Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Debate between Chris Williamson and Jeremy Corbyn

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

This is the third time during my lifetime in Parliament that I have been asked to vote to invade or bomb Iraq. I have voted against on previous occasions, and I will not support the motion today. I ask the House to think a little more deeply about what we have done in the past and what the effects have been. We have still not even had the results of the Chilcot inquiry.

The current crisis descends from the war on terror, the ramifications of which have been vast military expenditure by western countries and the growth of jihadist forces in many parts of the world. Many people have lost their lives, and many more have had their lives totally disrupted and are fleeing warzones to try to gain a place of safety. Only two weeks ago, it was reported that 500 migrants had died trying to cross the Mediterranean to get into Malta, and many die every day trying to get to Lampedusa. Many of those people are victims of wars throughout the region for which we in this House have voted, be it the bombing of Iraq, the bombing of Libya, the intervention in Mali or the earlier intervention in Afghanistan.

We need to give a moment’s thought to where the problems come from. The growth of the Taliban came from 1979, when the west decided to support the opposition in Afghanistan. The Taliban morphed into al-Qaeda, which then morphed into various other forces in Africa, particularly in Nigeria, and of course into the current group, ISIL. That is an absolutely appalling group of people—there is no question whatever about that. Their behaviour, with the beheading and abuse of people, is quite appalling.

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend comment on the argument that the air strikes have so far prevented the expansion of ISIL forces? Would more air strikes go further in preventing ISIL from taking more ground?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The air strikes have had some effect, but I do not believe that further air strikes and the deepening of our involvement will solve the problem. I will come to that in a moment, if I may.

We are right to talk about ISIL’s appalling human rights record, but we should be careful with whom we walk. The Prime Minister pointed out that there had been a ministerial visit to Saudi Arabia to get it on side in the current conflict. We sell an awful lot of arms to Saudi Arabia, and there is an awful lot of Saudi money in London in property speculation and various other investments. Saudi Arabia routinely beheads people in public every Friday, executing them for sex outside marriage, religious conversion and a whole lot of other things, but we have very little to say about human rights abuses there because of the economic link with Saudi Arabia. If we are to go to war on the basis of abuses of human rights, we should have some degree of consistency in our approach.

One should be cautious of the idea that bombing will be cost-free and effective. There was a military attack in Tikrit on 1 September, as reported by Human Rights Watch. It was an attempt to strike at a supposed ISIL base of some sort in a school. It resulted in 31 people being killed, none of whom was involved in ISIL, which was nowhere near. We will get more of that.

I believe that the motion that we are being asked to support will lead us into one war after another. There has to be a political solution and political development in the region. I have had a lot of e-mails on the subject, including one this morning from a lady aged 91 that said, “War begets violence, which begets the next war.” We need to take a different stance.

Housing

Debate between Chris Williamson and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 5th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

This is an important and timely debate. Time prevents me from commenting on each of the contributions we have heard—there have been some excellent ones—but I shall pick out one or two. My right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) effectively debunked the Government’s flamboyant use of statistics and demolished the claims made about the benefits of the new homes bonus.

I welcome the Housing Minister for the second time today. He clearly has an extremely big job to do. We have not seen a failure to deliver on this scale since another Tory-Liberal Government failed to deliver on their promise to build homes fit for heroes for the families of soldiers returning from the horrors of the first world war.

Conservative Members used to talk about a property-owning democracy, but many would-be home owners are now trapped in private rented accommodation, paying extremely high rents and unable to build up the very high deposits necessary to secure a mortgage. Nowadays Members on the other side of the House talk about “an affordable housing revolution”, but they are presiding over the disintegration of affordable housing as we know it.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Is my hon. Friend aware that in constituencies such as mine a third of the population are living in private rented accommodation, both those in and out of work, are being denied sufficient housing benefit to pay the rent and are being socially decanted out of central London? That is destructive to communities and to family life. Does he agree that the Government have simply got it wrong on housing benefit?

[Chris Williamson]

The Government have absolutely got it wrong, and it is a complete scandal. If we are to have balanced communities, we need to create a situation in which people in different places on the income scale can live in the same community. What the Government are doing is completely wrong.

We have seen a massive fall in affordable home starts and a catastrophic collapse in social housing starts. When I was first elected, I was a member of the Communities and Local Government Committee, and I well remember the ministerial team coming before the Committee. The then Minister for Housing said:

“We believe in house building; we believe we’ve got a better way to get houses built. The idea is to get a system which delivers housing in this country.”

The Secretary of State chipped in, adding:

“And homes that people want to live in so kids can play in the streets and people come home with some pride.”

But they have totally failed to deliver on all the rhetoric on that day and since.

