YouSaid · the spoken record
Jon Trickett
On the record 2018–2026
hansard
This is everything the corpus holds for Jon Trickett. It is not everything they have said on the record.
Every line below is reproduced as it was said and credited to the record it came from, and links to that record wherever it can be linked. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections
“This year, whenever the election is, we will see what exactly will happen to the kingdom of injustice that the Conservatives have created. Question put and agreed to. Resolved , That this House has considered inheritance tax.”
House of Commons17 January 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“First, inheritance tax is paid by a tiny minority of people who are based largely in Conservative-voting seats; that tells us exactly what fears are in the bellies of the Ministers who are trying to pump money into Tory areas to try to protect their majorities. It will not work. Secondly, to respond to the hon. Member for Strangford, who is no longer in his place, this issue is about the big estates. It is not about somebody who has built wealth through hard work with their hands; it is about entrenched estates that have been there for centuries, right back to the Domesday Book—estates that the Minister’s party protects and that presumably fund his party, too. Let me finish with the words of a man who was alive at the time of Christ, the philosopher Seneca: “A kingdom founded on injustice will not survive”.”
House of Commons17 January 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will be very brief. “The politics of envy”—talk about predictable. What we have actually heard from Government Members is a politics of wealth, privilege and greed. We have a tax system that simply reinforces the gross inequalities in our society, as we have heard from almost every Member, including the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and a couple of Members on the Government Benches. We have a system that is grossly unequal, deeply unfair and unjust, and the system of so-called inheritance tax reinforces all that. The Minister has refused to deny that the Government are looking at inheritance tax. We look forward to the announcement on 6 March, and we hope that the Government will listen to the points that we have made. The Minister did not respond to the two central points that I was trying to make.”
House of Commons17 January 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If you are one of the tens of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises bidding for contracts from the public sector, you will be met with a wall of bureaucratic paperwork designed to prevent relationships between the contractor and the service provider. If you are an ex-Prime Minister, you can make dozens of phone calls on behalf of an interest in which you seem to have been involved, including nine texts to the current Prime Minister. Is it not clear that that was reprehensible behaviour, and that the lobbying rules allowed it to happen? When will the Minister tighten the lobbying rules properly to prevent people from being able to benefit from the old system of “It is not what you know, but who you know”?”
House of Commons23 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“T3. Palantir has this week received one of the largest contracts imaginable. The company is based in silicon valley in California. It was established by the CIA and it has continuing links with the American defence network. It looks as though huge amounts of British NHS money and profits will be migrating back across the pond to California, but the most concerning thing is that information about millions of our fellow citizens—their health data—will be handled by that company. How can that be right?”
House of Commons23 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will leave the House with that point. There is money in our society that could be used for public services and to help working people, which the Government pretend they are trying to do but have failed to do.”
House of Commons22 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The thing is, we left the European Union in part because we supposedly wanted to be free to adjust our VAT rates, but we have done none of those things, really. We let inflation rip. My final point—again, this was not mentioned in the statement—is about the asymmetric way we deal with income. As we have heard, we tax earnings from work to a significant amount—part of that is just to pay for the debt that we have incurred while this lot have been in government—so someone who earns £50,000 will receive £38,400 after tax and national insurance. Someone who earns £50,000 from dividends will take home another £8,000 and receive £46,250. If we were a Parliament for working people—one that valued work and labour as a way of contributing to our society—we would not tax work more heavily than income from wealth.”
House of Commons22 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“But I have covered 40 separate financial statements since I was first elected 28 years ago, and I remember sitting here and seeing the faces of Conservative Members when the Budget was introduced—they started off rosy and finished up pale, even white and ashen—but what did they do? They voted for it—all of them, I think. We know what the consequences have been since. Was there another option for the Government to try to protect working people? I think there was. Spain, for example, with the same spending pressures from oil costs, harvests, the wars and so on, has managed to keep inflation down to 2% while ours was roaring away at up to 11%. What did Spain do? It removed VAT from basic foodstuffs, capped prices, made payments to households, and reduced VAT on electricity and gas.”
