Clive Lewis
MP for Norwich South · Labour · United Kingdom
“I do not know whether I am alone in this, but I am hearing the shadow Secretary of State glibly throw away 80 years of legislation on human rights—human rights that were forged in the aftermath of the Holocaust, of concentration camps, of the horrors of fascism.”
House of Commons13 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the right hon. Member for his speech. Maybe I can answer his question. Perhaps it is because of a nostalgia for an Israel that no longer exists—an Israel that made the desert bloom.”
House of Commons9 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his excellent speech. There are lots of things about AI and its impact that we do not know. But one of the things that history teaches us is that if vast amounts of power and wealth are handed to a handful of individuals, corporations or even the Chinese Communist party—this is not just about corporati…”
House of Commons8 July 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“coli from raw sewage, and why thousands of our constituents are made sick every year. When public anger saw the Government ban bonuses, water execs raised their salaries and rebranded the payouts “retention payments” and that comes on top of the £78 billion to shareholders and £60 billion borrowed, our bills up 40%, and 30p in every pound…”
House of Commons8 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the Minister both for her response and for putting up with me—I am a bit of a broken record on this issue. We are all well aware that water is essential to life itself—to food, industry, nature, housing, energy, and now even the data centres powering the supposed AI revolution—and yet we have handed a monopoly where no competition…”
House of Commons8 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“South East Water is one of a number of privatised water companies that are responsible for selling off 35 reservoirs since 2017, and those companies have not built a single one since privatisation that is complete.”
House of Commons3 June 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“Is the Secretary of State and her Department aware of the severe financial crisis engulfing the University of East Anglia, one so severe that the vice-chancellor has today resigned? This will have a dramatic impact on the regional economy. We could be looking at up to £45 million-worth of projected debt and 30% job losses. As such, will the Secretary of State or the Minister agree to meet me and a delegation from the University of East Anglia to discuss this most critical issue as soon as possible?”
House of Commons27 February 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I seek your guidance on the matter of slavery reparations to the Island of Grenada, and the wider Caribbean? As you may be aware, today the Trevelyan family is launching a £100,000 fund in Grenada, announced by the BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan and her family earlier this month, in response to the family’s discovery that they had benefited from the slave trade and the massive British Government compensation paid to slave owners—but not to the slaves—in the 1830s. As a son of both Britain and Grenada, I believe that the Trevelyan family’s actions are to be applauded, but I cannot find any evidence of a single, solitary statement to the House on this pressing matter, or any record of British Ministers’ having the same conversation directly with nations such as Grenada.”
House of Commons27 February 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They have had enough of being told that there is no alternative, that politicians will always be caught on the take, that the rich and powerful will always be able to buy influence, that foodbanks are inevitable, that the NHS will always be in crisis, that our rivers will always be polluted, and that a race to the bottom on employment rights is inevitable. History will show that the Bill is the act of a Government on the ropes, bereft of direction, and lashing out at the very public they claim to protect. This grim 50-year-old ideological experiment is in tatters all around, and I will be voting against this piece of rubbish.”
House of Commons16 January 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 criminalised political protest. The Elections Act 2022 will disenfranchise millions through voter ID, and it undermined the independence of the Electoral Commission. The Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 limits the power of courts to remedy unlawful Government action on the part of the Executive. The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 means that 6 million in this country could now be stripped of citizenship at the whim of the Home Secretary, and although the Government have temporarily gone quiet on this, we know they also want to repeal the Human Rights Act. The British public have had enough of being told by this Government to suck up failing privatised public services, corrupt politicians, collapsing living standards, a dying environment and a falling democracy.”
House of Commons16 January 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They are the ones fighting to stop a healthcare system that is run from silicon valley by surveillance companies such as Palantir, and fighting for our education system, which 44% of teachers plan to leave within five years. The Government, however, are on the side of employers such as P&O, British Gas and British Airways, with a Bill that gives a green light to the practitioners of fire and rehire, poverty pay and a race to the bottom. And yes, as ever, the Government are on the side of the rich and wealthy, as they have always been. But the Bill is also part of a longer term, anti-democratic trend, and part of a raft of anti-democratic legislation passed by the Government. It is a trend of transferring power away from workers and citizens, and eliminating their limited rights and freedoms in the workplace and across society.”
