Dame Angela Eagle
MP for Wallasey · Labour · United Kingdom
“The Kremlin increasingly relies on proxy organisations to pursue its objectives, seeking to undermine our security while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability. The so-called GRU Volunteer Corps is a clear example of that approach. It is not an independent force or a loose collection of volunteers.”
“This Government have introduced support for the Jewish communities who have been threatened and directly targeted by IRGC proxies. Just a couple of days ago, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced an extra £250 million for policing to ensure that we can support and protect our Jewish communities.”
“I will move on to the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right. The IMCR has publicly claimed seven attacks at UK locations linked to Jewish and Israeli communities and to Persian-language media, including the antisemitic arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green on 23 March.”
“We expect platforms to act responsibly and not to provide space for state threat-linked activity, propaganda or recruitment. We will be keeping a close eye on that, as well as liaising with social media companies to tell them about how this law impacts them.”
“The IRGC Quds Force and the IRGC Intelligence Organisation, together with the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, form the Iranian intelligence apparatus. As a key component of the Iranian state’s security apparatus, the IRGC is answerable directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader.”
“It provides a targeted and proportionate means of disrupting those involved in foreign power threat activity based on the recommendations of Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of state threat legislation. To answer the hon.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,924 lines we hold for Dame Angela Eagle, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 43 of 119.
“The Government have already conceded that fighting the spread of this dangerous covid-SARS virus in our country requires extraordinary levels of state action and support, but now, just as the fight is intensifying, it is clear that they have lost their nerve. We are not only battling this deadly virus; the Prime Minister is fighting his libertarian instincts and the right-wing ideologues in his party. They are opposed to the collective state action that is necessary to save lives and mitigate the damage from the pandemic. The delay that this fight caused in March left us with a double whammy of the highest per-capita death toll in Europe on top of the largest economic hit in the G7, and now, this unforgivable dereliction of duty looks like it is happening again. As the Prime Minister dithers, the virus spreads.”
“Yesterday, my constituency of Wallasey, as part of the Liverpool city region, was mandated by the Government to go into tier 3 restrictions. Does the Chief Secretary agree that the £40 million of unallocated support that his Government gave to the city region at the start of the pandemic could now be used, given that we are in tier 3, to support local businesses that are in the worst form of lockdown?”
“Given that the Liverpool city region, which includes my constituency of Wallasey, was placed in tier 3 yesterday, could the Secretary of State outline whether there are plans to reopen or revive the Nightingale hospitals to serve that region? I do not mean the hospital in Manchester.”
“They also need to be far more generous, especially in tier 3 areas, with the support they are willing to put in to keep local economies, local jobs and local businesses alive, so that we can all fight to get this virus down.”
“Given that there were 41 deaths in the past week in the north-west, I understand the need to do it, but we cannot just have local lockdowns on the cheap. The current furlough-lite is just not a good enough system to ensure that hospitality and jobs are properly protected, and 67% of wages is just not enough. We are abandoning many hundreds of thousands of jobs and allowing many fantastic businesses in hospitality and entertainment to go to the wall without support. I want to support the Government, but the Government also need to share their thinking and be much more transparent and open about the scientific advice and what works.”
“The advice over the summer about eating out to help out, or people being told to go back to work, then to work from home and not go out or even go to the pub, caused confusion and ill will. That is making it much harder to persuade our constituents that this is what they should be doing, and that the Government have a plan. We need transparency and honesty, and to be able to trust what the Government are doing. Yesterday, my local authority was put into tier 3. We know that the Government have decided to keep universities and workplaces open, against the advice of SAGE. That leaves them with only socialising to try to press down on the virus. All they can do is restrict socialising in private or public.”
“I believe that the Government should have brought all these measures to Parliament from the beginning, and it should not have taken a revolt on the Tory Back Benches for us to debate these statutory instruments. Why? Because through debates in Parliament we can persuade the public that the Government are making the right decisions, and we can challenge the Government and make them explain why they are making certain decisions. From the beginning of the pandemic there was widespread support for what the Government were doing, but since Dominic Cummings’s trip to Durham, when his rule breaking was met with impunity by the Prime Minister, we have seen an increase in confusion and the rules becoming more complex. We have also seen people’s good will turn into cynicism.”
“Does the Minister agree that as the virus is coming roaring back, particularly in areas such as my constituency, now is the wrong time to be getting rid of the furlough, and that if we are going to have extra restrictions, we also really need much greater extra support so that we can compensate and look after business owners and individuals who have to self-isolate or close?”
