Oral Answers to Questions

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Wednesday 29th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for all he is doing to champion small businesses. We want to help all businesses—small, medium and large—in Witney and across the country get through this incredibly difficult period and bounce back with confidence as we defeat the coronavirus. Through the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme, the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme and the bounce-back loan scheme, we are lending to businesses of all shapes and sizes. The Government have stepped up to the plate, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right that we expect the banks to do the same.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab) [V]]

While working people are having to make huge sacrifices during this crisis, state support is available to big businesses that dodge taxes and pay millions to super-rich executives and shareholders. We should be bailing out the 99%, not the 1%. Will the Government follow the likes of Denmark and stand up to big businesses by saying, “If you want state support, you have to prohibit dividend payments and share buy-backs, and you cannot be based in a tax haven”?

[Dominic Raab]

I have to say that if the hon. Lady looks at the package of measures that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has put in place in the round, she will see that we are not only dealing with small businesses but helping larger businesses. They are important too; they are large employers. We are doing everything we can to support innovative firms, which will now benefit from the offer of £1.25 billion for high-growth firms. Frankly, I think we should take some of the partisan baggage out of this, focus on targeting the businesses that will create the growth that will drive us through this crisis, and support the workers up and down this country who rely on those crucial businesses.

Turkey-Greece Border: Refugees

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

My hon. Friend raises a good point, but we should not allow that to detract from the reality that has created this situation, which is the continued brutal violence, particularly in Idlib, of the Syrian regime and its Russian supporters, which has driven millions of refugees into Turkey and beyond. He is right to say that the UK as a whole should be proud of the part we have played thus far.

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Some 5.5 million people have been forced to flee brutal war in Syria, with more than 3.5 million fleeing to Turkey. The European countries have refused to do their fair share and instead have built a fortress to keep out people in need of safety. That is what we are witnessing at the Greek border. In the light of that, will the Government finally do what is right and significantly step up efforts, including by opening up safe and legal routes?

[Nigel Adams]

I am sure the hon. Lady will agree with my earlier point that we should absolutely condemn the offensives in Idlib. We must also welcome the ceasefire. We have repeatedly called for an immediate end to this, but preventing the further worsening of the humanitarian crisis is a key priority for us. Much more must be done to bring forward a lasting political settlement.

Recent Violence in India

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

In August 2019, the Indian Government stripped Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomous status. In December, it passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which provides a path to citizenship for all migrant minorities except Muslims and creates a national register of citizens, forcing Indians to provide documents to prove their citizenship, which many poorer Indians do not have and many Muslims will not be able to get. Does the Minister accept that the recent violence in Delhi, which has been whipped up by BJP politicians and has led to dozens of deaths, is just the latest targeted assault on Muslims by the Modi Government?

[Nigel Adams]

The UK Government have deep concerns about the escalation that the hon. Lady refers to. She mentioned the NRC, which is currently enacted in the state of Assam. We have not received any confirmation from the Government of India that it will be expanded India-wide, but she is right to raise concerns, because millions of people could be affected and will be very concerned about this policy.

Climate Justice

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Sir Charles. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) on securing this debate.

My generation grew up to the sound of climate warnings. Before I was even born, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had said that human activity was to blame for a planet that was quickly getting hotter, and every few years since, it has warned that we are on course to do “irreversible damage” to ecosystems and species. Two years ago, it said that preventing climate catastrophe would require,

“rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”.

Since its first meeting more than three decades ago, CO₂ emissions have risen by more than 40%. They continue to rise, and the powerful continue to ignore the warnings.

The effects are with us now. This winter, Australia burned and Indonesia drowned. Twenty-nine people died in the fires and 66 people drowned in the floods. Across the world, we see it again and again. The Solomon Islands are disappearing beneath the Pacific, forcing people to flee. Mozambique was battered by two of the worst storms in the continent’s history last year, which claimed the lives of more than 1,300 people. The Amazon rainforest—the lungs of our planet—was set alight by warmer, drier weather and reckless profiteers. Here in Britain, floods are hitting us harder and more often. Climate breakdown is with us already, but still the powerful ignore the warnings.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Zarah Sultana]

I apologise to the hon. Member—because of the time limit, I must progress.

There was a time when many denied the science, but today there is a different kind of denialism. They do not deny the science—they deny the politics. They pretend that business as usual can combat the climate emergency, and that banning plastic straws, using bags for life or tweaking the system is enough. I am sorry—it is not, because the problems are not individual. They are collective. It is the same politicians who tell us to ban plastic straws who have left MPs’ pensions invested in deadly fossil fuels, so hon. Members will understand why we do not have high hopes for COP26 later this year and why we expect more platitudes and more hypocrisy. I ask hon. Members to take a lead from the students who have forced their universities to divest, and to divest now.

To prevent the climate emergency from becoming a climate catastrophe, we have to face up to what is driving the crisis. The answer is clear. It is a capitalist crisis, driven by capitalism’s need for expansion and exploitation. It is not the fault of a few bad apples; the entire system is rotten. It is a system that rose with the coal mines and steam mills that powered Britain to global dominance, and trashed the world’s climate to win wealth for colonial powers. Today, the global south still pays the price. If the climate crisis is a capitalist crisis, it is a neocolonial crisis too. Those least to blame—the global south and the global working class—will be hardest hit. While the world burns, the rich will build higher walls to protect themselves. They will let climate refugees drown and the dispossessed starve.

That is one future, but there is another. If we unite people across borders, and recognise that in this fight our enemy travels by private jet and not migrant dinghy, we can have a global green new deal, and it will look like this: dismantling the fossil fuel industry; taking resources away from a handful of private profiteers, and using them to plan a better future; insulating our homes and designing new green industries; building free public transport and creating millions of good, unionised jobs. That is how we unite black and white, north and south, migrants and those born here, people in Britain and people overseas. We all have an interest in survival. That is how we can build a world that is truly our own, with opportunities for all.

Plenty of people will call me naive, but the real naivety is to pretend we have another choice. My generation grew up watching global leaders bail out banks but ignore the warnings of a planet on fire. To stop that, we must finally make good on the promise of an old socialist hymn. With a global green new deal, we will

“bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old”.