Illegal Migration Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

It is sadly not a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). Talking about leaving or having derogations from human rights law is exactly what is wrong with the Government’s approach to this issue and what is wrong with this vile Bill.

With overwhelming support from across the political spectrum, and backed by Conservative peers and by religious leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the other place is absolutely right to have inflicted a string of defeats on this vile, illegal Bill.

Lords amendment 1B, in the name of Baroness Chakrabarti, should be easy for any decent Government to accept, because it simply asks for compliance with the rule of law, which is the bedrock of our democracy. But the Government are attacking that foundation, forced to admit on the face of this immoral Bill that they are unable to say it is compatible with the 1950 European convention on human rights. By moving a motion to disagree to Lords amendment 1B, the Government are seeking to deny UK judges the right to interpret this law and to check it against compliance with the UK’s obligations under no fewer than five international conventions that we should be defending, not undermining.

The Minister in the other place tried to argue that a previous version of this amendment was trying to incorporate international law into domestic law and that, in doing so, it was an unacceptable change to our legal framework. I do not think that that is what the previous version did, but, for the avoidance of doubt, in this version Lords amendment 1B is explicit in calling for the interpretation of international law to ensure compliance with our international obligations. Indeed, Ministers will be aware of the contribution from Lord Hope, who served as deputy president of the Supreme Court and last week said that this amendment is a

“pure interpretation provision…entirely consistent with the way the courts approach these various conventions….it is entirely orthodox and consistent with principle.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 July 2023; Vol. 831, c. 1817.]

Adhering to the refugee convention, the European convention on human rights, and other international laws we have signed up to should be non-negotiable. What a terrible state of affairs it is that the Government want to vote down an amendment seeking compliance with the rule of law.

The Government’s argument is that stripping vulnerable people of asylum and other human rights will stop other vulnerable people falling into the hands of the people traffickers. That is both morally bankrupt and utterly bogus. It is morally bankrupt because human rights are not earned or contingent on a person’s conduct or character, or on whether upholding those rights might affect someone else’s actions. Human rights are attached to a person by virtue of their humanity. Vulnerable people, including children, are being punished because of presumed future actions of adults. Furthermore, by disagreeing with Lords amendment 1B, Ministers face the charge of hypocrisy, as they disrespect international law and undermine migrants’ rights at a time of unprecedented international turmoil. Just last week, the Prime Minister was at a NATO summit absolutely saying that we need to uphold international law against the grotesque breaches by Putin in Ukraine. Yes, we do need to do that, but let us have a little moral consistency.

As well as being immoral, the Government’s argument about a deterrent effect is bogus and unevidenced. The Home Office’s own impact assessment, published just last month, is peppered with caveats about how undeliverable this policy is. It includes an admission that:

“The delivery plan is still being developed.”

The lack of evidence on deterrence in that document is glaring. It says that the Bill is “novel and untested”, so we do not know what impact it will have on deterrence. As I said earlier, a raft of children’s charities have pointed out that once routine child detention was ended in 2011, there was no proportional increase in children claiming asylum. Beyond that, there is a strong evidence to show that it is the precisely the hostility towards refuges exemplified by this Bill and the Government’s rejection of Lords amendments to it that fuels the grim and terrible trade in small boats that they claim they are against.

So any Member who votes to block the Lords amendments should admit that in doing so, they degrade the rule of law, dehumanise vulnerable refugees, attack our modern slavery laws, put LGBT refugees at grave risk, and that their approach will lead to the unconscionable mass detention and treatment of children, with no stated time limit to that detention—it is sickening. I will be voting to uphold the Lords amendments, because this Bill shames and degrades our country, our democracy and this House.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I want to speak mainly about Lords amendment 1B, and to follow up on the remarks made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). I heard him make exactly the same argument in the Council of Europe, when, to the consternation of most of its members, he argued that Britain had to criticise and walk away from the European court of human rights because one case was found against Britain. Many more cases have been found against almost every other country that signed up to the European convention on human rights and, therefore, the Court.

I support Lords amendment 1B because it gives some protection under the 1950 European convention, the 1951 UN convention and the conventions on statelessness, on the rights of the child and on action against trafficking. The Lords amendment will mean that any decision has to be taken in accordance with those conventions. If the Government are opposing those, what message are they giving, other than that they have no respect for international law and for the conventions we helped to write and sign up for, and that they want to walk away from them? Walking away from them will mean that we have no regard for the rights of people seeking asylum if the European Court of Human Rights finds us to be wanting in that respect. Therefore, should any other country want to walk away from the European convention on human rights, for example, Turkey, Poland or Hungary, all of which have issues with their legislation in respect of the convention, we will be in no position to criticise anybody ever again. The idea that this country is facing a crisis so severe and so serious that we have to walk away from conventions that were hard fought for and have served the human rights of people across Europe very well is simply ridiculous. On a global scale, the numbers of people involved are enormous, because of economic stress around the world, wars, environmental degradation and destruction, and human rights abuse. That is why people seek asylum.

Public Order

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

This statutory instrument is oppressive, anti-democratic and downright wrong. It is anti-rights legislation by Executive diktat, and it is a profound insult to people and to Parliament, of which this Government should be ashamed. In short, it is authoritarian in both style and substance.

On the substance, the police do not need yet more power to restrict protest. We need only look at what happened at the recent coronation: Ministers had to be summoned to this House to explain why police gravely overstepped the mark. As other hon. Members have set out, these regulations hand new, unprecedented powers and discretion to the police. They seek to redefine “serious disruption” from “prolonged” and “significant” to “more than minor”. This will gift the police greater powers to impose conditions on public assemblies and processions, as well as powers to consider the legally vague concepts of “relevant” and “cumulative” disruption. Requiring the police to consider all “relevant” disruption is dangerously vague and places far too much discretion in the hands of the police as well as placing an unfair burden on frontline officers. It could mean peaceful protest activities are restricted because of other forms of disruption not linked to the protest, such as traffic congestion in the area.

The so-called “cumulative” disruption that the SI allows lets police add up disruption from other protests when considering whether to impose conditions on a particular protest. That runs the serious risk of the police facing pressure from the Government of the day to restrict particular protest movements based on their content.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

The hon. Member is making an important point about the right of protest. On the idea of giving long-term notice to the police, if, for example, an eviction is due to take place and fellow tenants arrive at the scene to support and defend the tenant due to be evicted, the urgency of that means they could not possibly gain permission in advance for their demonstration, yet that is a wholly legitimate right of protest that a neighbourhood would be performing to protect somebody.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I agree.

This SI comes in the wake of our official police watchdog warning that public trust in police is “hanging by a thread”. This is no time to risk increased politicisation of the policing of public order.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has made it clear that it has grave concerns about this measure, advising that

“the measures go beyond what is reasonably necessary to police protest activities.”

Its briefing warns of its concern about incompatibility with the European convention on human rights and of a “chilling effect” on the right to freedom of expression.

Moving on to the style—the way in which this is being done—the Government are trying to do something which has never been done before: they are trying an abuse of process that we must not permit, whatever we think of the content of the SI and the intentions behind it. The restrictions on protest rights that this SI seeks to impose were explicitly rejected by Parliament during the passage of the Public Order Bill—now the Public Order Act 2023—in February 2023. This is the very opposite of the integrity that the current Prime Minister promised when he took over. It is a blatant continuation of the casual disregard for Parliament’s democratic standards that he promised to discontinue.

My Green party colleague in the other place, Baroness Jenny Jones, has tabled a fatal motion to kill off this affront to our rights and our democracy, and it will be before that House tomorrow. Rightly, for primary legislation the unelected House of Lords is a revising Chamber. As Members will know, this is secondary legislation and it needs the approval of both Houses. Presumably, that is to avoid the type of situation we face now, where an SI could be used by the Executive to reverse a Lords revision to primary legislation that they do not like.

Public Order Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Report stage
Tuesday 18th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Member for her powerful contribution with which I entirely agree.

