Future of the Post Office
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(3 days, 18 hours ago)
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Gareth Thomas
My hon. Friend has always been a great champion of her constituency. I have visited the banking hub in Acton in a previous life, before the general election. I would be very happy to revisit the post office. I hear her message about co-location and I assure her I will look at that. I am sure she will continue to press me on the future of banking hubs in Acton.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
I welcome the Minister’s statement and his assertion that the Post Office is a central part of our community. The previous administration of the Post Office seemed to glory in selling off Crown post offices and reducing the service for all of us. Earlier, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said that there should be no more closures of Crown post offices. Can the Minister commit to that, and, in the consultation process, consider reopening post offices or extending the Crown post office network to ensure that a variety of services are on offer, and that the post office is central to the life of our high streets and communities all over the country and can play a huge role in the regeneration of our town centres?
Gareth Thomas
My right hon. Friend is right to stress the importance of post office branches to the future of all our communities. In that regard, work is required from trade unions and others on highlighting the importance of banking services. I wish that work had been given more attention by my predecessor. [Interruption.] With due respect to those on the Opposition Front Bench who are heckling me, it has fallen to this Government to roll out banking hubs in a more significant way. On my right hon. Friend’s more general point about directly managed branches, as I have already said to the House, given that they cost significantly more to run, it is right that we look at those costs. No individual decisions have been taken as yet, and we have made it clear to the Post Office that it needs to consult directly with sub-postmasters, trade unions and other stakeholders.
Budget Resolutions
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(8 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
We are on day one of the four days in which the House will debate the Chancellor’s Budget statement, but within minutes of the Chancellor sitting down we heard Opposition parties roll out their headline soundbites, such as “Look where we are after 14 years of Tory rule.” I suspect we will hear a lot of that in the lead-up to the next general election, which is fast approaching, in the hope that the wider geopolitical context in which we have had to govern is completely glossed over. That simply trivialises the importance of this debate, so let us do it justice, and appreciate what has actually happened over the past 14 years.
We have had to endure the largest global pandemic since 1920. It cost more than £400 billion to protect our economy and vaccinate the nation. We continue to endure the worst war in Europe since 1945, which is impacting both the continent’s security and its economy, with global oil prices having increased by 11%, UK wholesale gas prices having risen by 40%, and food prices having spiked following Ukraine’s grain export disruption. That is the monetary and fiscal backdrop—the challenging context—that we find ourselves facing today. It sits behind the cost of living crisis, with double-digit inflation, and has led to the unprecedented but necessary colossal state intervention that we are now slowly moving away from.
Look at the situation that we inherited 14 years ago: UK debt was rising, the deficit was about £150 billion a year, and unemployment was higher than in 1997. Labour would rightly point out that it had to endure the global financial crisis that hit Britain hard, but that underscores my point about the context of the global economic headwinds that we have had to face. Of course I would like to see more money to further ease the burden on households, tackle the waiting lists, and upgrade our defence posture, but the reality is that the Conservatives have had to manage the UK economy through the toughest of circumstances, during which time there have been successes that should be acknowledged, including investment in our schools, the roll-out of free schools and academies, our jump in the international league tables, and the roll-out of the pupil premium and free school meals.
Our welfare structures are far simpler, fairer and better targeted, with transformative free childcare as well. National insurance contributions have now been cut to 8%—a tax cut for 29 million people. On the green economy, our agenda is world-beating: the fastest decarbonisation of any major economy, and the first to legislate for a net zero target. We hear today that there will be further steps as we invest in the modular nuclear reactor programme. Thanks to the tax breaks and investment incentives, we have the third-largest tech sector in the world, behind the United States and China. We are global leaders in pharmaceuticals, life sciences, quantum computing, artificial intelligence and aerospace, as well as fintech and financial services, backed up by some of the best universities in the world.
Crime is falling. Police numbers are now rising. Violence reduction units to tackle knife crime, which I have been campaigning for with the Chancellor, are now being rolled out, including in my constituency of Bournemouth. A new generation of hospitals are being built, with upgrades to existing hospitals, such as we are seeing in Bournemouth. There are 42,000 more doctors and 72,000 more nurses. The levelling-up programmes are transforming communities up and down the country, including Bournemouth’s seafront, and we are on target to build 1 million new homes in this Parliament.
On defence and security, we have expanded our surface fleet with two carriers. We have upgraded our Air Force and our continuous at-sea deterrence programme. We formed the National Security Council as well as the National Cyber Security Centre, and signed up to AUKUS. We have hosted G7 summits and the NATO summit, and have played a lead role in Ukraine, as well as defending safe maritime passage in the Red sea.
