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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“The right hon. Gentleman’s points are absolutely correct. The 1998 Act enshrined the laws I have mentioned, but it also created a culture of human rights that has developed in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland through foreign policy and in many other attitudes. When the Minister responds to the debate, I hope she will make it very clear that there is no question of a British Bill of Rights or a Bill of Rights that undermines the principles of the United Nations’ universal declaration of human rights, the European convention on human rights or the European Court of Human Rights. If we go away from that, then what future is there for human rights in this country?”
“A recent Westminster Hall debate focused on Ethiopia, particularly the situation in Tigray. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to keep the pressure up on the Ethiopian Government to ensure that human rights observers from the United Nations Human Rights Council have absolutely unfettered access to all parts of the country?”
“Obviously, I concur with the Minister’s view about the abuse of human rights in Afghanistan—I am sure we all agree about that—but the reality is that Afghanistan is desperately poor, and people are literally starving. What can the Government do to ensure that there is some kind of operation getting food into Afghanistan? Obviously, that would require some degree of co-operation, one way or another, with the de facto Government.”
“Will she welcome the commitment of the newly elected President Lula of Brazil to protect the Amazon rainforest and ensure the biodiversity of his country as a contribution to world survival? Secondly, will she guarantee that no British companies or banks will finance any fossil fuel exploration, extraction or trading anywhere in the world?”
“I think the whole House owes a debt to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this urgent question and for raising the issue of human rights in Egypt. The Minister must be aware that Kenya and its five surrounding neighbouring countries have contributed less than 0.1% of greenhouse gas emissions in their existence, yet they are paying the price with climate change, flooding, devastation, and now famine and so much else. Thirty one years ago, Vanuatu asked for restitution from the richest countries in the world in order to help them to deal with the consequences of rising sea levels. Will the Minister take this opportunity to do two things?”
“His remarks mean that much more inspection will have to be done by local authorities. Will the Chancellor ensure that local authorities are sufficiently funded to increase the levels of public health inspection to provide a safe living environment for people in all housing situations?”
“May I take the Chancellor back to the issues of housing, which other hon. Members have raised? Raising the local housing allowance merely in line with inflation does not necessarily help many people on benefits living in the private rented sector, particularly in constituencies such as mine where, generally speaking, many of those people end up being exported away from the area in which they live. It is more important to give local authorities the power to introduce rent controls in areas of very high private sector rent. Excessive rent levels are the biggest problem that many people, particularly young people, face in their lives. Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities made an interesting and helpful statement on the issues of safety within all housing.”
“I will stick to five minutes as you asked, Sir Gary, so we can all speak. I congratulate the hon. Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) on securing the debate and the way she introduced it, particularly her drawing attention to the way women were treated during the conflict in Tigray, the abominable abuse they suffered, and sadly probably continue to suffer, and the lack of closure in that part of the conflict.”
“Let us respect that history and participation and give all the support we can to what we hope is a path to long-term peace in that country.”
“It is not for us to interfere in the running of another country—I am absolutely clear about that—but we must be prepared to recognise that we may be able to play a role that can help by facilitating the UNHRC and with necessary aid and support of a humanitarian kind. We must ensure that we do not supply arms that fuel this conflict to any actor on this field and that arms that we sell elsewhere do not end up in Ethiopia, because the terror, death and real problems that the people of Ethiopia face—drought, famine, poverty, the lack of medical aid and other issues—must be addressed as quickly as possible. Ethiopia was the one country that was never colonised by the Europeans. I see it as the major beacon of Africa. It is the centre of the African Union and so much else.”
“They could not take part in the Ethiopian elections last year. The government in Tigray has been dissolved and there is no regional government in Tigray—it is done from Addis Ababa. Surely there is therefore a big democratic deficit in Tigray. If that democratic deficit is not addressed, it could well be the source of future stress and conflict. The last point I want to make is this: Tigray is not the only part of Ethiopia where there are problems. The Roma community are also facing tensions and stresses. There has been unrest and violence, and there have been deaths as a result.”