House of Commons22 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The faulty memory of Government Ministers—let us put it no stronger—has resulted in a rather rosy picture of what will happen to our country, but the people will see what has happened to their families, their households and their neighbours, and they will understand that this Government are simply for the rich rather than for the rest of society. I return to inflation. The right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), who is not in his seat, talked about how we should explain inflation and said it was produced purely by external forces. Of course, external forces have made a difference.”
House of Commons22 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The people I represent and the people of Britain as a whole are not fools. We might see tomorrow’s right-wing newspapers bellowing out a great triumph for the Conservative Government, but people will look at their pay packets, and they will see that the Treasury is still taking £100 more than it would have had thresholds changed. That is an unfortunate situation to be in. It is what the economists call fiscal drag, and it is estimated that next year alone, the Treasury will take back £8 billion from working people, which is £270 a person a week.”
House of Commons22 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I represent large numbers of working people—we all do, I guess—and the average salary or income in my constituency is £29,200, which is way below the national average. With wage increases needing to match food inflation, I calculated the result of today’s announcements for people on £29,200. The amount of income tax they pay will increase by £456, because the Government have not increased the thresholds. That is £9 a week. Okay, the Chancellor announced a reduction in national insurance of 2p, but that will still leave people in my constituency on the average salary more than £2 a week worse off. What the Government pretend they are giving with one hand with a cut to national insurance is then taken with the other hand, as they have not increased the thresholds. Effectively, people are falling further into poverty.”
House of Commons22 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is shocking, when we reflect on the levels of difficulty that we see in our constituencies. The other thing that the Government seem to have forgotten, while they have been claiming that inflation is going in the right direction, is that inflation as a whole is one figure, but the cost of food is increasing by 10%. I looked at the figures to see where we are with food poverty. The bottom four deciles—that is, two fifths of the population—spend more than 40% of their total household income on food and housing. Food prices going up are driving people further and further into destitution and poverty. All those facts seem to have been forgotten by those on the Government Front Bench. I will not speak for too long, but I will make a couple of other points. Ministers have said that this is a Budget for working people.”
House of Commons22 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Government forgot to mention that the OBR has said that the plans published today require £19 billion worth of expenditure to maintain our public services, but the Government have provided only £4 billion. A spokesperson for one of the larger well-known think-tanks has said that the cuts that the Government are proposing are “completely implausible”. I looked at the figures. Schools are looking at a cut in real terms. There is no attempt to match inflation. The Government are going to reduce the amount of money going into schools. How will those cuts be made? Services, after 13 years, are almost beyond repair without a new Government. The Government seem also to have forgotten that the OBR has said that working people are facing the worst cut in living standards since records began.”
House of Commons22 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Look around: where has the money gone? Our services have collapsed in many cases, including schools, hospitals and the police force. Our people are living in increasingly difficult times. There is an increase in poverty and the necessity to use food banks. Our growth is more or less static. Okay, there is a small percentage increase, but over the medium term we are not looking at any growth at all. Where has all this money and all this borrowing gone? It has been spent by a profligate Government who do not have any sense of the country’s priorities, and that worries me. One section of the population has done well—the big corporations and the wealthy—and I might return to that if I have time.”
House of Commons22 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Thank you for your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I will try to be brief. The first point I want to make is that the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary, who spoke at the beginning of this debate, seem to have omitted certain important facts. I do not want to suggest that they deliberately misled the House—that would be totally inappropriate—but perhaps they had memory problems, so I will try to assist those on the Government Front Bench with some things that seem to have been forgotten, but are quite important. First, right hon. and hon. Members on the other side have suggested that Labour has a problem with borrowing, but look at the figures. Since 2010, the Government have borrowed £1.5 trillion, and they seem to be heading towards borrowing of £3 trillion, an increase of 28% of GDP since Labour left office: they are the borrowers.”
House of Commons22 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They are effectively taking the power to bully these people by saying, “If you don’t have this X-ray, there will be a presumption that somehow you are not under the age of consent.””
House of Commons20 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“How on earth can we explain to people, many of whom will be below the age of majority, and who may be frightened and may not have English as their mother tongue, in a way they can understand, the risks of radiation exposure engaged in the procedure—x-raying a single tooth—that they are about to undergo? It raises the question in my mind that informed consent, which is a basic requirement imposed on medics generally and on the health service, will be lacking in significant numbers of cases. That is why I am not convinced by the Minister’s arguments, and why I could not possibly vote for this measure, given the arguments he has made. What are the Government doing?”
