Jeremy Corbyn
MP for Islington North · Your Party · United Kingdom
“In two minutes, I will do my best, Sir Desmond. I am proud to represent a very small urban area of Britain in which, over the years, we have managed to increase the number of parks and open spaces.”
“I grew up in a country area where we had a competition over who heard the first cuckoo in spring. It is that sort of change in understanding that we have to bring about if we are to win this debate on biodiversity and sustainability on our planet. The Government are pledged to the 30by30 target for the oceans.”
“We have to address the wider issue, which is the pollution emanating from our towns, cities and industries into our rivers and the water companies that do not deal with it. I have 13 seconds left, so I will simply say this: it is great that the House has come back to this issue and that so many Members want to speak today.”
“I congratulate the right hon. Member on becoming Prime Minister and on his stamina at taking questions for already even longer than the longest world cup match. He has said some helpful and useful things about housing, particularly on rough sleeping.”
“Surely the obvious answer is to bring in some kind of ceiling—a rent control of some sort—to the sector, and immediately look at not postponing the rise in the local housing allowance, but to bring real relief to people who are desperately up against it and subsidising their rent out of their benefits.”
“When the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) introduced the debate, he quite rightly drew attention to the huge work done by our constituency and parliamentary staff. It is right that we should thank them on this occasion and also thank all the parliamentary staff for what they do.”
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Every one of 8,612 lines we hold for Jeremy Corbyn, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 29 of 173.
“Let us have a sense of reality about what modern Britain is like, and the degree of racism that is still there, sadly, in our society—and the way in which the far right is organising to try to make the situation worse. We should be full of admiration for those in the black community who have organised themselves, and those in the former colonies who organised to defeat the occupations by Britain, France, Italy, Spain and so many other European colonial powers, and bring about independence. I would like our children in our schools to understand, and see as a central part of the curriculum, the significance of the Pan-African Congress held in 1945 at Chorlton-cum-Hardy town hall in Manchester. It was largely ignored at the time, but the future leaders of many African countries were there at that conference.”
“When we have a Home Secretary who talks about using the Navy to repel desperate asylum seekers and refugees who have risked all to cross the world’s busiest shipping lanes to try to get to a place of safety, can we replace that rhetoric with the principle of humanity and an open heart to people all around this world? In my constituency, like many others, I do not have to walk very far from my house to find asylum seekers whose process is endlessly lost somewhere in the miasma of the Home Office filing system, with no recourse to public funds, sleeping on the streets, begging and looking for a meal from a church, a synagogue or a mosque in order just to get by.”
“It was a deliberately created hostile environment that led to the injustice of the Windrush generation—a generation that came to this country and gave so much in health, in education, in engineering and in so much other work, and helped to improve the living standards of all of us. Ministers should not be unaware of the hurt that is felt among that generation about the way they were treated by that hostile environment. We should look at the way in which we treat migrants to our society. Why do we have so many people in immigration detention with no charge against them, held effectively in prison with an indeterminate sentence until the Home Office gets round to dealing with their case? We should not be so proud or so complacent about what we do.”
“The successor chair of that committee was my great friend Bernie Grant. We saw in that the way in which we could put public resources into the most disadvantaged communities to empower and strengthen them and help their young people get the same chances as others all across the borough. Our approach on the Labour Benches is essentially a collective one. That is why we founded the national health service. That is why we developed council housing. That is why we developed so many other of our collective services in this country. This debate takes place not that long after the scandal of the Windrush business hit the headlines and hit this House.”
“We should not be complacent, and this debate—I hope that it will become an annual event—should provide a review of the progress, or not, that has been made in these matters. I urge Members to look carefully at that document. I have heard the speeches from Government Members, who talk quite reasonably about the huge achievements of individuals who have broken out of the cycle of poverty. For Opposition Members, it is not individuals we want to break out; we want a collective response to develop a system that provides decent education, housing and health opportunities for all, recognising that we have to provide services that deal with the inequalities that people face. As a councillor in Haringey in the 1970s, it was my honour to chair the community development committee.”
“We should approach the debate with a sense of reality. The House of Commons Library has produced an excellent briefing paper, as all its briefing papers are, entitled “Race and Ethnic Disparities”. I urge Members to read it carefully, because it shows the situation in health, education, housing, stop and search, poverty, the criminal justice system and so much else in our society. If someone is young and black, they are more likely to be poor, to be stopped and searched and to underachieve in school; less likely to go to college and even less likely to go to university; and more likely to have a lower life expectancy and lower income in future. Those are devastating statistics—here, in 2020, all those years after we introduced the first race relations legislation under a Labour Government in the 1960s.”