In her contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) touched on the fact that the Government are failing to deliver. Indeed, every one of the plethora of new initiatives announced by the Government has been an utter failure. As my hon. Friend the shadow Minister for Housing pointed out, in the month following the introduction of the NPPF, planning approvals fell by 37%, which accompanied the loss of 180,000 planning approvals as a result of the meddling in the planning rules by the Secretary of State when he first came to office. That puts into context the cavalier way in which the Government have addressed the whole issue of delivering decent housing.

The Government’s definition of “affordable housing” means that it is not even affordable to large numbers of people. Indeed, the ministerial announcements that we are seeing on various new housing initiatives would not have been out of place if they had appeared in George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” as the product of the Ministry of Truth. Perhaps we should rename the Department for Communities and Local Government.

The reason we face this massive housing crisis today is the abject failure of the coalition parties’ economic plan. They have cut housing investment at precisely the wrong time and, as a consequence, the construction industry is on its knees. It is a very labour-intensive industry and it could create huge numbers of jobs. Moreover, 80% of the products on a building site are procured from inside the United Kingdom. Construction is an engine for economic growth.

Housing (London)

Debate between Chris Williamson and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Chris Williamson]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. It is not really the business of housing associations to build luxury multi-million pound accommodation. Their whole raison d’être should be to provide affordable housing, which is why they came into being in the first place. They have lost sight of their original purpose when they start engaging in market-led developments, such as the one that my hon. Friend has mentioned.

I referred earlier to the difficulties that people have in raising deposits, and I have seen figures that suggest that it takes more than 14 years on average for someone to save for a deposit, assuming that they can keep pace with house price inflation. It is completely wrong that people are forced to rely on relatives to get a foot on the housing ladder, because it disfranchises tens of thousands of people in London whose families do not have the wherewithal to provide them with the deposits needed to purchase the houses that they aspire to own.

The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) said, I think, that the economic background was one of the reasons why the Government had made some of their decisions on housing and cutbacks. I assume that he was referring to the finance that has been made available for housing and the cuts being made in housing benefit. I disagree with him, because it is really important that the Government seek to invest in the housing market and in providing houses, because that is a way of addressing the very problems that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. Using the construction industry is an excellent way of assisting a private sector-led economic recovery. Most of what is procured for the construction industry is sourced from the UK, which provides a huge number of jobs in areas where housing construction and other building is taking place. It is mistaken to suggest that the economic circumstances that the country faces in some way justify the cutbacks in housing.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to delays in planning, and I agree that more needs to be done in that regard. I am concerned, however, that proposals in the Localism Bill might add delays, or will certainly make it more difficult in many circumstances to provide the houses that people desperately require.

It seems to me that the biggest reason for this housing crisis in the capital is an obsession that can be traced back to the early 1980s and the introduction of the right to buy, with its emphasis on a personal subsidy rather than a subsidy on bricks and mortar. That was almost inevitably going to end in tears, which is where we are today. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North pointed out, many landlords—I accept that it is not all of them—have sought to exploit the housing benefit system and to maximise rents. That has led to rents in the private rented sector going up and up to a point at which the Government—the same Government who introduced the obsession with personal subsidies in the first place—are now reining in those subsidies and forcing the poorest people and those on middle incomes in the city to bear the burden for their policy mistake, which can be traced back 30 years.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Is my hon. Friend also aware that those who live in private rented accommodation not only pay high rents and often a large deposit, but often pay much higher heating costs, because the energy efficiency of the housing is so low? In addition, repairs are often so poor and incompetent that tenants end up paying for repairs themselves out of sheer desperation, in order to live somewhere reasonable. We need a much tougher regulatory regime for private rented accommodation.

[Chris Williamson]

I could not agree more, because my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Again, research has demonstrated that the private rented sector is far and away the worst in terms of providing adequately insulated accommodation. That adds to the burden of people living in such accommodation, obviously, but it also has significant environmental implications for our cross-party commitment to reduce carbon emissions and address climate change. The private rented sector clearly has a big part to play. My hon. Friend has made a forceful point and has provided another reason why more must be done to regulate the private rented sector.

In conclusion, I return to the importance of investing in housing and of a bricks and mortar subsidy rather than a personal subsidy. We should be seeking to turn the juggernaut around and emphasising building new houses and providing subsidy for affordable housing in London in order to supply the homes that people desperately require. That would provide a huge economic stimulus and create many jobs for local people as well as, most importantly, homes.

Good quality homes would also have huge implications for educational outcomes for the many people living in overcrowded circumstances who would be able to move into more appropriate accommodation. Again, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North made that point. We could also address the health of people in inadequate housing by investing more in providing more and better affordable housing. Crime and antisocial behaviour would be reduced, because people would be living in better circumstances rather than being forced out on to the streets in the evening, where young people get into mischief. It would certainly make a big difference to the quality of personal and family life, which would have a massive, beneficial knock-on effect on the wider community.