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.”
The complete record
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 22 of 173.
“I am interested in what the Minister says about the remedial works being done. What compensation will be made available to people who, as I outlined, have paid unbelievably excessive levels of insurance, through no fault of their own, and are seriously out of pocket and unable to continue doing so?”
“Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the problems with the Council of Europe is that its work, importance and role are not fully understood, even by Members of this House, never mind the general public? I know he has worked hard on that. We need to have a much more active public relations initiative, explaining the value of the Council of Europe, its powers and the changes it can, and does, bring about among members states.”
“Therefore, to me, the Council of Europe is a very important body. To conclude, we must ensure that there is a serious information campaign about the role of the Council of Europe and all its policy areas—environment, human rights, and many other social policy areas—so that people understand what it does. Obviously there was a funding issue with Russia’s removal, but that ought to spur us on to have a better information campaign and better reporting back. The least we could expect is to have a debate in the main Chamber of our Parliament, rather than here in Westminster Hall; I am not criticising Westminster Hall, but this ought to be a main Chamber debate.”
“Turkey is an abuser of human rights through its prison conditions, its treatment of Kurdish and Armenian minorities, and in a number of other ways. I am not in favour of the expulsion of Turkey from the Council of Europe. I want to see engagement—for us to work with and support the many brave journalists and human rights campaigners in Turkey, and try to bring about improvements in their society and their country. The role of election observation is an important one. I was recently an election observer—not on behalf of the Council of Europe, but a different body—at the elections in Colombia. Having observed other elections in other places, I know the great importance, not necessarily of finding all the faults, but of simply being an unexpected presence at the polling stations with a right to investigate and inspect what is going on.”
“The discussions in the Council of Europe on human rights issues are important, but more important in some ways is the engagement with, and delegations to, different member states to try to improve their human rights records, their prison conditions and prisoner rehabilitation regimes. Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe. That has now happened. It is a huge step to expel a member state. Although I, like everyone in this Chamber, totally condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war that is going on there, we have to ask ourselves a question: what message does it send to human rights campaigners and victims of human rights abuses in different parts of Russia if they no longer have access to the European Court of Human Rights? I know the issue of Turkey is writ large.”
“Some people, no doubt, will not be very pleased with the decision made last night, but personally I think it was absolutely the right decision. If any member state, including this one, goes outside the European convention on human rights and behaves in the way that the British Government wanted to, there are consequences. The Court has intervened to bring that about. Personally, I support the decision, but others might not. However, we cannot complain about other countries not complying, such as Turkey or in the past Russia, if we do not stand up for exactly the same principle ourselves. The European Court of Human Rights is something that the whole of Europe apparently subscribes to and ought to continue to subscribe to.”
“I am pleased that we are having this debate, and to be an alternate member of the Council of Europe. I have found the experience very interesting. As I said to the leader of the UK delegation, the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), in an intervention, the lack of information, understanding and publicity about the Council must be addressed. The Council of Europe is a big body and it spends a great deal of money on staff, resources and all that—I am not complaining about that, but there has to be a much better understanding of what it does. Its foundation in 1949 was historic and dramatic, because it gave a European focus on human rights, and it supported the principle of the European convention on human rights and the European Court of Human Rights.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that it is also important in this context to have as much contact as possible, through the Council of Europe, with Russian human rights campaigners and activists, so that they feel that there are people who are interested in the difficult situation they find themselves in?”
“Instead of attacking lawyers who represent desperate and frightened people and attacking courts who give judgment on the European convention on human rights, why cannot the Home Secretary just say very clearly that her Government support the European convention on human rights as a protection of the rights of everybody among the signatory nations and that this Rwanda policy is not just a shame but an utter disgrace? It is a dereliction of duty and it is treating desperate people trying to find a place of safety in a difficult world like chattels that can be sent away somewhere else. Is the policy not just a disgusting example of what the Government are really about where human rights are concerned?”
“The Secretary of State rightly says that billions were pumped into the railways during the covid pandemic. That money kept the system going, and a lot of people worked very hard to keep it going. The train operating companies were preserved and supported, and they did very well during that period, as did many others in the private sector. Why is he now punishing the people who kept the railway system working, and who do all the difficult jobs on the railways, with job losses, inadequate pay and a loss of morale? Should he not talk to their representative unions about the real situation on the railways and work with them to ensure we have an effective, efficient and secure rail system for the future?”
