← LEADERSHIP TERMINAL

UK PARLIAMENT · SITTING

Yvette Cooper

MP for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley · Labour · United Kingdom

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

NATO has been the cornerstone of Euro-Atlantic security for over 75 years, protecting more than a billion people, but to ensure it remains as strong for the next 75 years, it needs to respond to changing threats.

NATO SUMMIT · 2026-07-09 · READ IN HANSARD

He may have seen that the Prime Minister and the Canadian Prime Minister put out a joint statement over the last couple of days to set out how we seek to work together to ensure that those initiatives, which do slightly different things, can combine and collaborate to ensure that we get the best possible impact.

NATO SUMMIT · 2026-07-09 · READ IN HANSARD

The world must not fail the people of Sudan again. Last week, the UK convened an urgent debate at the United Nations Human Rights Council. A UK-penned resolution condemned atrocities, called for an urgent UN fact finding inquiry and urged the RSF to comply with international law and halt this attack, urging both the RSF and the Sudanese A…

NATO SUMMIT · 2026-07-09 · READ IN HANSARD

We agree about the nature of the increasingly dangerous world we live in and the importance of us being able to defend ourselves and maintain our security. We have committed to reaching the 3.5% commitment on defence, but that is part of a 5% commitment that was made to cover broader defence and security intelligence.

NATO SUMMIT · 2026-07-09 · READ IN HANSARD

I did take the opportunity to discuss the situation in both the west bank and Gaza with some of our allies and partners. I am deeply worried that last year’s 20-point plan for Gaza—which was hugely important and which we supported, as did the whole world—is at risk of running into the ground.

NATO SUMMIT · 2026-07-09 · READ IN HANSARD

As I have said, our security since the second world war has very much depended on the NATO alliance, which has always been a defensive alliance that has built its strength through deterrence. Deterrence is immensely important. When we reached the end of the cold war in 1990, there was at that point a substantial peace dividend.

NATO SUMMIT · 2026-07-09 · READ IN HANSARD

The complete record

Every one of 8,060 lines we hold for Yvette Cooper, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 64 of 162.

  1. I appreciate that, but I think that also makes clear the gap in the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s case, because operational flexibility still should not apply to the burden of proof—the evidence required in order to justify applying measures that are for particularly extreme circumstances. The independent reviewer, Jonathan Hall, has said that “administrative convenience does not appear to provide a basis for reversing the safeguard of a higher standard of proof.” We cannot justify saying that in order to somehow reduce the paperwork, we want to reduce the burden of proof to use such measures. His predecessor, Lord—David— Anderson, who argued for bringing back relocation and who has been a supporter of strong powers, has agreed with him on this matter.

    COUNTER-TERRORISM AND SENTENCING BILL · 2020-06-09 · READ IN HANSARD

  2. Let me stress this point again: the Minister has still not given us any reason why the current system is no good and why it does not work. He has mentioned independent judgment, but he is giving us no evidence on which to make our independent judgment that is different from the reviewer’s.

    COUNTER-TERRORISM AND SENTENCING BILL · 2020-06-09 · READ IN HANSARD

  3. I know that we will return to the protest issues in the statement shortly. This evening, there will be a television dramatisation of the terrible injustice inflicted on Anthony Bryan by the UK Home Office during the Windrush scandal. It was a case we raised in the Home Affairs Committee two years ago. Does the Home Secretary agree with the urgency and importance of the Government now accepting and acting on all the recommendations in Wendy Williams’s review? In particular, given the timing of the immigration Bill, has she implemented recommendation 7 on a review of the hostile environment, including its impact on race equality?

    TOPICAL QUESTIONS · 2020-06-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  4. Will she provide for the Committee a list of all the practical steps that she and the Home Office are now taking to tackle injustice and racism?

    PUBLIC ORDER · 2020-06-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  5. I join all the Front Benchers in sending support and best wishes to all the police officers who have been injured, and in their strong sense that violence by a minority is always unacceptable and helps no one. There is a responsibility on us all to ensure that this does not prevent us from coming together to respond to the strong demands for action against racism and injustice across the country. In that spirit, the Home Secretary will know that the Home Affairs Committee is conducting an inquiry into policing, two decades on from the Macpherson report. Next week, we will look at reports that covid-19 enforcement fines may have been disproportionately applied to BME communities. Has she looked at that, and what has she found?

