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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“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairing of this debate, Ms Butler. I have the honour to represent an inner London constituency, in which approximately a third of the population live in private rented accommodation. Among young people, that proportion is considerably higher because of the problems they have with access to social housing of any sort, which force them into the private rented sector or into sharing properties. The stress they suffer is enormous, the overcrowding that happens in shared flats is horrendous and the way young people have to club together to try to pay rent, which for even a two or three-bedroom flat would be at least £2,000 a month in the private rented sector in my constituency, means they have no possibility of saving money for anything else.”
“Before the Minister sits down, could he say anything about his Department’s approach to the large housing associations? I increasingly hear stories in my area—as the Minister probably does in his—that they are selling off properties when there is a change of tenancy to give themselves a capital asset, and they are then spending it somewhere else. It ends up with a process of social cleansing in the central parts of all our big cities.”
“We should be very proud of our NHS. It is universal, and Palantir is in danger of getting its hands on the personal health records of every single person who has lived or died since 1948, which it can use for research purposes. Since it is a conglomerate that covers all kinds of other services and was involved in the war in Gaza and the attacks on the Palestinian people, surely it is time, as the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) said, for us as a Parliament to challenge the Government on this and say: get this contract out of our NHS, and bring it back into public hands.”
“It is hopefully under threat in many other countries where it is trying to operate, such as Germany, where human rights organisations are pressurising it because of its behaviour and attitudes. This company is getting its clutches into our NHS, and it appears to be pressurising every local hospital and NHS trust to join the Palantir system. My local hospital, Whittington hospital, so far is not part of that system and says it does not wish to be part of it, as have many others, but we need a clear steer from the Government. I do not blame the Government for the contract—they did not sign it; they inherited it. But they have the opportunity now to say that they will end it when the opportunity arises, which is less than 18 months away, and that they will use the interim period to develop a publicly owned, accountable system in our NHS.”
“It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) on securing it and on his excellent speech. Palantir received a massive contract from the UK Government, apparently starting in about 2019. Some may recall that during that general election campaign, I accused the Government of undertaking secret negotiations with US health providers to take over our NHS. What was the response of our media? That I was peddling Russian propaganda. They refused to engage in a serious debate about the way in which US companies were trying to undermine not just the NHS but our public services as a whole. Palantir already has a £330 million contract with the NHS and is trying to get its hands on much more.”
“Defence spending is rising rapidly in China, Russia, the UK, the US and all over Europe. In every country in the world, there is pressure on welfare budgets and there are increasing levels of human and social inequality. A global environmental disaster is on the horizon. At the same time, the agencies for peace—such as the UN and its agencies—and overseas aid budgets are being cut. Global inequality is getting worse, and the conditions for future wars are being created. What plans do the Government have to put some energy into a UN-led peace process to bring a cessation to the dreadful conflicts going on around the world? Where is the investment for peace in the future, or are we going to continue down the road of spending more on arms and less on people’s human needs?”
“Britain’s military co-operation with the USA and Israel has enabled Israel to commit acts of genocide against the people of Gaza, the Palestinian people, and has enabled the United States to undertake this massive illegal bombardment of Iran. Can the Prime Minister assure the House that from now on the military co-operation and supply of weapons and parts to both Israel and the United States will be suspended while this appalling war goes on in Iran, which is a danger not just to the peace of the whole region but, clearly, to the peace of the whole world?”
“In this overarching statement on the middle east by the Foreign Secretary, it is surprising that she did not take the opportunity to condemn the continuing genocide in Gaza, the brutality of the occupation of the west bank, the destruction of Palestinian villages there, the invasion of Lebanon by Israel and the continued supply of British weapons. Trump has declared war on Iran without any war objective or war plan, and we are involved in that. Can she end this nonsense about whether we are sending defensive or offensive strikes from this country? The reality is that if a bomber takes off from RAF Fairford and bombs civilian targets in Iran, we are involved in that act of aggression against the people of Iran. Should we not join Spain and say no to the USA?”
