Jeremy Corbyn
MP for Islington North · Your Party · United Kingdom
“In two minutes, I will do my best, Sir Desmond. I am proud to represent a very small urban area of Britain in which, over the years, we have managed to increase the number of parks and open spaces.”
“I grew up in a country area where we had a competition over who heard the first cuckoo in spring. It is that sort of change in understanding that we have to bring about if we are to win this debate on biodiversity and sustainability on our planet. The Government are pledged to the 30by30 target for the oceans.”
“We have to address the wider issue, which is the pollution emanating from our towns, cities and industries into our rivers and the water companies that do not deal with it. I have 13 seconds left, so I will simply say this: it is great that the House has come back to this issue and that so many Members want to speak today.”
“I congratulate the right hon. Member on becoming Prime Minister and on his stamina at taking questions for already even longer than the longest world cup match. He has said some helpful and useful things about housing, particularly on rough sleeping.”
“Surely the obvious answer is to bring in some kind of ceiling—a rent control of some sort—to the sector, and immediately look at not postponing the rise in the local housing allowance, but to bring real relief to people who are desperately up against it and subsidising their rent out of their benefits.”
“When the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) introduced the debate, he quite rightly drew attention to the huge work done by our constituency and parliamentary staff. It is right that we should thank them on this occasion and also thank all the parliamentary staff for what they do.”
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“I will be brief because I very much want to hear what the Minister has to say in response. The whole House owes a debt to the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) for the way she has pursued this case for so long—I remember having a conversation with her when Nazanin was first taken prisoner. We should all also admire Richard for the way he has campaigned so effectively despite his suffering. As a result of that, this is the largest Westminster Hall turnout I can remember. Obviously, the debt is owed and must be paid. If this country wants respect for behaving in the proper manner, the debt should be paid. It is not a negotiation; it is saying “This money is owed.”
“I say to them, “Create more porous spaces. Don’t pave over everything.” Indeed, it is perfectly possible even in heavily-urbanised built environments—for example, my constituency is the smallest, most urbanised place in the country—to create more porous surfaces, which means that the water flows directly into the ground and improves the water table rather than forcing sewage into our rivers, which causes all that pollution.”
“That is now owned by a series of fly-by-night hedge funds. To anyone trying to get hold of somebody who actually owns Thames Water, I say, “Good luck. You might or might not find out about them.” The argument for public ownership of our water is irrefutable. Before someone on the Government side decides to call me a neanderthal from the 1960s, ’70s, ’50s, ’40s or whatever for wanting public ownership, I simply say that the public ownership I want for our water industry is genuine public ownership. It is community controlled. It means the involvement of local authorities, water workers and people who are concerned about our environment and, yes, local businesses in those areas, so that we improve our water and river quality and all the rest. There is also a big role for local authorities in planning.”
“We should pay tribute to some wonderful people who have done great work in trying to clean up our rivers: those who regularly voluntarily monitor water quality in our rivers, those who campaign to end the culverting and canalisation of rivers so that we have a more natural environment and floodplains, and those brilliant people—particularly on the north coast of Cornwall— who formed Surfers Against Sewage, which has been so successful in drawing attention to the filth that is in our seas. We have to ask ourselves a question. I have been in the House long enough to remember when water was privatised. I voted against it and opposed it all the way through. I think of the glory of the Metropolitan Water Board and what it achieved on flood control and flood prevention, and the huge investment it put in.”
“Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) before we came in and he said, “What about the rivers in your constituency?” I said, “Well, actually there aren’t any because they have all been culverted and put underground many years ago.” I have no idea how bad they are, but I suspect very bad because nobody ever sees them and they appear somewhere in the Thames a bit further on. However, many other people in many other places see it all the time.”
“The £57 billion that has been paid out to shareholders and in dividends over the past few decades could have gone an awfully long way towards stemming the leaks of fresh water and providing a better infrastructure system as well. It is worth thinking about what is included in the waste that ends up in our rivers. Yes, it is sewage. It is also plastics, chemicals, bleach—a whole lot of stuff. When it goes into the rivers, it ends up in the sea with all the foul pollution that results from that. I was talking to my hon.”