“In the past four months, the Wirral food bank has seen a 51% increase in the support that it gives to 65,000 people—71 tonnes of food. The Government must support us to do the right thing if we are to get the virus down.”
“Furlough comes to an end in three weeks’ time, just as the extra lockdown restrictions that this SI introduces are closing down and making unviable a lot more of our local jobs and businesses. In order for us to support the Government and join the battle to get the virus down, they must increase support for individuals who need to self-isolate when test and trace is fixed. They must support businesses that are forced to close or operate at much lower profit levels, or unprofitably, through no fault of their own, because of the restrictions that the Government have imposed. They must give extra support to local authorities and statutory services that have to maintain the ongoing capacity to act. On the Wirral, we have over 15,000 people who had to shield during the initial phases of the pandemic.”
“We all want to fight to get the virus down and save lives, but to do so we must have coherent and transparent rules from the Government that are simple and that everyone can understand, and that certainly do not run to 10 pages. We must have an effective test and trace system. We have to understand—I hope that the Minister will take this back to the Government—that we cannot get the virus down by lockdowns on the cheap. It makes no sense to withdraw the support that kept everybody going earlier in the year while the pandemic is coming back and still raging in our communities. We need the Government to look very quickly at the support they can give to the areas that they decide need extra restrictions. On the Wirral, we have 31,000 jobs still furloughed.”
“I welcome the Minister’s agreeing with my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Sir George Howarth) to meet local MPs, local leaders and the Mayor to talk about what is happening in the Liverpool city region. The Minister will know that £7 million between nine different local authorities as extra money for the much more severe restrictions being imposed is not nearly enough, so will he promise to keep an open mind about the extra support we need in a region where 20% of our economy is the visitor offer, hospitality and tourism, and where 50,000 jobs and 4,000 businesses are at stake?”
“If the right hon. Member considers the efficacy of parliamentary scrutiny, has he looked at what the New Zealand Parliament has done? It has set up a special Select Committee, led by the Leader of the Opposition and with an Opposition majority on it, to subject the Government’s performance to more direct and transparent scrutiny. It appears to have worked very well indeed. Perhaps he would consider that this Parliament could behave in that way.”
“It is unclear how many lives the Prime Minister’s personal struggle with his libertarian instincts and his complacent reaction to the looming threat cost.”
“UK resilience to the threat of pandemics has been badly undermined by a decade of austerity, which weakened the ability of the NHS and both national and local government to react in time to prevent the disease from taking hold. This failure became all too evident in the chronic shortage of personal protective equipment, which put key workers at unnecessary risk and led to the deaths of all too many, especially in the NHS and social care sectors. The abandonment of testing so early in the pandemic meant that those charged with protecting us were effectively blind to its development in the community. That increased the chances of a total lockdown being the only viable response the Government could turn to. The Prime Minister recognised that all too belatedly on 23 March.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne). I agreed with precisely zero of what he had to say, but this is not the first time that has happened in our time in this House. As the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic in the UK began to recede over the summer, some sobering truths became evident. The UK had suffered one of the highest per capita death rates in the world and taken a far larger economic hit than comparable developed economies. Many attribute that dismal double whammy of failure to a Government who were too complacent at the beginning and too slow to lock down and prevent the death rate from spiralling so badly out of control.”
“We should allow the Government to give Opposition Members that duty so that we can get some air, transparency and accountability into the decisions that the Government are currently making behind closed doors.”
“It set up a special committee—it is called a Select Committee, but it does not have to be—and it has a majority of Opposition Members on it, although there is a rotating membership. The committee is led by the Leader of the Opposition, it has unusual powers to subpoena witnesses and papers, and it can subject any Government decisions to that unusual but timely form of scrutiny. That worked well in New Zealand, because it allowed policy making to be improved by parliamentary scrutiny and accountability. As we move to discuss the new measures on Wednesday, I believe that this House should carefully consider doing what the New Zealand Parliament has done.”
“He replied that that issue had been considered by silver and gold committees, but no one bothered to tell Wirral Council that that was happening, and at the height of the pandemic it was reduced to watching daily press conferences to try to discern what was happening. We cannot fix test and trace without more local co-operation. In Wirral, pillar 1 tests now take 48 hours, and we have an infection rate of 157 per 100,000 and rising. Pillar 2 tests—when people can get them—take between five and seven days to get results, thereby rendering their effect, which is to get people to isolate, much less likely to work. How can we get less centralisation and more transparency into the Government’s response to this pandemic? When considering parliamentary accountability, perhaps we should look at what New Zealand has done.”