“My hon. Friend must be aware of the anger that many people who work in the rail industry feel—those who clean and repair the carriages, those who repair the track and those who provide the catering that many Members of this House enjoy—at being told basically to take a pay cut and face compulsory redundancies at a time when billions has been poured into the train operating companies, which have done very nicely out of their cosy arrangement with this Government.”
“My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, particularly with the historical references. Those of us who were here during the grim days of section 28 remember just how horrible it was, and how brutally the media then treated LGBT communities. The proposal to not include trans people in the conversion therapy ban is unbelievably wrong, divisive and short-sighted. We need to be very clear, and when this legislation comes along, I hope there will be a majority in this House that says, “We need a total ban on conversion therapy,” as the Scottish Human Rights Commission and others have proposed, as the hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) said earlier. Does my hon. Friend agree?”
“Would my right hon. Friend agree that the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, originally conceived in 1968 under the Government of Harold Wilson, was an enormous step forward and is universally supported by most non-nuclear powers around the world, and that Britain could make a very positive contribution to the NPT review conference in August this year? Would he also agree that it would be helpful if the Government did that, so that we could start down the road of ridding the world of nuclear weapons and signing up to a ban on nuclear weapons?”
“I thank my right hon. Friend for the remark he just made about future diplomacy. Does he not think that this moment, when defence expenditure is rising so rapidly all around the world, presents a big problem, and that we should also look at the role that the United Nations could and should play and regret the long delay between the start of the awful Russian invasion of Ukraine and any kind of diplomatic initiative by the UN? There has to be a world of peace and basically that has to come through agreements via the United Nations.”
“I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman has raised the issue of sewage pollution in our rivers. Does he not think the solution is to take all our water companies back into public ownership and stop pouring millions of pounds of our water costs into the profits of the private sector, often in overseas locations?”
“I am interested in what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. I assume he is talking about fracking when he talks about onshore gas production, and suggesting that we leave it to individual landowners and local authorities, but the polluting effects of fracking do not stop at the borders of somebody’s land or at a local authority border. Fracking pollutes the aquifers and it can and does create earth tremors that go well beyond all that. It is surely a matter of national policy that we do not pursue this short-sighted avenue of trying to get gas, and that we look at better methods of conservation and more sustainable methods of generating our energy.”
“We should joy in their creativity, their art, their music, their science, their learning. They are the future. But what are we doing? Consigning them to stress and, in many cases, so much poverty. We can do things differently and very much better than we are. Sadly, the speech given today offers no hope whatsoever for any of the issues I have drawn attention to.”
“I think he is a whistleblower and journalist who should be protected, not removed. My last point is that we should be building a world fit for the next generation. We are bringing up a generation of children in this country who are overstressed and over-tested in school; who are streamed almost out of sight in secondary school and are victims of the competitive culture between secondary schools; who are charged in college and heavily indebted in university; and who then, because their wage levels are so low, cannot afford any decent or permanent place to live. What message are we giving to the next generation? They will not have it as good as the current generation; they will have to pay the debts for the future. We should be investing, nurturing, cultivating and including all those young people.”
“We should hold out the same hand and the same welcome to refugees from other conflicts and wars in Yemen, Syria, Libya, Palestine, Ethiopia, Eritrea and other places, and recognise that if we want good human rights for ourselves, those human rights should apply to others. That should also apply to people’s human right to express dissent around the world. The number of real journalists, very brave people, who have stood up against oligarchs and dictators and have paid the ultimate price as a result by being murdered should be recognised. Our Home Secretary should think carefully of the responsibility on her shoulders to decide whether somebody who has bravely reported on human rights abuses and military activities around the world, Julian Assange, should be removed from this country.”
“The whole agenda of a law and order society, rather than dealing with the social divisions in society, is not an appealing prospect. The world is in an environmental crisis. COP25 said so, COP26 said so—although there was a lot of greenwash surrounding it—and there is a massive environmental disaster around the corner. The global refugee crisis of 70 million people around the world comes from wars, human rights abuses and oppressive societies, but it also comes from the environmental disaster we face. We cannot just close our doors on refugees. I absolutely and totally condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and I hold out my heart and my hand to the Ukrainian refugees who have come to this country, albeit with great difficulty and no thanks to Home Office processes and procedures.”
“If the Government are proposing deregulation of the economy at the very time when we need an investment in the economy, if they are not doing anything about job protection, fire and rehire or the insufficiency of wages for many people, the gaping chasm of inequality in Britain will get worse. There is regional inequality, there is national inequality, there is social inequality and there is class inequality, and it is getting worse. This Parliament must address those issues. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) said, social inequality is dealt with either by raising wages, raising public expenditure and so on, or by repressing the protests and the anger and trying to control people who want to demonstrate against it.”