“I hope that when the Minister comes to reply, he can give us some indication of what support we can give to ensure that the refugees are decently treated and, where they want to and where it is possible, what assistance we can give them in returning to the country they come from. The Tigray conflict ended because of the intervention of South Africa, with the support of the African Union, and we should be very grateful for that. It was good that they brought about the ceasefire and the agreement. The ceasefire and agreement are one thing. What is important is the progress that happens after that: the investigation of the crimes that have been committed; getting humanitarian aid, medical aid and food rapidly into Tigray; and not being blockaded or blocked from going in. There is also the question of their democratic point of view.”
“Absolutely. I am sure that everyone agrees with the hon. Member on that point. I certainly do. I was going to say this further on in my speech, but I will say it now: we must ensure that the UN Human Rights Council has unfettered access to all parts of Ethiopia to examine these abuses and the crimes that have been committed. In the past, it has been barred from access and had to interview victims by telephone and things like that. Obviously, that is a very unsatisfactory way of reporting. The other point I make about Ethiopia generally is that there are almost a million refugees in Ethiopia from most of the neighbouring countries: South Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and so on. There is a massive demand placed on Ethiopia to deal with that.”
“Like my hon. Friend, I have constituents from Tigray, Oromia and Ethiopia as a whole, and they are going through the most awful stress. There is a lack of communication, but they want to send help and aid in support. Does she think we could do more to facilitate information, to give the families some sense of security about what is happening to their relatives? The community in this country is also very keen to send whatever help it can.”
“I thank the Minister for his contribution. Is he confident that unfettered access to all parts of Ethiopia will be given to the UN and other agencies?”
“Otherwise, we are going to have hundreds of thousands more dead as a result of what is, of course, the totally wrong occupation of Ukraine.”
“I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement. We all, obviously and correctly, totally condemn the Russian invasion, the war against Ukraine and the illegal occupation, as we condemn illegal occupations everywhere else. Possibly more than 200,000 people have already died in this conflict, and with the current trajectory, tragically, there are going to be many more deaths of Ukrainians and, indeed, Russian conscripts. There are going to be devastated families all around. I hear everything that the Foreign Secretary has said, but he did not say anything about the possible role of the United Nations or any other world body in trying to bring about a process that could at least halt this conflict, restore the status quo in terms of land areas, and try to bring about an early end to this war.”
“We need tough legislation on the private rented sector, we need more council housing built and we need an attitude from public health inspectors that goes down like a tonne of bricks on any landlord, whoever they are, who fails in their duties to maintain a safe, dry, warm and clean environment.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his statement on this awful tragedy and for the way he made it. I hope this will lead to a step change in attitudes and policy towards the housing needs of people across the whole country. I totally agree with him when he says that everyone should have a decent, safe, secure, dry, warm place to live in—absolutely right. It is not happening in my constituency, or in many others, where I come across people living in overcrowded accommodation with damp and all the other issues that go with it. In the now very large private rented sector, tenants are often afraid to complain—they fear eviction if they complain—they have no certainty of a long-term residence.”
“I was very interested to hear the Minister make reference in his statement to the Chilcot report. In the light of the horrors of Mali and the terrible loss of life there, I understand the withdrawal of French and British troops, but I would like the Minister to be clear about how many British troops are now going to be deployed in that region of Africa. Crucially, what is the long-term aim of this—what exactly are we getting ourselves into? That is clearly why the Minister made reference to Chilcot, which said that there had to be clear aims and objectives before British troops were deployed overseas.”
“I would be grateful, Mr Speaker, if you could just set out that this kind of language is totally unacceptable—as, indeed, is any other form of abuse of any type—that it will not be repeated in this Chamber and that you will absolutely not allow it to be repeated at any time.”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have given notice of it to you and to the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting). At the conclusion of last Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Question Time, I tried to raise a point of order to ask why the Prime Minister had not given me prior notice that he would make reference to me in the Chamber. During the few minutes that followed, you may not have heard the Member for Ilford North using what I consider to be very unparliamentary and actually quite demeaning language towards people in our society who suffer from dementia or senility. That has led to a lot of people contacting me who are very upset about this because they have loved ones they have lost to dementia.”