“What consideration did the Home Secretary give to compliance with articles 10 and 11 of the European convention on human rights on the right to protest? What discussions did the Metropolitan police have with the organisers of this planned march to ensure that it could go ahead safely and would be properly stewarded and properly run? In my experience, the police are very accommodating and keen to have long discussions with march organisers to make sure that the right to protest is maintained in our society. There is a slippery slope here, because banning a march that is not necessarily a very popular march may lead to draconian banning orders on all kinds of protests within our society.”
“I find this faux outrage about Mandelson astonishing. He is a man who had been closely involved with the leadership of the Labour party ever since Tony Blair and very closely with the current Prime Minister since 2020. They must have known his character; they must have known what he was like. In the documents that the Government are now producing, will we know every piece of advice that was given to the Prime Minister by his officials and by the Foreign Office? Specifically, will there be a record of any verbal briefings given to the Prime Minister before he made the calamitous decision to send Mandelson to Washington? The public need to know why the Prime Minister, despite all the knowledge about Mandelson, felt the need to go ahead with the appointment.”
“Does he not think that there must be much greater concentration on the role of the racist far right in our society, which, on social media and elsewhere, continually incites—subliminally and overtly—violence against identifiable minorities all over the country, with devastating consequences for the security, safety and wellbeing of many people on our streets?”
“All forms of abuse are appalling. All forms of targeted abuse—be they against Muslim, Jewish or black communities—are even more appalling. I would be interested to know why the word “Islamophobia” does not appear in the statement, when that is clearly an enormous problem in our society. I am unclear about whether the Secretary of State took any advice from the Muslim Council of Britain, which has often been very helpful in explaining to the wider community the consequences of Islamophobia.”
“Could we not instead adopt a stance of trying to bring about an immediate ceasefire to prevent further dreadful loss of life across every country in the whole region and the danger of this escalating into a semi-global conflict?”
“Last Friday, the talks in Geneva were apparently making good progress and there was hope that there would be some kind of agreement between the United States and Iran. Some 12 hours later, President Trump ordered attacks on Iran, the first victims of which were a group of schoolchildren attending school in the morning. They in no way can be held responsible for anything in Iran, whether human rights abuses or anything else. In the Prime Minister’s statement, it is unclear to me under which circumstances US forces will be allowed to use RAF bases. Can they use bases in this country to attack Iran? Can they use RAF Akrotiri for that? Are we—this country—sharing information with the US to further its war aims against Iran?”
“This is an important point. The Secretary of State must be aware that large numbers of homeless people very seldom vote, because they do not have a point of registration unless they can find a church or somebody is prepared to host them. Is there a possibility that we can make arrangements for people who do not have any fixed abode but nevertheless are equal citizens like the rest of us and deserve the right to vote?”
“The hon. Gentleman has just made the most extraordinary allegation about an electoral process last week: he suggested that 12% of all votes were somehow or other invalid because of pressure that he claims was put on them. Has he got any real evidence, or is that just an easy assertion to make to grab some headlines on social media and elsewhere?”
“Lastly, I will turn to the right to vote. I have raised the question of homeless people having the right to vote; if we had a universal registration system, it would be much easier to ensure that everyone who is entitled to vote is able to do so. While I absolutely support votes at 16, I also think we should extend votes beyond just Irish nationals to those who are legally resident in this country and have a stake in the future of this country, and should be able to vote accordingly.”
“The question of the funding of elections comes up all the time. Massive amounts of business money flows into politics both at election time and between elections, funding parties, so-called political interest groups and so on. We need to get a grip on this. Our democracy is being sold to the highest bidder, and it is getting worse and worse with the levels of political influence and money that goes with it. There is also the question of the power of the media between and within elections. We need to extend broadcasting rules into print media during elections. As others have said, we need to look very seriously at the damaging interests of social media and the algorithms that go with it, which direct political views. It is almost impossible to find out how much money has been spent on social media campaigning.”