“We must understand that if we are going to have such a huge proportion of our population living in the private rented sector, they need certainty of an affordable rent, certainty of long-term tenancies, certainty that they will not be peremptorily evicted from that property and certainty that repairs will be done when they need them. Many local authorities, my own included, are innovative and creative in building some degree of protection and regulation in their communities, but it is this House that should build those protections and regulations within the private rented sector. There are a whole lot of things that ought to be in the Queen’s Speech.”
“We must hardwire into any housing legislation a sense of democracy in how housing associations manage their properties, and force them to listen to their tenants. It is in the private rented sector, however, that the worst problems occur. About 30% to 33% of my constituents live in the private rented sector, and the rent levels are horrendous. They are more than three times the level of council rents, and the local housing allowance is insufficient to help people who are mostly moving into the private rented sector. Those on universal credit moving into the private rented sector because of the insufficiency of council housing must either supplement the rent themselves or move away from their community, their schools, their families, their support networks and all the rest.”
“I represent an inner-city constituency with a large number of council properties, a considerable number of housing association places, a small and declining number of owner-occupiers and a fast-growing private rented sector. By and large, the council properties are well managed and well run and have reasonable rents, and to live in a council property gives people a considerable sense of security. I do not think housing associations are particularly well managed. I do not think by and large that they are good at doing repairs or good at management, and they are profoundly undemocratic in their behaviour and their frequent refusals to listen to tenants or allow what tenants want to have any bearing.”
“The homeless people who were very obviously on the streets of this country when the covid pandemic started were housed, because there was Government intervention and sufficient funding given to local authorities to ensure that they were housed. Some local authorities leased hotels, some bought new places and a large number—I do not think all, but a large number—of rough-sleeping homeless people were housed during the pandemic. If we can do it during a pandemic, we can do it at any time. We can carry on doing it. It is simply immoral that anyone should be forced to sleep on the streets of this country at any time. However, that means addressing the issues of housing costs and housing stress.”
“Why have this Government not done what the French have done and introduced an energy price cap? Why have they not taken the hit of the increased energy prices as a public good in order to protect people? Why are they not promoting public ownership of energy, rather than having the energy companies making massive profits during this period of crisis? We must look at all of those issues. Some 83% of adults say that they are noticing, or suffering from, a considerable increase in the cost of living, which means not just food poverty, but an inability to buy clothes and so much else as well. Those issues were not addressed in the speech. I was interested in the very thoughtful speech made by the right hon. Member for Newark just now, which addressed many of the housing issues we face in this country.”
“Some 6.3 million people in this country are living in fuel poverty, which is a nice sociological term, but what it really means is that those people cannot afford to put on the electricity, cannot afford to buy the gas, and cannot afford to heat their homes. If they are lucky, they can heat one room of that home, or they just go cold. I would have thought that quite a few Members who campaigned in the local elections last week came across houses with no lights on, even when it was getting dark. There was a reason for that: people in those houses could not afford to charge the key meter or to put the lights on in their homes. That is the reality of poverty in this country. That poverty, again, leads not just to unpleasant living, but to hypothermia and really serious problems for people just trying to survive.”
“Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) pointed out, a rapid increase in universal credit. It requires recognising the desperate state of poverty within Britain. It became very obvious during the covid pandemic that there is a whole generation of people who came together in mutual aid groups that now recognise that poverty and food hunger are unacceptable in our society and that the work that has been done on the right to food and so much else must be acknowledged and taken up. There is nothing in the speech that says anything that gives hope to those people living in desperate poverty at the present time. Many Members have spoken about the problems of energy costs.”
“I will try to keep within the 10-minute limit that you have requested, Madam Deputy Speaker. The day of the state opening of Parliament is quite surreal. We have all the pomp, the gold coaches and the ancient Rolls-Royces out on the streets, and a Prime Minister who comes into the Chamber and tells us that he has got right all the big calls on covid and all the big calls on finance and then disappears. The reality is that we as a country have 4.2 million children living in poverty. Some 1.3 million babies—very, very small children— are being brought up in households in desperate poverty, often with not enough to eat and a heavy reliance on food banks and food co-ops merely to survive. Dealing with poverty and related issues requires wage rises, and, as the right hon.”
“Is my right hon. Friend aware that, while the Prime Minister was organising parties in No. 10 and showing complete contempt for his own rules, working-class communities and young people in overcrowded flats all over Britain were in lockdown? The mental health crisis that we still have around us was intensified by the very strict operation of those rules, and many young people faced massive £10,000 fines for organising parties. Is it not just one law for Boris Johnson and his mates, and a different one for everybody else?”
