Covid-19

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank our armed forces from the bottom of my heart. I very much share in what my hon. Friend has just said. They have played an outstanding role throughout this pandemic—where necessary, moving patients to hospital from remote places, conducting testing, and now having a big role with the vaccines as well. I am sure, like every other part of the public sector, they will be considered by the JCVI as it comes to make its decisions about the allocation of the vaccine.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab) [V]]

The Prime Minister will be aware that, as school lessons move online, the cost of pay-as-you-go broadband is completely prohibitive for poor families in areas such as Hackney. He is talking about coming to cut-price arrangements, but what so many families need is access to free broadband—an excellent policy, which was in Labour’s 2019 manifesto. No child should be deprived of an education because their parents cannot afford the broadband cost, so will he look again at providing free broadband when it comes to accessing online education?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, indeed, but I think the arrangements that are being put in place by the mobile phone companies and others will cover the vast bulk of the cost, at the very least. I am happy to come back to the right hon. Lady about exactly what is being offered.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Diane Abbott Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab) [V]]

In over 30 years in this House, this is the most important and consequential piece of legislation on British-EU relations that I have taken part in. Let me say at the beginning that I will not be voting for this Tory Brexit deal today, but that is not because I do not respect the result of the 2016 referendum.

I think I have rather good Eurosceptic credentials. I voted against the Maastricht treaty in 1992, and I have voted against most other pieces of further EU unification that have come in front of this House. However, I voted against the Maastricht treaty not because I was opposed to freedom of movement or because I had fears and concerns about EU migrants or because I had the notion that migrants drove down wages; I voted against the Maastricht treaty and other aspects of EU integration because of a concern about fundamental issues of democracy and accountability. By driving this historic deal through Parliament in one day, with no time for proper scrutiny, this Government are trashing democracy.

This deal falls short in many policy areas, but I want to talk about security. The Government claimed that they were going to get

“a security partnership of unprecedented breadth and depth”.

On the contrary, our access to Europol and to Eurojust has been compromised, and we will no longer have access to the European arrest warrant and to EU databases that allow for realtime data sharing, such as the Schengen Information System, and are valuable to our police and the National Crime Agency. The database was consulted over 600 million times by UK police forces in 2019.

In closing, I have the greatest respect for the result of the 2016 referendum, but this shoddy deal falls shorts. It fails the British people and fails my constituents, and I have to meet my responsibilities as a Member of the British Parliament and vote against it today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am not sure why the hon. Lady has chosen to take that stance. The fact is that many, many respected people think that a universal basic income is not what is right for this country. It lacks the flexibility to respond to changes in income—unlike universal credit—it is less redistributive, and it is certainly not something that we are considering at the moment.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

What steps the Government are taking to tackle the disproportionate number of BAME deaths from covid-19.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

What steps her Department has taken to tackle the disproportionate effect of the covid-19 outbreak on BAME communities.

[The Minister for Equalities (Kemi Badenoch)]

We are very concerned by reports of a disproportionate impact of covid-19 on ethnic minorities. It is important that we understand what is underpinning these disparities and that we have robust and accurate data to do so, in order to take effective action.

[Ms Abbott [V]]

The Minister will be aware that of the 17 doctors who have died from covid-19, 16 are from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. So will she be speaking to her ministerial colleagues in the Department of Health about the NHS surcharge for migrants? It cannot be right that NHS migrant workers, who are frequently BAME, pay twice for the NHS, first in taxation and then through the surcharge—and, increasingly, with their lives.

[Kemi Badenoch]

This is an issue that I personally have taken a keen interest in. It is one of the reasons we have commissioned Public Health England to review exactly what the impact is on ethnic minorities. Specifically on fees for migrants, migrants who are ordinarily resident in the UK already receive their NHS care for free. Many more are exempt from charges, including temporary migrants who pay the immigration health surcharge, and asylum seekers. However, it is important to note that we remain committed to fighting this virus, and that is why we changed our regulations in January to ensure that no overseas visitor or anyone living here would be charged for diagnosis of or treatment for covid.

UK Elections: Abuse and Intimidation

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

This is a very important debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) on securing it. We have to be clear that we are talking not about robust debate, however robust it is, but about mindless abuse. In my case, the mindless abuse has been characteristically racist and sexist. I have had death threats, and people tweeting that I should be hanged

“if they could find a tree big enough to take the fat bitch’s weight”.