“I am grateful for my continued rent-free tenancy in the Prime Minister’s head, but if in future he could just let me know when he intends to speak about me, that would be helpful. That is the norm in the House. Could I ask the Prime Minister if he would take this opportunity to welcome the election of President Lula in Brazil, and his commitment to both social justice and environmental justice, and to confirm what the previous Prime Minister told this House, which is that no British bank, financial institution or company will henceforth be allowed to invest in fossil fuel extraction anywhere in the world as part of our contribution to bringing about net zero globally?”
“Will the Minister confirm that to seek asylum is a perfectly legal thing within international law and, therefore, UK law and that loose use of the words “illegal asylum seekers” is dangerous for the individuals concerned? Has the Minister’s attention been drawn to the Council of Europe report on pushbacks across Europe of people seeking a place of safety in a number of countries, including this one? They have been pushed back and left in places of enormous danger. Will he confirm that Britain will not be involved in sea-bound pushbacks towards France that leave people in enormous danger? Instead, will he recognise the humanitarian needs of, frankly, deeply desperate people to whom we should be holding out the hand of friendship, not condemnation?”
“If I am going to live rent free in his head, he could at least accurately reflect what I think and say, rather than inventions made up by him or his office.”
“On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise to make a point of order concerning Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday. I informed the Prime Minister that I would be raising this point of order this morning. Yesterday, in answer to the Leader of the Opposition, he made reference to me. He gave me no advance notice that he was going to make such a reference, which is surely the convention for all Members of the House, including the Prime Minister. He also gave a wholly inaccurate representation of the 2019 election manifesto, of which he must have been fully aware, because he took part in many debates concerning its contents during the election campaign. Could you guide me, Mr Deputy Speaker, on how the Prime Minister could correct the record?”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to the Leader of the House for what she has just said. The manifesto is freely available. Had it resulted in a Labour Government, we would not have such poverty, such food banks and such misery in this country today.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. She is making a very powerful speech in support of her amendments. I was with her at the demonstration outside New Scotland Yard following the death of Chris Kaba. It was an emotional and passionate occasion. Everyone there was looking for justice and looking for knowledge and an inquiry. Does she support more pressure on the Home Office to hurry it up, so that we can get some closure on that terrible loss of life and the pain that goes with it? The beautiful way in which his cousin spoke at that demonstration will stay with me for ever.”
“My hon. Friend is making an absolutely excellent speech. The right to roam would not have happened without the mass trespass at Kinder Scout in the 1930s. We owe our liberties to those who took risks by demonstrating in the first place. Every Member of this House has benefited from those liberties that came about as a result of the risks that others took.”
“We live in a deeply divided country and a deeply divided society. There are more poor people than ever, more people accessing food banks than ever before and more children growing up in absolute poverty and, as a result, not achieving their best in life. Twice the Chancellor has refused to answer the question whether he will raise benefits in line with inflation. I ask for the third time: can he please assure people who rely on benefits for their very existence that they will be increased at least in line with inflation, to tackle the appalling poverty so many people face?”
“Will the Chancellor of the Exchequer explain where the morality is in giving a huge increase in income to the very richest in our society and threatening the benefits of the very poorest in our society, who are trying to get by on universal credit? What estimate does he have of the levels of inequality that will exist in this country in one year’s time and in five years’ time as a result of his statement today?”
“What studies has the Secretary of State undertaken of the effect on aquifers where fracking has taken place, which are deeply polluted and run well beyond the local communities he is seeking support from to reintroduce fracking to this country? Surely, he must understand that the dangers will be here for decades to come—long after whatever small amounts of gas have been extracted? It is future generations who will suffer because of this policy.”
“Is it not obvious that all these years of privatisation, all the billions that have been paid out in dividends and profits and the massive levels of executive pay have meant that not enough has been invested in the infrastructure, and that there have been excessive numbers of sewage discharges, which are getting worse? Is it not obvious that we should do what every other country in western Europe does and bring our water industry as a whole into public ownership under public control so that we do not damage our water infrastructure in order to pay profits to distant billionaires?”