“Like others, I will to be brief, so that everyone who has applied to speak in the debate is called. It is brilliant that the debate is oversubscribed, because that shows how the debate has developed around the country, as well as the pressure on MPs. We are in this debate at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement has become big and strong in the United States and around the world. After George Floyd was killed, demonstrations took place, as we know, across the USA and, indeed, across the world. Many people—indigenous people in different parts of the world and minorities all over the world—saw themselves in the treatment of George Floyd at the hands of American police. We would do well to remember that this movement is not going to disappear—it empowers and unites people around the world.”
“Indeed, I love Nelson Mandela Place in Glasgow—it is fantastic. If I may, I would like to convey through the hon. Member my congratulations to the University of Glasgow for recognising that it should repay the compensation money that it was given at the end of the slave trade. The issue of colonial brutality should be taught to our children, as should the way in which the slave trade enriched the already rich in Britain and how some of our biggest companies relied on the slave trade to provide profits from banking and sugar.”
“Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) mentioned CLR James, and I would mention also Derek Walcott and the great Asian poets such as Tagore and so many others. Let us give our children the space and the opportunity to learn the history of this country, and to learn the popular history of this country—of ordinary people’s demands to get fair legislation such as trade union rights, factory Acts and so on—but also to understand what colonialism did and what colonialism did to its victims. That way they will have a better understanding of why the world is as it is at the present time. That, to me, is what Black History Month should be about, but I would like us not to have Black History Month but to have black history as a central part of our history curriculum all year round for all our children.”
“I love the work of Andrea Levy. She lived in my constituency before she died. We unveiled a plaque in her memory and her family all came to a little reception we held afterwards, where I met one of her nieces who did not realise quite how famous she was. She was in school and the teacher read out a part of one of Andrea Levy’s books to the class and said, “What do you think of that?” There were a load of blank faces, and the teacher said, “That was written by Andrea Levy.” This girl’s hand went up and she said, “Yeah, that was my auntie.” She did not realise she had been the great writer at that time. We need to popularise the literature by so many writers who have come to this country. My hon.”
“History educates, history empowers, but history also forms attitudes and opinions, so our children should be brought up understanding that maths and science comes, yes, from Europe, but also from Africa and from the civilisations of what is now called Latin America, and that it comes from China and it comes from so many parts of the world. Our standard of living comes from those people who used their brains to invent so much all over the world, but too often it is taught in the process of some kind of European supremacy over the rest of the world. It does not have to be taught that way; it should be taught in the way of the thirst for knowledge that empowers us all. We should also teach and recognise that the great writers and poets who have come from the Caribbean and south Asia have enriched our lives massively.”
“That speeded up the process of abolition. To its eternal shame, this House then voted to pay what would now be billions in compensation to slave owners, but not to the slaves themselves. There are many other books that I want our children to read. My great friend Remi Kapo wrote the “Reap the Forgotten Harvest” trilogy of novels about the slave trade. These are the books that I want our children to learn. In conclusion, history is divisive at one level. It is endlessly controversial and, to me, endlessly fascinating.”
“I want children in our schools to understand what those people—such as Paul Bogle, who led the Morant Bay uprising and, of course, Sam Sharpe, who led the rebellion in western Jamaica in 1832, as brilliantly chronicled by my late, great friend Richard Hart in his book “Slaves Who Abolished Slavery”—went through. When Sam Sharpe was taken to the gallows, before he was executed he said that he accepted the laws under which he was going to be executed and went on to say: “I depend for salvation upon the Redeemer, who shed his blood upon Calvary for sinners.” He was then executed because of his part in leading the rebellion against the slave owners and the sugar plantations of western Jamaica. But at that point the sugar industry was in dire straits: people were losing money in London because the sugar was not coming because of the uprising.”
“It is not about distorting history; it is about the reality of history that should be taught. That means understanding what the slave trade was about, what the brutality of colonialism is and the way in which people were treated. There are many in this House who say that William Wilberforce was wonderful in his presentation of the abolition legislation in this very Chamber—excellent—and that Thomas Clarkson risked all to tour the whole country explaining to people just how evil the slave trade was, showing them the accoutrements of torture that he took with him throughout the country, but the reality is that the slave trade was abolished and slavery was abolished by the selfless bravery of slaves who rejected it in the plantations in the Caribbean, the Americas and elsewhere.”