I was just explaining about the combined effect of new clauses 7 and 8. New clause 7, crucially, allows the Government to propose that the Secretary of State be allowed themselves to apply for an injunction despite not being affected or being a party in the normal sense. Added to that is the effect of new clause 8, which gives the Secretary of State another new power, namely to apply to the court to attach a power of arrest and of remand to injunctions granted under new clause 7.

Let us imagine what that could look like in practice. Let us suppose that the Government set their sights on a group of countryside ramblers planning a walk headed in the direction of a nature reserve that is home to a protected species and about to be dug up by investment zone bulldozers. The Secretary of State might decide that there is a risk that the ramblers will link hands to try to close down a major bridge that is required for vehicle access to the nature reserve. The Government might then apply for an injunction to stop the walk and for the power to arrest anyone who breaches that injunction and goes rambling in the countryside—regardless of their intentions. If successful, a new public order offence will have effectively been created on the basis of potential disruption of key national infrastructure, and the ramblers concerned will be at risk of being fined or even imprisoned. I do not think that it is an over-exaggeration to call such powers Orwellian. They are anti-freedom, anti-human rights and anti-democratic.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend is making an absolutely excellent speech. The right to roam would not have happened without the mass trespass at Kinder Scout in the 1930s. We owe our liberties to those who took risks by demonstrating in the first place. Every Member of this House has benefited from those liberties that came about as a result of the risks that others took.

[Caroline Lucas]

Do I agree? Yes, I do. The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. As someone who took part in some recreations of that trespass on Kinder Scout earlier this year, I could not agree with him more about the importance of people taking that action.

It is also important to note that while existing and expansive civil injunctions are being used with growing and alarming frequency to clamp down on direct action tactics, with a wider, chilling effect on the right to protest, the majority of civil injunctions do not give the police powers of arrest. I have repeatedly warned that the Government’s approach overall amounts to a dangerous politicising of policing, and these two new clauses are cut from exactly the same cloth. Moreover, a seemingly ideological determination to stop people standing up for what they believe in is woven through every clause of this Bill.

In my remaining time, I want to speak specifically against serious disruption prevention orders and in favour of the amendments to remove them. On Second Reading, I set out my objection to these new civil orders and said that they might more accurately be called “sinister disproportionate political orders”. Nothing I have heard since then has persuaded me otherwise.

The Government want to be able to impose such orders on individuals who have participated in at least two protests within a five-year period, whether or not they have actually been convicted of any crime. That is a massive expansion of police powers. Furthermore, the range of activities that could result in someone being given an SDPO is extremely broad. It includes actions that would not themselves be criminal but for the creation of the new, widely-drawn offences in the Bill. The threshold is so low as to be laughable, were the consequences not so grave. The conditions for imposing an SDPO include activities related to a protest that might—might—cause serious disruption to two or more people. The Bill is a massive clampdown on our civil liberties and we have to oppose it.

Finally, I wish to put on record my support for the new clauses of the hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), and for new clause 11, which has been much discussed already this afternoon. I also want to say a few last words about new clauses 13 and 14, which I support because they are consistent with so much of the work that has been done over many years to make misogyny a hate crime and to end violence against women and girls. Sexual harassment is still at epidemic proportions. Women are disproportionately subjected to harassment, abuse and intimidation every day. Those offences are still not properly addressed by the police or the criminal justice system.

New clauses 13 and 14 would bring sentencing for harassment offences motivated by the sex of the victim in line with the approach already followed for offences motivated by race or religious identity. Crucially, they do not create any new public order offences or make anything illegal that is not already illegal; rather, they seek to ensure a serious response from the police and the courts. I hope that, in turn, harsher sentencing for those hate crimes would act as a deterrent and encourage women to report sex-based harassment, confident that they will be taken more seriously than at present.

Some 97% of women under the age of 25 have experienced sexual harassment in a public space—a huge number. There is no room for complacency. If we want to tackle hate crime against women, we must support the changes set out in new clauses 13 and 14.

Protecting and Restoring Nature: COP15 and Beyond

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I am genuinely struggling to know how to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question. I want to say yes, and in a sense awareness is greater now and the general public’s anger at seeing nature decline before their eyes is perhaps stronger. However, although there are some good words, unless we get rid of all the brackets in the texts and get them agreed, and unless, crucially, we have both the finance and the implementation, with a real focus on putting this stuff into practice, I am afraid I cannot stand here and tell him with any degree of certainty that we will have a better outcome.

I am coming to the end of my comments, as I am sure you will be pleased to hear, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will touch briefly on the marine environment, because I do not want us to leave that out. I was lucky enough to join Greenpeace as part of its Operation Ocean Witness to see for myself the destructive fishing practices that are still happening, even in our supposed marine protected areas. We came across a French-flagged industrial fly shooter fishing vessel in the Bassurelle Sandbank MPA, and it was shocking to see the destruction in its wake. Fly shooting is hugely damaging not only for our marine ecosystems, but for local fishing communities, including those in my constituency, who are increasingly unable to make ends meet.

Will the Government finally please use their powers under the Fisheries Act 2020 and take action to restore our depleted seas? Will they make all MPAs in UK waters fully protected and immediately restrict the fishing licences of industrial vessels so that they cannot fish in those precious ecosystems?

I also want to underline how crucial it is that we address climate and nature together. They are two sides of the same coin. In Parliament I have championed the climate and ecological emergency Bill, which would address the climate and ecological crises in a holistic way, and I urge the Government to pick up that Bill in this new Session.

Finally, at the core of the climate and ecological crisis is our broken economic model, which prioritises growth above all else, including the health of people and planet. There is a growing body of evidence showing the dangers of our current economic model, with a report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services by 82 of the world’s top scientists and experts saying that the

“focus on short-term profits and economic growth”,

often excludes the value of nature.

The Minister will be aware that the Treasury-commissioned Dasgupta review called for an

“urgent and transformative change in how we think, act and measure economic success to protect and enhance our prosperity and the natural world”.

Yet we are still not really seeing what follow-up there will be to the Dasgupta review. Another inquiry by the Environmental Audit Committee on biodiversity in the UK made it clear that

“Alternatives to GDP urgently need to be adopted as more appropriate ways to measure economic success”.

We must now look to build an economy for the future, following countries such as New Zealand, which is already leading the way with the world’s first ever wellbeing budget. The nature of our economy must be on the agenda at COP15 and the Government should join other countries in showing leadership by urgently introducing alternative indicators of economic success that prioritise the health of people and planet.

Much of this debate is around global challenges, but I want to end by focusing on the local and talking about the round-headed rampion, of which I am a proud species champion. The round-headed rampion is a beautiful blue wildflower, which is known as the “Pride of Sussex” and is the official county flower. However, it is increasingly rare, since it grows only on chalk grasslands such as those on the South Downs, and those chalk grasslands have declined by 80% just since world war two. Its fate relies on the protection, preservation and restoration of these important habitats.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and I agree with her on protecting habitats, grasslands and other places. However, does she also accept that isolated protection does not really work, and that there has to be a connectivity between preserved areas, just as there has to be a connectivity between forests and natural grasslands?

[Caroline Lucas]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He is absolutely right: that connectivity is crucial to a thriving natural environment. Unless we ensure that we have not just isolated protection areas, but a genuinely joined-up corridor of environmental improvement and even widen out from that, we will not be successful in our aims.

I will just wind up by saying that as we head towards COP15, let us remember the beauty of this world and what we risk losing by failing to protect it for ourselves, for our children and for future generations. I urge the Minister once again to do all he can to ensure a positive outcome from this important summit.

COP26: Limiting Global Temperature Rises

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I could not thank the hon. Member more for his intervention. I think he has been reading my notes, because I was going to make exactly that point. The Prime Minister himself has said:

“It is the biggest economies in the world that are causing the problem, while the smallest suffer the worst consequences.”