So please do not say that it has been 14 wasted years. That is an insult to the British people. It has been challenging, absolutely, and not without frustration—I can say that at first hand—but had Labour been in office without benefit of hindsight, would it have fared so much better than us? Bear in mind that the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)—he is in his place—would have been at the helm for some time. He would certainly have taken Britain in a very different direction. I think he would acknowledge that.
Jeremy Corbyn
Yes, it would have been a very different direction. There would not be the levels of poverty, homelessness and inequality that we see in this country today.
Mr Ellwood
I gave the right hon. Gentleman the opportunity to put his words on the record. I look forward to hearing what he has to say.
Here is the rub: it is not likely to get any easier in Britain. Global storm clouds are gathering again. Our world is becoming more contested and more fragmented. We face evermore testing times ahead, with increased threats to our international rules-based order. The question is, who is best placed to strengthen our economy, to navigate us through further global shocks and to lead the country? With inflation now falling—heading towards 2%—wages rising, business confidence returning, education standards improving and the UK growing faster than most of the other members of the G7, this is clearly a Budget for growth, which we should all support.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
I ask the House one question: how can it be right that, in the sixth richest country in the world, more than 4 million of our children are living in poverty, and the richest 10% of households earn or receive an income over 10 times that of the poorest 10%? In my borough, in which some extremely wealthy people live, one in four people live in poverty, making us the sixth most deprived borough in London—in other words, there are 26 other boroughs that are less deprived. Some 19,000 people in my borough experience high levels of food insecurity. I am delighted that the Mayor of London has pledged free school meals across the whole of the city, even though my borough has been providing them since 2010. It is a huge step forward. We have a very high rate of child poverty, with 47.5% of our children living in poverty. This Budget could have done so much to reduce levels of child poverty and improve the livelihood of some of the poorest people in the country, which is why I intervened on the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) in the way I did.
We have what I think is an immoral and disgraceful two-child policy on benefit levels in this country, which means that children in large families lose out. Large families are already often poor because they are large, and they are then made even poorer by the discrimination against the third, fourth or even fifth child in the family. It would not be madly expensive to end that policy, and it would take 250,000 children out of poverty. It would cost £1.3 billion. The Chancellor announced that the non-dom abolition, which I agree with, would free up more money for tax cuts in the future, but that could have been used to end the two-child policy, in a very neat synchronisation of two policy changes. The Chancellor could also have looked at page 63 of the OBR report, which tells us that there are now estimated to be £156 billion-worth of uncollected taxes in this country. That is more than double what it was five years ago, and the figure is getting worse and worse.
It seems that in this Budget the Chancellor was more interested in appealing to a small number of people with some degree of tax cuts through lowering national insurance, but I ask this question: is it fiscally responsible to plunge more families or more people into desperate poverty than at present? A quarter of a million people in this country are homeless, and more than 1 million households are on social housing waiting lists. Most young people have no chance whatsoever of being able to rent somewhere of their own, because rents are simply too expensive, and they have to share. They cannot even think about buying anywhere, and they have almost no chance of getting on a council waiting list, unless they have either large numbers of children, or quite complex medical conditions or stress levels.
We have a housing emergency—we see that emergency every day when we come to this building and see homeless people on the streets of London begging. Those numbers are increasing as time goes on. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) pointed out, the amount of money we are spending through public expenditure on housing benefit to subsidise very expensive private rented accommodation is part of a catch-up every year. The local housing allowance rises a bit, the landlords raise the rent a bit more and the public have to pay this exorbitant level of rent. Why on earth can we not have rent controls—private sector rent controls—which are pretty normal across most European cities and, indeed, in parts of the United States?
In my borough, we have 15,000 households on the waiting list for social housing. The only way forward to deal with the housing crisis is not to pledge to build millions of homes, as the Government are doing, but actually to pledge to build council housing at secure and affordable rents to guarantee decent-quality housing for people. This country did that, under both parties, in the two decades after the second world war, and then we had the Thatcherite idea of selling off social housing, which was very nice for those who were able to buy it very cheaply at the time, but every other generation since then has paid the price of that policy. I ask the Government: why do they not give priority to the housing needs of the majority of the population and those in desperate need, recognising the effect on child poverty, the effect of underachievement in school and the effects on society as a whole of the very poor-quality housing so many people live in?
The underfunding of local government has enormous implications. When the Government say they are very pleased that Britain is an attractive place for arts and culture, that is wonderful and I absolutely agree. I want us to be an attractive place for art, entertainment and culture, but if they cut local government expenditure, the art centres get underfunded, the performing arts suffer and the whole cultural scene suffers as a result, as does so much else.