“I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) for securing this important question. It must be very obvious that in this age of extremes—extreme heat, extreme cold and flooding—our infrastructure is simply not capable of dealing with it and that we have not really followed through on the commitments we have given at successive COP events. Will the Minister commit to the Government taking a long, hard look at all the decisions taken at COP that we have or have not followed and all our infrastructure requirements that need to be changed, so that we have effective public services that are properly funded and properly staffed in order to deal with these kinds of extremes? They are not one-offs. They will come more and more often as the years go on and we have to be ready for them.”
“I am grateful to the Prime Minister for taking a break from his fantasy tour of this country. Could he take one moment to explain why 14 million people in this country are living in poverty, why there are more food banks than there are branches of McDonald’s, why there is a mental health crisis, why big pharma has made so much out of owning the patents of the vaccines, and why his Government are presiding over the enriching of the richest, the impoverishment of the poorest, and the greatest job insecurity in industry after industry? He has created poverty, inequality and insecurity. That is his legacy.”
“The sad fact is that it seems that a large number of people died, and the allegations made against the special services are very serious indeed. Does the Minister think it appropriate that the Royal Military Police should be conducting these investigations at all? Should it not be done by an outside body? In response to the question from the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), does the Minister think it is time for special forces to be brought under the same democratic accountability as the rest of the armed services?”
“The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and I agree with her on protecting habitats, grasslands and other places. However, does she also accept that isolated protection does not really work, and that there has to be a connectivity between preserved areas, just as there has to be a connectivity between forests and natural grasslands?”
“I absolutely agree with what the right hon. Gentleman has just said. Does he not also think that we have to do something about the market for very rare, valuable tropical hardwoods? That market acts as a huge economic incentive for people in forest areas, because it is their only way of surviving economically. We have to do something about that as well, because we are indeed the market for those products.”
“It is about conserving and preserving the natural world and the environment. Of course, that includes the big global conferences and the international agreements, but environment is basically a state of mind: whether we live with nature, or destroy it and see it as something solely to be exploited. Today’s debate is a good example of how we can advance both of those agendas at the same time, ensuring that we get the international agreement that is essential, but bringing that debate into all the other actions of our lives and all the services that are administered by the public in this country.”
“Conservation can work if people bring the population along with them; it does not work if security companies, armed guards and everything else are sent in. It is so important to achieve that more universal buy-in. I am delighted that we are having this debate. We have to ensure that the generation going through school—the next generation coming up—understands that our lives and the survival of this planet depend on how we interact with nature. That means bringing children up to understand that insects, wildlife, and wild places are not their enemies—that we have to live alongside nature, not destroy it through our activities and our greed. They will then get the message about connectivity: that when a person drops a plastic bag in a river, it ends up in the sea, and we end up eating that plastic with the fish we consume.”
“The most effective conservation, whether marine or land conservation, is done with the participation, support and involvement of the entire community that lives locally. I will give one example. In Mexico, the turtle on the Atlantic coast was rapidly depleted in numbers and was not far off extinction. There was an idea to create a protected zone for sea turtles, with lots of guards to prevent people from stealing turtle eggs. What would have happened then? Corruption would have come in, somebody would have started stealing the eggs, and so on. What they actually did was recruit all the turtle hunters to become turtle protectors as a way of making money out of visitors going there. There is nothing like a poacher turned gamekeeper to look after a species that was at great risk.”
“It is no good western countries lecturing the poorest people in the poorest parts of the world about the need to protect their environment, because we believe it is the right thing to do, when they cannot feed their children, do not have a proper education system, do not have a health service, and are living in levels of desperate poverty. Something else has to go with it. Eco-tourism does help, as do sustainable agriculture and our purchasing practices and powers, but this is also about bringing people on board. If we just fence off an area and say, “This is preserved, and we are going to put armed guards in it to protect the animals that may become extinct”, we are not sending a very good message to the people who live in that area.”