There was an English Defence League-affiliated Twitter account—#burnDianeAbbot. I have had rape threats, and been described as a

“Pathetic useless fat black piece of shit”,

an “ugly, fat black bitch”, and a “nigger”—over and over again. One of my members of staff said that the most surprising thing about coming to work for me is how often she has to read the word “nigger”. It comes in through emails, Twitter and Facebook.

Where I disagree with the hon. Gentleman is that he seems to suggest that this is all a relatively recent occurrence in this election. That is not my experience. It is certainly true that the online abuse that I and others experience has got worse in recent years, and that it gets worse at election time, but I do not put it down to a particular election. I think the rise in the use of online media has turbocharged abuse. Thirty years ago, when I first became an MP, if someone wanted to attack an MP, they had to write a letter—usually in green ink—put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it and walk to the post box. Now, they press a button and we read vile abuse that, 30 years ago, people would have been frightened even to write down.

I accept that male politicians get abuse, too, but I hope the one thing we can agree on in this Chamber is that it is much worse for women. As well as the rise of online media, it is helped by anonymity. People would not come up to me and attack me for being a nigger in public, but they do it online. It is not once a week or during an election; it is every day. My staff switch on the computer and go on to Facebook and Twitter, and they see this stuff.

[Andrew Percy]

I agree with everything the right hon. Lady is saying, but I do not think my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) was saying that this is a new thing. We have all had it for years on social media, and the right hon. Lady has had it in a particularly terrible way. What is different now is that some of this is being driven by political leaders’ language. When someone addresses a rally where there are posters of the severed head of the Prime Minister and they do not do anything about it, and when leaders say “ditch the bitch” in relation to the Prime Minister, that is the problem we have at the moment: it is the dehumanisation of each other in politics.

[Ms Abbott]

We will have to agree to disagree.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Abbott]

I am afraid I cannot give way, because I am mindful of the time.

The type of racist and sexist abuse I get is not tied to any events in this particular election campaign. This is not about just politicians or even women politicians. Any woman who goes into the public space can expect that type of abuse. People will remember how Mary Beard, the historian, received horrible abuse online because she was on “Question Time”.

[David Hanson (in the Chair)]

Order. The right hon. Lady is making a powerful speech, but I am conscious that we have only 11 minutes to get other Members in, so I hope she will draw her remarks to a conclusion.

[Ms Abbott]

In closing, I want to make a couple of points, the first of which is that there is a relationship between online abuse and mainstream media commentary; in my office, we always see, at the very least, a spike in abuse after there has been a lot of negative stuff in the media. Online abuse and abuse generally are not the preserve of any one party or any one party faction, and to pretend that is to devalue a very important argument. I am glad we have had the debate—it gives me no pleasure to talk about my experience not only in the last election, but for years—but let us get this debate straight: it is not about a particular party or a particular faction, but about the degradation of public discourse online.

Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have had those discussions and will continue to do so. The Arab world has provided some generous funding for refugee camps, but I am sure we will have further conversations with them.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The British people are indeed, as the Prime Minister said, a generous people, and they will find his proposal for taking 4,000 Syrian refugees a year derisory, but above all, long after this refugee crisis is no longer on the front pages, there will be a need for a sustainable, Europe-wide strategy. It cannot be right for Greece and Italy to be left alone to deal with incoming migrants from across the Mediterranean. It cannot be right that we refuse to take our quota. Syrian refugees are not the only issue; migrants from the horn of Africa and north Africa are drowning in the Mediterranean every day. The Prime Minister needs to look to a more sustainable strategy that is more genuinely about working closely with our European neighbours, because hundreds of thousands of lives depend on it.

[The Prime Minister]

I do not agree with the hon. Lady. I think 20,000 Syrian refugees is the right response for Britain. While I agree that we need a co-ordinated European response, I do not believe it should be Britain giving up our borders and joining the Schengen no-borders arrangement. That lies behind what the hon. Lady and others are suggesting—[Interruption.] If that is not the case, the Labour party needs to be clear about it. I think we can have a comprehensive approach that helps the Schengen countries with their external borders, but maintains our borders and recognises that we benefit from having them.