Yet he has not grasped the implications of his own statement. As the hon. Member has just said, climate justice means the biggest economies doing far more and being far more ambitious than net zero in 30 years’ time. Climate justice means cutting emissions at home, without overreliance on international offsets or costly and uncertain negative emissions technologies. Climate justice also means recognising the obscenity of continuing with business as usual knowing that young people, especially those in climate-vulnerable countries, are paying for it literally with their futures.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her excellent speech. Following that point, at COP26 do we need to get proper funding for technology transfer to the poorest countries in the world, which need such technology to protect their environments? Unfortunately, the signs following covid, where there has not been a proper sharing of vaccines or vaccine knowledge, are not good. We have to internationalise our knowledge freely across the whole world in order to protect the environment on which we all rely.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, with which I wholeheartedly agree. I particularly agree that if we look at the covid pandemic as an example of international co-operation, it does not augur well. If we cannot properly share technology and vaccines even when our own wellbeing depends so directly on that, it does not augur well for the climate crisis. We absolutely need the kind of technology transfer to which he refers.

Let me say a few words about the Government’s own track record, because we are not on track to meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets, let alone the sixth carbon budget, which is the first to be based on net zero by 2050, rather than the older 80% reduction. Just last month, Green Alliance calculated that the Government policies announced since 2020 will cut emissions by just 24% by 2032, and that the policies out for consultation, even if enacted, would still fall far short of the fifth carbon budget. This week’s publications of the net zero strategy and the heat and building strategy lack ambition. They lack urgency and—crucially—they lack the serious funding we need. As a result they still do not do enough to get us back on track. Time is running out in the race for our future, and the Government are barely over the starting line.

Not only are the Government not doing enough of the right things, but they are actively doing too many wrong things. Consider some of the most egregious examples on the charge sheet: a £27 billion road building scheme; the expansion of airports; scrapping the green homes grant just six months after it was introduced; stripping climate change clauses out of trade deals; and an obligation still in statute to maximise the economic recovery of UK petroleum. Perhaps most egregious of all, we are pressing ahead with Cambo, a new oilfield off Shetland. No wonder the Climate Change Committee has concluded that the Government continue to

“blunder into high carbon choices”.

Leading by example on climate and nature matters, not just here at home, but because globally the first rule of diplomacy is to walk your talk. Perhaps it is not surprising that, despite what I am sure have been the best efforts of the COP26 President-designate, the Government have so far failed to persuade many other countries to come forward with climate targets aligned to 1.5°C. Indeed, Gambia is currently the only country whose climate pledge is compatible with 1.5°C. Based on the UN’s assessment of the nationally determined contributions submitted so far, the world is on track for warming of around 2.7°C. That cannot be allowed to happen. Shamefully, almost 90 countries responsible for more than 40% of global emissions, including China and India, failed to meet the UN deadline at the end of July to submit new pledges ahead of the Glasgow meeting. What more will the Government do to galvanise more ambitious action to keep 1.5°C alive? What is the President’s plan post-COP26 if the world’s collective pledges are not compatible with 1.5°C?

The Government’s second goal for COP26 is to adapt to protect communities and natural habitats. Globally, Ministers need to lead efforts for a new post-2025 public finance goal, specifically for adaptation, and ensure that other countries and the multilateral development banks follow the UK’s commitment to ringfence 50% of climate finance for adaptation. We need a scaling up of locally led adaptation and support that is accessible and responsive to the needs of marginalised groups. We also need ambitious and rigorous ecosystem protection and restoration incorporated into the enhanced nationally determined contributions and adaptation plans of all countries. Nature, with its vast ability to store carbon and cushion us from shocks such as flooding, is our biggest ally in the fight against climate breakdown. It is therefore shocking that just weeks before the start of COP26, more than 100 fires have been reported on England’s peatlands. They are a vital carbon store, and it is environmental vandalism to set fire to them right now. The climate and nature emergencies are two sides of the same coin, and they need to be addressed together with far greater co-ordination.

Let me move to the third goal of mobilising finance. The COP26 President has stated that delivering the 10-year finance pledge is a matter of trust. Yes it is, but when that pledge has not been delivered anything like in full, trust is at breaking point. Any leverage that the UK might have had in persuading others to step up has been carelessly thrown away by its becoming the only G7 country to cut overseas aid in the midst of a pandemic. That unforgiveable decision means that climate programmes are being slashed, leaving some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries bearing the brunt. For example, aid to Bangladesh has been cut by more than £100 million. It is not too late to change direction, restore the official development assistance budget, ensure that climate finance is genuinely new and additional, and increase our commitment so that we are providing our fair share.

We must also act on loss and damage—a subject far too long consigned to the margins of negotiations. I welcome the UK presidency’s more constructive approach to that issue, including making progress on operationalising the so-called Santiago Network, but we need to do more. We must facilitate a process to scale up dedicated finance specifically for loss and damage, and we must acknowledge that as the third pillar of climate action, on a par with mitigation and adaptation. We must ensure that it has its own dedicated space on every COP agenda, and take forward calls for a specific loss and damage champion. It is long past time for the more wealthy countries to put aside their concerns about liability and compensation, and instead to come from a place of solidarity and human rights, in order to make meaningful progress on loss and damage and delivering new finance. As the young Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate has said:

“Our leaders are lost and our planet is damaged…You cannot adapt to lost cultures, you cannot adapt to lost traditions, you cannot adapt to lost history, you cannot adapt to starvation. You cannot adapt to extinction.”

The climate crisis is pushing many communities beyond their ability to adapt.

The fourth goal of the COP26 presidency is to work together to deliver. No one would argue with that, but I go back to the context in which these talks are being held. The summit is taking place while the pandemic continues to rage in many of the poorest countries, as a direct result of vaccine apartheid. Only around 2% of the populations of low-income countries have received even one dose of the vaccine, and of the 554 million doses promised by the richest nations, just 16% have so far reached their destination. That failure is morally obscene, as well as running entirely counter to our own self-interest. If COP26 is to succeed, the concerns and justified anger of countries in the global south urgently need to be addressed. That means providing enough finance and vaccines to match the need, waiving intellectual property rights, and transferring technical capacity and expertise.

Glasgow is not only crucial for delivering climate ambition and finance in line with the Paris agreement; it is also a litmus test for safer, fairer, more inclusive forms of economic restructuring and global governance. It is a chance urgently to shift to an economic system that values the long-term wellbeing of people and planet above the endless growth that, in the words of the OECD, has generated “significant harms” over recent decades. When the climate crisis is caused by our extractive, exploitative economic model, we cannot expect to win the chance for a better future by re-running a race that we see we will ultimately lose, and that everyone else will lose as well.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I believe in the powers of persuasion and tonight I would like to persuade my hon. Friend: come with us, vote against this Bill and vote against the programme motion, because I believe, and I think he may agree with me, that that is in the interests of his constituents.

[Caroline Lucas]

Does the Leader of the Opposition share my concern that this Brexit deal could lead to a loss of freedom of movement within the island of Ireland for international family members of Irish or UK citizens? In other words, it imposes the equivalent of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, denying families their reunification rights. Will he acknowledge that this is a barely mentioned but worrying aspect of yet another way in which this deal breaches the Good Friday agreement?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Yes, I understand and accept the hon. Lady’s concerns on that. She is eloquently making the case for far more scrutiny of this Bill, so I am sure she will be joining me in opposing the programme motion this evening, because it will prevent just that kind of scrutiny. I note that the programme motion allows just one hour for consideration of all Lords amendments, however many there may or may not be.

Debate on the Address

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. We have almost a lost generation. Children are going to understaffed schools with very few teaching assistants, where headteachers are going to parents with a begging bowl to try to match school budgets, and too many young people are growing up in bad housing, with incredible levels of stress and worry about the future. That contributes to the mental health crisis that this country as a whole must address.

