Debate on the Address

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 11th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind) [V]]

Post-covid Britain has demonstrated a number of things. One is the fantastic sense of community solidarity that exists all over the country, where so many people have joined in mutual aid groups and done so much to support each other and to look after fellow citizens who are using food banks in unprecedented numbers. It has demonstrated the levels of poverty that existed in Britain before covid, which have now become much worse as many people’s income has been cut by 20% on furlough and many sadly are looking at job losses in the future. The pandemic has also exposed the mental health crisis that affected Britain before covid and is now much worse. It has demonstrated the value of public sector workers, cleaners and delivery workers and the fantastic work that they have done to keep us safe and get through this crisis.

Surely the way out of this pandemic now has to be to recognise that we live in a deeply unequal society and that many people do not achieve their full potential because of the poverty in which they live, the bad housing in which they live and the inadequate training that they get. Surely the way out is through investment in public services, in infrastructure and in sustainable—in economic as well as environmental terms—industries and jobs. That means legislation, which should be in the Queen’s Speech but I am not sure is there, to end the disgraceful practice of fire and rehire. Many companies are firing a whole workforce and then reinstating them on lower pay and with worse conditions. What a disgraceful way to treat loyal, long-serving workers.

This is also about those who deliver care. The Queen’s Speech includes references to the care service; I am not exactly sure what the Government’s plans are, but no doubt we will hear them soon. We have to treat social care as if it is part of the NHS, with the same principle of universal access to care when it is needed and decent pay and conditions for care workers. That has not been delivered by the plethora of private sector organisations and companies that have been delivering the service; it would and could be much better delivered by local authorities and the public sector as a whole.

I am glad that the Queen’s Speech includes references to mental health, because we have to recognise the mental health crisis that we face, the stigma attached to people who go through a mental health crisis, and the very long delays to get any kind of talking therapy, which means that too often people in a crisis resort to suppressant drugs rather than the necessary talking therapies and support. It is also about changing the attitudes that everyone has towards mental health and mental illness, and supporting people to get through such crises.

I am proud to represent an inner-city constituency, Islington North, and I am proud of its strength and diversity and the way in which the communities come together. But I am not proud of the housing conditions in which so many people, particularly those in the private sector, currently live. The Queen’s Speech mentions something about the private rented sector and guarantees within it. Well, a third of my constituents live in the private rented sector and they need to know that their rents are controlled, that their tenancies are long term, if not permanent, and that they have a chance, later on, of getting council housing. That means giving local authorities the finance and power to build, rather than having to go through the most arcane negotiations to get some degree of social housing from each development site.

In my constituency, buying a place is impossible for anyone on average earnings, twice average earnings or even three times average earnings. It is simply not possible. For so many, the only way out of the housing crisis is council housing. As we have seen throughout the covid pandemic, too many children have been stuck at home in small, overcrowded flats, with insufficiency of computer access, unable to achieve what others can achieve in school. If we improve housing for all children throughout the country, we will improve the life chances and educational opportunities for all those children.

The Queen’s Speech includes some depressing passages on civil liberties. I always thought that the Prime Minister was a sort of right-wing civil libertarian. I have always thought he was right wing—he would not be too worried about being called that—but he is not actually a libertarian at all. If he was, why would he attempt for a second time to push through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, with its control over the right to protest and the right to assembly and its requirement for those who wish to protest or assemble to seek police permission? We would condemn such legislation in any other part of the world and it should be condemned here. Those who turned out on Clapham common did so for a vigil but ended up being driven off the common by the police, who saw it as an illegal demonstration. These are dangerous precedents. We need to have the right of free speech and the right of assembly enshrined in the very being of our legislation in this country.

The idea that we somehow have to bring in a system of identification before we vote is under consideration, but it was not that long ago the Prime Minister said he would eat an ID card rather than show it to somebody. Most people do not carry ID with them, and there is no ID card system in this country. I believe that the Prime Minister and many others voted against the ID card idea, as did I, when it came up some years ago, so let us drop the idea. It seems to me that it is looking to solve a problem that does not exist. The levels of voter fraud are less than minuscule in elections in this country, and I am pleased about that, so there is no need to bring this in. All it seems to be is voter suppression, as has happened in so many states in the USA.