“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) for introducing the debate on the petition signed by 111,000 people—257 from my constituency. There is something disgusting about this: hundreds of thousands of raw sewage discharges knowingly released into our rivers every year. Some are because of storm overflows, but only some of them. Some, to my mind, are quite deliberate because it is simply cheaper to do it that way, and the water companies think they can get away with it. It is true, as Government Members have said, that there are big infrastructure needs in our water industry—I absolutely understand and accept that.”
“New Delhi is now heading into a pollution lockdown because of the emissions affecting the people there. The poorest people in the poorest places all around the world suffer the worst from pollution. Will the Prime Minister tell us what he is seriously going to do to bring China, Russia, Australia and others on board to get rid of their coal production? The answer he gave to the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) was less than clear. Will he now be absolutely clear that there will be no British financing whatever for any new fossil fuel industries anywhere in the world?”
“She is a wonderful woman and an old friend of mine; I have known her ever since the dark days of Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, before she became the President of Chile. A report that I have just received states: “Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that ‘all parties to the Tigray conflict have committed violations of international human rights, humanitarian and refugee law. Some of these may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.’” She is a very intelligent and normally very cautious person. She does not throw those kinds of allegations out willy-nilly. They are very serious indeed.”
“That was preceded by—indeed, it continues—many people from Tigray or other parts of Ethiopia who have made their homes in Addis Ababa being attacked, arrested and persecuted by the authorities. There is a whole popular mood against the people of Tigray, who are seen as separatists within the country of Ethiopia. I say that as somebody who is a friend and an admirer of the amazing history of Ethiopia—the one country in Africa that never became part of the European colonisation system. In Tigray, 2.1 million people are displaced, 5 million are food-insecure, which is about 80% of the population, and at least 400,000 are literally starving, but because of the conflict, aid trucks, relief trucks and support simply cannot get through. Only 15 minutes ago, before I came to the debate, I was watching Michelle Bachelet of the United Nations.”
“Huge protests are going on in Khartoum and other cities, the elected Prime Minister is under house arrest and the military are patrolling the streets and trying to restore the previous regime’s methods. I wish the people of Sudan well in their demands for democracy, and I send a message of support to the demonstration that was held outside Downing Street last Saturday. Ethiopia can now be described only as a country in a state of war. The Prime Minister has gone on national television to ask people to be mobilised to defend the capital and the society as a whole, and is busy enlisting large numbers of often very young people—he is complaining that they are ill-trained—into the armed forces in order to continue the conflict.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the humanitarian situation in Ethiopia, Sudan and Tigray. I am delighted to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Bardell. I am very pleased that Members have come to debate the humanitarian situation facing Sudan, Ethiopia and Tigray. The debate could not be better timed for the news that we have had today and in the last few days. I will open with a few reminders of the size of the humanitarian crisis facing people in that area. In Sudan at this very moment there are 60,000 Tigrayan refugees, who have crossed the border from the fighting in Tigray, and there are still in Sudan, which is not a wealthy country, 1.1 million refugees from historical conflicts in Darfur and other places. As all Members will know, Sudan suffered a coup recently.”
“To return to the account I was quoting, Michelle Bachelet has said: “The investigation recounts a report of a massacre of ‘more than 100 civilians’ in Axum, Tigray by Eritrean forces”— note: the Eritrean forces— “on 28 November 2020. The victims were ‘mostly young men’ but one witness told the joint investigation team that others were targeted too. ‘EDF soldiers took a 70-year-old man and his two sons out of their homes. They took them to the nearby water tanker, ordered them to lay on the ground and shot all three of them in the head,’” and so it goes on about a series of other occasions. Again, note that the Eritrean defence forces have become involved in the conflict as well, which is more than unfortunate in the sense that it indicates the danger that the war is about to spread.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention—I was actually going to come on to that point next—and she is absolutely right. The abuse of women and girls by the forces in Tigray has been abominable and appalling. The crime of rape has been used as an act of war, and multiple rapes, sexual slavery and the abuse of women have been the order of the day. It is utterly disgraceful, and I hope that when the conflict is over, and all conflicts have to be over eventually, there will be the most thorough investigation of every one of those cases. We have seen rape as a weapon of war in so many places—in Congo and many other parts of Africa, as well as in many other wars around the world—and I hope there is the most thorough investigation and that prosecutions will follow as a result.”