“These are people who think seriously about these matters and we would do well to listen to them, rather than ramming this through in a few hours on a Thursday afternoon and imagining that that will be job done. It will not be, because this will all get back in the courts at some point in the future and the Mitting inquiry report will come out at some point. Many of us will continue our vigilance in order to protect civil liberties and human rights in our society and our country, and to protect the civil liberties and rights of those who work in the police and other security services.”
“I hope that at the very least the Minister will make it clear whether the Government are committed to continuing to support, recognise and work within the terms of the historic and important Human Rights Act or whether, once again, he will be appealing to the backwoods people in the Tory party who see human rights as somehow a term of abuse and who want to repeal that Act or reduce its power and importance. These things are very important. I regret that we have such a short time for this crucial debate today, but I am moved by the hundreds of people who have been in touch with MPs about this, and the dozens of organisations, not necessarily all protest groups or on the left—these groups cover peace, civil liberties and human rights—that are very concerned about this Bill.”
“He and I spent a lot of time campaigning to try to get British nationals and British residents released from Guantanamo Bay. The whole thing is a disgrace. The whole thing is extra-judicial in every conceivable way. Likewise, this country and our Government here were involved in extraordinary rendition in some form. If we are to hold our heads up around the world as being supporters of human rights, and as being a signatory to the universal declaration, the European convention and our own Human Rights Act, we need to look carefully at ourselves and at what this Bill proposes.”
“Friend the Member for Streatham has also proposed amendments on the issue of accountability, which is the key to this. I wonder whether Ministers actually knew what was going on or know what is going on now. I wonder whether senior police officers always knew what was going on. I wonder how many different quasi-secret operations were being conducted in different police authorities around the country without the relevant police commander even knowing what was happening. Inquiries in South Yorkshire in respect of Orgreave and Hillsborough tend to indicate there is a lack of transparency in the way the police operate. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) spoke correctly about the issue of where we are going if we go down a road of ignoring human rights and justice within our society.”
“I hope that we will have a thought for a moment for the more than 1,000 groups that have been infiltrated in some way by the police at some point over the past few years. Those of us who have spent our lives campaigning for social justice and environmental sustainability, and against racism in any form, often wonder why there is apparently much less concern about, much less involvement with and much less attention paid to far-right racist organisations than to other people within our society. We need to know the answers to all these questions, but I suspect we will not get them today. My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has tabled an amendment that proposes that activities should in future be authorised only by the Prime Minister. My hon.”
“Or would they be acting in the interests of themselves, their colleagues and other workers by trying to improve their economic wellbeing? There is a big debate about what is economic wellbeing and what is not. There are those, like me, who have seen the activities of undercover police operations in trade unions and the blacklisting of wholly legitimate trade union representatives, who have spent 20 years and more being unable to work, as electricians, as carpenters or as plumbers, because they have been blacklisted secretly by groups of employers, when the police knew about it all along. These were wholly illegal activities. The police need to recognise that what they have been doing is completely wrong—it is simply unacceptable.”
“Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and others are accepted by the Government today. I will be brief, because there is not much time and 11 more colleagues wish to speak before 3.20 pm. The second matter to which I shall refer relates to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham. The Bill says that people cannot do anything to undermine the economic wellbeing of the country. What does that actually mean? Does it mean, for example, that if dock workers decided to take strike action because they had reached the end of the road in negotiations with their employer and therefore wished to withdraw their labour to force a settlement of their grievance, they would be acting against the economic interests of the country, because that would disrupt trade?”
“Imagine what it feels like for someone to have been with what they thought was their life partner for several years, and they discover that that person was put there by the police to seduce them into giving information on, actually, legal activities done by environmental and other groups. Will the Bill protect women from that in future? I think we all know the answer to that. I hope that, at the very least, the House of Lords is able to make some substantial amendments to the Bill. I am disappointed that the College of Policing advice, which has just come out, is that it is not necessarily wrong for undercover officers to form sexual relations with people to gain information. This is the kind of world that we are about to approve of unless the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham, my hon.”
“If we live in a free and democratic society, criminality is obviously not acceptable and policing is obviously required to deal with it, but we do not deal with criminality by authorising criminality through undercover policing operations and investigations of such groups. There are those of us who have had the honour of meeting people, particularly women, in a number of groups that have been infiltrated by the police and the police have then knowingly formed sexual liaisons with those women. Children have been given birth to as a result, and then, often years later, the woman concerned finds out that she was completely duped—completely misled—and her life was ruined by an undercover police operation.”