The Government said in the Queen’s Speech that they were going to carry through the security review. There are 80 million people on this planet who are refugees. That is 80 million people with no place to call home, no place that they know is safe, and no future in which they know what is going to happen to them. They are stuck in refugee camps, they are stuck on borders and they are stuck in desperate levels of poverty. I am not defending people traffickers or smugglers or anything like that, but they are the symptom, not the cause. Refugees undertake dangerous journeys because they are desperate and they are in a dangerous situation. We have to look at the causes. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya, the oppression of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, the way in which militia groups in the Congo have driven people off their land to make way for mining corporations, and the way in which people in Colombia have been driven off their land to make way for land-grabbing by global corporations—these things exist all over the world. The causes of instability are the inequalities on this planet.

When the Government propose to dramatically increase expenditure on defence and armaments and turn their back on the possibility of a global treaty to ban nuclear weapons, and at the same time cut overseas aid, they are not dealing with the problems of the world; they are ignoring them or, indeed, making them worse. The levels of hunger in the world have gone up. The famine that is now going on for many people in Madagascar and other places in something that our aid, as well as United Nations aid, could help to deal with. This is a question of dealing with the causes of conflict and the causes of human rights abuses around the world. That means having challenging conversations with every Government, whatever their colour and whatever kind of Government they are, if they are abusing human rights in any form. This has to be a universal.

The news over the last couple of days has been heavily dominated by what is happening in Jerusalem and what is happening now in Gaza. Some years ago, I went to Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem, a place of Palestinian homes. It has been a place of Palestinian homes for almost all of my lifetime. Settlers are trying to drive the people out of those homes, and this is emblematic of the way in which settlers all across the west bank have taken over Palestinian land, divided up farms, created settler roads and created the quite correct anger of the Palestinian people against the occupation. Surely the way forward is to end the occupation, end the siege of Gaza and ensure that there is peace in the future. I say that because I believe very strongly in it, and if anyone doubts the horrors of what it is like to live under occupation, I urge them to look at a film called “The Present”, which demonstrates just how difficult life can be for people trying to undertake an ordinary thing like going out to buy a present. I have taken part in many conferences, calls and discussions with people from Israel, from Palestine and from different organisations all over the world. Peace will not be achieved by bombardment or by land-grabbing; peace will be achieved only by the recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people and an end to the occupation.

I finish with this: the world is at a crossroads. It is at a crossroads of inequality, injustice and poverty, which covid has shown. It has shown us the need for universal healthcare around the world, to make us all healthy. It has also shown the need for us to urgently address the environmental crisis. The Paris COP went some way forward, in that most countries signed up for it, although they have not fully implemented it. We need net zero by 2030, but we also need investment to ensure that the jobs that are created tomorrow are environmentally sustainable, as well as economically sustainable, and that we have economic planning that has sustainability at its heart and is not about destroying biodiversity, and polluting our rivers and oceans. This is about putting recycling, reusing and protecting our natural world at the very heart of what we do. I was proud on 1 May 2019 to propose to Parliament that we declare a climate emergency. It was agreed, without a vote. We were the first Parliament in the world to do this. Let us go to COP saying that we have carried that out, that we will achieve net zero by 2030, and that we will share the technologies around the world and have a trade and economic strategy that sustains the world, rather than damages it.

When we deal with the Queen’s Speech, it is the start of the parliamentary Session. There is a whole legislative programme ahead and a lot of debates coming up, but we should have in our minds the kind of country we, as MPs, have been elected to represent. It is not a happy place. There is massive disillusionment and division, and there are massive levels of poverty and of underachievement. That can be changed, but it means tackling injustice and inequality. It means chasing down the tax avoiders in the tax havens. It means investing in public services for tomorrow and in the jobs for tomorrow. In short, it means creating a country fit for the next generation, where we say that our core principles are supporting people, opposing those who would wish to divide our society—the far right and the racists—and, above all, investing for a future that works for everybody. That is the task before us and no doubt in all these debates all these issues are going to come to the fore. That is our job as MPs: to try to articulate the problems that people face and, above all, to find solutions to them. I do not think they are going to be found in any ideas of free market economics; it is only about what the public can do for the public.