“Yes, I will in a second. I do think that we have to recognise the seriousness of the situation we are in at the present time—that is why Michelle Bachelet has said what she has said—and I want to put that into historical context, once I have given way.”
“My purpose in calling the debate was not necessarily to blame the British Government for the whole situation there, but to thank the International Development Committee for what it has done and to ask our Government to give what aid is necessary and, above all—I repeat this—to use our political clout, whatever we have and wherever we have it, to get a ceasefire, to stop the killing, to stop the refugee flows and to let the people of Tigray, the rest of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan decide their own future in peace. That is the best message that we can give.”
“I am pleased that the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the all-party parliamentary human rights group and the all-party group on prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity are meeting tomorrow afternoon at 2 o’clock to go through all the issues. I urge Members to attend that meeting, which I understand will be online. It will be helpful for us to be better informed.”
“Arms are available for soldiers to kill civilians in a conflict that has to be resolved by a ceasefire and a coming together, so that people may decide their future in peace. All those soldiers are passing starving people—babies who are dying because of malnutrition; women who have suffered the most abominable abuse by those very same soldiers—and the war carries on with the arms that come from God knows where, from all around the world. It is the poorest people who suffer, in the worst possible situation. I hope that we can send a message: we will give all the necessary aid and support that we can to get through this and, above all, we will take the political initiative and support Michelle Bachelet in her determination to bring about a ceasefire and some hope for the future.”
“EU arms exports to Ethiopia over the last three years are more considerable, amounting to £36 million. I hope we put pressure on the European Union not to allow those arms sales to continue. The urgent need, as I said, is for food aid to get through. Hundreds of thousands—nay, millions—are suffering from malnutrition or lack of food. There is a huge lack of medicines all across the country, as well as the war crimes investigations and all the rest going on. The situation is that well-armed and presumably well-fed and watered soldiers are able to kill each other in Tigray. Forces of the TPLF are active in Ethiopia and Ethiopian forces are active in the conflict against them.”
“Fourthly, the arms sales to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Tigray are not huge on the global scale of things—I am not pretending there are massive arms sales—but nevertheless, in a conflict of this nature, rapid-fire machine guns and all those kind of armaments are the instruments of war. We are not necessarily talking about planes and drones and things, but more about those things. The UK sells quite little to Ethiopia. According to the figures I have from Campaign Against Arms Trade, UK arms exports approved to Ethiopia in the last three years amount to only £58,000, and most of that was related to armoured vehicles. Those questions were put. The three known military export applications are from Safariland Group, Harrington Generators and Boeing. I look forward to the Minister saying that there will be no further exports there.”
“That, sadly, is the story of so many poor countries around the world. Thirdly, who is going to be the interlocutor to bring about a ceasefire? The UN obviously must and should have a role in this. The African Union must and should have a role in this, but it appears that the degree of mistrust, particularly by Tigrayan forces towards the African Union, which is housed in Addis anyway, is one of the problems in bringing about a meaningful ceasefire. I do think there has to be involvement with the African Union, perhaps brought about by the UN itself. It is extremely important that we send that message today.”
“First, we need to somehow or other get an immediate ceasefire in this conflict so that the food aid, medicine, water and all the other things can get in and so that the thousands who have gone mainly to the Sudan—and some who apparently have also gone to South Sudan, although I am not sure of the numbers—can return home. Secondly, we need to recognise the consequences for those countries of the massive refugee flows. At the start of my contribution, I gave figures for the numbers of people who are refugees in Sudan—60,000 from Tigray and 1.1 million from Darfur. The media in this country complain about a few hundred refugees coming in across the channel. I am talking about a poor country hosting more than 1 million refugees without the infrastructure or wherewithal to cope with them.”
“There was then, effectively, the break-up of the Government by a change in the ruling party and by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front removing itself from the Government. The Government in Addis then delayed the election that was to be held in Tigray. The TPLF in Tigray then decided to hold its own election, which it did. It was claimed that this was illegal under the terms of the Ethiopian constitution and the whole thing descended very rapidly into armed conflict. We then get the deaths, rape and occupation, and huge refugee flows as a result. That is the immediate tragic history that Ethiopia and Tigray have descended into. I hope that in our debate today we can, at least, find out what the British Government think about this and what action they are prepared to take. The issues we face are fourfold.”