“We have mayors and a local government system that is essentially dependent on central government. We are not a fully democratic society by any manner of means. Indeed, this House of Commons is really meeting on sufferance of the Government. Its agenda is basically set by the Government. It is not an independent chamber of power over the Government; it is one that tries to hold the Government to account—there is a big difference. So we need to think a bit more about how our democracy could develop. Perhaps a good idea would be a commission on democracy, where there could be wide-ranging thoughts on democracy in our society. The Bill contains a number of issues that I want to refer to quickly. I say that as a former agent in many elections, and as a parliamentary candidate in many more after that.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). She rightly reminded the House about the role of the Chartists in Islington South. I remind her and the rest of the House about the role of Mary Wollstonecraft in the north of the borough, and of course the fact that “The Rights of Man” was written in her constituency at the Angel. Our borough has made a massive contribution to radical thought and radical development. This debate should be much longer and wider, because we need to look at wider issues of democracy in our society. We have an elected House of Commons. We have an unelected House of Lords. We obviously have an unelected Head of State. We have a massive disparity in regional influences on political decision making. We do not really have regional government.”
“We have the continued occupation of Gaza by Israel. Then we have the so-called Trump peace plan—that is such a disgusting misuse of language it is unbelievable—which is actually a military reoccupation of Gaza. A very large military base is now being built in the north of the Gaza strip, presumably to assist the expulsion of many Palestinian people from Gaza and the construction of hotels, casinos and all the rest of it, which is what the dream of that wretched peace plan is. Can we not ask our British Government to do something serious and say that we totally condemn the Trump plan and the reoccupation of Gaza?”
“The situation in Gaza is beyond appalling in every way we can think of. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) on securing the debate, and also the wonderful Palestinian activists in his constituency, who do a fantastic job in drawing attention to all this. We must have some sense of urgency. We have a continuation of the occupation. Israel is now using thermal weapons, which have killed over 2,000 people since last year. Those weapons basically vaporise the body, which is barbaric by any stretch of the imagination. Temperatures can reach as high as 3,500°C, which is the temperature achieved when a nuclear explosion takes place. If we look at the silhouettes of the bodies vaporised on the streets of Hiroshima, that is what the people of Gaza are now having to tolerate. That is disgusting at any level.”
“I simply say to the Government, “Do everything you can to demand access for healthcare workers, everything you can to get the equipment in there, and everything you can to end the occupation of Gaza and allow the people of Palestine to decide their own future in their own land, and decide what society they want to create there. It is not up to us to recolonise it; it is up to us to help them to liberate their own lives.””
“I went to her apartment in Gaza City and I said, “Mona, what’s the mental health situation for people in Gaza?” She said, “Jeremy, by my estimate 70% of the population are now suffering severe and profound mental health trauma.” That was 20 years ago, at a point at which there was some degree of hope for the future. There was some degree of optimism at that time. Now, there is no hope. There is no optimism. We are talking about the entirety of the population suffering from mental health trauma. That will carry on intergenerationally—and we are supplying weapons, which has allowed some of that to happen.”
“The world has beyond the capacity to deal with every health problem in Gaza. Why is it not being done? Because Israel will not allow it to happen and will not allow equipment to go in. Unless we are utterly determined as a country and a Government to get that medical equipment into Gaza, the situation will simply continue to get worse. We will be wringing our hands here in six months’ time, in a year’s time and so on—as many of us have been for many years—about the treatment of the Palestinian people. The long-term consequences will not disappear. Communicable diseases will get worse, the sewerage system will get worse and the mental health trauma for future generations will not go away. I remember talking to Dr Mona El-Farra on the day after the 2006 election in Gaza, at which I was an observer.”