I know you are concerned about the time, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I will conclude with a letter that the leader and deputy leader of my local authority in Islington, Kaya Comer-Schwartz and Diarmaid Ward, wrote to the local paper in a plea to the Chancellor before the Budget. They made several points. First, they called for more realistic local government funding so that they did not have to cut services or reduce them in some way. They are doing that, and they have lost £300 million due to central Government underfunding. They asked for rates to build much needed new council homes. The council has done well on building on land that it owns, but it cannot afford to buy anywhere else, or it must build a mixed development with less council housing than we could have. They also asked for full flexibility about how the money could be spent. We need much more responsibility put on to local governments to spend the money as they see fit, and that will help with the housing issue.
Finally, while the Chancellor said a great deal about the NHS, he did not mention social care at any point in his speech. For many, social care is a crisis, with many families devastated by its cost. Many women have to give up their jobs, careers and hopes because they must care for elderly relatives or those with profound disabilities. We can do so much better in this country than we are doing. This Budget is not welcome at all. It is a huge missed opportunity.
Arms Export Licences: Israel
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(11 months, 1 week ago)
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Zarah Sultana
Thank you, Sir Christopher. Since being elected, I have raised the issue of arms licences for regimes such as Saudi Arabia, which used British-made weapons in Yemen, so I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The Bill I presented would suspend sales to not just Israel but the likes of Saudi Arabia, whose war in Yemen led to the death of thousands of people with, again, clear and well-documented violations of international law. In another example of shameful disregard for human rights, that war was also facilitated by our Government and is therefore linked to this debate. Export licences to Saudi Arabia since the beginning of the war have been worth a staggering £6.8 million, which is why I have repeatedly called for the House to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Is she aware that only two weeks ago in the House the Secretary of State for Defence claimed that arms sales to Israel in the past year were less than £50 million? The figures she has given suggest that he had misinformed himself before he made that statement. Does she have a credible figure for how much is sold to Israel, as well as for the value of Elbit Systems sales and how many of those sales are made internally within Elbit Systems back to Israel itself?
Zarah Sultana
As I mentioned, a lot is shrouded in secrecy. We do have the figure of £474 million, but we believe that the figure is much higher. There needs to be true transparency, especially with the arms sales coming from the Government.
Ending this bloody exchange is one of the steps the Government must take to end their complicity in the massacre in Gaza. Even as countries across the globe, and figures from the Pope to the President of France, call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the Government still refuse to heed that call, ignoring the 76% of the British public who back it. Beyond the immediate need to end the bloodshed, Britain has an historical responsibility to push for a just and lasting peace, having been the mandatory power in Palestine during the 1948 Nakba. As we witness a new and even more terrible Nakba, Britain must honour that duty by demanding an immediate ceasefire and ending arm sales today, and by insisting on ending the illegal occupation and on a free Palestine tomorrow.
Israel’s war on Gaza is not the first time British-made weapons have been used for war crimes, but it must be the last. I conclude with these questions to the Minister. Given the overwhelming evidence that Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, what assessment have the Government made of Israel’s conformity with international law? Have they made any assessment of it? If they have not, will they commit to immediately making that assessment? Given the overwhelming evidence that Israel has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, what assessment have the Government made of Israel’s actions in the light of our export licensing criteria? Again, have they made any assessment of that? If they have not, will they assess whether Israel’s actions are consistent with our licensing criteria as they stand? Finally, will the Government uphold our export licensing rules, international law and basic principles of humanity by immediately suspending arms sales to Israel? I look forward to the Minister’s reply and thank everybody who has joined us for the debate.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
Lots of people want to speak, so I will be as brief as possible. I want to ask a number of questions, but I will just say as a preface that when someone has been in this House long enough and sat through the discussions about the various wars taking place, they get an understanding of the nature of war and of war crimes legislation. Whatever Hamas did, whatever people think, it was a war crime, and we have condemned that absolutely, but we created legislation globally after the second world war to determine how states could legally react to war crimes like that. Article 8 of the Rome statute, which set up the International Criminal Court, specifically designated war crimes: first, the use of weapons that were indiscriminate in their impact—that is, that affected civilians—and, secondly, the denial of the basic resources to survive, for civilian populations in particular. That is food, water and heat. The third element of war crimes under article 8 was the forced displacement of people from their homelands. I am afraid that whatever people think about what is happening in Gaza at the moment, what we are seeing are war crimes, according to the Rome statute; that is the case by any definition, but certainly on those three points. That is how we guide our reaction to activities by any state, whether it is Israel, Saudi or whoever, and, in guiding our behaviour, we have to recognise that if we in any way aid or provide support to a state acting in that way, we become complicit in those war crimes. That is the reality of where we are at the moment. I feel for the reputation of our country in the future because of the current behaviour of our Government.