“For goodness’ sake, there has been enough death, wars, conflict and loss of development opportunities without there now being a descent into a massive civil war across Ethiopia. It is always the most vulnerable and the young people who die as a result. The points in the Select Committee report about gender-based violence, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) intervened earlier, are so apt and well put. I hope they become centre stage in any UN human rights investigation into the causes and continuation of this conflict. The most immediate response to this conflict is the two events of 2019, when the Government of Ethiopia were pursuing a more democratic and participatory course and getting a lot of international support for it.”
“It has been a party to the cold war, and there has been a massive flow of armaments into Ethiopia from the Soviet Union, the United States, Europe and arms dealers all around the world. It is a country that has seen the most appalling conflict and the most appalling humanitarian disasters, such as the famine of the 1980s. I pay tribute to the International Development Committee for its report on the humanitarian situation in Tigray. I am delighted that its Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), is here, and I hope she is going to speak in this debate. If I may say so, I think the Select Committee puts the history of Ethiopia in summary form very well, and of course the enormous conflict that took place before Eritrea gained its independence and the further conflict that went on during the border dispute.”
“I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and he is absolutely right. The reports of Eritrean forces being involved are very disturbing because that clearly internationalises the conflict. Verification is obviously difficult when the Ethiopian occupying forces and the conflict itself make it impossible for independent investigators to get there to understand exactly what is going on. One plea I am going to make at the end of my contribution is that international observers be allowed in, so that they can assess what is going on. If I may, I think we should put this in the context of the tragic history of Ethiopia. It has been through all kinds of things, right back to the Italian fascists’ invasion in the 1930s and their removal by British and other forces during the second world war.”
“Birds such as the sparrow, which used to be so common, have disappeared, and many children are completely unable to identify any bird or animal whatsoever. I had the joy of growing up in the countryside. Children used to talk about the birds they had seen that weekend. They talked about them with real love and affection. This is about inspiring our children and giving them that space. I hope that this debate takes inspiration from the young people that have done so much and moves forward into changing not just the curriculum but the mindset in the curriculum about our natural world. If we do not interact with and understand our relationship with nature, the future is going to be pretty grim, with more pollution, more damage to people’s lives and the loss of our natural world.”
“I hope when the Minister replies, he will be able to give us some news on the way in which schools will be encouraged to have growing and gardening projects in their schools, to help children get involved and get their hands mucky, playing around with the earth and all the rest of it. Those key early formative years are so important in our understanding of the natural world. There is so much inspiration that comes from interaction with nature, animal life and poetry and so much else. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) was just talking about the beautiful, wonderful swift. If we hunt through references in poetry, it is the skylark that appears most often. Sadly, if we went to many schools and asked children to identify particular birds, they would not know what we were talking about.”
“The subject can be made interesting and exciting. Bringing up children in an environment in which they understand human interaction with the natural world, the need to maintain biodiversity and how things grow is very important. In my area, probably two thirds of children live in flats. They have no access to open space at all. Many do not even have a balcony. It is very easy for us to say, “Get involved in gardening,” but if someone is in a third-floor flat above a shop in private rented accommodation with no open space whatsoever, it is not so simple. It requires a superhuman effort from teachers and the rest of the community to involve children.”
“One boy said, “Okay, sir, what is the best and most important animal in the world?” I thought, “There’s a question,” and said, “Well, the earthworm.” He said, “What did you say the earthworm for?” I said, “Without earthworms, the world would be covered in concrete.” We then got into a discussion about insects, insect life and biodiversity, and the children became interested and excited by that, whereas if I had given the lecture that we are all accustomed to giving or hearing, that does not work. The good news is that I went to the same school last year or the year before, and they gave me a lecture on global warming, CO 2 , environmental changes and everything else, as part of year 5 teaching year 6 how to understand the environment. The school has achieved massive advances, including growing projects in the school.”
“They are vaguely in favour of a better world and environment, but they do not see that they have a role to play within it. It is about empowering young people in a thought process that will bring about a better education system. I try to visit every primary school in my constituency once a year. Over the years the discussions about the environment have changed dramatically. I remember about 10 or 15 years ago giving a year 6 group what I thought was an absolutely brilliant talk about the environment. After a while, they began to yawn and look out the window.”