House of Commons20 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Secondly, Professor Andrew Rowland, the officer for child protection at the Royal College of Paediatrics, says that the evidence shows that using X-rays to determine age is “widely inaccurate”, and that the “practice is ultimately unethical”. He goes on to say that we will be exposing children to radiation. There is, surprisingly—perhaps not surprisingly, given the nature of the British establishment—the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee, presumably to provide advice to the Government. It talks about informed consent, which is my third point.”
House of Commons20 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will try to be reasonably brief, although I need to repeat some of the points that have been made. First, we are not dealing with a huge number of people—over six years, from 2016 to 2022, there were only 700 people a year who were said to be under the age they were claiming to be. Seven hundred a year—that is perhaps two a day. Most of those people have already been identified using other techniques. It is therefore hard to see what the Minister thinks will be added by doing this very unethical and slightly dangerous procedure. Will he tell us how many people he thinks are escaping scrutiny at present?”
House of Commons20 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The final sentence on page 6 says that the authority notes all this, and says that the applicant—that is, the Government—should “cease using X-rays when alternative methods are validated.” If the justifying authority has major reservations about the use of X-rays in this unethical and unscientific way, what are the Government doing to look into alternative examinations, which the JA is clearly proposing we should do?”
House of Commons20 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We are already massively under capacity. I can only imagine that this will mean diverting people from looking after the health of ourselves, our friends, our neighbours and our citizens in order to carry out a practice that is unethical, impractical and unscientific. Where will these radiologists come from, and how long will it take to examine each individual? I will refer to the report that the Minister has referred to, which says: “Biological age assessment involving ionising radiation is limited to radiography of the third molar” and/or of the wrist. This is hardly a great operation, is it?”
House of Commons20 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am complaining about the fact that this procedure will be done to children, who are not capable of giving informed consent, which is a basic principle of medical practice. That is my point. Here is the thing: there is no evidence whatsoever that these X-rays will demonstrate the age of the person—the victim. The scientists are not saying that to the Minister. If he can say otherwise, let him say so, but the people who are responsible for this and the advisory committee do not think the procedure produces sufficient evidence. I will just make one further point. Where are the practitioners doing these x-rays coming from? According to the Royal College of Radiologists, there is a massive under- supply of clinical radiologists in our country. In fact, by 2027, we are going to need an additional 3,365 clinical radiologists.”
House of Commons20 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We all know that many people will be on the march on Saturday. The organisers and participants have told me that they will be participating in ceremonies of remembrance and that their march has been organised in such a way that it will not impact on that. The truth is that the Government are attempting to draw the police into taking political sides in a very contentious matter in the country. There are millions of people who want a ceasefire. We are on a dangerous slippery slope, because the operational independence of the police to protect the right of assembly —the basic English right of liberty—is being challenged by the Home Secretary. She is not fit to hold that post, is she?”
House of Commons9 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The overwhelming majority of people in Yorkshire are proud and patriotic, love their families, and work hard. How can it be, then, that families had to approach food banks 75,000 times last year in order to feed their children? That is shameful, and doubtless it was in the UN rapporteur’s mind when he said that our country was in breach of its international treaty obligations under the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. May we have a debate about child poverty in Government time, and will the Leader of the House arrange for a Government Law Officer to be present to tell us what their legal defence is for the position in which the Government have put us?”
House of Commons9 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Yorkshire and the Humber is one of the great centres of steelmaking—in our area, there were more than 8,000 jobs in steelmaking, the last time that was counted—but how many jobs will be left when the Minister has finished with her cuts? Has she noticed that whenever the Conservative party is in government, it deindustrialises further? Unite the union—I declare an interest as a member—is saying that if the Government would commit to procurement of steel for all our relevant contracts, 8,000 further jobs could be created. What exactly does she make of that? Has she met representatives of the union to discuss that matter?”