Will the Prime Minister match Labour’s commitments to scrap the benefit freeze, end the benefit cap, ditch the bedroom tax, scrap the two-child limit and the disgusting rape clause, and end punitive sanctions in the benefit system? While we welcome the legislation to ensure that employers pass on tips to their workers—something that the Labour and trade union movement has long campaigned for—the Government must go further, and I urge them to listen to the package of measures set out by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock) in her brilliant speech at the TUC last month. This Queen’s Speech was supposed to herald an end to austerity and a new vision. Instead, it barely begins to unpick the devastating cuts to public services.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the climate and nature emergencies demand so much more than the six words they were accorded in the Queen’s Speech and an Environment Bill that will widely weaken the protections we currently enjoy as members of the EU? Will he join me in calling for a comprehensive green new deal to decarbonise the economy by 2030, so that we can show we are genuinely serious about the climate crisis?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I am coming on to that in a moment, but I absolutely agree: what we need is a green new deal. We need a green industrial revolution, and we have to face up to the reality of the climate emergency. If we do not, the damage to the next generation and the one after it will be even worse.

Our national health service has suffered the longest funding squeeze in its history, while life expectancy is falling and infant mortality rising. Schools have had their budgets cut, class sizes have risen, and headteachers are sending begging letters to parents. Any Government Member who is concerned about that should simply take a walk down the road and speak to any primary school headteacher about the stress that they and their pupils are going through. The police have lost more than 20,000 officers, while violent crime soars.

Environment and Climate Change

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. In a former life, I was a trade union organiser and negotiator. Even then we were discussing with the pension fund trustees how they would have environmentally sustainable investments and we would use that as a way of promoting green energy and such issues. I urge people, many millions of whom have shares in pension funds, to do exactly that.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I welcome that Labour is now following the Green party lead in calling for a climate emergency, but does the right hon. Gentleman agree that fossil fuel subsidies make a mockery of a climate emergency? We are one of the worst countries in Europe for giving subsidies to fossil fuel industry. Does he agree that it is not compatible with a climate-constrained economy to go on with these subsidies to fossil fuel companies?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Indeed, what we need is a sustainable energy policy and I will come on to that. I obviously pay tribute to the hon. Lady for the work she has done on this. Often, she and I have been on exactly the same side on these issues of environmental sustainability.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I imagine that the hon. Gentleman supports the Prime Minister’s deal because he is incredibly loyal to his party, with a blindness about the dangers of this deal for the rest of the country and the jobs that go with it.

The lack of clarity around these proposals also means that there is no guarantee of a strong deal with the single market, to ensure continued access to European markets in services. There is merely a vague commitment to go beyond the baseline of the World Trade Organisation.

As both the Attorney General and the Environment Secretary made clear in recent days, the commitments to workers’ rights, environmental protections and consumer safeguards are very far from secure. The social Europe that many people supported and continue to support was not part of why people voted to leave. All of that is at risk from this deal. This deal fails to give so many economic sectors and public services clarity about our future relationship with several European Union agencies and programmes.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Prime Minister’s deal seriously undermines environmental protection in this country, because it does not replace the European Court of Justice with anything like the strength of an enforcement body? Instead of the promised watchdog, we have little more than just a lapdog.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Lady is absolutely correct. The environmental protections that we have are essential. We cannot protect the environment inside national borders; it has to be done across national borders. We have to have the toughest possible environmental protection regulations, and the suspicion many of us have is that there is an appetite on the Government Benches to remove many of those protections as time goes on.

UK's Nuclear Deterrent

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 18th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend is well aware of what the policy was. He is also well aware that a policy review is being undertaken, and he is also well aware of the case that I am making for nuclear disarmament.

[Caroline Lucas]

As the right hon. Gentleman will know, a multilateral process is currently taking place at the United Nations. More than 130 countries are negotiating, in good faith, for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Government’s refusal even to attend, let alone take part in, that process raises serious questions about their commitment to a world without nuclear weapons?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I think it is a great shame that the Government do not attend those negotiations, and I wish they would. I thank them for attending the 2014 conference on the humanitarian effects of war, and I thank them for their participation in the non-proliferation treaty, but I think they should go and support the idea of a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons. No one in the House actually wants nuclear weapons. The debate is about how one gets rid of them, and the way in which one does it.

There are questions, too, about the operational utility of nuclear armed submarines. [Interruption.] I ask the Prime Minister again—or perhaps the Secretary of State for Defence can answer this question in his response—what assessment the Government have made of the impact of underwater drones, the surveillance of wave patterns and other advanced detection techniques that could make the submarine technology—[Interruption.]

ISIL in Syria

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The number of ground troops is, as my right hon. Friend says, unknown, and their composition is also unknown, but what we do know is that they are, by definition, opposition fighters: they are anti-Assad. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Prime Minister still has a question to answer about how we can work with them to retake ground from Daesh without becoming drawn into a wider conflict with Russia, given that they are on the other side?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

That is an important point. The hon. Lady has been very active in trying to promote peace and humanitarian resolutions to the many conflicts that exist around the world.

Fourthly, the Prime Minister has avoided spelling out to the British people the warnings that he has surely been given about the likely impact of UK air strikes in Syria on the threat of terrorist attacks in the UK. That is something that everyone who backs the Government’s motion should weigh and think about very carefully before we vote on whether or not to send RAF pilots into action over Syria.

It is critically important that we, as a House, are honest with the British people about the potential consequences of the action that the Prime Minister is proposing today. I am aware that there are those with military experience—Conservative as well as Labour Members—who have argued that extending UK bombing will

“increase the short-term risks of terrorist attacks in Britain.”

We should also remember the impact on communities here in Britain. Sadly, since the Paris attacks there has been a sharp increase in Islamophobic incidents and physical attacks. I have discussed them with people in my local mosque, in my constituency, and they are horrific. Surely this message must go out from all of us in the House today: none of us—we can say this together—will tolerate any form of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or racism in any form in this country.

In my view, the Prime Minister has offered no serious assessment of the impact of an intensified air campaign on civilian casualties in ISIL-held Syrian territory, or on the wider Syrian refugee crisis. At least 250,000 have already been killed in Syria’s terrible civil war, 11 million have been made homeless, and 4 million have been forced to leave the country. Many more have been killed by the Assad regime than by ISIL itself. Yet more bombing in Syria will kill innocent civilians—there is no doubt about that—and will turn many more Syrians into refugees.

Ukraine, Middle East, North Africa and Security

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this thoughtful debate. I will start my brief remarks with a reflection on Ukraine.

Russia is undoubtedly breaching international law and its previous commitment to non-interference in Ukraine’s affairs. I want to make it crystal clear that I condemn President Putin’s hostile actions and violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty. We do, however, have to understand better what is going on in that area if we are de-escalate the situation and find the solutions that we seek. Russia has long been suspicious of western intentions on its borders, and it fears encirclement. The history and culture of Ukraine and Russia are inextricably bound together. In this context, no Russian Government would coolly accept the drawing of Ukraine into the EU or NATO.

Extremely experienced and respected commentators and ex-diplomats, including Sir Roderic Braithwaite and Sir Brian Barder, have observed that the west has badly mishandled relations with both Ukraine and Moscow with irresponsible talk of EU and NATO membership. Members of the European Parliament will vote next week on whether to ratify the EU-UK association agreement. I think we should be deeply uneasy about actions and statements that suggest a wish to draw Ukraine into NATO or the EU at a time when that will only escalate tensions.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the hon. Lady agree that at the time of Ukraine’s independence at the end of the Soviet Union it became specifically a non-nuclear power, and specifically sought to be neutral-ish within the region and to pursue a peaceful course? Does she not think that that is something that we should have respected, and should respect now?

[Caroline Lucas]

I absolutely believe that that is at the heart of the problems that we are facing. The association agreement requires Ukraine to steadily approximate its legislation to that of the EU, a process to be monitored and even enforced by the EU. It sets up a political dialogue designed explicitly to

“promote gradual convergence on foreign and security matters with the aim of Ukraine’s ever-deeper involvement in the European security area.”

That is not compatible with what my hon. Friend has just described, namely the understanding and settlement for Ukraine in the past. I believe that at a time of such heightened tension, this agreement is inflammatory and divisive.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I support amendment 2, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), who made his case extremely well.