“I hope that when the Minister replies to the debate, he will recognise the need to significantly change the way in which our primary schools, secondary schools, colleges and universities approach the natural world and the environment, and that energy policy, transport policy, food policies and so on—every issue—are debated in relation to the effect on the natural world and the environment in which we live. Too many of our young people are brought up with the idea that everything is consumable and that what happens in the environment and the rest of the world simply does not matter; that is all somewhere else. There is a huge divide between the environmentally conscious within our society and what, frankly, probably the majority think about it.”
“Although I understand the point of the debate in ensuring there is a proper place in the curriculum for climate education, I do not want us to just promote another tick-box exercise where we say, “We will put this, this and this into the curriculum, and we will tick that box so that that bit is done.” It would be yet another subject alongside, in the case of secondary schools, science, economics and everything else. The philosophy around our interactions with the natural world, nature and the environment is more important. If, by putting something in the national curriculum, we start to change the mindset in those that plan education, we will have done a very good job indeed.”
“That means environmental concerns are more difficult than in an area where there is obviously a greater interaction with the natural world and nature. I am impressed with the number of teachers in the community who are absolutely determined to make sure our young people are brought up to understand the natural world and their interactions with it. I pay an enormous compliment to my local authority, Islington Council, and the schools for the work that they do to ensure that there are gardening projects in every school, however small the space, and that all our young people get a chance to go to parks and on school journeys to begin to understand their interaction with nature.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) on securing this debate. I also congratulate the young people who made sure it happened—Scarlett Westbrook and others who are here today. They invited us to Old Palace Yard yesterday to be photographed alongside banners calling for climate education in our schools. The fact that demand is coming from young people in schools who want to green their own buildings and ensure that school buildings are sustainable is something we should bear in mind, because the demand for better climate education from young people is very powerful indeed. I represent a small, highly urbanised constituency. Geographically it is probably the smallest constituency in the country, and probably one of the most densely populated, if not the most densely populated.”
“I thank the hon. Lady for her excellent speech. Following that point, at COP26 do we need to get proper funding for technology transfer to the poorest countries in the world, which need such technology to protect their environments? Unfortunately, the signs following covid, where there has not been a proper sharing of vaccines or vaccine knowledge, are not good. We have to internationalise our knowledge freely across the whole world in order to protect the environment on which we all rely.”
“The rate should be much higher. Reduce, reuse and recycle is important, but achieving it also requires the Government to support local authorities, and not planning greater levels of incineration all over the country, with the pollution that results. Let us look at COP26 as a great opportunity for the sharing of technology and wealth across the world, for investment in biodiversity across the world and, above all, for the transfer of knowledge held by the richest countries to all on this planet. If we do not do that, global warming and extreme weather patterns will continue and, ultimately, everyone will suffer. There will be no hiding place, however rich we might be.”
“It will mean better insulation in homes; transport initiatives; using waste heat from an underground station as part of a district heating scheme; using waste heat from a stepped down transformer owned by the national grid to heat a school and neighbouring properties; and installing a heat pump in a community centre to meet the passive house standard. I was struck that local authorities do not have enough planning powers to properly insulate places and properly demand of developers that we have solar panels and greened roof spaces and that we build buildings to last much longer than the planned obsolescence after 60 years before we knock them down again, with all the environmental costs of doing so. It is also about waste disposal. In my borough we manage a 30% recycling rate, which is better than it was but is nowhere near good enough.”
“If we are to win the climate debate, it is not necessarily about convincing each other in this Chamber; it is about convincing a very large number of people that their living standards and livelihoods are not under threat by greening our environment, but that a green industrial revolution is a chance and an opportunity to create a high-skilled, high-paid workforce and to create the green energy jobs of the future. That will not be done if we rely on market forces; it will only be done through substantial public investment to achieve that transition to a green economy. I was at an excellent meeting on Monday morning organised by Islington Council to launch its brilliant green agenda.”
“I welcome this debate and congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) not only on securing it but on all the work she has done over many years to bring environmental issues to the fore in this House. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) for drawing attention to the fact that, on May Day 2019, this House became the first Parliament in the world to declare a climate emergency, which I am pleased to say many local authorities across Britain, as well as other countries around the world, have also taken up. We have to start at a local level because, in a sense, all politics is local.”