House of Commons8 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As a person of Jewish heritage, I was mortified and horrified by what happened on 7 October, but I did not for one second believe that any Palestinian child anywhere was responsible. Yet the Secretary-General of the United Nations has said that Gaza is “a graveyard for children” and that the Israelis are committing war crimes, and has called for humanitarian peace. We helped to create the United Nations. We are permanent members. Is it not time we got behind the Secretary-General, who speaks with great moral authority on these matters, and ourselves called for a ceasefire?”
House of Commons8 November 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Like many hon. Members, during the recess I visited various sites in my constituency, including Langthwaite business park, which is an immensely successful business park with more than 50 businesses now employing almost 2,000 people. It is adjacent to two former pit villages, South Elmsall and South Kirkby, where deprivation is still deeply rooted. The people who live in those villages are not able to take advantage of the jobs created by Wakefield Council, Mohan De Silva and Karen Harrison. What Government programmes has the Secretary of State put in place, or can she put in place, to ensure there is a linkage between areas of deprivation and new jobs?”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Can we have a debate in Government time about the requirements on developers to fulfil planning obligations? In Ackworth, the leader of Ackworth parish council, Martin Roberts, took me to the community facility that has been built by Strata Homes as part of the planning conditions for a large housing development. There is deep frustration in the village that the developers seem to have walked away, left the community facility unable to be opened and have not finished surfacing the roads. Can we have a debate so that hon. Members can express the frustration that people feel about such issues in their area?”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“All those aspects of economic life were first tried in Chile, dripping in blood, and then implemented elsewhere, including in our country. Those three factors play in my mind when I think about Chile.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Some were in fear of their lives; we helped them, in a kind of underground railroad in Leeds, to avoid the people pursuing them who might well have tortured and killed them. I think the issue is still relevant because, in Chile, the constitution, currently much debated in the country’s political life, is the same as that introduced following the military junta. It is important for that matter to be resolved, although that is for the people of Chile. It is there as a current debate that is interesting to watch. I am quite clear about the third reason why I think the issue is still contemporary. The experiment in Chile following the junta involved the introduction of what we have now come to call neoliberalism—the attack on so many public services, privatisation, globalisation and the triumph of finance over industry.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not know exactly why; over the past century, the capacity of human beings to inflict the most awful damage on other human beings—and animals and the planet too, come to that—has been profound. Yet somehow those events in Chile have particularly stayed with me from that day to this. I feel I want to make some points here about them because I believe that there is unfinished business for the British Government. The second reason is also personal, as I shall shortly refer to. Significant numbers of people came from Chile to escape the violence, murder, torture and bloodshed, as refugees. They came in numbers, which I will give shortly. I met them and helped them. Some of them were legitimately here.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“But beyond trade, international relationships are also about democracy, progress and human rights, and about resisting torture and arbitrary murder. Those things are important too. When it comes to Britain’s role in the world, if we want to really be a motor for progress, yes, we should promote trade, but we should equally promote democracy and those other things that I have just referred to. My next point, on which I will touch briefly, is about whether those events 50 years ago are still important today. I want to argue that they are, and for three reasons. The first is perhaps the most personal. I was 23 at the time of the coup, and it marked me profoundly.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to the parliamentary authorities for allowing this debate to take place. It might be said that the events under discussion took place a long time ago, but I am going to argue that they are relevant to this day. I want to speak principally about the events of 50 years ago and their contemporary significance, but let me begin by referring to the fact that both Chile and the United Kingdom are now part of this slightly bizarre relationship in the Pacific—not that we are anywhere near there—and that in some ways we are partners. I hope that the Minister will not focus purely on the commercial relationships between our two countries, although those are important—trade is an important factor in bringing people together.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Those were inappropriate—let us say it no more strongly than that—deeply reactionary activities by Washington. Santiago is 1,000 km further away from Washington than London. We cannot say that any kind of military or other threat was posed by Chile to the interests of the United States or Britain. Moving on to the British Government, Edward Heath recognised Pinochet within 11 days of the coup. Diplomatic cables that have now become available in the National Archives indicate that the British Government were fully aware of the violence being used by the Pinochet regime against innocent people, whose only so-called sin was to hope for a better world. They were working people, socialists, trade unionists and activists of various kinds.