“May I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the case of Mehran Raoof, a trade union activist who is in jail in Iran? He was not released when others were released. The Foreign Secretary rather erroneously said that he did not want his name to be made public. It has been made absolutely clear through Amnesty International that his family do want his name to be made public, they do want a public campaign, and they do want him to be released in the same way that the very welcome release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe took place.”
“Could the Minister assure the House that the Government are in serious negotiations and talks with the Government of Iran about the release of Mehran Raoof, who I mentioned, and others whose names are not revealed but are nevertheless equally meritorious of being released?”
“Is it not a moral requirement for the Home Secretary to explain why she will deport people who have arrived in this country, fleeing from desperate wars, famine and problems, prepared to risk all to cross a dangerous sea? Do they not deserve a sense of humanity from the Home Secretary, and not to be deported to incarceration in Rwanda?”
“Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) correctly pointed out that Afghan refugees are still waiting. Many of them have been waiting for months and months just to get papers to get somewhere to live so that they can contribute to and work in our society.”
“I absolutely welcome and support all that. Indeed, in my constituency and borough, many people are taking part in fundraising efforts to assist Ukrainian people. There obviously needs to be an urgent ceasefire, a withdrawal of forces and a long-term settlement that brings about peace and security for people in the whole region. There must also be a recognition of the bravery of many peace campaigners in Russia who have opposed the war and are now in prison as a result. All wars end in a peace process, and I hope we can get to that point much more quickly. I have to raise the uncomfortable truth of the contrast between the way Ukrainian refugees are supported by our media and by many politicians and people in our society, and the way refugees from other conflicts are not treated in the same way. The hon.”
“Indeed, on our own continent, Europe, many are dying in the Mediterranean and, sadly, some are dying in the English channel trying to get to this country. Such injustice has to be compared with the rhetoric with which we claim to be supportive and always welcoming of refugees—we are not and we have not been. I totally and absolutely condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the bombing of civilian targets and the killing of people, and I have every sympathy for all those who have had to flee from Ukraine to try to get to a place of safety. I absolutely welcome the way in which people in this country—apparently 200,000 of them—have offered space in their own homes to refugees from Ukraine, and the fact that those who come here will be able to stay here, will get papers immediately and will get the right to work.”
“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I fully endorse your proposal, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the summer Adjournment debate should be known as the David Amess Adjournment debate. The speed with which he described Southend means that whenever I go there I simply run to keep up with the sites that he used to describe to us. It would be nice to remember him in that way. I wish to speak about the refugee crisis around the world and offer some thoughts on where it might come to. As we go into the Easter Adjournment, around 70 million people around the world are refugees. They are refugees from wars, famine, human rights abuse and poverty, and refugees fleeing intolerance in their societies. They are all people who want to survive and contribute to the world. They are often treated brutally wherever they try to escape to.”
“I hope that over Easter people will reflect on that, and our Ministers in the Home Office and other Departments will think for a moment about the consequences of denying freedom to somebody who has ensured that there is at least an understanding of how some of these atrocious wars and abuses of human rights came about.”
“That tradition of people speaking out against abuses of human rights and injustice when they find them, whatever the consequences for themselves, is something we should revere, welcome and support. We should not allow Julian Assange to be confined to prison in this country and possibly removed to the United States, where he would face a lifetime sentence—or even several lifetime sentences, in the ridiculousness of some of their legal decisions—and never see the light of day or be able to write again. We need to think very carefully about what freedom of speech is. If we do not defend those who defend the right to know, and ensure that we get the right to know, we demean ourselves in the process.”
“I just ask for a sense of understanding of what Julian Assange has contributed to the world in trying to bring truth to power about what has actually happened. I would hope that this House would recognise that those who expose injustices and abuse are eventually remembered and recognised. I will give a parallel: an unknown shipping clerk in Liverpool, E.D. Morel, observed things that were going back and forth from what was then the Belgian Congo in the late 19th and early 20th century. He started to investigate the appalling abuses of human rights in the Congo. He was vilified and attacked for doing so, but he persevered and prevailed. Eventually, he came to this House, becoming a Member and a Minister and so on. He exposed the truth and eventually saved lives in the Congo.”