    PUBLIC ORDER · 2020-06-08 · READ IN HANSARD

  6. Sir Patrick Vallance has said that the crisis escalated in this country as a result of many, many cases coming from Spain and Italy during March. So clearly, the triage system was not working. The Home Affairs Committee was also told that in a 10-day period from 13 to 23 March, up to 10,000 passengers with coronavirus are likely to have arrived at our ports and airports. The Home Secretary has still not published the science that we were promised behind those decisions. Can I urge her now to do so and to tell us her estimate of the number of people who, in the next three-week period, are likely to arrive in the UK with coronavirus?

    COVID-19: UK BORDER HEALTH MEASURES · 2020-06-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  7. There will always be disagreements on different aspects of immigration, but right now at this point, particularly in this coronavirus crisis, we should be looking for the areas where we can find agreement, and find a positive way forward.

    IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL SECURITY CO-ORDINATION (EU WITHDRAWAL) BILL · 2020-05-18 · READ IN HANSARD

  8. It is also time to lift the NHS surcharge for NHS staff and careworkers, instead of charging families maybe £10,000 when they renew five-year visas, on top of their taxes, to fund the NHS they are already working incredibly hard for and, in some awful cases, giving their lives for, too. I believe this Bill is flawed, but I recognise that legislation on immigration is now needed. As Select Committee Chair, I will table amendments that I hope will receive cross-party support. In that cross-party spirit, I will not vote against the Bill tonight, although if the Government’s approach does not change, I expect to oppose it when it returns to the House, because it is immensely important that we try to build that new consensus. I urge the Government to do so, because they have the opportunity to do so now.

    IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL SECURITY CO-ORDINATION (EU WITHDRAWAL) BILL · 2020-05-18 · READ IN HANSARD

  9. Those careworkers should be valued and paid more, and I will campaign for them to be so, but the Government must heed the warning from the Health Foundation, which said: “The government’s new immigration system looks set to make our social care crisis even worse.” We cannot do that at this time. The Bill should also do more to support careworkers. Rightly, the Home Office has introduced free visa extension for overseas doctors and nurses and has also said that if they die from covid-19, their families will be given indefinite leave to remain, but why exclude careworkers? Why exclude NHS porters and cleaners—those who wash and clean sick residents, those who scrub the door handles and the floor and those who do laundry for the covid wards?

    IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL SECURITY CO-ORDINATION (EU WITHDRAWAL) BILL · 2020-05-18 · READ IN HANSARD

  10. In fact, we should be rejecting the old approach through successive Governments of only doing things through secondary legislation by making things more transparent and putting the bones of a new system in primary legislation instead. Secondly, by default, the Bill extends rather than repeals the hostile environment. As we have seen from the Windrush scandal, that shames us. The hostile environment should be repealed rather than extended in this way. Thirdly, there will be considerable problems with the Government’s White Paper proposals for social care. A quarter of a million careworkers have come from abroad —half of them from Europe—and we should be supporting them, yet the Government’s £25,000 salary threshold for overseas workers will turn those people away.

    IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL SECURITY CO-ORDINATION (EU WITHDRAWAL) BILL · 2020-05-18 · READ IN HANSARD

  11. I heard from Labour supporters concerned about the gulf, for example, between the rules for EU and non-EU citizens. I heard from others who opposed EU free movement, because they could see employers exploiting it to keep wages down, and who rightly pointed out that there is a difference between a free-market approach to immigration and a progressive approach to immigration. There are many different ways to draw up a left-of-centre, fair approach. It is time to look afresh at how we build a new positive consensus on immigration, but there are significant problems with the Government’s approach. First, this is only half a Bill. It removes the old system, but it does not set out a new one. It gives Ministers major powers.

    IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL SECURITY CO-ORDINATION (EU WITHDRAWAL) BILL · 2020-05-18 · READ IN HANSARD

  12. We have to choose well and build a positive system that recognises and welcomes the contribution people coming to Britain have made for many generations and will make in future, too. We have to choose well and build a positive system that recognises and welcomes the contribution that people coming to Britain have made for many generations and will make in future, too. That means that the Government have to ditch the divisive rhetoric of recent years and recognise that the hostile environment, and the treatment of the Windrush generation as a result, demean us and can never be part of a new consensus. Meanwhile, Labour will need to make a start on the commitment we made in our 2017 manifesto to draw up new fair immigration rules for EU and non-EU migration in place of the EU free movement system.

    IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL SECURITY CO-ORDINATION (EU WITHDRAWAL) BILL · 2020-05-18 · READ IN HANSARD

  13. The cross-party Select Committee on Home Affairs that I chair has repeatedly called for us to build a new, positive consensus on immigration in place of the polarisation of previous years, and this should be the time to do that: right across the country everyone can see the immense contribution of immigration to our nation and our public services, most of all our NHS and social care system. More than half of the NHS and careworkers who have died from coronavirus were born abroad; they could not have given more to this country, and we owe them so much. We are also at a time when we need to move on from the old Brexit divides: Brexit happened in January and as a result European free movement rights end in December, so we need new legislation and the UK has to choose what to do next.

    IMMIGRATION AND SOCIAL SECURITY CO-ORDINATION (EU WITHDRAWAL) BILL · 2020-05-18 · READ IN HANSARD

  14. We need greater transparency if we are to get decisions right, greater clarity so that everyone knows what is going on, and greater determination to tackle the hardest problems we face. We have a long road yet to travel, and we have to do this together.

    COVID-19 · 2020-05-11 · READ IN HANSARD

  15. The Home Office has rightly promised a free visa extension for foreign national doctors and nurses, and, if they tragically die from covid-19, a guarantee that their families can remain, but it has not done so for NHS porters and cleaners, who scrub the door handles, floors and sinks in the covid wards, or for care workers, whose lives are at the greatest risk. That is not fair. Finally, on international travel, other countries introduced self-isolation rules or screening many weeks or months ago. The UK unusually did not. Our Select Committee has been asking for the science behind that since early April, but those SAGE papers have not been published. If the Government now recognise that those measures are needed to prevent the spread, it makes no sense to wait many more weeks before bringing them in.

    COVID-19 · 2020-05-11 · READ IN HANSARD

  16. In a public health crisis, confusion can cost lives and put the police in an impossible position over what to enforce. Secondly, I agree that more action is needed in social care, where the virus is still spreading. We should prevent any patients with covid-19 from being moved from hospital back into care homes. They should stay in hospital or dedicated intermediate care. We need higher standards of PPE, higher pay and sick pay in care homes. I want to mention two other things that have come up before the Home Affairs Committee.

    COVID-19 · 2020-05-11 · READ IN HANSARD

  17. That makes it even more important to get protection in the workplace now, as low-paid workers are more likely than professional workers to be asked by the Government to go back into the workplace. Our key workers have been heroic and should be rewarded, and so too have our communities. In our towns, we have set up hubs of volunteers to help with shopping and food parcels, and we have run a community book programme to deliver books to kids. I want to say a massive thank you to Paul, Denise, David, Lorna, Cath, Saney, Michelle, Ash and many more who have done that. There is much more that we need to do to prevent a second peak. First, we need clearer messages and answers. Half an announcement yesterday, before the regulations and guidance were in place, has caused considerable confusion.

    COVID-19 · 2020-05-11 · READ IN HANSARD

  18. I agree with the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and others about how much we have sadly lost by not following the South Korea example on testing. We must be ready to follow the best examples from all over the world in the second phase. In just a few short weeks, tens of thousands of people in the UK have died as a result of covid-19. It is unbearable to think of so many families grieving and in pain. Those who have died or have suffered most are more likely to be poor, more likely to be black, Asian or minority ethnic, and more likely to be working-class men. At a higher risk are the cleaners, security guards, hospital porters, nursing assistants and, most of all, care workers—people who had to keep going during the crisis.

    COVID-19 · 2020-05-11 · READ IN HANSARD

  19. I am grateful, Mr Speaker. The Health Secretary told me that he would make public the evidence behind the Government’s repeatedly confirmed decision, in contrast with other countries, not to ask people arriving at our ports and airports to self-isolate. However, that evidence was not included in the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies papers published today, even though the papers say we were affected by many cases arriving or coming back from Italy and Spain. Surely we need to see the evidence and scrutinise it in order to get border policy right. Why has it been withheld?