Surely the issue is simply this: Parliament is here to scrutinise what the Executive do and to try to represent public opinion. We need to take advice from the public, organisations, lobby groups and so on, but all I have managed to find was an interesting and quite useful briefing from Liberty that came in yesterday—all credit to Liberty for getting a reasonable briefing together in a very short time—and a series of articles in The Guardian and one or two other newspapers.

But this Bill has massive implications in relation to the ability of the state to dip in and out of people’s telephone and e-mail accounts. Because it takes on itself a global reach, it has huge implications all around the world. If we are to take the global reach to dip into e-mail accounts all around the world, what are we to do, as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said in an intervention, when an unpalatable regime decides to do the same and pitches up in a British court and says, “Well, you’ve taken these rights unto yourself. Why shouldn’t we do exactly the same?”? The implications of the Bill go a very long way indeed.

I am always suspicious when the House is summoned in an emergency and told, “This is an absolutely overriding, desperate emergency, so we’ve got to get this thing through all its stages in one day,” and Front Benchers from both sides of the House get together and agree that there is a huge national emergency. I am sorry, but what is the emergency?

There was a court decision some months ago, about which the Government have since done very little and made very few statements. There has apparently been an interesting debate between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative party in the coalition. In the interests of public scrutiny, we should be given the minutes of the discussion between the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister, and of all the sofa discussions that have no doubt taken place. I thought that sofa politics ended with new Labour, but apparently it still goes on in Downing street. We need to know the nature of that debate.

What is the objection to a sunset clause that would bring the—to me—very unpalatable Bill to a conclusion in six months’ time? Such a clause would at least give lawyers an opportunity to make a detailed case, and the Government an opportunity to explain their case a bit better. It would give the Home Affairs Committee a chance to discuss it, and the Joint Committee on Human Rights a chance to examine it, which we as Members of Parliament would also be able to do.

In an age of social media, it is interesting to see the numbers of people following the debate online and live. They are interested in social media, privacy and communication, and they all have views and opinions. I have no idea what all their views and opinions are. All I know is that as an individual Member of Parliament, I, like all colleagues in the Chamber, must vote on this piece of legislation without having had the chance to reflect or consult.

This is not a good day for Parliament. It is not a good advertisement for Parliament. It is not a good advertisement for democracy. The very least that we can do is to agree that this wrong-headed piece of legislation will expire by the end of this year and force the Government to come up with something more palatable, more carefully thought out and more sensible in respect of the protection of privacy and civil rights for all. That is why we were elected to Parliament. We should be given the opportunity to do our job, and should not have to lie down in front of a steamroller and accept something that we know in our hearts to be ill thought out and wrong.

[Caroline Lucas]

I spoke a lot in the debate earlier and was not going to speak again until my colleague, the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), reminded us of how this debate looks to the public outside this place.

As we have all said, this issue is of huge importance. Almost no issue that we deal with affects people as directly as their personal communications, and, therefore, is as sensitive. That is why it is so negative that we have given the impression that we simply do not care what people think. The public are pretty disengaged from MPs and Parliament, and do not have much respect for what goes on in this place. Today was an opportunity to begin to build bridges with them and to demonstrate that we can take these issues and their concerns seriously, and I feel so sad about the fact that Parliament seems to have flunked it. We have decided not to build bridges and have given the public the impression that we do not take ourselves seriously, so why should they take what we do in this place seriously?

Many arguments have been advanced on why it is not necessary to pass the Bill in such a short time. There is no serious argument that this is an emergency. If there were, it would have been dealt with three months ago. People can see through that. Their concerns and disillusionment with this Parliament will be redoubled by this process, instead of being addressed by it.

One reason why I support amendment 2 to the sunset clause is that it would rescue something from this unhappy state. If we at least said that over the coming months, we will do this piece of work properly and a review will happen, we could build some confidence among the public. As it is, I regret to say that we have lost yet more public confidence today, at a time when we can least afford to do so.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Later this evening, the House will divide over whether in principle this country should undertake military action in Syria. We will perhaps do justice to the suffering of the Syrian people if we first determine where, as a Parliament, we are at one.

I have no doubt that we are all united in complete condemnation of the deplorable chemical attacks on civilians in Damascus. The gut-wrenching images of those attacks are etched on all our minds as we sit here tonight. All of us seek an outcome that will bring peace and stability to the region. That much we can agree. It is also the case that this motion is less damaging than the one we were originally led to believe we would be debating. That is a tribute to the fact that Back-Bench and Opposition MPs can make a difference. To that extent, this is a good day for Parliament and for public pressure. It is clear to me that those things have helped to force the Government to think twice about their way forward on Syria.

I welcome the fact that this motion recognises that to have proceeded with a military attack as the UN weapons inspectors were still visiting the sites of the alleged chemical weapons assault would have been preposterous. It beggared belief that, once again, we could have been about to embark on military engagement, without apparently having learned any of the lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan. By seeking to pre-empt the outcome of the inspectors’ work, we would also have increased the likelihood that further requests for access by weapons inspectors would be denied; they would be regarded simply as a ploy for subsequent military action, regardless of the findings. As Hans Blix pointed out earlier this week:

“If the aim is to stop the breach of international law and to keep the lid on others with chemical weapons, military action without first waiting for the UN inspector report is not the way to go about it.”

Although I am pleased that the Government’s motion now accepts that we must wait for the inspectors’ reports, I am deeply concerned at their cavalier treatment of international law and I completely reject their drive towards military action. On the legal question, both the US and our Government are indicating that they are prepared to act against Syria without a UN mandate. For all that the Government’s motion talks of making “every effort” to ensure a Security Council resolution, the bottom line appears to be that they are happy to proceed without one.

We are told that intervention could be legally justified without a Security Council resolution under the UN’s responsibility to protect, but the 2005 UN world summit outcome document, in which the Heads of State unanimously approved the new international norm of the responsibility to protect, subsequently approved by UN Security Council resolution 1674, states clearly that it is still subject to UN Security Council agreement. Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who co-chaired a working group on the responsibility to protect, again stressed that it is to be implemented in accordance with the UN charter. That means that the central decision-making authority is the UN Security Council. The conclusion from all this is clearly, if inconveniently for the Government, that military action against a sovereign state, other than in self-defence, without the authority of the Security Council cannot be justified under the responsibility to protect. On that issue the Labour amendment is also, unfortunately, very weak; it regards international law as an inconvenience. That makes it all the more important that our deliberations today are informed by all the relevant information and based on sound legal grounding.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the Government’s position would be far stronger if instead of coming here proposing military action, they had come here to tell us that they were having serious discussions with the new Government in Iran and a new round of talks with Russia, and that they were trying to build a consensus in the region to bring about what must happen at some point—a political solution to this crisis?

[Caroline Lucas]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman. As he rightly highlights, we have an opportunity now with the new regime in Iran and we should be responding to a more moderate leader there, yet by going ahead and giving a signal that military action is the direction in which we are heading, we absolutely undermine the authority of that new leader in Iran.

I was making the case that we should have seen the Attorney-General’s full legal opinion and that this one-and-a-half-side summary is simply unacceptable. While I am on the subject of further pieces of information that could have usefully informed this debate, I wish to refer hon. Members again to the Chilcot report—that missing report which has gone absent without leave. It is unacceptable that, yet again, many people are talking about the importance of the legacy of Iraq and we do not have that document, which would have given us the lessons to be learnt.

Iraq War (10th Anniversary)

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I can only ask why, then, did we not give Hans Blix more time? I, too, have met Hans Blix and I, too, have heard him say that were the weapons inspectors given more time, they could have established the answer without the bloody war that happened.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady recall that the weapons inspectors were not allowed to go back to Iraq because of the decision of the British and US Governments in January 2003?

[Caroline Lucas]

I absolutely recall that and I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It was in the interests of this country for the weapons inspectors not to go back into Iraq so that the Government could make that case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but I will move on.