“Thank you, Sir Jeremy. I ask the British Government whether they will kindly do everything they can to allow MSF and all the others to continue working in Gaza, to respect the work of health workers and those assassinated by the Israeli occupation? Unless we look at the wider context, it is impossible to get a solution. That requires political action by the British Government to enable health workers to carry out their work. As colleagues have pointed out, the consequences of the health disaster that is Gaza at the moment are large numbers of deaths, orphaned children and mothers dying in childbirth because of the lack of equipment. As the hon. Member for Stroud pointed out, it would be perfectly possible to get emergency medical equipment—operating theatres and so on—in very quickly.”
“Will the Minister confirm that political donations are not just cash payments but include the secondment of staff and the use of facilities, all of which ought to be publicly and openly declared, and clearly have not been?”
“Can I take the Minister back to the strange answer that he gave to the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), who asked for a full inquiry into all the actions and activities of Labour Together, including the behaviour of Morgan McSweeney and the hon. Member for Makerfield (Josh Simons)? I want the inquiry to extend to their undermining of the Labour party leadership between 2015 and 2020—the systemic briefing and attacks, and the general undermining of the interests of the Labour party while Labour Together claimed to support it. A single inquiry by a single person does not cut it. There needs to be an open, much more public investigation into not just Labour Together’s behaviour but the sources of its funding, expenditure and donations.”
“It is very clear that the issue has been referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee and that it will look at issues of national security and international relations. I intervened in the debate on this matter; it is possible that the Chief Secretary heard that intervention. I want him to be very clear that in the event of the committee discovering commercial links from Mandelson to any company, including Palantir but not excluding others, they will be pursued and will not be ignored because they do not necessarily impact immediately on the very narrow definition of national security and international relations.”
“Does the hon. Lady have any idea why the Government have left the overall benefit cap in place, knowing full well that it will lead to a massive anomaly with other children driven into poverty at the very time that we should be taking all children out of poverty?”
“Was it not the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) who, on a visit to Glasgow, discovered that there was much poverty, and decided that it was all the fault of there being too many children? He decided to punish the children for being poor in order to teach the next generation a lesson. That moral nonsense belongs with Malthus, not with any logical, socially minded human being.”
“In England, the biggest water consumers are in London and the south-east, which is, broadly speaking, the driest part of the country. The wettest part of the country is the midlands and the north-west. Clearly, moving water from one part to the other makes a lot of sense. Can we not have some sense surrounding the organisation of water distribution?”
“By any standard, river quality is appalling right across the country and is one of the worst anywhere in Europe. That is caused by the mixing of rainwater with sewage waste, and by agricultural run-offs that have a devastating effect. The River Wye is just one example of how awful the rivers can become, because of agricultural waste run-offs—hon. Members who drew attention to that are absolutely right. The waste of water from leaks is a huge problem, and I think I am right that the totality of leaks across the whole country would fill the whole of Loch Ness every year. Therefore, instead of calling for new reservoirs to be built, should we not look at much better water management, rainwater retention and water distribution across the country?”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) on securing this debate, which is timely and very important. The Cunliffe report is seriously flawed, in that it did not consider public ownership of the industry or agriculture, which is a major polluter, as other colleagues have already pointed out. Privatisation of water has been an absolute disaster from the very beginning, when many of us at the time warned against it. It has resulted in £72 billion being taken out of the industry in dividends and profits, and fantastic levels of executive pay. It has left behind pollution and flooding, with the cost of the pollution, flooding and foul water being borne by the public—our constituents—who are increasingly angry about it.”
“We had a long discussion with the Environment Agency about planning for flooding, which would involve restoring peatlands, upland planting, reintroducing beavers and others into rivers—that has an effect on a small scale, with lots of rivers and streams—and restoring floodplains. Those sorts of things are some of the most important things we can do. Water should be taken back into public ownership—not old-style public ownership, with a board of governors or directors appointed by the Government, but a popular form of public ownership that would involve the brilliant workforce in all those companies, and their knowledge. The directors would come from them, and from local communities, businesses, local authorities and unions, so we would have a locally and popular-based water industry in our society. We could do it. Why don’t we try that?”