G7

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The answer to my hon. Friend is that every effort is being made and every encouragement given to all sides that they need to get around a table and start talking. Specifically, those who have been backing the Houthi rebels should pay attention to the resolution that he mentions.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister appreciate that many people in this country, many of them of Nigerian heritage but many more of them not, will appreciate the special attention that is being paid to Nigeria? The abduction of the Chibok girls shocked the world, the failure to bring them all back is a stain on the conscience of the world, and they should never be forgotten.

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. All too often, appalling events happen on the other side of the world and there is an outpouring of grief, then the world shrugs and moves on. I am determined that we should not do that in this case. I want Britain to have a long-term partnership with Nigeria. About a quarter of a million Nigerians live in Britain and well over 20,000 Britons live in Nigeria, we have common links of history, heritage and language, and I think there is a real willingness to work together.

Tributes to Charles Kennedy

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to pay tribute to Charles Kennedy. As we have heard, he was a politician with all the talents, but as one of the MPs who were here at the time of the Iraq war and as one of the small group of Labour MPs that voted against the Iraq war, I remind the House that it was not just remarkable that Charles Kennedy was the one party leader who took the correct position against the Iraq war. Those of us who opposed the war from the beginning were very worried that in the end Charles Kennedy would not be able to lead his MPs through the Lobby because he was under pressure within his own party. We cannot understate the judgment and courage he showed.

We had the biggest rally in London ever against the war. I remember Charles Kennedy on the platform addressing the crowds and how excited and happy they were to hear him speak. His position on the Iraq war was the right position for him, and it was the right position for his party because he led it to its greatest ever victory. It was also the right position for Westminster politics because the public like nothing better than to see a politician stand on principle. He exemplified that.

Sometimes the people who pay the price for the personal ambitions of MPs are our families and our children. I would like the message to go out to his son that he should never cease to be proud of his father—the best of the political class and the best of men.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank all colleagues for what they have said and the way in which they have said it. We must, I am sure, all hope that the warmth of the sentiments expressed and the demonstrable unity of the House on this occasion will offer some, even if modest comfort and succour to the family in the harrowing period that lies ahead.

Recall of MPs Bill

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stuart]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a subtle and important point, which takes me back to the observation of my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) about US Congressmen always looking over their shoulders because they are elected to serve only two-year terms. It is not entirely a bad thing, however, that MPs are always looking over our shoulders to ensure that we communicate to our constituents why we are doing what we are doing and why we have made certain promises and voted in certain ways.

I do not know whether this has already been mentioned, but I accept that we are taking a risk. If we give the public the right of recall without any prior wrongdoing having been proved, we do not know how it will be used or what the pressures—political or otherwise—that may occur in coming years will do. I suggest, therefore, that this process is a perfect candidate for a sunset clause, whereby it would be trialled for a five-year Parliament. It might be said that after giving the public the right of recall, there is no way this House would ever have the courage to take it back from them. I suggest, however, that if that right ends up being used not for wrongdoing, but to challenge Members on how they vote, this House should then have the courage to do something about it.

It is not just proven wrongdoing that is of a criminal character or that is so severe that a Member is suspended for 21 days that upsets the public. If Members look at the data that WriteToThem, which is part of the TheyWorkForYou stable of internet tools, used to produce its league table, they will see that an awful lot of colleagues from all parties appeared not to respond to constituents: they did not write back to or take care of them. It is up to the electorate to decide whether they are being properly served by a Member of Parliament. That is at the heart of the issue for those of us who wish to give the public that right, and we hope, albeit in the spirit of optimism, that it will be used in the right way.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I support the Bill. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that this is not about whether we trust the public, but about the fact that for the past 50 years brave Members of Parliament have had to take positions that were in advance of public opinion on social issues such as homosexuality, hanging and race relations, for which they were later vindicated?

[Mr Stuart]

I take that point on board. For the entire period during which I have been involved with the Conservative party, I have for ever been hearing how old, out of touch and ludicrously right wing many of its members are. It was said that they would never select anyone to stand for Parliament who did not accord with their views. It turns out that whatever their views—in times past, if they had very strong views on capital punishment, they may have said in advance that they would only choose a candidate who believed in capital punishment—they eventually selected someone completely different, because they respected that person and wanted to back them. I put it to the hon. Lady that I am not sure that the many people who have been mentioned today would be disowned by their constituents for taking brave and unpopular decisions. They are quite likely to be backed in their local area, but I recognise that we are taking a risk, which is why I suggested a sunset clause.

Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Friday 26th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Alison McGovern]

I will say more about internationalism shortly. Some people will say that the conflict is not our fight, and we should leave it to those who are closer by. For those who feel strongly, it is tempting to offer a counsel of despair and walk away. It is much harder to set about dealing with violent threats in a complicated context where the risks are high. In response, I say that we all want peace, and the only question is how to achieve it. The UK should not dictate the answer to the violence or carelessly interfere, but that does not mean that we should turn our back while the violence persists. In answering the question of whether we should do anything or nothing, we have to ask ourselves what good we can do.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does not my hon. Friend accept that no one is talking about walking away? The only argument is over whether bombing is the way to resolve the long-standing political problems in Iraq and the surrounding region.

[Alison McGovern]

As I have said, in answering the question of whether we should do anything or nothing, we have to ask ourselves what good we can do. Conflict in the middle east seems to invite comparisons, but although we should learn from history, the search for patterns and repetition can be misleading. There is no reason why the future should necessarily be like the past. In fact, our job is to make sure that it is not.

ISIL is a serious and growing force that is wreaking havoc on the Iraqi Government and on innocent people. The Iraqi Government have asked us to help, and we have the capacity to do so. Our Government have made their aims clear, and the Leader of the Opposition has set the right tests. We in this House must offer scrutiny as best we are able and make the success of the operation more likely. A vital factor in that success will be to cut off the financial supply to ISIL, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) has said. A United Nations Security Council resolution on that point was adopted on 14 August, and it would be helpful to know what progress has been made.

There are other facts that matter. We are talking not simply about security, vital though that is, but about politics and development. We need more than a military response. Peace requires not only the absence of violence but the meeting of other needs. Basic needs must be met to keep the vulnerable alive, and all who are affected must be shown a way out of the conflict. In the past, the UK, via the Department for International Development, has put reasonably substantial sums into development-focused assistance for Iraq. That ended in 2012 when the bilateral programme ended. This year, DFID’s budget for Iraq has been more than £25 million, but only £4.3 million has been spent so far. Do we need to increase efforts to ensure that money that has been committed can be spent effectively and soon? In addition, we must question whether that is enough support. By way of comparison, we will spend some £75 million this year in Syria, and a similar sum in Yemen.

I want to make two further points about development, the first of which concerns long-term needs. The budget that I have mentioned is for a single 12-month Iraq emergency humanitarian assistance programme to help 65,000 ordinary Iraqis who are in serious need. It will be used to provide emergency medicines, food and basic shelter, and to reunite families. At what point will Iraq receive longer-term development assistance, rather than simply humanitarian assistance? Instead of emergency aid, such longer-term assistance would support the wider development needs of victims of the conflict. Have the Government discussed that possibility internationally?

Do Ministers know how many children are losing out on their education as a result of the conflict? Schools in the Kurdish region are being used for shelter, which is the right thing to do, but it means that many children are losing out on their chances and hope for the future. In addition, what is the risk to wider health care needs? The Iraqi Government must be supported to maintain not simply the hard infrastructure that the country will need—power, transport and water—but the vital infrastructure of public services. Development assistance must work alongside military answers to ISIL. Is DFID working alongside the military in planning? [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

When it comes to this military intervention in the middle east, we do not have to look in the crystal ball; we can read the book. I am all too familiar with the history of our last military intervention in the region, so I will not support the motion in the Lobby tonight. It is totally disingenuous of colleagues on either side to say that this is a choice between acting and not acting. It is a choice between what sort of action we take—whether we place the emphasis on these military interventions, which are in some ways for show, or on humanitarian and diplomatic work and, above all, on putting pressure on the great powers in the region to step up.

There is something that no one has mentioned: it is quite clear from what ISIL has done in filming the beheadings, putting them on YouTube and ensuring that they have English voice-overs that it is seeking to incite us to bomb. Why does that not give people pause? ISIL wants this to happen because it will make it the heroic Muslim defender against the crusader.