I want to talk about the former Member for Livingston, Robin Cook. Reading his resignation speech makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, because it is all there: the reasons why the war was unnecessary and unjustified, the critique of the Government’s position and the exposure of the misinformation and deceit. It was delivered with eloquence and with the authority and credibility of a former Foreign Secretary and member of the 2003 Cabinet. Yet his warnings were heeded only by the 23% of MPs who voted to oppose the war. How could that happen?

The right hon. Member for Blackburn said earlier that the transcript of what Chirac had said was in the public domain, and that is precisely my point. Given that the evidence was there, how is it that more MPs did not come to a different conclusion? The answer, which I will make in greater detail later in my speech, is that they were whipped massively through a system in this House that means they give up their responsibility to make their own decisions. My point is that that kind of whipping on a vote of such importance and conscience is not the right way forward.

There are many potential explanations for why Robin Cook’s warnings were heeded by so few, but most come down to the idea that Members perhaps trusted the view that there was a subplot to the invasion that the Government could not be open about, that perhaps the Government knew much more about the risk Saddam posed to the UK than they were able to say, and that perhaps the conditions were right for establishing Iraq as a democratic, pro-western state. In some cases, Members were taken to one side and given off-the-record briefings.

But I think that the answer is much more simple: too many Members put loyalty to their leader and to their party above their own judgment. They swallowed their private doubts, accepted what they were told and voted accordingly. That misplaced trust crossed party lines. It is deeply regrettable that the tradition of loyalty meant that hon. Members such as Robin Cook were not heard. It is also regrettable that the Tory leadership supported the war so unquestioningly. Perhaps there was a feeling that that level of deceit was simply inconceivable when it came to an issue as serious as war. Yet now we know that it was not.

Returning to the “If I had known then what I know now” defence and looking to the future, we can perhaps conclude thus: no Member of this House should ever take on trust the case for war. They must listen to all sides with open minds, even to the refuseniks and the usual suspects in case this time they might just be on to something. They must look at the sources themselves and ask themselves and their leaders the tough questions: is there an alternative, and what if it goes wrong? There is plenty more evidence of the fact that there was material in the public domain that should have enabled more hon. Members to make a more informed decision.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the hon. Lady not agree, then, that one lesson we can learn, and perhaps agree on in this debate, is the need for a war powers Act that would mean Parliament must be consulted and must vote specifically on any military action undertaken on our behalf?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I could do no better than echo the words of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) about Iain Banks. He was a great writer and a great supporter of the Stop the War coalition, of which I am the current chair, and he gave enormous political, practical and financial support to the anti-war movement. We thank him for that, and for all the other great things he achieved during his life.

This debate falls 10 years on from that desperate, fateful time when this country went to war with Iraq. I remember the debate on that here as if it were yesterday. The Chamber was full. We were told there was an ever-present threat from weapons of mass destruction. We were told that there were nuclear weapons and yellowcake, and all the other canards were brought up throughout that debate, and at the same time there was a massive whipping operation going on all around the Chamber. I have to say that I was totally unaffected by that whipping operation—it seemed to pass me by completely—but I observed it going on in dark corners around this building.

It was a shameful day for Parliament, and it was a shameful day for the whole political system in this country. Outside in Parliament square, there were thousands of people. They thought, naively perhaps, that they would be listened to. Some 1 million and more had marched in central London—maybe 2 million were on the streets of London that day—and 600 demonstrations on every continent of the world, including Antarctica, had been held a month before, and the opinion polls all showed that there was no support for this war against Iraq. They thought that Parliament would reflect their views and their wishes.

The vote that day in which Parliament, sadly, endorsed going to war not only did enormous damage to Parliament, but did enormous damage and a disservice to a whole generation, because they had put their hopes in the political process to carry out their wishes and it did not do so. That engendered cynicism and we are still dealing today in many ways with the legacy of the war in this country. Let me deal first with the role of Parliament.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) was correct. Up until the Iraq war, taking this country to war at any time was completely a matter of the royal prerogative exercised by the Prime Minister. That royal prerogative remains in operation. A number of us, particularly my hon. Friend, argued strongly that we should have a vote in Parliament on the war—previously, only procedural votes had been possible. Eventually the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, agreed that there could be vote, although I think it was a matter of self-interest on his part: he wanted to share the responsibility and the burden. We were pleased to have the opportunity to vote against the war, and I suspect he was pleased to have the opportunity to get a lot of MPs through the Lobby in support of his view.

Some people think that whipping, lobbying and pressure are the only things that matter in politics, but, quite honestly, we are sent here as representatives of our constituencies; we all have a conscience that we have to live with and decisions that we have to take. At the end of the day, an MP cannot blame anyone else; it is his or her own decision and vote, and the record will stand. I think our constituents understand that, but the very least we can do in recognition of what happened then is, first, in the immediate future, ensure that we have a vote before any arms are sent to Syria; and secondly, ensure that we have a proper war powers Act, so that Parliament must vote before British troops are deployed.

[Caroline Lucas]

rose—

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I will give way to my friend, if I may call her that, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). I congratulate her on her absolutely excellent speech and on securing the debate. As a fellow officer of the Stop the War coalition, I can hardly not give way to her.

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman is making a wonderful speech, as we knew he would. He spoke just now about the importance of having a vote before war. Does he agree with me that it should be a free vote—that we need to be voting from our conscience, not from the Whips’ list?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Absolutely. On something so fundamental as the deployment of armed forces, a free vote is the right thing to do. Many have said it is easy to send other people’s sons and daughters off to die and then hide behind a veneer of party loyalty, but the issue is much bigger than that.

Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I agree with the thrust of the hon. Lady’s speech. Does she accept that one problem with the secret courts process is that it would create a culture of impunity among the security services and allow them to develop relationships with other security services knowing that they would be protected and would be unlikely ever to have to face anybody’s wrath?

[Caroline Lucas]

Indeed, and I pointed out earlier the complicity of the intelligence services. Such arguments are mounting up, and they explain why opponents are lining up to denounce the Government’s proposals for closed material procedures. The special advocates have called them “fundamentally unfair”, and the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, has warned that secret courts will

“damage public confidence in our judiciary”

and are

“not fair because they are not balanced”.

The Law Society and the Bar Council have warned:

“Secret trials and non-disclosure of evidence are potential characteristics of repressive regimes and undemocratic societies.”

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has published expert legal advice finding that secret courts are

“incompatible with the common law right to a fair trial”

and

“incompatible with article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights”.

Foreign Affairs and International Development

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I am pleased to hear that, because at the moment it feels like there is real tension in the Government about where climate change sits, as the Chancellor clearly sees it as an obstacle to his economic development plans and there is not much of a fight back.

The absence of such matters in the Queen’s Speech is a tragedy, because there are so many opportunities to pursue a green agenda at the same time as pursuing jobs and a stable economy. Indeed, by investing in a green economy, which is far more labour-intensive than the fossil fuel economy it replaces, we can get those jobs and get the economy stable again.

Hon. Members will know that climate change is already affecting many of the poorest communities around the world, undermining their livelihoods through changes in temperature and rainfall patterns and through the increased frequency and intensity of floods and droughts. It has been estimated that climate change is already responsible for about 300,000 deaths a year and is affecting 300 million people, according to the first comprehensive study of the human impact of global warming from Kofi Annan’s Global Humanitarian Forum.

Although the impacts of climate change will fall disproportionately on the global south, this argument is not just about poorer people in far flung places. Increasingly, extreme weather events are happening much closer to home as well, such as the 2007 floods in Britain, which saw the largest ever civil emergency response since the second world war. From our riverside location at Westminster, we should perhaps take comfort from the fact that the Thames barrier is being prepared to cope with the sea level rise of 1.9 metres that is being projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the full range of its climate scenarios. Frankly, I am alarmed that we are having to consider such a sea level rise and that such measures are not being planned elsewhere.

