward is the end of the occupation. Ultimately, the only way forward is recognition of the rights of the people of Palestine.”
“Does the Secretary of State understand that we need rent control, so that those people who cannot afford to remain in their own home get some comfort and are allowed to continue being a valuable part of our local communities?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. I noted he said that, nationally, around 20% of the population live in the private rented sector. In constituencies such as mine, the figure is 30% to 35%, and many people feel very insecure in their lives. For those on universal credit and housing benefit, the problem is that the local housing allowance does not meet their rent needs. Therefore, they are actually subsidising landlords through their benefits and living in desperate poverty as a result of it. In turn, this forces people in mainly ex-council properties to leave the borough, so we end up with a sort of social cleansing of our inner cities all over the country.”
“I say to all her family: my condolences, and thank you for the life of Ann.”
“When we asked her to explain this, she said, “I don’t think it’s any of your business how many cases I choose to bring, but it’s very much your business that you’ve got to carry them.” So I said, “Thanks, Ann—that’s great.” But we played our part in ensuring that the people of East Timor, who had been through hell for decades, actually saw their independence and some hope for the future. I want to say a huge thank you to Ann for the friendship, for the humour, and for the steel and determination on the human rights cause and all the other causes that colleagues have mentioned. She was always a good friend to me. We often did not totally agree on everything, but we totally agreed to respect each other in our disagreement, so we always got along very well indeed. That is a good example of how politics can work.”
“I want to put on the record my thanks to her for so much of what she did. As chair of the human rights group, Ann also led us in a delegation to East Timor in 2000 to witness its referendum. It was difficult, because the Indonesian army was supposedly protecting the integrity of the referendum, which was a strange thing to do. Ann, I and the late Alice Mahon were on a delegation, and we visited all the polling stations on behalf of the UN and met many people there. For some reason that I never really understood, Ann brought an amazing amount of luggage, which filled up the very small plane we went in to get there. The rest of us all became porters for Ann Clwyd’s luggage—there was a lot of it, and it was very heavy.”
“While she and I did not agree on the Iraq war, we were both on the record as opposing arms sales to Iraq. There were not many of us who were opposed to arms sales to Iraq before the war began. I saw Ann as a friend and colleague, and I worked closely with her as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary human rights group. During the Yeltsin period, we went on a delegation to Russia to try to defend the Chechen people, with the horrors they were going through. Ann was extremely assertive on behalf of the human rights group on that. I distinctly remember sitting in front of somebody who was presumably very senior in something because he had an unbelievable number of phones set out all round his desk, and Ann and I were speculating about which phone led to which person. It was her wit and humour that helped to get things through.”
“The miners’ strike came, and they wanted support, so she asked me to get a load of people from my constituency to go to Cynon Valley. We hired a coach and a van, we took food and we went in large numbers. Ann met us there. We built up a great relationship with Tyrone O’Sullivan, and it was an honour to be invited to speak at his funeral recently with my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley. Ann was somebody who stood up for what she believed in. She and I were two of a very small group of MPs who opposed arms sales to Iraq and spoke up for the Kurdish people during the chemical attack on Halabja. We did a lot of activities around the place and worked closely together with all the Kurdish groups. Ann was rightly seen as a great friend of the Kurdish community.”
“Ann was deeply concerned about Mango’s health and often looked after Mango for me. One day there was a leak in the roof. It was literally a leak—there was a lot of talk about Government leaks, but this was a real leak with water coming in from the roof. The rest of us just moaned and groaned and phoned up services and said, “Please fix this leak,” but Ann? No, no, no. I opened the Evening Standard at lunchtime that day. There was a picture of Ann Clwyd with an umbrella over her head, raincoat, wellington boots—the whole bit—explaining how Parliament had so deteriorated that she was forced to come in with protective gear to get through the day. She had this wonderful panache for publicising events and issues, but that hid a deep steel in what she did. She represented Cynon Valley, where Tower colliery was. I was at the next desk to her.”
“It is a great pleasure to be able to speak about my friend Ann Clwyd, whom I knew extremely well. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) for the wonderful way she has put her memories on the record today. I first knew Ann when she was elected to Parliament along with me in the early ’80s. We shared an office in the Cloisters downstairs, along with about 25 other MPs. It was an extremely noisy place, because Ann had a great deal to say. Lord Campbell-Savours often came along to have an argument with Ann about something, or to tell her what to do, and she told him what to do and so it went on. Tony Benn was next door, and there were a number of others there, so it was not a quiet place. The office was also home to my dog called Mango, who came in as well.”
“Is this not an example of a very bad national planning process? HS2 does not link up with HS1; all the pain and disruption around Euston will have been for naught; and if it is completed as far as Birmingham, all it will do is join an already overcrowded rail network. Surely we have either a high-speed network or nothing at all. The Minister seems unable to answer any questions at all.”
“The right hon. Gentleman and I are well aware of the situation of Dr Gubad Ibadoghlu in Azerbaijan. He is a distinguished academic, proud of academic independence and the objectivity of his work and studies. He will not be intimidated by anybody regarding what he writes or how he writes it. He is in a difficult situation at the moment, and I would be grateful if the Minister could assure us that the British Government will do all they can to ensure that he gets the medical support and attention he needs, as well as to ensure his right to pursue his profession and live in peace.”