“He revealed the truth. He will go down in history as a journalist who exposed what was going on, in the same way that others exposed what German rearmament was about in the 1930s, and human rights abuses in other places around the world, including in the Vietnam war, the Afghan war—all the Afghan wars for that matter—and others. Yet, he is in Belmarsh, a maximum security prison in this country, just a few miles from this House, and is not in a good physical state. Anybody in Belmarsh, particularly those who are not guilty of anything, will not be in a good physical state. Obviously, the court cases have gone on. At the moment, there are no legal processes going on, which is why I am able to bring this subject up in the House.”
“He works in the Netherlands and other places to draw attention to it and is a writer of plays and so on. We have to ask ourselves how an innocent man ended up in Guantanamo Bay, other than through the atmosphere created by the war on terror by George Bush and others before 2003. Then we have to ask ourselves about how we get to the truth of these matters, and this is what I want to conclude with. The truth about these matters is that there was a long-term plan by the United States and others to invade Iraq through the war on terror—we can remember the axis of evil speech by George Bush in 2002. There was also one journalist who told the world the truth about all this. Julian Assange revealed the truth about US matters, about what it was doing, about the war in Iraq, about Afghanistan and about the treatment of people.”
“We must be consistent and clear in what we do—consistent and clear on the issue of human rights whether or not there is, as a result, an economic difficulty or cost. None of these wars has happened by accident. I have mentioned a number, but there are many more around the world. This is also about the policies that led to them. A few days ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) and I had an interesting meeting with Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian national, who was taken to Guantanamo Bay. He suffered grievously there—waterboarding, torture, isolation, sleep deprivation, bright lights, loud music and everything else—for years. I was amazed by how rational he was in his discussions and observations of what had gone on there. He got out and is now teaching people about the dangers of it.”
“In Yemen, which is now the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, there has been constant bombing for a very long time by Saudi forces, which are armed and supplied by Britain. If we are serious about peace in the world and serious about these issues, we must question our own policies and our own activities. It is a bit strange when our Prime Minister quite rightly condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine and then, at the same time, asks Saudi Arabia to supply us with more oil, because we are not buying oil or gas from Russia—we did not buy that much gas from Russia anyway—and asks it to co-operate. Lewis Hamilton and others have done more for human rights in Saudi Arabia than the British Government by simply speaking out against the human rights abuses that exist there.”
“Absolutely. My hon. Friend is totally correct. In her constituency and mine, there are people who have come from the most awful situations and wars around the world. They want to work and contribute—they are often very experienced and qualified—but are just languishing day in, day out in unsatisfactory and expensive temporary accommodation, unable to contribute to our health service, education service and so many other things. It is a crying shame and a crying waste. There are victims of other wars in which we as a country have been involved. The war in Iraq created many refugees. The constant bombing in Palestine by Israel’s occupying forces also creates refugees in that region, in Libya and around the world.”
“I welcome the statement made by the Secretary of State today, and in particular his reference to international seafarers. I recognise that he spoke about minimum wage conditions on ferries, but he then went on to talk about international seafarers, who often face disgraceful, almost slave-like conditions of work on international transport. Will he commit to working with the International Transport Workers Federation of transport trade unions, as well as the ILO, to try to get rid of this scandal on a global scale? Obviously Britain can only play one part in that, but we can have a very big influence on changing the whole mood internationally.”
“Following on from the point that was just made by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), the Minister must be aware of the massive effect of the whole coronavirus process on mental health, particularly among young people—even among children in primary school. Are the Government committed to putting the necessary resources into the hardest-hit communities where the mental health crisis is at its worst?”
“I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend about rates of sick pay. Is he aware that the levels of poverty since the end of the pandemic are increasing, that access to food banks is in greater demand than ever before, and that statutory sick pay often leads people to take serious risks because they have no alternative but to go out and try to work, even though they may well be displaying symptoms, in order to feed themselves and their families? That is a disgraceful situation in this country, and it can be dealt with by having a proper system of decent statutory sick pay as every other European country does.”
“I endorse what my hon. Friend says. Can he think of any reason why regulations cannot be introduced now to ensure that the speedy turnaround of death certificates that has been achieved, which has been of great comfort to the Muslim and Jewish communities in Britain, can be introduced urgently, so that this process can continue without causing stress to families who, by tradition, want if at all possible to undertake a burial within 24 hours of death?”
“I thank the Minister for his statement. I hope he introduces legislation very quickly. In that legislation, will he also take on board the scandal of the way seafarers are treated in international waters generally—they suffer from low wages, poor conditions and terrible working arrangements—which has been exposed by the P&O scandal? We need to address the issue of fairness and justice for all seafarers. As a major seafaring nation, we can take the lead on that.”