I do not need to repeat that air strikes on their own will not win a war against ISIL. We will need ground forces. We know that the Iraqi army is wholly inadequate. Inevitably, we will get drawn into Syria—the Prime Minister has admitted as much and has even said that he would wrap it up by saying that he was doing it on humanitarian grounds—but I have not heard much about Turkey and the Kurds. I have one of the largest Turkish-Kurdish communities in the country in north-east London, and I know that the Kurdish community has a long-held aspiration for a Kurdish state, which I support, but it would involve dismembering Syria, Turkey and Iraq. That explains some of Turkey’s ambivalence about this issue.

Some people have said that this is not 2003. Sadly, this reminds me too much of 2003. Yes, it is legal, but there is the same rhetoric: national interest, surgical strikes and populations begging to be liberated. I think that it was Walpole who said of another war that the population are ringing the bells today, but they will be wringing their hands tomorrow. We know that the public want something to be done, but as this war wears on and as it drains us of millions and billions of pounds, the public will ask, “What are we doing there? How are we going to get out?” I cannot support this military intervention. I do not see the strategy, and I do not see the endgame.

Tributes to Tony Benn

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I first encountered Tony Benn when I was a starry-eyed young activist at mass meetings. He was on the platform and I was among the audience. It is impossible to convey what it was like to be at a mass meeting addressed by Tony Benn in his prime. I would come reeling out the meeting, believing in a new heaven and a new earth. It was truly extraordinary.

As this is a parliamentary tribute, I first want to say—I hope that my colleagues will forgive this old-fashioned phrase—that Tony Benn was a great House of Commons man. He loved the House. He was one of the few people in the House of Commons whom hon. Members from both sides of the House would return to hear speak, because he had such mastery of the Chamber. It is significant that when he was given the freedom of the House, he mainly used it to come back to the Tea Room to meet and talk to colleagues and comrades.

We cannot talk about Tony Benn without mentioning his love of family. I remember that when my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) gave his maiden speech, Tony Benn sat a few Benches in front of him, and as Hilary spoke, his face streamed with tears. It was the most moving thing. It would also not be right to talk about Tony Benn without mentioning his wife, Caroline, because she was not just his life’s partner but his comrade in arms. To my mind, he was never quite the same after her tragic death. Some of us used to tease him about my right hon. Friend, suggesting that my right hon. Friend was perhaps fractionally less left wing than he was himself, but he would just smile serenely and say, “Benns move left as they get older.”

People have spoken about what Tony Benn believed in, and about whether he was right or wrong. I would say that very many of his ideas have stood the test of time. He believed strongly in parliamentarians and MPs being a voice for the voiceless. Many black and minority ethnic people have said to me, “Please let people know how much black and minority ethnic people loved Tony Benn.” That is because they saw him as a voice for people who did not otherwise have a voice.

On civil liberties, he has largely been proved correct. On the Iraq war, on which he made some of his most moving speeches in this House, he was certainly right. He talked about inclusive talks with Northern Ireland. At the time, he was accused of being a loony for talking about that. It is now completely mainstream.

For his critique of the markets, he was judged to be

“the most dangerous man in Britain”.

After the collapse of Lehman’s, can we say that he was completely wrong to criticise the working of markets and market-based mechanisms being the main organising factor in our society?

Trade unions are a hugely unfashionable subject, but I would argue that if we had stronger trade unions today, we would not see the super-exploitation of immigrant workers, we would not have seen the rise and rise of agency workers, and we would not see the abuse of zero-hours contracts. I think he was right in always wanting to stand up for the right of ordinary people to organise in the workplace.

I would call myself pro-European, but his cynicism about the European project and his undying concern about the lack of democratic accountability in European institutions have been proved correct. Anyone who saw what happened to the Greeks last year, when a handful of Brussels bureaucrats were almost able to run their country, must remember some of the things that Tony Benn said about the EU.

Finally, we live in an era when very many people—particularly younger people—are cynical about politics. We live in an era when politicians are cynical about politics. Too many people on both sides of the House study polls and endeavour to repeat back to people what the polls have said they believe. Tony Benn believed in a different type of politics, in which people knew what they believed and were prepared to argue and campaign for difficult and initially unpopular causes for however long it took. Some things have been said about him that are not quite right—that he was divisive and that he was this, that and the other. Tony Benn did not just inspire the generation of political activists of my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell); he continued to inspire generation after generation of young activists, because he was a man who stood up for what he believed and a man who was willing to fight the fight even in adverse times.

Tony Benn was an inspiration to me, and I am very grateful to have been able to make my own small tribute.