“We are now told that we cannot meet people at home or in their gardens unless we are in their bubble, but we can go to the pub with six households, as long as we leave by 10 pm. All those rules are different in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Respect for the rules will evaporate if the Government do not do a better job of justifying them, and ensuring that they are coherent and understood. The Government have centralised all decision making, and have outsourced procurement for test and trace, which had led to a failing system. They have not involved local public health or local authorities in the decision-making process. Only two weeks ago I asked the Health Secretary about sudden increases in infections in Wirral.”
“That prompted public anger on an unprecedented scale, persuading many that there was one law for them and a completely different one for the Prime Minister’s friends. The second is the lack of transparency and parliamentary oversight surrounding ministerial pronouncements on the rules. All too often the rules appear to be contradictory, almost arbitrary, and difficult to justify. The public were asked to work from home one minute, only to be urged to return to work and save the high street the next. Now, as evidence of a second wave of the virus emerges, people are being ordered back home again, but not before the Government spent half a billion pounds on subsidising meals out in August, and opened air bridges to half of Europe, only to reimpose unenforced quarantine requirements on those who had been trusting enough to believe them.”
“I was trying to say that complacency at the beginning caused many more deaths; it caused us to have a higher death rate and a bigger economic hit than other countries. From the beginning there has been a problem with mixed and often contradictory messaging from the Government about the rules they wish people to follow, and a lack of transparency about how those decisions are made. Not only has that undermined the efficacy of public health messages, but it has genuinely confused people who wish to do the right thing. The Government’s moral authority to order the greatest restrictions on personal freedom since the second world war has been completely undermined by two things. The first is the revelation of Dominic Cummings’s rule-breaking trip to Durham, and the Prime Minister’s refusal to sack him.”
“My right hon. Friend is making an extremely good speech. Would he perhaps tell the House who on earth might have signed this terrible deal with so many ambiguities less than nine months ago?”
“The right hon. Gentleman is making points that go to the heart of the Bill, and I share his worries about them. Does he share my worries that the Bill also attempts to curtail judicial review, or prevent it entirely, once that law has been broken?”
“This will not end well. The Government must step back from the brink, withdraw the law-breaking clauses in the Bill, and think again.”
“What are we to make of a Prime Minister who presides over this moral vacuum and this reckless gamble with our international reputation; the man who resigned over his predecessor’s deal, which had no Irish border, pronouncing it a betrayal and using it as his path to power in the Conservative party; the man who, nine short months ago, negotiated and signed the withdrawal agreement, declaring it “fantastic”, and expelled from the Conservative party and Parliament all his own MPs who did not back it; the man who went to the country with this “oven-ready” Brexit deal and won a huge majority; the man who now believes it was rushed and flawed, and must be unilaterally written by him and him alone, the world king acting like a two-year-old having a tantrum because he did not get all he wanted; a Prime Minister who is completely careless of the consequences of his own actions; and the leader of a Government who think they can do what they want, purge who they want and act how they want, a Government who think there is one law for them and another for everyone else, repudiating treaties they have just signed and ignoring the lockdown rules they impose on everyone else?”
“It unilaterally tears up treaty obligations made just months ago and makes it less likely that any of our future undertakings will be believed or trusted, just as we must renegotiate all our existing trading agreements with the rest of the world.”
“It is a sign of just how dangerous the Government’s actions now are that all five living ex-Prime Ministers, Labour and Conservative, have made public their opposition to this reckless course of action, as have the Brexiteer ex-leaders of the Conservative party, Lords Hague and Howard. This morning, the Prime Minister’s first Lord Chancellor called the Bill “unconscionable” and revealed that he will not vote for it. Many legal experts argue that both the current Lord Chancellor and the Attorney General are in breach of their oaths of office and should resign. Last week, the head of the Government legal service did resign over the Bill because it breaks international law. Given that we have an unwritten constitution which relies on ministerial restraint and responsibility, the Bill is even more dangerous than it at first appears.”
“The Bill orders the domestic courts to prioritise this new law over any existing international law we have signed up to, and it attempts to preclude any prospect of judicial review. It has already been admitted on the Floor of the House by a Cabinet Minister that the Bill breaks international law in a very “specific and limited way”. The reality is that this is a shocking repudiation of everything the UK holds dear. It threatens to destroy our hard-won reputation as an upholder of international law and as a country that can be trusted to keep its word. Once lost, that reputation will not be easy to regain. This is not only morally wrong; it is self-defeating, and undermines the prospect of reaching a deal at all.”