“The Mitting inquiry into undercover policing operations, which succeeded the Pitchford inquiry after Pitchford’s death, is still going on. It was due to report in 2018; it has not even got into its second and third stages yet and may well go on for several years more before it reports. It covers undercover policing since 1968, a time which, I reflect, more or less covers my whole political life, so I will read with great interest the Mitting inquiry’s final report. What has come out so far for those of us who have good friends in environmental groups, human rights groups, trade unions and many other campaigns is the sheer arrogance of police undercover operations that have infiltrated wholly legitimate and legal operations in order to disrupt them, spread negative information and cause problems for them.”
“The proceedings on this Bill today are an absolute travesty of parliamentary accountability. That a major Bill such as this, with huge implications for civil rights and human rights in our society and for our standing around the world, should be pushed through in a very short time this afternoon is a travesty. I suspect we will not even vote on most of the amendments—they will not have been subject to stand-alone debates. In effect, we are having another Second Reading debate to accommodate those who have tabled amendments. We should reflect on this House’s role in holding this Government to account. I have added my name to a number of amendments, particularly those drafted by my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), to whom I pay tribute for her work on the Bill and her contribution this afternoon.”
“They are refugees or internally displaced people. By and large, they have no access to healthcare. They are at a greater risk than absolutely anybody else. Let us ensure that our approach to the coronavirus crisis is fair and just in this country and that we have international trade and development policies that tackle health inequalities and injustices across the world to give us all a better and safer future.”
“The virus has also exposed global health inequalities on a massive scale, with the poorest in the poorest countries suffering the most, as the lack of access to any health facilities makes life very difficult and the quality of life that many have makes social distancing absolutely impossible. When the World Health Organisation calls for universal access to healthcare, the response of the west is too often to say, “Introduce a payments scheme or an insurance-based health service” or something like that. No—we are all at risk. If anyone is at risk anywhere in the world, surely that has to be the lesson from this covid crisis; universal healthcare is very important. In the last few seconds, let me say this: there are 65 million people on this planet who have no home to call their own, and no country to call their home.”
“Life expectancy is shorter for people from BAME communities, and there is a lack of community facilities in so many areas. I want to say thank you to all our public service workers for what they have achieved and for the way in which they have come together. I also thank the volunteers who have come together in the food banks and food hubs, such as the one that I have been working on in my constituency over the last few weeks. I also say a special thank you to the Whittington Hospital in my constituency for its work. Last week, the staff there reported no new covid cases at all; well done them. Covid has exposed inequality in our health service and society and the injustice in our society. Post covid, let us invest for the future and not cut with yet another new regime of austerity.”
“As colleagues have pointed out, it is low wages, overcrowded private rented accommodation and unsafe working conditions that lead to under- achievement in schools and to those children having great difficulty getting through. A couple of days ago, I was talking to a headteacher of a primary school in my constituency. More than three quarters of the children in her school are entitled to free school meals. The school has done its best to deliver food to those children during the crisis. Teachers also want them to learn online, but many of the children do not have access to computers or laptops. If they do, there is one for a very large family and the children end up squabbling over who gets to access it. The school is therefore spending money posting lessons out to children. That is the effect of inequality and injustice in our society.”
“This virus has exposed the necessity of communities working absolutely together, but it also shows a disproportionate number of deaths among people from the BAME community, who are 50% more likely to die from covid-19 than those who are not from the BAME community. The same figures apply for admissions to emergency care and intensive treatment units in hospitals. The health inequalities exposed by the pandemic are not actually new. Professor Douglas Black’s report was published in 1980—40 years ago—and exposed health inequalities in Britain. The Tory Government then tried to suppress that report. I hope that no Government ever try to suppress the levels of knowledge of inequality that exist in our society.”
“This crisis will have a huge effect on people’s lives and mental wellbeing for a long time to come. The motion that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central so excellently crafted requires the Government to respond to this debate. I hope that when the Minister replies, the Government will give us some indication that they do take seriously the health inequalities that have been exposed by the covid crisis. Some 40% of our doctors and 20% of nurses come from BAME communities, as well as a very large number of people working in social care and a group of people who were decried as unskilled migrants by previous Home Secretaries: the cleaners who clean our care homes, hospitals and schools. They are the heroes in all this because they are the ones who are helping to keep us safe.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), who is my great friend, on securing this debate and on the incredible work that she has done—not just today, but over many years—to expose racism, inequality and injustice in our society and to persuade us that we should all learn and teach history much better in this country in order to conquer the inequalities and injustices faced by so many people. There have been many absolutely brilliant speeches this afternoon, for which I commend colleagues. I particularly want to express my sympathy to another great friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi); to not be able to attend the funerals of close family friends, and not be there to carry the coffin, is something that will live with him for the rest of his life and live with the family forever more.”