    COVID-19 UPDATE · 2020-05-05 · READ IN HANSARD

  20. The Health Secretary promised me nearly two weeks ago that the Government would publish the scientific evidence behind the decision not to self-isolate people arriving at ports and airports, but he has not yet done so. If we look on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies website, there has been no update, it appears, in the publication of the scientific advice and evidence to the Government since 16 March, which is six weeks ago. It is inconceivable that the Government have not received more scientific advice and evidence since then. Given that transparency and trust should be at the heart of what the Government do and that getting these decisions right is crucial, why are the Government still not publishing the scientific evidence and advice?

    PUBLIC SERVICES · 2020-04-28 · READ IN HANSARD

  21. This Bill is important, but if we are serious about the sentiments behind it that we are all expressing, we should see it as a chance to do more. If we do not, we will be dealing with the consequences of the surge in domestic abuse that we are seeing now for very many years to come.

    DOMESTIC ABUSE BILL · 2020-04-28 · READ IN HANSARD

  22. The Victims’ Commissioner told us that we should adopt a French programme that would provide emergency contacts in pharmacies and supermarkets. I heard from a police officer in the north-west trying to do that, but they need national intervention with the supermarkets to make it work. The Children’s Commissioner warned us about vulnerable children whom no one is visiting and no one has seen since the crisis began and the need for face-to-face contact. We need national action to make that possible. Some of those important things are not happening because, bluntly, we need more leadership and drive from the centre, and that is why the Committee has called for an urgent action plan to be drawn up by the Home Secretary with the domestic abuse commissioner and others as part of the Cobra planning process.

    DOMESTIC ABUSE BILL · 2020-04-28 · READ IN HANSARD

  23. Secondly, the Bill is about using the criminal justice system to protect victims and prosecute criminals, but the system faces new challenges. We recommended extending the time limit for domestic abuse-related summary offences, and we should do that now in this Bill. Thirdly, if we believe in having a domestic abuse commissioner, let us listen to what she says now, because Nicole Jacobs has been appointed already, even if her powers are not fully in place. She told our Committee that a lot of things are in the way of getting people support in a crisis. She raised issues around housing, support services and perpetrator programmes and called for a cross-governmental working group and an action plan to sort things out.

    DOMESTIC ABUSE BILL · 2020-04-28 · READ IN HANSARD

  24. I welcome the creation of the domestic abuse commissioner, which I first raised with the then Home Secretary seven years ago, but I press the Government to go further, including on a stalking and serial abuse register and on making stronger reference to children. There are things in the Bill that we should be doing better and faster now, as we set out in our Home Affairs Committee report yesterday. First, if we believe in a statutory duty of support, let us start delivering it now. In many areas, refuges are full yet at the same time their funding has dropped, so the Government should ring-fence the new charity funds now and get them urgently to refuges and domestic abuse support groups. They should talk to the national hotel and hostel chains to provide supplementary housing and get a national guarantee of safe housing in straightaway.

    DOMESTIC ABUSE BILL · 2020-04-28 · READ IN HANSARD

  25. Those perpetrators are taking advantage of the fact that it is harder for their victims to seek help: the social worker is not dropping by, the bruises will not be visible at the school gate the next morning; and the GP will not be asking questions at the next appointment. This is not just about lockdowns; the period afterwards may be much higher risk for victims, too. In the face of this deadly virus, we know that staying home to save lives is important, but that it is also why we have a responsibility to help those for whom home is not a safe place to be. All those reasons show why this Bill is so important, but also why it is not enough. I welcome the Bill, the new powers and the new statutory duty of support for victims, which the Home Affairs Committee called for, although I would want it to go wider.

    DOMESTIC ABUSE BILL · 2020-04-28 · READ IN HANSARD

  26. It is a pleasure to follow my fellow Select Committee Chair, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill). When the Domestic Abuse Bill was first proposed, none of us could have imagined debating it in circumstances such as this: when there is evidence that the number of women and children killed as a result of domestic abuse in a few short weeks has increased sharply and at its highest level for over a decade; when the calls to helplines are up by 50% and visits to some support websites are up sevenfold; and when some victims are feeling more trapped than ever because perpetrators of abuse are exploiting the coronavirus crisis to increase control and to commit crimes.