House of Commons16 January 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They could have built a new social settlement, recognising the role that those workers played in that national crisis. Instead, they chose to look to the first world war, and to the Geddes axe, when the post-war Conservative Government slashed public spending, attacked workers’ rights, and told the poor they and not the wealthy must bear the brunt of the costs of the war. The Bill puts beyond a shadow of doubt whose side this Government are on. It is certainly not the public, because those public sector workers who are being denied their democratic rights are the public. They are the ones defending public services, not the Government, and they are the ones fighting to stop trains without ticket offices, and railways with a reduced number of safety precautions.”
House of Commons16 January 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in which Members will find no money from oligarchs, Saudi Arabia, oil barons or oil companies—nothing but from trade unions, and I am quite happy with that. Here we are, a little more than 18 months since the end of lockdown, and the Government have gone from clapping to slapping key workers. It did not have to be this way. In the wake of covid, the Government had a choice. They could, like the 1945 Labour Government at the end of world war two, have chosen a new path, a different path, and a new social settlement that recognised the sacrifice and efforts of key workers. They could have rewarded them by embarking on collective sectoral bargaining, and invested in rebuilding our public services and in housing after more than a decade of decay.”
House of Commons16 January 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank my hon. Friend for making such an excellent speech. Will he comment on the fact that at the University of East Anglia medical school we saw a fifth of new nurses, or training nurses, drop out of the course after the Government cut the nursing bursary? With the low pay, crisis of staffing and pressure that is going on, we expect those nurses to work in the NHS as they are training and rack up debt at the same time. If we are going to get the numbers back up, we must surely reintroduce the bursary.”
House of Commons22 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend is making a top-banana speech—it is fantastic. On public services, in Norwich and Norfolk we know that the two local authorities face a combined budget deficit of £60 million, which will have a massive impact on our ability to provide social care to an ageing population. We have heard much from the Government about support for public services, including the NHS, but does she agree that if social care is cut, it is the NHS that bleeds? Everyone knows that, yet the Government have failed to recognise it.”
House of Commons22 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Friend agree with me that we cannot let the Government blame strikers, public servants or even climate activists for the deaths that occur because of what they are doing on their watch?”
House of Commons1 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank my hon. Friend for this critical debate; I notice there are more civil servants in attendance than there are Government Members, which is shameful. I want to pick up on the human cost that my hon. Friend mentioned. In 2011, on my first day in the job as a young parliamentary candidate, I stood on a picket line with Unison members in the mental health services. They were not just striking for pay, but because they were warning the public about the cuts coming to mental health. We have now had a decade of failure. I look now at GMB ambulance workers who have said that a third of the deaths that they see are because of delays caused by bottlenecks in the NHS—caused by the cuts. Does my hon.”
House of Commons1 November 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster accept that there are just too many climate deniers on the Government Benches, too many oil licences being granted, too many carbon budgets being missed and too many Government Members calling those who are concerned about the heatwave “snowflakes” for his Government to be considered anything other than part of the climate catastrophe? Anything that they say today means absolutely nothing when they have leadership candidates moving away from net zero. It is an absolute joke, and this Government are a joke when it comes to the climate crisis.”
House of Commons18 July 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Q But from our perspective as legislators, the risk is not just the science. History shows us that scientists—Oppenheimer and others—often have brilliant ideas, but it is then about how those ideas are used by corporations, politicians and others. The risk is not just the science, but how those patents and that science are used further on down the line. That is part of the risk, and it is the part of the risk that regulation— Professor Halford: You could make exactly the same comment about anything in plant breeding. The argument is, “Why should you look at gene editing as being different?” Is it more risky? Is it more likely to be misused? I would say no.”
House of Commons28 June 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Q No—I think there is a discussion that will now take place in Committee about the level and type of regulatory framework that we have for these technologies and what the outcome of that is. There is obviously an argument for a low-regulation framework, and there are those of us who believe that there should be a higher level of regulatory framework. That is the debate, and I am just interested in hearing the points of view. I am sorry, Mr Angus, that I have not brought you into this conversation very well, but that is not my job. If you would like to come back on anything—”
House of Commons28 June 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Perhaps he will be able to tell them how the Bill will turn their lives around and make a difference to them and their families.”