“Does the Prime Minister recognise that the covid crisis has exposed grotesque levels of inequality in our society? His statement yesterday has given carte blanche to many employers to try to force people to come back to work, without proper consideration of their health and safety and the dangers they will suffer in travelling to work. Does he recognise that, while the death rate is so high and the reinfection rate continues, his statement will probably make the situation worse, not better? Will he reconsider carefully and not lift the restrictions and the lockdown until it is absolutely clear that we have the corona crisis under control? It is affecting the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society the worst, and I believe his statement will make the inequalities in this country even worse at the centre of this crisis.”
“The Secretary of State came to the House in January to say that he was going to increase the amount of testing. This issue was raised with the Prime Minister on 24 February and again in a meeting we had in March, at which the Secretary of State was present. He told us then that the level of testing would increase, but it is still nowhere near the level that is necessary. Can he assure us that there is going to be a really rapid increase in the level and availability of testing, in order to get on top of this dreadful virus?”
“First, I want to pay tribute briefly to all those health workers, care workers, delivery workers, street cleaners and cleaners, and so many other groups all over the country, who are doing such an incredible job, together with all the volunteers, to deal with this crisis. It is an amazing moment in this country’s history. However, Parliament’s job is to hold the Government to account, so I have a simple question. The World Health Organisation indicated that there was a danger of an epidemic from coronavirus in January—it later declared this to be a pandemic. The WHO’s director general said, in terms, that the way to deal with it is “test, test, test”, in order to ascertain the levels of infection across our society, but we did not do that.”
“Why was that not done weeks ago, if not months ago, when the Government were first warned about the threat of a global pandemic? What action is now being taken to get testing machines?”
“They are the unsung heroes, keeping the transport system running, the post delivered, utilities running and our supermarkets properly stocked. I wish to give a special mention to one group who are usually ignored, forgotten and decried as “unskilled workers”—cleaners. All around the country, and in this building, they are doing their best to keep our places hygienic and safe. Over the past few weeks, I have asked the Prime Minister many times what action is being taken to ensure that testing is being prioritised, and I have received assurances that everything that could be done was being done. Yet a leaked email shows that it was just three days ago that the Prime Minister wrote to UK research institutes to ask for help, saying that there were “no” testing machines “available to buy”.”
“Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for making the best arrangements possible today to ensure not only that as many Members as possible can ask questions, but that the Government are held to account, which is the function of Parliament. Many more people will be mourning the loss of loved ones as a result of coronavirus this week. Our hearts go out to all of them and to those suffering from the disease at the present time. Across our country people are working day and night to keep us safe, fed and warm: our wonderful NHS staff; police; firefighters; prison and probation workers; teachers; civil servants; local government staff; and social care workers. All of them are showing the value of public service.”
“I thank the Prime Minister for his very kind remarks. I believe in a decent, socially just society. He was talking as though this was a sort of obituary—just to let him know: my voice will not be stilled, I will be around, I will be campaigning, I will be arguing and I will be demanding justice for the people of this country and, indeed, the rest of the world. We can protect the health of us all only if we protect the health of our carers, yet the Sue Ryder charity, which provides care to people with neurological conditions, has said that its workforce is depleting daily as it has no access to tests. When will all social care staff have access to regular testing? They are very important and obviously very vulnerable in this crisis.”
“Obviously, if carers have to self-isolate because they suspect they have the disease and cannot get a test, their work is lost for a week and those who need care and support do not get it during that time. There are reports that care-home workers are being turned away from supermarkets in relation to priority shopping and not being allowed to buy more than certain items that they desperately need to feed their residents. What is the Prime Minister’s plan for making sure that care workers can get the vital food and supplies that they need for the people they are caring for?”
“I hope the Prime Minister will, because care workers are on the frontline looking after the most vulnerable people in our society. Keeping our care homes safe and well should be, and must be, an absolute priority. The Prime Minister has been saying for quite a long time that NHS staff will get the equipment they need, yet the Health Care Supply Association—get that: the Health Care Supply Association—has been forced to use Twitter to ask DIY shops to donate protective equipment to NHS staff. This is an appalling situation. When will NHS staff, social care staff and community nurses, and all other staff relating to healthcare, get the PPE equipment that they absolutely, desperately need?”