    DOMESTIC ABUSE BILL · 2020-04-28 · READ IN HANSARD

  27. Will the Minister and the Home Secretary pass on huge thanks to Home Office staff, Border Force staff and the police, who are working immensely hard on the response to the coronavirus? Given that other countries have mandatory quarantines in place for people arriving and that the Government in this country withdrew on 13 March the previous advice for travellers coming from high-risk countries such as Italy to self-isolate, does the Minister accept that it is hard to understand why there is no guidance on self-isolation on a precautionary basis for travellers coming from high-risk countries? Will he and Home Secretary look at that issue again? Will they also work with the Home Affairs Committee to ensure that they can attend remote meetings to answer our questions during this crisis?

    COVID-19: SCREENING FOR UK ENTRY · 2020-03-23 · READ IN HANSARD

  28. Will the Secretary of State look at the immigration surcharge for doctors and nurses who are working in intensive care units? Will he also look personally at the issues relating to research trials for potential new drugs or treatments, or existing drugs or treatments that are being used? Concerns have been raised with me that those processes are all being delayed by the traditional randomised controlled trial processes, which may not be appropriate given the emergency we face.

    CORONAVIRUS BILL · 2020-03-23 · READ IN HANSARD

  29. Will she therefore urgently agree to accept all the recommendations about scrutiny and openness in the Home Office, so that she can prove to Parliament that she is, in fact, going to make the fundamental changes that are needed?

    WINDRUSH LESSONS LEARNED REVIEW · 2020-03-19 · READ IN HANSARD

  30. The Home Secretary will know that consecutive Home Affairs Committee reports, and reports from previous Committees as well, have often raised many of the concerns embedded in this report: concerns about the hostile environment; about the casework culture— the culture of disbelief; about the net migration target; and about a series of problems within the Home Office, but they have not had an impact. Some of the most damning conclusions in Wendy Williams’ report are that this was foreseeable and avoidable and that, since the Windrush crisis broke, the action that has been taken has been dealing only with the symptoms and not the causes.

    WINDRUSH LESSONS LEARNED REVIEW · 2020-03-19 · READ IN HANSARD

  31. This report is deeply disturbing, but it also tells us many of the things we have been raising concerns about since the Windrush crisis emerged. The result of it is that British citizens have been deported, been denied NHS treatment, been cost their jobs and been made homeless by the actions of the British Government, who act in all of our names. So all of us should be deeply ashamed by what has happened to the Windrush generation and determined that this should never happen again; the conclusions on racism are particularly damning.

    WINDRUSH LESSONS LEARNED REVIEW · 2020-03-19 · READ IN HANSARD

  32. Many parents will think that this is the right thing to do for their kids and for us to stop the virus spreading, but they will also be really worried that they just cannot afford to stop work to look after them and cannot get the grandparents to step in. Given that the Secretary of State said this situation could last for some time, will he look at urgent financial support for parents—not just of those on free school meals, but all parents in these circumstances—or at working with local councils on free childcare options in much smaller or one-to-one settings, which could help?

    EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS · 2020-03-18 · READ IN HANSARD

  33. On the proposal to reduce the number of trains, buses and tubes that are running, given that so many of them are so crowded at the moment, would it not make sense to keep many more of them running so that those essential workers who still have to get to work have more space?