“Absolutely. The state of the infrastructure does need to be examined. Like many Members, my constituents have endless complaints about that. Thames Water is one of the most frequent visitors to my constituency; it digs up the roads frequently. With the resulting road closures—which are absurd—Thames Water is much better at traffic management than Transport for London, actually. I would also ask that we look much more seriously at river basin management. I remember visiting York with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) during the flooding at that time.”
“Does the Minister really understand the depth of anger and feeling across the country when people read and hear about Palantir—the way in which it has wormed its way into Government contracts and the national health service, and its behaviour on behalf of the Israeli Defence Forces in the destruction of Gaza and other places using artificial intelligence technology? Do we really want to be involved with a company like that? Can we not just distance ourselves from Palantir altogether and have an ethical procurement policy across Government—not just in the Ministry of Defence, but in other Departments as well?”
“As was pointed out earlier, this country was involved in supporting and establishing in the 1920s the International Court of Justice. We pride ourselves on being the custodians of international law and order. This country is making itself complicit in the genocide of the people of Palestine by its supply of weapons. It is time to stop.”
“I was joined by Shahd Hammouri and Neve Gordon, who assessed a great deal of detailed evidence. In the one minute and 15 seconds left to me, I cannot go through that evidence, but I will simply say this. There was powerful evidence of doctors in tears because they did not have the equipment to deal with the horrendous injuries that they were asked to deal with in hospitals without electricity, anaesthetic, antiseptic or even clean water. The legal evidence given and the evidence given by former Foreign and Commonwealth Office official Mark Smith was very powerful, as was the evidence about the supply of weapons to Israel through RAF Akrotiri. The matter has now been taken up by a group of UN member states in the Hague convention, who will carry on with it. Let me conclude with this.”
“It was a deeply moving experience hearing the South African application and the bravery with which they put it and thinking, “This is the country that threw off the yoke of apartheid and had the courage then to stand up for the Palestinian people, facing genocide as they are.” The conclusion by the eminent judges was that there was a credible case that genocide had been committed, and they are going through many details on it. Following that, last year I introduced a ten-minute Bill in the Chamber calling for this country to set up its own tribunal of investigation on its participation in arms sales to Israel and the bombardment of Gaza. Unsurprisingly, it was blocked. Through the Peace & Justice Project, I then established our own independent Gaza tribunal, which we held over two days in Church House Westminster.”
“I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber (Brendan O'Hara) for getting this debate and to all those who have spoken in it. We are having this debate against a background where 71,000 people are known to be dead in Gaza as a result of Israeli bombardment, with many thousands of bodies lying under rubble that will no doubt become the foundations of the casinos and hotels that the Trump plan is visiting on the people of Gaza. I had the privilege of attending the South African application under the genocide convention at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.”
“I compliment the hon. Member on the content of his speech so far. This inquiry will have massive ramifications. It is an inquiry into the gilded circle surrounding Mandelson, which extends very broadly around this House and the civil service, the business community, the media and internationally. Is it not time that we had a novel form of inquiry which is not undertaken solely by Parliament or the civil service, but which is a much broader, more public inquiry that will look into the whole issue? This is a basic corruption of our political system that we are looking at in the behaviour of Peter Mandelson.”
“The hon. Member is making some excellent points. Does she agree that all the inquiry systems that have been discussed so far are influenced or participated in by people who have been within the golden circle of Peter Mandelson? Do we not need something novel and different, such as an independent, judge-led or judiciary-led inquiry that examines the whole thing in the round, similar perhaps to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war?”
