Oral Answers to Questions
Bell Ribeiro-Addy Excerpts(3 weeks ago)
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Mr Alexander
As I was saying, let me deal with both the failed Governments who have been letting Scotland down in the last decade. Frankly, if the hon. Gentleman wants to advance the case that there has been a decade of prosperity in Scotland, good luck to him. The reality is that it is very hard to think of a single aspect of Scottish public life that has improved over the last 10 years. Take the case of ferries. Take the case of hospitals. Take the case of our schools or, indeed, the broader business environment.
On Brexit, I recognise that there is a need for a fundamental reset with the European Union, and in recent days I have been taking forward that work. I welcome the work that the Prime Minister has been undertaking, but that is the task of a Labour Government. As so often on so many issues, the SNP talks and Labour delivers.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Clapham and Brixton Hill) (Lab)
The Minister for Industry (Sarah Jones)
In little more than 100 days in government, this Department and its Secretary of State, who is flying to Doha today, have set about delivering on the promises made in our manifesto. We have turned up the dial on growth and published our Green Paper on the modern industrial strategy, which will channel support to key sectors, work across our nations and regions with the private sector, and deliver the conditions for investment and good jobs. We have delivered a huge vote of confidence in the UK by securing £63 billion of investment at our international investment summit, boosted by investment ploughing into our aerospace, automotive and life sciences sectors, as announced in yesterday’s Budget. We have also kept our promises by publishing the Employment Rights Bill, which represents the biggest upgrade in workers’ rights in a generation. We are a pro-innovation, pro-worker and pro-wealth creation Government, and are investing all our time in growing the economy for the long term and turning round 14 years of failure.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy
A four-day week with no loss of pay has proven to have benefits for employers and employees alike, and a recent report by the Autonomy Institute and Alda suggests that it can have a hugely positive impact on the economy. The report concludes that Iceland’s economy has outperformed most of Europe since adopting a shorter working week, and now has one of the lowest unemployment rates. With even more UK businesses beginning a four-day week trial on Monday as part of the 4 Day Week Campaign’s autumn pilot, what assessment has the Department made of the Icelandic report and of the potential impact that a four-day week could have on UK businesses and our economy?
Sarah Jones
The Government have no plans to undertake any trials on a four-day week for five days of pay. It is for employers and employees to reach agreements that fit their specific circumstances, but we want to get the balance right and make sure that we work with employers and employees. That is why the Employment Rights Bill will support both parties to reach agreements, where they are feasible.
Arms Export Licences: Israel
Bell Ribeiro-Addy Excerpts(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Zarah Sultana
Many hands are going up—I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy)
Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this extremely important debate. She has touched on the arms sales, which have continued over a number of years, and on the fact that the UK has continued to supply arms to Israel, which I believe makes us complicit in the occupation of the west bank and the use of arms to suppress people there. She said she was going to talk about the precedents we have had for suspending arms sales where it is clear that there are concerns about their benefiting human rights violations. Does my hon. Friend agree that this could be very much like the time the UK had an embargo on the sale of arms to Israel from 1982 to 1984, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Zarah Sultana
Yes, I agree. In the past, we have shown that we can take leadership, and I mentioned the example of when David Cameron stopped arms sales, although we resumed them afterwards. On this occasion, we can see that clear violations of international law are taking place, and we cannot continue arms sales.
I will make a bit of progress. What makes the Government’s refusal to suspend arms sales even more horrifying is that Israeli officials have been quite open about their intent in Gaza. At the beginning of the assault, an Israeli military spokesperson said that “the emphasis” of bombing was on
“damage and not on accuracy”.
Another official promised to turn Gaza into a “city of tents”, while the former head of the Israeli National Security Council said that the aim was to make Gaza
“a place where no human being can exist.”
The National Security Minister said that the only thing that should enter Gaza is
“not a gram of humanitarian aid”
but
“hundreds of tons of explosives”.
More recently, an Israeli Minister said that the war would be “Gaza’s Nakba”, which is a reference to the 1948 catastrophe in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes and never allowed to return. Given that stated intent, and actions to match it, UN experts have warned of a “genocide in the making”. Let us be clear: if this is a genocide in the making, British-made weapons are almost certainly part of making that genocide happen.