House of Commons27 June 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think the whole House will welcome many of the changes that the Bill represents. I especially welcome the section on black mental health and on the situation of people who are being incarcerated in the mental health system, but many of my constituents have suffered the effects of eight years of systemic and catastrophic failure on the part of their mental health trusts. What provisions in the Bill will make a difference to them following nearly 1,000 excess deaths in our mental health trusts? I know that he has committed himself to meeting me to talk about this, but will he also commit himself to meeting many of the victims of those eight years of failure who will be coming to Parliament next Tuesday to discuss what has happened to them?”
House of Commons27 June 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and for making such a powerful speech and securing this debate. I wanted to intervene at this point, when my hon. Friend is talking about the regulatory framework, because it has comprehensively failed my constituents, many of whom have been suicidal. The collapse has led to them losing their homes or their businesses. The FCA failed them, Football Index failed them and the Gambling Commission failed them. The Government have ruled out financial redress. Would my hon. Friend say that, in the interests of justice —indeed, if justice is to be done—and in the interests of our constituents’ wellbeing, the Government must look at financial redress again?”
House of Commons7 June 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I understand that Government Members want to talk about an individual in an ambulance, an individual who has been disrupted, but we should think about the global disruption and what is happening around the world. Some 800,000 of those people were in Europe. This is not just happening elsewhere—it is happening here and now.”
House of Commons23 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is always an experience to speak after the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis)—what kind of experience, I do not think parliamentary etiquette allows to me to express, but it is an experience none the less. I would like to comment on some of the engagement tonight from Government Members, because it is quite instructive. It is like a one-sided equation. They want to make this issue about the disruption to individuals and the cost to business, and although that is one side of the equation, there is another side to it: the disruption that the climate crisis is bringing to people around the world already and to this country. One thing that the House may or may not know is that, between 2010 and 2019, it is estimated that 5 million people have already died from the effects of the climate crisis.”
House of Commons23 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Let us take a look at the Bill’s provisions on protests involving critical infrastructure. Like so much of this Government’s agenda, they have been lifted directly from the hard neo-con right in the US. A Bloomberg News exposé from 2019 uncovered extensive lobbying by the oil and gas industry to criminalise protest near extraction sites. We know that the Conservative party has received more than a million pounds from the oil and gas industry in the past few years, so it is legitimate to ask what the Government’s motivations are for the Bill.”
House of Commons23 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Joint Committee on Human Rights described proposals set out in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 as “oppressive and wrong”. The Equality and Human Rights Commission stated that measures in it undermine human rights legislation. Former senior police officers described it as “harmful to democracy”. Some 700 legal academics called for it to be dropped. UN special rapporteurs and top human rights officials warned that it threatens our rights. More than 600,000 members of the public signed a petition against it. What possible motivation could the Government have to push through such an authoritarian and regressive Bill? I think that that is a legitimate question for Opposition Members to ask. The Bill is so regressive and anti-democratic that even Conservative Members are baulking at its sweeping, draconian powers.”
House of Commons23 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Members need not take my word for it; they should listen to that socialist radical, the Secretary-General of the UN. The hon. Gentleman may think that the Secretary-General is woke, but I think he is increasingly important to global politics. He wrote: “Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals. But the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.” Cue our own Government attempting to do just that. Opposition Members know all too well this Government’s track record of attacks on human rights, democracy, the poor, the vulnerable, trade unions, justice and migrants. Undermining our democratic right to protest goes against the very essence of what it means to live in a democracy. Again, hon. Members do not have to take my word for it.”
House of Commons23 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That individual has made their comments, but I guess the question we have to ask is who are the criminals. Are the criminals those individuals who are trying to come together collectively to stand up against a Government who are failing them on the climate crisis, or against billion-pound corporations with pockets deep enough to buy influence in Parliament and across politics? Are the criminals those individuals who are trying to use the only apparatus that they have to stand up and speak up for what they feel impassioned about? I would argue that the real criminals are those who are wilfully pushing to extract more oil from our oilfields and who are pushing us off an existential cliff edge. I think that this country and the British people increasingly understand that those are the people who need to be held to account.”
House of Commons23 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Trade union money is the cleanest money in British politics. [ Laughter. ] The hon. Gentleman can quote me: it is the cleanest money, because we declare it and because we are representing the interests of workers, which is why our party was set up. We have no shame; we are proud of where our funding comes from. As many Opposition Members have seen, much of the money that funds the Conservative party has come from the kleptocrats of Russia, with whom Conservative Members have more in common than with the people of this country.”