“On the way to get one tree—iron tree, mahogany, or whatever else it happens to be—the whole forest around it is destroyed or, in the case of the Amazon rainforest, wantonly burned down in order to create the short-term advantage of growing soya for a few years, leaving a virtual desert behind. I discussed that issue with a lot of environmental campaigners and others from Brazil, both from Rio and from the Amazon, during the COP in Glasgow last year, and the similarity of views between those from urban Rio and those from the Amazon area was very interesting. The commitment now being made by the putative and hopefully next President of Brazil, Lula, to end all the destruction of the rainforest and promote sustainability there is welcome. I hope he gets elected and is able to achieve that goal, because it would be an enormous step forward.”
“The number of animal species that are becoming extinct year on year is increasing fast, and there will come a time when the elephant, the tiger, the lion and so many other large species will be on the danger list, as well as very many smaller species that are almost extinct at the present time. As such, I agree with what the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell said about changing the story and the narrative. In some places, such as the Indonesian, African and Amazon rainforests, there is a huge economic advantage to be gained from selling tropical hardwoods.”
“We can do an awful lot, and we must bring up our young people to understand that. I pay tribute to teachers in schools who do their best to achieve that. During a visit that I made recently to another local school, Newington Green Primary School, there was another brilliant set of children who were concerned about these issues. Older students, such as those at the Arts and Media School Islington, who are preparing to do their GCSEs and later their A-levels, believe—this view has also been put forward in the House—that there should be much more environmental education at all stages of our education system, so that children grow up understanding such things. To add to what has been said already, the loss of biodiversity on a global scale is huge.”
“For example, Rotherham Council has done an excellent job in ensuring a huge level of biodiversity on all its roadside borders, and a number of other councils have done exactly the same. We should support them in that. Those are the things we can do ourselves, through farming policy, the use—or non-use—of pesticides, and building up a sense of biodiverse resilience, which in turn will protect endangered species. Sadly, as the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell pointed out, the hedgehog is not far off being an endangered species. Obviously I hope its population recovers, but it seems to be recovering in urban rather than rural areas. That is deeply disturbing and suggests that it is due to a combination of farming practices and dangers from roads, whereas urban areas seem to be maintaining or even recovering their hedgehog population.”
“I explained that there had to be a balance between keeping grass on football pitches the right length and growing flowers and other things—it is a serious practical question if your interest is mainly in football. Winning people over to these arguments is so important, and today’s debate will help us to do that. We must also encourage local authorities to have more permeable surfaces and fewer car parks with impervious layers, and to end the appalling practice in many parts of the country of paving over front gardens to park cars, when those front gardens are an important point of nature. Indeed, paving them over increases the danger of flooding, and thus the pollution of rivers further downstream. Some local authorities have done well on that.”
“These are children growing up in a very urban environment, but they absolutely get the connectivity between the natural world and themselves, and they get what is possible in the small growing spaces that they have in those schools. Yesterday morning I was in Ambler Primary School near Finsbury Park. It is a very densely populated urban area, with high levels of traffic around it. We were talking about biodiversity, growing flowers and so on, and one student asked me what I meant when I said that we should not be cutting grass too short. I was explaining about wildflowers and biodiversity, and he wanted to know whether that included football pitches.”
“I have the honour of representing my constituency, which I believe is the smallest urban constituency in the country and, I am pretty sure, the most densely populated in the country. Most people in my constituency have no open space of their own whatsoever, not even a balcony. Bringing up our children in that atmosphere, it is not easy to get them to understand the interaction between human life and natural life, because they live in an entirely concrete environment. What we do in our schools and our parks is important, as is the message that those young people get. I have always visited each of the primary schools in my constituency as often as I can, usually once a year, and I have been to two primary schools and one secondary school in the past week to hold a discussion with students about their views on the environment.”
“She reports in a fascinating section of her book that eventually, after the rewilding had grown a great deal and become much more biodiverse, crop production rates went up because of the high levels of pollination by higher levels of insect life surrounding those farms. As the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) said, there is an interesting phenomenon of joined-up thinking on farming, because it is about the biodiversity surrounding crop production as well as the preserved areas that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion talked about in her excellent contribution. We must think about that aspect. This is also about how local authorities behave.”