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  34. But we can do this, and we have the strength, resilience, ingenuity and ideas. We will have to pull everyone together, not push people apart. We will have to do things in new ways, including doing politics in different ways—pulling people together and facing up to the sheer scale of what needs to change. Politics has to stop being the art of the possible and become the art of the apparently impossible, so that we can come through this together.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  35. Emergency planning will be needed, as well as intervention and funding on a scale that the Government would never normally contemplate. I hope that as well as talking more about emergency funding for the NHS, the Chancellor will announce a big injection of emergency investment for local authorities so that they can support public health, emergency planning, housing, family support, social care and children’s services, which are now our crucial community actors, and which urgently need to take on more staff to deliver the changes needed. We need sectoral plans, to make sure that we still have something as simple as community pubs, which can open again when the crisis is over. This will be a challenge. We all know and fear that those who are on the lowest incomes will be hardest hit, which will be a challenge for all of us.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  36. Entire sectors such as travel, leisure and hospitality cannot function at a social distance. There are 1.9 million jobs in catering, restaurants, pubs and coffee shops. There are more than half a million jobs in hotels and holiday accommodation. Those sectors are not sustainable, given the way in which we are going to have to operate and live our lives for at least the next few months. How we support those sectors and people who work in them is crucial. Other sectors such as social care and food distribution need to grow and change to meet community needs. Communities will have to support one another, but we cannot just stand back and hope that the free market will solve the systemic challenges that we face.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  37. Given the reports from London hospitals about rising numbers of covid-19 cases coming in through A&E, and reports that we are three weeks behind Italy, we should ask ourselves what would Italy have done three weeks ago if it had known? That is what we have to face, and it means that we need urgent plans to be in place now on how to close or scale down schools while keeping parents and vital services in work; while stopping grandparents being drawn into childcare and being exposed to the virus; and while supporting families who depend on free school meals as well as those who have safeguarding risks. This is urgent. The Budget was designed around the old strategy of mitigate and manage, or tinkering with sick pay and staff absence. We are way past that point.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  38. We need a massive scaling up of testing. The World Health Organisation has said, “test, test, test” and “You cannot fight a fire blindfolded”. That is what we need. I have heard from consultants who say that in some hospitals three quarters of elderly care consultants are self-isolating and cannot gain access to tests to find out whether in fact they are fine and can get back to work, where they are urgently needed. If we rely on the information from hospitals to tell us what is happening on the scale of the spread we will be two weeks behind the curve. We cannot afford to do that. We need to learn from what South Korea did, with a massive mobilisation effort. If the spread is accelerating, keeping schools running as normal is going to become impossible and seriously unwise.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  39. For example, we are still only being advised to go to the pub—advised not to go to the pub. [ Interruption. ] If only! It feels as if we are only being advised, and it feels as if Ministers are being a little too squeamish to tell us what they need us to do, and to tell the pubs what they need to do. My message to Ministers is, frankly, “Get over it,” because there are an awful lot more things that they are going to have to tell us to do before the crisis is over. It does not feel as if there is a proper strategy for testing yet—a proper plan massively to gear up the number of tests that we need. The chief scientific adviser has said that that is what he wants to see, but we need the same kind of national effort for which the Prime Minister has rightly called to produce ventilators across the country.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  40. I do not blame Ministers for struggling to keep up with this, because in the early stages of the financial crisis it took time—often precious time—to realise the magnitude of what was happening and the scale of previously unthinkable things that had to be done to turn it round. We do not have that time now. It is good that the Government seem to have shifted strategy in the light of evidence from Imperial College, which confirms what the WHO, epidemiologists and public health experts from other countries have been saying for some time, and which shows that the objective should be suppression of the virus, because the number of lives that would be lost by pursuing a mitigation or herd immunity strategy would be far too great. Again, it feels as if the Government still have to do more to shift to that new strategy in practice.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  41. It will need calm leadership, clear communication, frankness about how difficult some things are going to be, but firmness about our ability to come through this, about our resilience and strength, and about our ability to work together in extraordinary ways. In the end, we may be grateful that we are also the generation that now communicates so much online, and that has different ways to hold our families together, to communicate and to work. Some of those new technologies will make it easier to address new challenges than perhaps would have been the case 10 or 20 years ago. It also means that the Government must address the scale of the task, and it does not feel as if they are doing so yet.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  42. There is little time for any of us to absorb or assimilate the scale of the changes that will be made in all of our lives this year, so that we can get through this, but we have to get on with it. Incredible work is already under way. People have already paid tribute to NHS staff who are preparing for the task ahead. We should also pay tribute to emergency planners in our local councils, in social care services, in businesses, in food distribution systems and in voluntary groups across the country. They are already preparing and planning for the challenges that we face and those huge changes that we will need to make.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  43. Quite simply, those systems will not be able to take the strain. There needs to be substantial, unconditional support, so that people can pay their rents, their mortgages and their bills, because food banks will not be able to fill those gaps. Those urgent assurances and interventions are essential if we are to address people’s anxieties and concerns, particularly in relation to family finances and family health. There is a much bigger task, which is to shift our shared mindset from anxiety to action to ensure that we are not just all overwhelmed by alarm when we have practical tasks ahead of us, and when we need to focus on the practical things that can be done and must be done to come through this together.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  44. Crucially, we will need urgent assurances that no one will lose their home, and that everyone will be able to pay their bills to feed their kids and to keep their families going. We look forward to the response from the Chancellor later today so that we can know that, whatever the changes in our lives that are going to be needed, we can strain every sinew to keep important services going. That means getting some immediate commitments for substantial financial support for families. We all know that the current system of universal credit, of statutory sick pay or of any of those tinkering measures just will not cut it. If the Government try to use them, all they will do is expose even further the weaknesses and failings in our welfare system and our social insurance system that are already causing huge hardship.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  45. For example, people have contacted me following the advice that was given yesterday, asking, “What should people do if someone in the family has serious health conditions, but they are doing a job that cannot be done from home?” Those jobs may be in distribution, in retail, in education, or working in schools. They may be in policing, or they may be doing countless important jobs across the country. Should they go to work? Should they send their kids to school? I have been contacted by one mum who is suffering from cancer and who wants to be able to keep her daughter at home. She and others need support and advice. What are the plans to deliver care, food and supplies for those who are going to be at home?