House of Commons23 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Freedom from tax, another Conservative staple, is freedom from the redistribution that is essential for fairness and social mobility. Now freedom is being mentioned again, and this time it is freedom from protest. That means freedom against the public’s right and ability to hold big business and the Government to account for the climate destruction that they are undertaking. Opposition Members know which side Conservative Members are on. Increasingly, so do the British public. You may wrap this up in the ability of law and order to hold back the unwashed masses, but actually they are the people who are fighting for all our freedoms, for our future and for a world without a climate crisis fuelled by your friends in the big corporations and the oil sector. That is the reality.”
House of Commons23 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“No, I will make some progress. The issue of freedom goes to the heart of the Bill. Conservative Members revel in being the so-called party of freedom, but let us interrogate that a little. Some freedoms are zero-sum, but unfortunately many are not. As Isaiah Berlin explained, freedom for the pike means death for the minnow. Conservative Members often talk about freedom—freedom for people to go about their lives and so on—but we must ask a critical question: freedom for whom and freedom against whom? That is what they do not explain. Freedom from trade unions is freedom for corporations to exploit their workers. Freedom from regulation and red tape, as Conservative Members call it, is freedom for corporations to pollute our rivers and restrict our freedom to swim or fish.”
House of Commons23 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“He understood that GDP is mercenary, blind to morality and indifferent to suffering. GDP growth loves pollution, especially if it has to be cleared up. It relishes crime, especially if more prisons must be built. It delights in war, especially if countries require rebuilding in the aftermath. That does not mean there is no place for GDP as an economic tool but, if we are to successfully face the existential challenges of this century, we need new political tools for measuring wellbeing, the health of our democracy, and the ecological and climate cost of our economic activities.”
House of Commons18 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Apparently, it is through increased resource use efficiency and productivity gains. In the next half of this century, the global economy will triple the number of people who will enjoy western levels of consumption, to 3 billion,. That is despite the fact that the l billion of us already consuming that much are using 1.6 times more of the planet’s resources than is sustainable—you can do the maths. In other words, the growth delusion is a fallacy that will drive climate and ecological destruction and kill us all. Only in the warped reality of our current growth-obsessed economic model is expansion without end seen as a virtue. In biology, it is called a cancer. Bobby Kennedy knew this truth more than 50 years ago when he made his now famous speech on the limits of GDP growth as a metric for success.”
House of Commons18 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Citizens end up believing they are being deceived, and nothing is more dangerous or destructive to our democracy. We must understand that our constituents’ buy-in to any political economy depends not just on their absolute wealth, but, rather, on their relative wealth to those around them. As has been repeatedly demonstrated, the more unequal a society is, the less satisfied its citizens will be. That results in political instability, higher crime rates and higher levels of mental health illness—and we wonder why demand for mental health services is going through the roof in this country. Let us, for the sake of argument, park both democracy and inequality to the side for one moment and ask ourselves: how do we square unlimited growth on a finite planet? It is a fair question but one that never gets a remotely convincing answer.”
House of Commons18 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Not ours.” She knew that for millions like her the proceeds of growth were never fairly shared and that, when the economy grew, the overwhelming beneficiaries of that growth were the rich and powerful, not her. Even when it was growing but not fast enough for its main beneficiaries, it was the public services that she relied on that had to be discarded—again, in the name of economic growth. That leads us on to the second great challenge of this century: defending democracy, not just from external threats, such as Russia, but from within. Why? Because if people do not see the reality of their lived experience reflected in the political discourse of their politicians and do not hear their reality being discussed in this place, that gulf is dangerous.”
House of Commons18 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is the logic of the message we tell our constituents, “You’ve never had it so good because the economy is growing.” Yet, by focusing on growth, we too often evade the hard political questions about distribution. If the economic pie is growing, the proportional size of the slice matters less, but the issue still gnaws away at people’s sense of fair play. Back in 2016, during a Brexit debate, a remain campaigner told his audience: “If we leave the EU, GDP will fall.” He was, of course, as we have seen, correct, but that is not the point I wish to make. The point is the heckle from a lady in the audience, which came back: “That’s your bloody GDP.”