The truth is that growing recognition of climate change as a serious threat to our national security, our economy and international development is not resulting in commensurate action domestically or internationally. What in the Queen’s Speech could help us? The new energy Bill, if it were significantly more ambitious than proposed, could play a role. Investment in major power infrastructure today will be with us for decades to come, but there is a real risk that rather than the “secure, clean and affordable” electricity system that we have been promised by the Government, we are more likely to end up with an insecure, dirty and expensive one. To avoid that, we need four crucial elements to be introduced into the electricity market reform proposals.

First, and most importantly, the energy Bill must contain a clear and absolute commitment to decarbonising electricity generation by 2030. That is not a radical green proposal, but is based on the advice from the Committee on Climate Change. I hope that the Prime Minister will ensure that that happens, given his own explanation of the crucial role of the committee. He said that it exists to

“take the politics out of climate change and show our intention to get to grips with the problem.”

Here is a perfect opportunity for him to demonstrate exactly that.

The second thing missing from the EMR proposals to date is the vast untapped potential of energy saving. We could argue all night about the various costs of low-carbon technologies, but I think that those on both sides of the House would agree that it is often a lot cheaper to save energy in the first place. The energy Bill must therefore introduce mechanisms to equalise support for demand reduction and energy saving, such as a feed-in tariff for energy efficiency. That should be the priority, not planning to subsidise EDF’s nuclear-generated electricity to the tune of £115 per megawatt hour. That is the level of subsidy that would be necessary based on EDF’s recent announcement of a new £7 billion price tag per nuclear power station. Let us remember too that subsidising nuclear power would fly in the face of the coalition’s promise not to provide taxpayer subsidy for nuclear. As the City analyst Peter Atherton has succinctly concluded, the only way that new nuclear could be built is

“if the construction risk was transferred to the taxpayer”.

I am extremely concerned that that is exactly what the Government will try to do.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Lady makes a very important point about the costs of new nuclear power stations that are subsidised by the public, but does she not also acknowledge that decommissioning costs often fall heavily on the public purse and are an enormous hidden subsidy to the nuclear industry?

[Caroline Lucas]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman and that is yet another hidden cost of nuclear. It is not expressed up front and therefore when comparisons are made between different energy sources the price of nuclear, which would be a lot more expensive if the truth were told, is artificially deflated.

Like nuclear, an obsession with gas is another expensive distraction from a decisive and rapid shift to an efficient sustainable power system. The Chancellor has said that gas is cheap, but he is wrong. It might have been cheap 10 years ago but it certainly is not today. His Government’s own figures show that gas has been the main cause of higher energy bills over recent years and organisations such as Ofgem are all saying that gas prices are likely to continue to rise. Yes, gas can be a bridging technology and play a role in meeting peak demand, but the energy Bill must categorically rule out a new dash for gas both to keep energy costs for householders and businesses down and to meet carbon targets.

A strong emissions performance standard is essential, yet what we have so far from the Government is utterly inadequate. The Committee on Climate Change has also warned that allowing unabated gas-fired generation, as this Government plan, from new plant right through to 2045, carries a huge risk that there will be far too much gas-fired generation at the expense of low-carbon investment.

With fracking, huge questions remain over the impacts on groundwater pollution, health and air pollution, as well as earthquakes. Moreover, evidence from the Tyndall Centre indicates that the exploitation of even just a fraction of the UK’s shale gas reserves would simply be incompatible with tackling climate change.

Trident

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The Minister shakes his head. It is his head, and he is allowed to shake it, but I hope that when he replies, he will be able to explain why Parliament has not been consulted on spending £2 billion on the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston. If my figures are wrong, I am sure that he will put them right—that is the whole point of a parliamentary debate and of parliamentary scrutiny.

As I have said, the new figures announced this year for spending on replacing Trident are going up. The submarine will cost around £4 billion before the construction decision. As I understand it, it will cost £900 million on the concept phase before initial gate, which is from 2007 to 2011; £3 billion on the assessment phase between initial gate and main gate; and £500 million on long-lead items for construction. That will put the cost of the submarine replacement programme prior to main gate somewhat higher than what was spent on the Nimrod programme, which was cancelled in October 2010 after £3.4 billion had been spent on it.

Quite simply, we are moving to an enormous expenditure before a parliamentary vote in, presumably, 2016 or whenever, when all of us might still be Members of Parliament—or when none of us are. There will be a new Parliament, and a different Parliament will make that decision. I could write the speech for the Minister or his successor now. It will say, “We do not want to do it, and we do not like it. It is not good, but we have already spent so much money that it would be a shame to waste it.”

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the eye-watering figures that he is describing are of concern not only to some of the CND stalwarts in the Chamber today—myself included—but to those who care about the MOD’s equipment budget, given that all that will amount to around 30% of the budget over the 2020s?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her point. Not only is she a CND stalwart, but she has great responsibility, for she is a member of the CND national council, as I am. I am pleased that she is a member as well. She is quite right—many in the defence community express horror at equipment shortages of all sorts, the privatisation of air and sea rescue, and all those kinds of things that are planned, while at the same time someone is going ahead and planning to spend and spend on replacing Trident, a massive vanity project; that is what it is. It does not seem to bear any relation to any foreign policy strategy or to British membership of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which requires clearly under article 6 that the five permanent members of the Security Council, which are also the five declared nuclear weapon states, take steps towards nuclear disarmament. Britain is not taking steps towards nuclear disarmament—it is reducing the number of warheads, but the capability is to be increased. Any Government, whether this one or a future one, could increase the number of warheads.

When the National Audit Office looked at the matter recently, in November this year, it cited problems with the Astute class submarines currently being built. They are now expected to cost £6.67 billion, a full £1.47 billion more than anticipated when the project was approved. Apparently, it is also running five years and one month late. Also, a report, “Looking into the Black Hole”, states that

“spending on the successor programme will rise sharply, probably reaching a peak of around 30% of the new equipment budget by 2021-22 or 2022-23”—

exactly the point made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas)—

“when the first-of-class begins production. It is likely to remain close to this level until after the planned delivery of the first submarine in 2028.”

I want to turn to the issue of transparency—

UK Extradition Arrangements

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on taking up this case and on what she is saying. Does she agree that if Babar Ahmad were to face trial in this country, it is likely that the case would collapse because of the way he has been treated, the conditions under which he has been held and the nature of the accusations that have been made against him throughout?

[Caroline Lucas]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I was explaining that Babar wants to stand trial here partly because he is a British citizen and partly because going to the US would separate him from his family, friends, and legal representatives, which would seriously undermine his ability to mount a strong defence.

Interestingly, I have seen extracts from the European Court interim decision on the cases of Babar and Talha. In paragraph 175, it is clear that the European Court has had from the UK Government an acknowledgement that they could be tried here, which runs counter to what is generally asserted. Moreover, Babar’s lawyers also point out that other comparable prosecutions are proceeding in the UK. Nevertheless, in July 2004 and December 2006, the CPS and the Attorney-General declared that there was insufficient evident to charge Babar Ahmad with any criminal offence under UK law and that he should therefore be extradited.

If it is agreed today that there should be a Bill and a new approach, it would be even more essential for there to be new prosecutorial decisions in these very disturbing cases. In Babar Ahmad’s case, it is my understanding that his lawyers are requesting a new prosecutorial decision on the basis that there has not been a proper one to date. That should mean that the changes that we are calling for today need not be retrospective but, rather, current in relation to these new prosecutorial decisions. Those decisions are needed because of these very disturbing cases in which it is clear that things have gone wrong.

The night before the debate on extradition in Westminster Hall, there was a shocking turn of events. Babar’s lawyers received a letter from the CPS that admitted for the first time that it was never given the evidence that was sent to the US, apart from a few documents. The bulk of the evidence was shipped straight to the US by the police. Astoundingly, although we had previously been led to believe that the CPS had viewed all the evidence and judged it insufficient to bring the case to trial in the UK, we now have a confession that it had not even seen all the evidence let alone investigated it properly. Quite simply, a proper decision has not been made on whether a prosecution can go ahead in the UK. That is shocking and it raises serious questions about why evidence that should have been given to the CPS was not and why Babar was not told about it. Who directed and authorised that circumvention of the CPS, apparently in deference to and at the behest of the US? Given the seriousness of what the CPS has told Babar Ahmad’s lawyers, we need not just new prosecutorial decisions but a full public inquiry into what has gone on in this case.