“I never thought I would ever see a piece of legislation this objectionable put before the House. It is a gigantic act of self-harm masquerading as a negotiating strategy in the EU-UK trade talks, as they flounder and the end of the transition period looms. It unilaterally repudiates the devolution settlements and centralises power to the UK Government. As currently drafted, the Bill will give Ministers the powers to disapply or unilaterally reinterpret parts of the Northern Ireland protocol and ignore their legal obligations in both domestic and international law to enact the protocol as it was negotiated. It asserts that these powers will be legally effective even though they break international law, thereby unilaterally repudiating the foundations of the withdrawal agreement, which was only enacted by the House earlier this year.”
“In Wirral, there has been a sudden, sharp rise in covid-19 infections, with yesterday’s figures standing at 33 infections per 100,000. What extra assistance can the Secretary of State promise to my local authority, which is fighting hard to suppress this outbreak? If he does not want a reorganisation of Test and Trace because he thinks it will slow down progress, can he tell us why he is reorganising Public Health England in the middle of this dangerous pandemic?”
“Earlier this month, Baroness Harding told a House of Lords Select Committee that people were unwilling to self-isolate because of financial pressures. We also now learn that Test and Trace does not make the same inroads in poorer areas, where the pressure not to self-isolate because of financial pressures is higher, as it does in more well off areas. Can I again ask the Secretary of State to make an announcement about sick pay and access to extra help for those who need to self-isolate but who perhaps cannot really afford to do so?”
“If test and trace is to work effectively and people take the advice they are given via that service, some of them will find it difficult, because they will be earning no money; there is a choice to be made between self-isolating and being able to pay their bills. So will the Secretary of State look once more at the issue of sick pay for those, especially in local lockdowns, who are asked to self-isolate on behalf of all of us?”
“The aerospace sector has already said that 9,000 jobs will go in the UK. The north-west is going to be specifically badly affected if the Government just sit back and allow this export-strong, high-skilled, high-wage sector to be decimated. Germany has put a big package in place. America has put a big package in place. France has put a big package in place. So what is the Chancellor going to put in place to protect and guarantee the future of the aerospace sector in the long term?”
“Does the Health Secretary agree with the Prime Minister’s despicable comments, blaming care workers for the huge death toll in care homes, or will he admit that his Government’s own failings left these low-paid and undervalued carers with little or no protective clothing, and many without access to sick pay, fighting a losing battle against this awful disease at the height of the pandemic?”
“As the Federation of Small Businesses pointed out, if those who pay themselves in dividends and who have been excluded from accessing support go out of business, they will take a great many employees on PAYE down with them. We await the formal Treasury response to the Committee’s detailed points, but when questioned in this place, Ministers tend to boast about the size and cost of the schemes they have introduced without addressing the specific issues we have raised.”
“It is a leaky and inadequate lifeboat that has prevented the economy from going under completely, but it will all come to nothing unless a proper rescue operation is launched to bring the economy back to safety. The Chancellor must make certain that his economic response does not mirror the Prime Minister’s pre-lockdown dithering and organisational incompetence, which are likely to have cost tens of thousands of lives and exacerbated the economic damage wrought by the pandemic. The Treasury Committee has published a report that deals with the gaps and unfairnesses in the Government’s schemes. We point out that over a million people have been arbitrarily excluded from the scope of various schemes, even though their livelihoods have been affected by the requirement to lock down and there is no reasonable excuse for leaving them out.”
“The coronavirus pandemic has ushered in an economic emergency of gargantuan proportions. The estimates show that £42 billion will be spent on the coronavirus job retention scheme and £10 billion on the self-employment income support scheme. These are very large numbers, but size is not everything, and questions need to be asked about the effectiveness of the packages the Chancellor has announced. Is this massive resource being spent in the most effective way? Is it being spent fairly? Is it helping those who need it most? Is it creating the optimal conditions for recovery when the pandemic finally recedes? The jury is still out on all those questions. A lifeboat has been launched in the shape of the furlough scheme and the grants or loans made available as the pandemic took hold.”
“The Chancellor exhorting people to spend, spend, spend, as he did at the weekend, risks entrenching the old debt-fuelled consumer economy and squandering the chance to lay the foundations of greener, fairer, more sustainable future prosperity. The Prime Minister blaming everyone but himself, exhorting us to “build, build, build” and trumpeting a Roosevelt-like new deal while promising to spend 0.2% of UK GDP, whereas President Roosevelt spent 40% of US GDP, would be a farcical response to our predicament if we were not in such a perilous situation.”