House of Commons18 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We use it to gauge progress and as a proxy for our collective wellbeing, yet the mirror we have been staring into all these years is less of the bathroom variety and more of the fairground variety, reflecting a distorted image at odds with the reality confronting many of our constituents over those long decades. Growth is an illusion that is partly responsible for driving three of the key challenges we now face: rising inequality, the erosion of democracy and the climate crisis. We have had GDP growth, albeit sluggish, over the past 12 years. Hence, by our main metric of choice, our collective wellbeing should have increased, even if only incrementally.”
House of Commons18 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Unlike the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, I stand not as a conduit of God but as a heretic shaking my metaphorical fist at the crumbling edifice of economic orthodoxy. The title of today’s debate is “Achieving Economic Growth,” but to what end? For more than 70 years, successive Governments preened themselves in the mirror and admired what they saw—growth. That mirror is better known as gross domestic product and it has become our key metric for judging how beautiful we are as both an economy and a society.”
House of Commons18 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What competition drives the energy, water and rail sectors? They seem to be natural monopolies, if I am not mistaken, so can the hon. Gentleman tell me how the free market and competition help to drive down prices in those sectors?”
House of Commons18 May 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In Norwich, I have 20 constituents in touch with me who are trying to get the Ukrainian families they have offered homes to into the country. Many of the people applying for visas have had emails about other visa seekers coming back to them in the confusion. We have an urgent visa processing and help system for MPs that is nothing but urgent: it takes days of prompting to get anything back. Having listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) talk about the whistleblowers, I guess the question is: is it cock-up or is it conspiracy, or have the Government cocked up their conspiracy to cock up?”
House of Commons28 April 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Given Prorogation, can you advise me on how I might raise the urgent matter of the fifth successive Care Quality Commission warning notice for mental health services in my constituency and beyond in Norfolk and Suffolk? Those failings, driven by cuts and successive failures of leadership, have led to deaths, suffering and tragedy for more than a decade. How can I make it clear to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care that enough is enough and that he must take direct control of this failing service, provide it with emergency funding and rebuild it from the bottom up with its patients and hard-working and dedicated staff?”
House of Commons28 April 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The 1951 UN refugee convention is quite clear, and I do not think that the Minister has answered my hon. Friend’s question. What advice has he had that the UK Government, under this legislation, will not be breaking the UN convention on the rights of refugees?”
House of Commons20 April 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Home Office support on the ground is also non-existent, and what support there is is coming from small charities and individuals that are struggling with the numbers they are dealing with. Can you advise me how I may bring this tragic situation to the Government’s attention?”
House of Commons30 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is a very similar issue. I want to seek your guidance about how I may raise the plight of refugees currently languishing on the Ukrainian-Polish border near Medyka and beyond. Dave Powles, the editor of my local newspaper, the Norwich Evening News , is on the ground there, and has stated that the Government Homes for Ukraine scheme is failing by every metric possible. Despite hundreds of people across Norwich and Norfolk volunteering to take refugees into their own homes, a lack of co-ordination and communication as well as over-complication and technical delays mean that, while 80 families have been matched, not one has been accepted into the UK.”
House of Commons30 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend is making a very interesting speech. Does she agree that the UN refugee convention was about our common humanity? I have heard a lot of talk about a “great country”, but what we see now from this Government is an attempt to split humanity into two tiers. That undermines the concept of human rights and of there being one, sole, universal understanding of what it is to be a human being. This Government are putting humanity into categories, and history tells us that that is a slippery slope and fundamentally wrong.”
House of Commons22 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As someone who lost his guts, or at least his lunch, quite a few times when helicopters were having to jig because of the threat of Singer missiles—given to our allies at the time, decades earlier—may I ask whether the Minister can assure us that the Government’s measures are sufficient to ensure that our weapons do not end up on the black market in the hands of the wrong people at a future date? Will he also confirm that our weapons—the NLAWs and other pieces of aggressive equipment—will not end up in the hands of far-right neo-Nazis, many of whom we know to be making their way to Ukraine now from around the world?”
House of Commons15 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does my right hon. Friend have any idea why Conservative Members might want to have a different approach to refugees fleeing Ukraine and refugees fleeing Afghanistan, Syria and other countries?”