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I was watching and thinking, “Get on with it, because there’s much more to do try to feed the poor and liberate so many working people in Chile.” Early doors, Allende took public ownership of the copper industry. It was copper, above all—it was a resource that the Americans, the British and others were using—that turned the tide. Nixon’s crimes are well known, but among them we should add this: he had authorised action—I think he had put $3 million to one side—to try to prevent Allende from winning the election. The money was used in such a way as to try to achieve that. The CIA conducted spoiling operations prior to the Allende victory. Nixon personally authorised the agency to seek to instigate a coup to prevent Allende from taking office.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It was particularly inspiring to listen to President Allende, who insisted that: “The road to socialism lies through democracy, pluralism and freedom.” I was a young man, as I have said, and our hearts stood still as we hoped he would be able to find a peaceful road to socialism, although all the time we were hearing on the radio and the television that there was a possibility that something would happen there, and that was frightening. But we were also being told by the BBC and others that Chile had a long history of democratic representative government, and that the army and the Chilean state apparatus would not move against a Government; but, of course, they did. Let me quickly talk about the United States. Allende moved more slowly than he promised he would.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The scale of this is hard to come to terms with, yet it happened and there are families who still today do not know where their disappeared ones are. There is also a programme to build a memory forest for every person who was a victim called Ecomemoria. I recommend that Members have a look at it; there is a memorial there to each person who was killed. As a young person I was beginning to think about politics. I had been a manual worker; I had left school at 15 with no qualifications and I had come across the ideas of socialism. I looked across the world; the distance between London and Santiago is 7,000 km but somehow it was inspiring to see a country trying to create a new path to this creed that I was beginning to embrace, called socialism.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The brother of the father of the family was murdered by the military and I understand that the father was imprisoned and tortured. They say in an email: “As a family, we experienced unspeakable horrors at the hands of Pinochet and the military coup.” It goes on to talk about communities in the UK who welcomed them, but the family has doubts about the role of the UK Government and I am going to come on to that. The email goes on to say: “For 50 years we have been fighting for justice, searching for those who were disappeared and campaigning for the perpetrators to be held to account for the human rights violations.” And we know the facts: the junta killed 3,600 people, tortured 40,000, and some 200,000 were driven away from their home country by what was going on there.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend is of course right. Famously, the Chicago boys, as they became known in Chile, were those in the economics department of the University of Chicago who developed a reactionary theory about how economies ought to be managed. It was implemented first in Chile, as my hon. Friend has just remarked, and that was the point I was making. It was rolled out elsewhere, too, and there were conservative and right-wing politicians throughout the world watching what was happening in Chile to see whether, not so much the bloodshed, but the economic experiment could be brought about in their countries too—and of course we have seen it in our country. I was reflecting on why this is still a contemporary matter and want to refer to some correspondence I received today from the Bell family, refugees from Chile at the time of the coup.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To think that the soldiers were attacking their own democratically elected President and singing marching songs from the Nazis is really bone-chilling.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It was the first time I had heard it. There were even cafés and restaurants opening serving Latin American food. It was a tremendously exciting time, but it was heartbreaking as well. Before I make my final points, I just want to reflect on one thing. It has been possible to hear another sound on the BBC website this week, and it is even more chilling than that of the Hawker jets—built in Britain—attacking an elected President. It is the sound of the Chilean soldiers going to attack the palace of the elected President and they are singing a marching song. Visit the website if you like, but the sound is awful—it is blood- curdling—because the marching song is a song developed by the Nazis. When we think about antisemitism, we know that it has resided above all with the Nazis.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Those Chileans, who had fought for a different kind of country and a different kind of world, and who had friends, comrades and colleagues who were tortured and killed in the Santiago stadium and elsewhere, were among the finest people I have ever met. We can be proud that Britain had a tradition of accepting refugees into our country in such circumstances. If that were to happen again, I would like to think that Britain would be prepared to do the same. We took 3,000 Chilean refugees. Sweden took 40,000. Let me wind up with a couple of points. I got to know those people. I worked with them and helped to feed some of them who were in the underground. We helped to house them—not many of them, just two or three. There were 250 in Leeds. They brought a different culture. We had Chilean music and Latin American music.