“The recent announcement of many thousands of job losses in retail, aviation and leisure could be just the tip of the iceberg if the Chancellor does not take decisive action. The Government must now switch quickly to a more strategic and tailored response that will enable stabilisation and economic recovery. Certain sectors will continue to be affected because of social distancing rules, and they must be helped. Local authorities and schools, for whom the Chancellor promised he would do “whatever it takes” to fight the virus, should have their costs fully reimbursed. To date, they have received back only a third of what they have spent.”
“I absolutely agree. This crisis has forced us to look at how our labour market works, and we need to come back to that very strongly indeed. Tomorrow, I want to hear that the Chancellor is doing something to help the freelancers who power much of our cultural industry, but who have thus far been excluded from the help available. I want to see him announce a strategic sectoral approach to job retention to ensure that the economy thrives. The OECD estimates that the UK could suffer the worst covid-19—related damage among the advanced economies, with a decline of 11.5% in national income and UK unemployment rising to 9% this year. Despite the labour market having been sheltered from a complete meltdown by the furlough scheme, there are ominous signs of a huge strain like a dam waiting to burst.”
“The Prime Minister exhorting us to “build, build, build” is all very well, but it would be a farcical response to our predicament if the country were not in such a perilous position; the comparison is ridiculous. The Chancellor and the Prime Minister need to drop the hype and begin to deliver. Our future economic prosperity depends on it.”
“Clearly somebody in the Conservative party has moved on, but when we look at the difference between 0.2% of national GDP and 40% of national GDP, we can see that a few lessons are yet to be learned. Coming back to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), the labour market is key. Many vulnerable people in the labour market have been left with nothing as a result of the effects of coronavirus. Many in the labour market have also been put at great risk of contracting the virus, and perhaps have to think about a choice between not earning and being ill, which is why we need to look more closely at how our labour market is regulated—and, crucially, at the 46% cut to the Health and Safety Executive, which enforces labour market rules.”
“It is not that we wish the Minister to support people in the way that they want. He has to recognise that there are 1 million people who have been given no support at all; we want some consideration for them. Their businesses and livelihoods have been affected because of Government decisions that—understandably, for health reasons—closed down the economy. Will he please address that?”
“I congratulate the Secretary of State on making the most outrageous points and keeping a straight face. He is very good at doing that. Will he answer the question asked right at the beginning of this debate by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May)? Precisely what are the new National Security Adviser’s qualifications in national security, which, after all, we all care about because it is about the safety and security of each and every person in this country? What are his specific qualifications and expertise, and why on earth, given his other job, was he considered even for a second for this role?”
“I congratulate the Minister on getting through the entire urgent question without making a single commitment, although he has made many observations. As a member of the Treasury Committee, I look forward to the Government’s formal response to our report on the 1 million people who are currently missing out on the Government’s schemes. Will he see if he can at least make a commitment before today’s UQ ends? What is he doing as a Treasury Minister to ensure that, as we move from the acute stage of the pandemic to furlough schemes beginning to end, the furlough scheme is not remembered as a waiting room for unemployment rather than the job-saving scheme that it should have been?”
“The right hon. Gentleman has come here throwing out phrases such as “tiger in the tank” and is trying to gear up on the optimism, but last week the EU’s chief negotiator said that “progress remains limited”. What makes the right hon. Gentleman think that progress, which has been so limited in the past, will all miraculously resolve itself by the end of July?”
“Is my hon. Friend as surprised as I am, if the Government always intended to do this, that they sent out the Transport Secretary and the Work and Pensions Secretary to embarrass themselves by defending the indefensible?”
“I thank my honourable and sororal twin for giving way. Does she agree that the state of the labour market and the precarious nature of much work is one of the most shameful legacies of the Conservative party?”
“In my own constituency of Wallasey, 3,910 students were eligible for the voucher scheme. Having had a look at the increase in unemployment since March of 1,880, I know that that will be going up. There is extreme pressure. I talk to a lot of my schools that have been dealing with this issue. Many of them say the same thing: that the food voucher scheme has helped to reduce financial and mental anxiety during the difficult times caused by the lockdown and covid; that vouchers to purchase food at least ensure that people do not have to worry about the basic requirement of being able to feed their families; and that without the Government making this concession children would undoubtedly have gone hungry, resulting in intolerable strain and collapse in our communities.”