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  46. Doctors, nurses and NHS staff and social care staff are in distress about the life-and-death decisions they know they may have to make on our behalf. The immediate challenge for Government in the face of this is to provide some urgent answers, urgent interventions, and urgent reassurances so that we can stop the anxiety, the panic and the hardship growing, and so that we can stop a national crisis becoming millions of separate family crises across the country. We can rise to that challenge, but we need to do so now. That means answering some very practical questions.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  47. Nothing will be normal for very many months, and all of us will have to face up to that in our communities, in our workplaces, and in families across the country. That means that, right now, many people are feeling very worried. Parents are worried about whether to send their kids to school. Pensioners are worried about whether they should be going to the shops. Their sons and daughters are worried about whether they should be visiting them. Cinema and pub staff are just worried about whether they are about to lose their jobs, and many will be facing exactly that fear this week. Self-employed contractors are at a loss because their business is drying up and small businesses fear that their life’s work and savings are about to be lost. Commuters are worried about travelling by bus, train or tube.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  48. We have seen nothing like this in our lifetimes. We are in a situation where six days after hearing the Budget, it is already out of date. We are at a time when, across the world, aeroplanes are being grounded, borders are being closed, people are staying at home, health services are gearing up, and workplaces are being frozen down. Just two months ago, we had barely heard of covid-19, and since then 6,500 people across the world have died from it. In China, hundreds of millions of children are being educated at home—some online. In Italy, people are building makeshift hospitals, even tents, to treat the sick. France has imposed a two-week lockdown, and Ireland has closed all its schools. The scale of the action that countries are having to take to deal with this global crisis feels overwhelming, and we are just at the start.

    INCOME TAX (CHARGE) · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  49. The health action that is being put in place is essential to save lives, but does the Chancellor accept that that also means that some of the jobs that are going this week and the redundancies that are being made will not come back in a hurry, because many hospitality, leisure and tourism jobs simply cannot be done at a social distance? Does he accept that there is a gap between the employment support package that he is rightly working on, I hope, as fast as possible and the welfare support that is simply not adequate for the huge numbers of people who are going to be urgently losing their jobs and who will be terrified of losing their homes as well?

    ECONOMIC UPDATE · 2020-03-17 · READ IN HANSARD

  50. Everyone wants us all to pull together and support the same strategy, and the Health Secretary will be aware of the real unease about the differences between the UK’s approach and other approaches taken internationally. Can he reassure us that the Government’s objective is the same as the WHO’s, which said today that we should be testing everyone who has symptoms, not waiting for a future test that might work in different circumstances? Is that the objective: to test everyone who has symptoms now? What is his target for how many new tests a day he wants to be able to do and by when? I have been contacted by GPs who are self-isolating because they cannot get tests.

    COVID-19 · 2020-03-16 · READ IN HANSARD