The second major failure of prosecutors relates to human rights. Decisions to prosecute or not to prosecute here should not be relinquished so easily in favour of the US. There are grave human rights implications that have not been properly taken into account. In these cases over whether and where to prosecute and whether to extradite, it is incredibly important for us to understand that the police, the CPS, the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Attorney-General’s office are all bound to consider the implications of the Human Rights Act 1998 in relation to every one of their decisions. That means that it is extremely relevant that concern has already been expressed, both by the courts here and now by the European Court, that the human rights issues that lie at the heart of the ongoing consideration in Strasbourg clearly never even formed part of the CPS’s original decision in Babar’s case and that the evidence was almost immediately conveyed to the US.

That in itself demonstrates that there has been a failure in the fundamental duty of prosecutors, which has not been adequately addressed to date. We cannot and should not tell the CPS who to prosecute, but we can and we should tell it to do its job properly and to insist on it receiving and properly reviewing all the UK evidence.

Let me say a little more about the significance of the current role of the European Court in Babar’s case. The European Court of Human Rights has been wrestling with fundamental issues that relate not just to Babar Ahmad’s case but to many others for the past four years. The final decision is expected imminently. The European Court has been considering two key issues: whether the use of extreme isolation for prisoners in prisons in the US before trial and post-trial amounts to a violation of article 3 of the European convention on human rights—the article prohibiting torture—and whether the length of sentences in the US, in particular the imposition of life imprisonment without parole or of 80 to 100 years, also violates article 3 of the convention. Whether or not the European Court finds for the applicants, in which case the UK cannot extradite them as long as those two potential fates await them, it is shocking that things have come to this. Courts here and the court in Europe have expressed their concern that what faces UK citizens if they are extradited to the US in a number of cases might arguably constitute what the law defines as torture.

These cases raise, in the most fundamental way, a convergence of issues between whether these men should be prosecuted here and the extreme consequence of what would happen to them if they were extradited to the US. Now we have today’s debate. It is a matter of weeks before we hear the result of four years of anxious scrutiny by the European Court of Babar’s case. I ask hon. Members to support the motion that has been tabled today because it is a crucial opportunity for us to send a clear message to say that the extradition laws in this country need to be radically reformed. If we do not do that, we are failing in our most basic duty of protecting British citizens. That is why it is so significant that there has been huge Back-Bench support for this motion, and I hope that it will be demonstrated when it comes to a vote—if it does—later tonight.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I want to speak briefly in favour of new clause 7 on annual reviews, but only because it is the least worst option on the table. It is deeply concerning that, despite pre-election promises and having voted in the past against the massively controversial and now, I would argue, totally discredited control order regime, the coalition Government are trying to push through a Bill that in so many respects simply rebrands the very worst aspects of that failed regime. Despite the spin that was put out when the Bill was presented, it contains the same fundamental mechanism of detention. Restrictions on a terrorist suspect while further investigations continue will in many circumstances be reasonable and in the public interest, but what is so offensive about control orders and their close relatives, TPIMs, is that both are imposed by the Executive, not by a court. The continuation of a system of Government detention entirely outside the rule of law is neither effective nor just, and that is why I hope that, as the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said, we can make these annual reviews more rigorous. Perhaps we can use them in the way I imagine people on control orders hope they will be used: for proper, rigorous scrutiny.

Today, I was in the same room as the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and I, too, heard from somebody on a control order. I heard some shocking stories, and not just about that person waiting to sign in at a police station and being deemed to be two minutes late and therefore, supposedly, in breach of a control order. There were even more ridiculous accounts. People are being written to because they have not kept properly clean the flat in which they are supposed to be in internal detention. All kinds of ridiculous methods are being used to misuse the kind of tools being put before us today. That is why, at the very least, we need the option of an annual review.

Everyone agrees that public safety requires that terrorists be held in prison, but let us not forget that this regime is about terrorist suspects, some of whom will be entirely innocent—as, indeed, was the gentleman we spoke to today. So, when considering these matters, which are central both to our security and to our core democratic values, it is critical to remember that the concern is not whether we would like to see terrorists subject to punitive restrictions, but whether we want a system that allows innocent people to be treated outside the rule of law. It is not the action of a democratic state to hold someone without telling them what they are charged with. That is the definition of a living hell: to hold someone without telling them what the evidence against them is, leaving them with no opportunity to defend themselves. The many past miscarriages of justice should weigh heavily on our consideration of these matters.

I am disappointed that the amendments I co-signed with the hon. Member for Cambridge, on police bail, were not selected for debate. I realise that I cannot now debate them, but I would simply say that public safety is best assured when suspects are charged with a crime and, if found guilty, imprisoned, rather than left in the community to abscond—as a number of controlees have done—or, crucially, to act as an advertisement for extremism because the regime is so unjust and impacts not just upon them but on their families and communities. Police bail would have enabled us to get away from that and properly to investigate people who are suspected of a crime, rather than leaving them in this no-man’s land, which discredits us enormously as a country.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I had not planned to speak in this section of the debate, but I was moved to do so by the eloquence of many of the contributions to it. We are debating TPIMs versus control orders, and the House will have heard in my intervention on the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) that I do not see a whole lot of difference between their underlying principles. I do not welcome TPIMs any more than I welcome control orders. I voted against control orders in the last Parliament and will continue to do so in this Parliament—and against TPIMs—for much the same reasons as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has eloquently explained to the House.

We are getting into a debate about sunset clauses versus a review. I would prefer a sunset clause on the Bill; indeed, any special legislation should automatically have a very short sunset clause attached to it as a matter of course. We are passing major legislation that has a huge effect on the civil liberties of everybody. However, if we cannot have that—I do support the Opposition Front Benchers in this respect—we should at least have a 12-month review.

One has to remember the atmosphere in this House in which we considered the question of special legislation. The Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974 was passed after the Birmingham pub bombings. They were appalling, they were disgraceful, and in that fevered atmosphere the House passed that Act, which it renewed at six-monthly intervals for a very long time. The only time when anti-terrorism legislation was passed in an atmosphere of relative calm was in 2000. All other such Acts were passed in respect of some awful event somewhere. At those times, the House met in a fevered atmosphere and said that it was important that, because of the nature of what had happened—be it 9/11, 7/7, Canary Wharf or any of a host of appalling incidents around the world or in this country—we had to pass the legislation because it would deal with the problem.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that the only part of my notes that is from the briefing from the NUT, much as I respect it, is the reference to the particular school I mentioned. I have made it very clear that even if that practice is not carrying on at that school, the wider point remains that it could carry on in any academy at any time because there is absolutely no protection in the Bill to prevent sponsors from imposing on schools any particular educational direction that they choose. That is deeply worrying and that is why there is, for the moment, a need for the national curriculum as a protection against that kind of utter and complete deregulation.

In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question about whether the freeing of academies from the national curriculum has been a positive thing, there is no overall evidence that academies perform better than other schools. Where academies have done better, it is often because they have managed to exclude more children and to use a different kind of curriculum by choosing from within the curriculum the subjects to pursue—possibly less rigorous ones academically. There is no educational argument in favour of academies—even those under the previous Government’s proposals. The Green party and I were not in favour of academies under the previous Government and we are even less in favour of them under this Government, because it is quite clear that they are going in the wrong direction.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I am sorry that I missed part of the hon. Lady’s speech. Will she confirm that removing academies from the ambit of the national curriculum, as the Bill suggests, will restrict the career and life choices of those students who might leave those schools under-educated and not having been exposed at all to certain subjects?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his wise observation. He is exactly right. If children are put into particular training perspectives very early on, the wider set of possibilities and potential that could have been available to them will no longer exist if they have only the particularly narrow kind of education that the sponsors of academies often seem to pursue. I thank all hon. Members who have intervened and I stand by my amendment.