“Epstein was very, very powerful and very, very wealthy. Obviously, there needs to be more examination of that. More files have been uncovered than even Julian Assange managed to uncover through Wikileaks, and those files are going to be read and studied for a long time to come. There are lots of people all around the world who were dragged into this ghastly web based on dishonesty, lies, corruption and patronage. It is up to us as MPs to ’fess up to what has happened and to make sure there is a genuinely open, independent inquiry. When it comes to the standards of democracy we have in our society, and the levels of patronage that continue within it, we need to look at ourselves in the mirror.”
“We need to make that very clear, because his role in British politics has been basically malign, undermining, and a very corrupting influence altogether. When we look at our politics, we need to look at the role that big money, patronage, and turning a blind eye to crime play in it, because what we end up with is the national embarrassment of Mandelson being the ambassador to Washington, apparently on the basis that it was a risk worth taking in order to please Donald Trump. I do not know whether it succeeded in pleasing Donald Trump, but I did notice that at one of his endless press conferences, he could not remember who Mandelson was, so I am not sure how big the impact on the President was. Today is a day of shame for our politics—shame that we have got into the situation that has now been exposed.”
“I think it has to be judicially led, independent and, for the most part, in the public eye—rather like when the Government were eventually forced to undertake the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war; that is the nearest parallel I can find—because it needs to expose the whole web that Mandelson created, and the power play that he operated within the civil service, the political establishment, the media and so much else. The hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) made a wonderful and very powerful speech. I thank him for his reference to what Mandelson said and did about me when I was Leader of the Opposition and leader of the Labour party. I can confirm to the House that under my leadership, Mandelson had no role, no influence and no part to play, because I do not trust the man or believe him.”
“Today, we have to be very stern and clear that there needs to be the fullest possible inquiry into all of this. Parliament is not competent to undertake this inquiry. The Cabinet Secretary and the civil service machine are not competent to do so. They have all been ensnared in this gilded, friendly web of Mandelson and his business, political and social contacts, where favours were done and contracts were apparently awarded. That ghastly company Palantir was trying to get hold of our national health service, apparently at the behest of Mandelson and others. None of us here are competent to undertake that inquiry, which is why I intervened earlier—I thank the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) for giving way—on how it should be conducted.”
“I cannot believe that, when he was about to appoint Peter Mandelson as the ambassador to Washington, he was not made fully aware of all of Peter Mandelson’s record. The Prime Minister would have known about the number of times that Peter Mandelson was forced to resign, even from the Tony Blair Government, because of his behaviour. He would have known Mandelson’s record as an EU Commissioner, and of his interesting relationship with global dealers in minerals and many other things. He would have known all of that, yet he still went ahead and appointed Mandelson as ambassador to Washington, apparently despite advice from the Foreign Office and others. What a shame, what a disgrace and what an appalling appointment to make. We do not even know whether Mandelson is still being paid by the Foreign Office.”
“We have a duty to do something important today, and I for one support the Opposition motion. I hope that we vote on it, rather than coming to some crabby deal between the Government and the Opposition through a manuscript amendment that would kick the whole thing into the long grass, a long way away, on the pretence that we cannot discuss these issues because that might affect security or international relations. Almost anything can affect international relations. It sounds to me like the Government simply trying to get out of things. The question is fundamentally one for the Prime Minister, and it is a bit odd that he is not here for the debate. It is a bit odd that he has not spoken in the debate and that all he has done is say what he did today at Prime Minister’s Question Time.”
“This debate is crucial and seminal, but first and foremost it must be about the victims of the horrible web that Epstein created —the abuse, abduction, raping and secret imprisonment of women, who were apparently flown in and out of major cities around the world for the convenience of rich and powerful men. It is utterly disgusting, depraved and abominable behaviour on every single level, and every Member who has called it out is absolutely right to do so. Epstein was not revealed yesterday; he was not convicted last week; he was not convicted last year. He was first convicted 18 years ago. It is not as if his record was not extremely well known. It seems that we are debating it now only because of the inclusion of Peter Mandelson in the ghastly, nasty, vile, horrible web that they created.”