“I realise that the Government’s focus at the moment is on refugees and dealing with the immediate crisis, but does the Prime Minister not think that, with tens of thousands of Afghan dead, thousands of American dead and hundreds of British dead, it is time for a full inquiry into the whole process that led us into Afghanistan and the whole notion of a foreign policy in which we intervene all over the world, and that we should start to re-examine our place and our role in this world?”
“I can hear all those who spoke up against the intervention, not because they supported the Taliban and not because they were not serious about human rights, but because they were serious about a long-term peace in a world that recognises the historical position that we have got ourselves into. Now surely is the time for a sober reflection on the disaster that has happened in Afghanistan.”
“The great game of the 19th century was about preventing Russia from getting control of Afghanistan. Later, the cold war took over and the Americans supported the opposition to the Soviet Union, thus forming the mujaheddin, which morphed into the Taliban and so much else. There are some serious historical lessons to be learned about how we take major foreign policy decisions. It is beyond disappointing that the Prime Minister’s response this morning appeared to be that he is not prepared to countenance a serious inquiry into all this. I can hear my friend, the late Paul Flynn, speaking about the number of soldiers who died in Helmand.”
“It has driven many of them into asylum or refugee status in all the neighbouring countries. It has taken the lives of American soldiers, and soldiers of almost every other nationality that got involved, including 457 British soldiers. At the end of it, the trauma of those who served there and were injured there, and the mental health issues that pertain for soldiers coming out of service, are huge and likely to be exacerbated by what has happened over the past few days. We need to ensure there is proper support for those who have served and suffered in Afghanistan, and we also need a serious appraisal of how we got there in the first place. Any examination of the longer-term history of Afghanistan will show that wars there fail. There were three in the 19th century and a number later.”
“If we are an open society that welcomes refugees, we should mean that wherever refugees come from—not just Afghanistan. I hope the Government will bear that in mind and give us a clear outline of how people will get out of Afghanistan, how they will get here and how they will be processed when they get here. Too many of us represent constituencies where refugees who do not have enough support are living. They are begging, homeless and street-sleeping while their applications are endlessly processed. That is not the sign of a society or a Government who are holding out a hand of friendship towards refugees. The war has cost the United States $1 trillion and this country tens of billions of pounds. It has cost the lives of tens of thousands of Afghan people.”
“First, they should respond to the very generous offers made by a lot of local authorities—I saw a letter last night from the leaders of Labour London borough councils—to do everything they can to support refugees coming to this country. However, they need financial support to be able to house those people, accommodate them and ensure that they can be integrated into our society. There must also be a change in the Government’s rhetoric about refugees in general. We cannot hold out a hand and say that we are going to welcome all the Afghan refugees here—I hope we do—when, at the same time, we are passing legislation that will criminalise those who save the lives at sea of people trying to get to this country, a place of safety.”
“As well as that, I ask the Government clearly what their strategy is for allowing people to come to this country, because it is clear that all those who have worked for the British Army or any other organisation in Afghanistan should be allowed to come here. That is the case, likewise, for non-governmental organisations, but I would add to that those who have worked for contractors that have been contracted to the British or American services. They will be just as vulnerable in the future. If we are serious about ensuring that all those refugees who wish to come here are able to get in, the Government have to do two things.”
“In this sombre and very serious debate, there are two fundamental points I want to make. First, we have all been inundated overnight and in the past couple of days with emails from constituents and many others who are very worried about the plight of those who are trying to get out of Afghanistan, the numbers of people who ought to be supported and the approach that the British Government have taken. Members will have seen letters from the National Union of Journalists concerning journalists and their safety, from the University and College Union concerning its students in this country and their fears, and from many, many others, including people representing trade unions in Afghanistan.”
“Instead of criminalising people who try to get to a place of safety, can we not have a more humane approach and use the opportunity of this legislation to send a message of decency, humanity and responsibility towards the world as a whole?”
“Are the Government going to prosecute the RNLI for saving life at sea? That would be contrary to the law of the sea, which requires it to save such lives. I also ask the Government to look at the conditions in which refugees have to survive in this country, such as the disgusting conditions at Napier barracks, and at the number of refugees sleeping on our streets and begging to try to survive. Just think for a moment of what it is like to be a refugee trying to make a contribution to our world, and being criminalised in the process. We rely on refugees in hospitals, as doctors, as engineers, as teachers, as technicians and in so many other jobs in our society.”