A letter was written from a number of key organisations, and I want to raise the questions in it. It was written by Asad Rehman, chief executive of War on Want; Katie Fallon, director of advocacy at the Campaign Against Arms Trade; Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Amnesty International UK; and Yasmine Ahmed, UK director of Human Rights Watch. I want to raise some of the questions that they have asked. Has the Minister seen the letter? First, it calls for an immediate suspension of the extant licences and new export licences for Israel given the clear risk, in their view, that the component parts that are being transferred from the UK
“might be used to facilitate or commit…violations of international law”.
That includes actions that they believe are tantamount to war crimes. The question from those organisations is this: will the Government now suspend those licences?
Secondly, do the Government know whether British weapons or military equipment are being used in Gaza or not? We have heard from one Back Bencher that they are. The letter notes that in the past the UK admitted that it had supplied equipment and that that had been used by the Israel Defence Forces during hostilities in Gaza in 2009. Lord Cameron, as he now is, then introduced a procedure to suspend the operation, and there was a complete review of what was happening with the weapons that we had supplied. I think the minimum that we should be asking for now is for the Government to undertake a Lord Cameron-type review to see exactly how what we have supplied is being used and whether it is being used in Gaza, because if it is, I am afraid we become complicit in the war crime.
Another question that the organisations have asked is just what monitoring is taking place by the Government—what mechanism is in place that effectively to monitor what is going on? The further question that is asked is this: on what basis do the Government consider that there is no clear risk that arms licensed to Israel will be used in prohibited conduct as identified, as my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) said, in the strategic export licensing criteria. This goes back to the fact that the Government have warned in the past that if any of these weapons are used in this way, they will suspend the licence overall. Again, have the Government even taken that into consideration?
One question that we have asked consistently as the provision of £474 million of exports to Israel have gone on is whether the Government applied the restrictions that we had called for to prevent their use in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or against Palestinians. At least there are instances in which we could accept that we have been providing sufficient support to Israel to defend itself from external attack, but to allow these weapons to be used in the occupied territories means that they will be used against Palestinians or, indeed, some of the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens as well.
My final question is to ask the Government whether there have been any shipments of spare parts from the UK to Israel of UK-supplied components for Israeli F-16 and/or F-35 aircraft. As has been said, those are the aircraft that have been used in the indiscriminate bombing of Palestinians in Gaza and have caused such civilian loss of life.
Jeremy Corbyn
Does my right hon. Friend think an additional question might be what is carried in the RAF planes that are leaving RAF Akrotiri and apparently flying directly to Israel?
John McDonnell
That is why I am asking the question: the key components of those planes could be being used in the bombing of Gaza and the huge loss of life.
I reiterate what others have said: I find it difficult to participate in these debates without becoming extremely angry or emotional on all sides—both because I want the release of the hostages and because 7,000 children have now died. That cannot be right, and I believe it is a war crime. Anything that we are doing to give aid or comfort in this direction will ensure that we will be condemned in the future.
Finally, a number of us met Yachad today. We met with heroes and heroines from Palestine, Palestinians and Jewish Israelis. They are trying to campaign for peace. As part of their heroic campaign, one of their clear demands is for a ceasefire, so that we can release the hostages and at least plan for the future in peace.
Draft Code of Practice on Reasonable Steps to be taken by a Trade Union (Minimum Service Levels)
Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts(11 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Chris Stephens
Thank you, Ms Nokes. I am surprised to have been called so early in the debate, because I was expecting finally to hear some sort of philosophical introduction or support from Government Back Benchers, but as we saw during the passage of the Bill, Government Back Benchers usually walk out and take their own industrial action—but without a ballot, I hasten to add, unlike the trade union movement. I thought that some Government Back Bencher would try to bind the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act and the code of practice together through some sort of philosophical introduction or ethos, so I am disappointed.
Even more incredible than what the Minister said to me was what he said to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East. The Minister said that there was no requirement for guidance for employers. Then, in reply to an intervention from the hon. Member for York Central, he said that there would be guidance but that it would not be statutory guidance. That is utterly ridiculous. If a Government were even-handed, they would have two statutory instruments together—one for trade unions and one for employers—so that everybody was clear.
We know what the game is here: to allow employers to use the legislation to bust industrial action. The Government know that the game is up. What is it about workers having decent wages that the Government are so repelled by? Why are they so repelled by workers standing up for good terms and conditions and having those wages to support their families? Is it because, if we had had consistent Conservative party rule since the 1800s, we would still have children going up chimneys? Or is it because, in the 1990s, as we all remember, the Conservative party bitterly opposed the original minimum wage legislation and that, after an acrimonious debate—
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)
Can I bring the hon. Member slightly more up to date? Could he cast his mind back to the 1970s, when industrial relations legislation introduced by the Heath Government ended up with five dockers being put in prison? They were then released. It was a headlong clash with the trade union movement, and it resulted in mass strikes all over the country.