“It is important that they get that equipment because, yesterday, 77% of NHS chiefs who responded to a survey said that the lack of staff testing and staff shortages were the two biggest areas of concern for them. Last week, the Prime Minister stood in this Chamber at the Dispatch Box and said that he would “protect private renters from eviction.” —[ Official Report , 18 March 2020; Vol. 673, c. 995.] He absolutely said that, yet some renters will be getting eviction notices as early as next week. The Prime Minister appears to have gone back on his word. Will he now, finally, absolutely ban evictions for six months in line with the renewal period of the emergency legislation, which is going through its parliamentary process at the moment?”
“Many British people abroad feel a bit abandoned by their Government, with many fast running out of medicines, with the host countries in lockdown, with flights and accommodation being cancelled, and with insurance either about to expire or not covering the much-needed costs until they are able to return home. These British citizens have a right to turn to their own Government for help. Hour-long delays on phone calls are not acceptable. These people feel abandoned. Will the Prime Minister update the House, as the Foreign Secretary was asked to do yesterday, on what his Government are doing to bring people home and to provide the emergency costs for the medical needs that many British residents abroad have at the present time?”
“Unfortunately, that is not the reality on the ground, as many of my colleagues will point out. Constituents are getting in touch with us, saying that they are being threatened with eviction now. They are in rent arrears because they cannot work during this shutdown over coronavirus. To be absolutely clear about this, will the Prime Minister make sure that it is legislated that nobody can be evicted from the private rented sector during the first six-month period of this emergency? I will continue my questions shortly in the second part of this session, but I just want to ask this question of the Prime Minister.”
“We heard this morning on the radio a call from a self-employed construction worker who said that he had contracted coronavirus and was suffering from it—he knew he had got it—but he had no option other than to get on the London tube and go on to a site to work, putting himself at greater risk and putting all other passengers and all other workers on that site at risk. Why was he doing it? Because his site had not been closed down, and he had no other source of income to feed his family, so he is going to work, putting all of us more at risk as a result. Can the Prime Minister be absolutely clear and give unequivocal guidance now that non-emergency construction work should stop now?”
“I thank you again, Mr Speaker, for making these arrangements today, so that more colleagues can come into the Chamber. It is a little odd, however, that we are having to have a double session of Prime Minister’s Question Time to question the Prime Minister, when he himself should have volunteered to come here and make a statement at some length on the subject, rather than just doing it through press conferences and television addresses. This House is the place where the Government should be held to account. Construction sites are still operating and still working on non-emergency work, despite the new rules. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said yesterday that sites will continue to stay open.”
“Obviously people should stay at home and protect others, but if they have no other source of income, then these very difficult, very personal choices are going to be made, and we are all put at greater risk as a result of it. The self-employed are having to choose whether they go to work or stay at home and face losing their entire livelihood, relying instead on an overstretched welfare system, which could pay as little as £94 per week. One self-employed person said that they need to pay for baby food, rent, council tax and insurance for the car they use for work, being “faced with a decision to feed your family and pay your bills, or stay at home and not get paid”. Why has it taken the Prime Minister so long to guarantee income for all self-employed workers? There are millions of them—our economy has changed.”
“Will the Prime Minister now put in extra resources and funding to boost DWP capacity and relax the often quite draconian requirements on people claiming, so that money gets where it is needed quickly—to those people who have got to feed the kids, got to pay the rent, got to survive somehow?”
“I am asking questions about the self-employed, those on zero-hours contracts and those with no recourse to public funds, who have no support. They are in a very difficult situation, and the Prime Minister should understand that many of our constituents —constituents of every Member of this House—lead a hand-to-mouth existence. A few days’ pay lost is catastrophic for them. Time and again, Government Ministers have told us that workers affected by the crisis could get help via universal credit. Last night, there were queues of over 110,000 people trying to get on to the Department for Work and Pensions system in order to register to apply for universal credit.”
“We are not asking for the entire UK economy to be closed down. We obviously want people to be safe, but clearly things have to go on. My question was about the DWP resources, which the Prime Minister did not answer. [ Interruption. ] Well, it was not an answer that was satisfactory to me. [ Interruption. ] One of his colleagues is claiming it was a yes. I will take that, so that means more staff now for the DWP quickly so we do not have 110,000 people waiting.”