Afghanistan

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend; I believe he speaks for millions of people—quiet people—up and down this country.

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

The Prime Minister will be aware that the entire House is united in offering our respect and congratulations to the people at the grassroots who made the evacuation of British passport holders and Afghans possible in recent weeks, but he must also be aware of how difficult it has been to get responses from Government Departments on behalf of our constituents who are terrified for their relatives and want to arrange safe passage for them. Will the Government give the House an undertaking that they will make sure that the relevant Departments have the resources and the people so that we can communicate with our constituents and give them some news at least?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. Lady. She is repeating a point that has been made across the House by many colleagues this afternoon. The work so far has been extraordinary. I pay tribute to the speed with which British officials have done their best to respond, and every email, as I said, will be answered by tonight.

Afghanistan

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

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

We in this House and our constituents have all seen the chaos and speed of the Taliban takeover. One of the questions that we have to address today and in the days to come is: how did it happen and what lessons are to be learned?

The points that I want to make this afternoon are about the people we, the British people, cannot let down. First, we cannot let down the British veterans who, over 20 years, fought in Afghanistan, particularly in Helmand—one of the most dangerous provinces to fight in. I can do no better than quote Jack Cummings, who has been quoted in recent days.

He is a former British soldier who lost both legs on 14 August 2010 while searching for improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan. They are a few simple sentences, but they are worth repeating. He said:

“Was it worth it, probably not. Did I lose my legs for nothing, looks like it. Did my mates die in vain. Yep.”

We as a House of Commons and as a Parliament should not and cannot let down Jack Cummings and those 457 British soldiers who died in Afghanistan. As a Parliament, we will have to continue this debate to understand the lessons to be learned from what is happening to Afghanistan at the present time.

The other people we cannot let down are the people of Afghanistan. We know how many of them have died. We know that even as we speak, there are women and girls in their homes, in hiding or running away who are frightened for their future, their prospects and their lives under this Taliban regime. In the political solution, the debate and the discussion with NATO allies we must have the future of those Afghan women and girls at the centre of everything we are talking about and trying to do.

In the past 20 years, it is not just that 457 British soldiers died—although that is tragic, which is why I mentioned it—it is that we gave those women and girls hope. We gave them hope of a better future and of the prospects that women and girls all over the world, including here in Britain, have. We cannot just sit back and have them see that hope snatched away. We cannot let down the people of Afghanistan and we cannot let down those women and girls.

Finally, we cannot let down the refugees who we know will be pouring out of Afghanistan. The debate on refugees in the British Parliament is sometimes a little complex and difficult, and sometimes people have more to say about the burden of refugees than about our moral responsibility to them, but, speaking as someone who was in this House 20 years ago when we voted on an Adjournment for this military intervention, we have an extraordinary moral responsibility to these refugees. We have a responsibility to towns and cities all over this country, including in Scotland, that may well need more support and finance from Government, but we cannot let down those refugees. Our political and moral responsibility is too great.

It has been tragic to see the chaos of the Taliban takeover, but, if we do the right thing by our veterans, the Afghan people and refugees, we can at least know as a country that we have followed on from the initiative we took 20 years ago to intervene in that region to bear down on terrorism and disorder. I did not vote for the intervention in Afghanistan 20 years ago; I am afraid it was foreseeable that it would end like this. However, it is not inevitable that we as a country and this as a Parliament will not do the right thing. I urge colleagues on both sides of the House to address the important issue being raised today, so that we can go forward in pride and confidence in our own understanding of our moral responsibilities.

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.