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am sorry, but it is not good enough that those events happened all those years ago, and I do not think we know the full truth about them yet. As a Labour party member, I am sure that Members would expect me to say that, when Labour came back to office, I was pleased that the Wilson Government cut off all diplomatic relations and then instigated an arms embargo against the junta. However, Mrs Thatcher restored relations when she won the election a few years later in 1979. The Wilson Government also accepted 3,000 Chilean refugees into our country. As I have said, I met a number of them in Leeds. Many of them are still here and have a personal interest in what happened.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am sorry, but it is simply not good enough for judgments on what is happening in a foreign country to be made on the basis of our commercial interests, as I said at the beginning of my speech. The Heath Government defied calls from all sides to impose an arms embargo on Chile. In fact, they delivered Hawker Hunter jets to Chile before the 1974 general election, when there was a change of Government. It was Hawker Hunter jets that laid siege to the presidential palace during the coup. Over the past few days, it has been possible to listen to a Spanish language broadcast from BBC Latin America and hear the chilling sounds of the jets—British-made jets—attacking the palace, which resulted in the death of Allende.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“When the coup happened, Heath was the Prime Minister, and Alec Douglas-Home was the Foreign Secretary. It is shocking to see what happened. They were aware of what was going on in Chile. The Foreign Secretary sent official guidance to British embassies across the world, only weeks after the coup, outlining British support—it is impossible to read it any other way—for the military junta. He said: “For British interests…there is no doubt that Chile under the junta is a better prospect than Allende’s chaotic road to socialism, our investments”— meaning British investments— “should do better, our loans may be successfully rescheduled, and export credits later resumed, and the sky-high price of copper (important to us) should fall as Chilean production is restored”.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I have spoken in this House about antisemitism, and I have been the victim of antisemitism, because we have Jewish blood in my family. I have even been to Leeds court as the victim of antisemitic behaviour. Nobody feels more strongly about this issue than me, and I am sure the whole House stands in condemnation of antisemitism generally. The hon. Member has made his points. I am not here to speak about that, so I will not follow him further down that track. I was just speaking about the Heath Government. In the spirit of all-party truth, I need to record the fact that during the first of Harold Wilson’s Labour Governments, it appears to be the case that there was at least one MI6 officer in Santiago collaborating with the Chilean military prior to the coup.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If the Government will not do it, let me say in my humble, Back-Bench way: I apologise on behalf of the British people—it is impertinent, but I do it—to the Chilean people for what happened in the name of the British Government, but not in the name of all of us.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To build a better future, it is important that we know what happened in our past. I wonder whether I can tempt the Minister to express some sense of regret. Does he agree with my brief description of Britain’s involvement? I do not mean this in a partisan way, but this democratic Parliament—one of the great creators of democracy—should say that we regret our involvement at the time. I may be tempting it too far, but I feel that an apology is required from the House of Commons to the Chilean people who were killed and those who survived, and the children and grandchildren who are bereft of their dads, mums and grandparents.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That was the simple objective of that Allende Government: to give decent work to all. It is not too difficult a thing to agree with. Secondly on culture, there was a band that travelled Europe and Britain—I remember seeing them many times—called Inti-Illimani, which sang Chilean music. It was tremendously inspiring. It was great to be young and to fight back against what was an appalling assault on our common humanity in Chile. I was trying to get to the end of my speech. I do not believe that we know all the truth about the British Government’s involvement, but we should. The email that I read earlier from the Bell family asks that the Government consider making public all the existing material that is not in the national archives, so that we know the true extent of what happened.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I do not want to detain the House for too long, but Victor Jara was a great folk hero. He chose to put his particular skills of singing and playing music at the disposal of the people, fighting for a better world and a better Chile. He was then taken to Santiago stadium, with thousands of others. His hands were immobilised so that he could never play music again, and finally he was killed. I am reminded of the city of Leeds, and what happened with the Chile solidarity movement back in 1973-75. I hope the House will not mind if I detain us. The Chileans there decided to paint a tribute to Chile, to the movement and to our solidarity. They painted a large mural of Chilean people—peasants, workers and others—in vivid colours. Underneath it says: “And there will be work for all”.”
House of Commons14 September 2023Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