House of Commons15 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“An investigation by openDemocracy in 2019 revealed that, in a decade of austerity, the Conservatives took £130 million in donations and 80% of their 2019 general election funding came from the elite Leaders Group, with exclusive access granted to group members for a fee of £50,000. There are other examples. Overseas territories, British tax havens, are responsible for 29% of the £245 billion in global taxes that the world loses to corporate, according to the Tax Justice Network. We know that donors and elites can essentially purchase a permanent seat in the House of Lords. Look at the owner of the Evening Standard , who, I am pleased to say, our own leader refused to be photographed with. We know that elites in our own media own 90% of UK-wide media and print and it is controlled by just three companies.”
House of Commons15 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Do we believe that Ukraine, Belarus and Russia are all integral to Europe, and commit to their eventual inclusion within a secure and just peace system, or do we decide that a new iron curtain is the best way to divide and subdue a continent at arms? Those are the questions we need to be asking, beyond the immediate. I want to come now to the role of the oligarchs and their interests. This is the rot that is at the heart of our politics and economy. We have heard repeatedly how the Benches opposite are bankrolled by the richest, including oligarchs. That is who they represent. This is writ large in their policies and policy choices. But do not take my word for it.”
House of Commons15 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Do we recognise the horror of all humanity caught up in war, or do we decide that, like malaria and cholera, this is some African or Asian malady that intrudes intolerably into safe, civilised Europe? Do we recognise that oligarchic interests have captured and corrupted our own political, economic and media structures, or do we make examples of a few Russian playboys and declare mission accomplished? Do we really want to break our easy addiction to imported carbon, or do we just want to find a new dealer? I say that noting that the Prime Minister is on his way to Saudi Arabia, a country that has just executed 81 people and is conducting a brutal war in Yemen—I am smelling some inconsistencies here.”
House of Commons15 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I want to talk about thinking beyond the immediate, trying to be strategic and thinking about the consequences of our actions now. Those actions are right—arming the Ukrainian people is right—but there are other actions that will come from this, so how do we make sure we learn from the lessons of the past? I think it is time to pause and reflect: where do we want to be in six months, in a year, in 10 years? I want to ask some questions that have been raised by an organisation called Rethinking Security. I will quickly go through them now; there are about seven. Do we see military might as inherently wrong, delegitimised because of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, or do we merely see it discredited in the wrong hands and validated in the form of our valiant allies and armed forces?”
House of Commons15 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In my intervention, I asked whether we were doing enough to put in place precautions about the billions of pounds of arms that are going into Ukraine. Some of them— Stinger missiles and anti-tank weapons— are quite lethal. We know from our recent history that those weapons can be turned against us. I can go into a shop and find a tracking device to follow my bike, my iPhone or any device I have. There is software that can be shut down with kill switches. The more lethal and complex the technology, the easier it is for us to do that. I do not need the details—we do not need the details in this House—but I want to know that the Government are thinking a few moves ahead and that is what I want to talk about today.”
House of Commons15 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a privilege to speak after so many interesting and varied speeches so far. Let me start by saying unequivocally that the Ukrainian Government and their people have every right to wage armed resistance against this unmentionable Russian invasion, which I believe is included under the UN charter. That is the first thing I wanted to put on record, but from now on some of my speech may find disagreement with Members in this place. I support the Government and their arming of Ukrainian resistance but, as I mentioned in an intervention, I also have questions. One of the roles of the Opposition and one of the roles of us in this place is to ask the questions that we think the Government are not asking or do not want asked. That is our job here and that is what I want to do today in my speech.”
House of Commons15 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I think the reason many of us on this side want to focus on this is because, at the heart of what is going on, we understand that, for many years, Putin—the same man, the same circle that devastated Russia and asset stripped it—planted that money into the City of London. This was their city of choice. That happened on the watch of successive Governments, but the hon. Member’s Government as well. I think it is critical that we understand Putin and the people around him, and how they have enriched and engorged themselves and made themselves powerful. We have to understand how that has happened if we do not want it to happen again. We also have to understand how our democracy is being corroded by interests similar to those of the people in control of Russia.”
House of Commons15 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention— [ Interruption. ] I can hear chuntering. I am sure Conservative Members do not want that mentioned. They want us to focus merely on what is happening in front of us. That is right, and much time will be devoted to it, but it is also important that we see the underlying trends and conditions that have in part enabled people such as Putin and the circle around him to come to power. [ Interruption. ] The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) is chuntering from a sedentary position. He can make a point if he wishes to.”
House of Commons15 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