None of that is to deny or downplay Hamas’s appalling attack on 7 October, when 1,200 people—the majority civilians—were killed. I condemn that attack once again, as I have done repeatedly in the Chamber, and call again for the release of all hostages. As I have also said before, echoing the words of the UN Secretary-General, those crimes do not excuse what we have witnessed since.
Unlike those awful crimes, Israel’s assault on Gaza has been carried out with the Government’s unequivocal support and with British-made weapons. Disgracefully, selling arms for war crimes is not new for British Governments. Following Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in 2014, which human rights organisations said violated international law, the Conservative-led coalition Government undertook an investigation into arms sales to Israel, finding that those arms could have been used by the Israeli military in Gaza. That resulted in the Government committing to suspend sales if Israel resumed its military assault.
Autumn Statement Resolutions
Bell Ribeiro-Addy Excerpts(12 months ago)
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Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)
The Government have presided over a crash in the economy of Titanic proportions. They saw the iceberg of stagnation, persistently high inflation and falling living standards, and they decided to head straight for it. Yet they refuse to do the one thing left that would be useful to the rest of the country: abandon ship.
The Chancellor talked a great deal about the need for growth and called this his “autumn statement for growth” yesterday, but what is the reality? The OBR has cut the growth forecast for next year to just 0.7%. In fact, it has cut the growth forecast for the next three years. If it is right—I remind the House that it was the Government’s decision to devolve forecasting to the OBR—we will not hit a 2% real GDP growth target in the foreseeable future. Worse still, this will go down in history as the only Parliament where living standards were lower at the end of it than at the beginning. How is that a policy for growth? I do, however, agree with the Chancellor on one thing, that strong public services depend on a strong economy, but on the official forecasts we will have neither. I do not think I could be any more damning of the Government’s record and the economic legacy they will leave than the OBR itself. It says that, faced with weak growth and the giveaways in this statement, the Chancellor’s spending plans rely on implausible levels of austerity in local government and public services.
Implausible levels of austerity mean enormous levels of cuts, when we know that local government spending has already been cut to the bone. That is why councils of every political stripe up and down the country are now facing bankruptcy. At the same time, our public services are in crisis. People are now more likely to be on an NHS waiting list than ever before and our schools are literally falling apart. I could go on. The Chancellor’s policy for the crisis of funding for public and local services is typically Conservative—even more cuts.
In passing, we should explode the myth that a pre-election bribe is anything but the most cynical type of politics. More importantly, the voters will see through it. The Foreign Secretary, also known as the former, former, former, former Prime Minister and his Chancellor Osborne had a one-off increase in Government spending and investment in 2014 and then reimposed austerity once they were re-elected in 2015. I have no doubt that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor hope to emulate that con trick. The British public, however, will not be taken for mugs, not least because on the Labour Benches we will warn them of it. The reality is that this is part of another bout of austerity, just as the OBR warns. The shiny bauble of cutting national insurance is to get the Conservative party through to the election without tearing itself apart—then the axe will fall.
As for the carrots to business to invest, we know they will not work. One reason they will not work is that the Government are cutting public investment. Why does that matter? Because the state sector is the single biggest investor in the economy. The whole notion that it crowds out private investment is nonsense and one of the many idiocies of the Thatcher era. Government have been “getting out of the way of business investing” for well over 40 years now. As a result, we have an abysmal record on investment, one of the worst in the industrialised world.
It is hard to imagine that any of the measures in the autumn statement were properly assessed for their impact on equalities in accordance with any of our laws. Despite literally being lawmakers, the Government have a strained relationship with complying with any of them. To prove it, we do not have to look much further than the callous announcements regarding disability benefits. In a cost of living crisis of the Government’s own making, an estimated 370,000 people with disabilities and debilitating chronic health conditions will be forced to work from home in jobs that do not exist whether they are physically or mentally able to or not, or lose up to £5,000 in income a year. How are they expected to survive, and how much more inhumanity dressed up as policy can this Government drag through the House before the country has an opportunity to vote them out? In case we have forgotten, they obviously want to remind us that they are the nasty party—nastier than ever.
Any reasonable equality assessment in accordance with our laws would have the author of this Budget sent back to the drawing board. In any scenario in which real incomes and living standards are falling, those at the bottom—those who are already facing discrimination and hardship—will be even worse off. This is the Conservatives’ economic legacy, and it is a shameful one.