Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. Iain Macleod was indeed a great statesman, a great politician and someone who believed, as I do, that we should be as active in social reform as we are in economic reform. When it comes to tackling homelessness, we have the “No Second Night Out” initiative, which is working, particularly in London, to find people a home. Frankly, we have to do more, particularly with troubled families, as my hon. Friend has said, who need an intervention to help them, often in relation to mental health issues, and make sure that they get all the help they need to deal with their problems and ensure that they have not only a roof over their head, but a job and a livelihood too.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I know that the Prime Minister will absolutely welcome my first few questions, because they return to his favourite subject: tax credits. Yesterday, one of his Back Benchers said

“too many people will be adversely affected. Something must give. For those of us proud enough to call ourselves compassionate Conservatives, it must not be the backs of the working families we purport to serve.” —[Official Report, 20 October 2015; Vol. 600, c. 876.]

Where was she wrong?

[The Prime Minister]

The tax credit changes are part of a package that includes a higher national living wage and tax reductions, and I think that is the right approach for our country. Let us make work pay, let us allow people to earn more, let us cut their taxes, and let us make welfare affordable. I am delighted that once again this measure passed the House of Commons last night with a big majority.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

If the Prime Minister is keen on tax credits helping people into work, I have got a question for him from Lisette, who says:

“A lot of people are setting up their own businesses as self-employed especially in rural areas where job vacancies are limited and pay is often low; tax credits help them until their business becomes established.”

Cutting tax credits damages her life opportunities and the life opportunities of anyone she might employ. Does the Prime Minister not see the value of giving support to people trying to improve their lives rather than cutting their ability to survive properly?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course we want to help the self-employed on low incomes, and that is why the people on the lowest incomes will continue to receive the child tax credit at £2,730. But there are other things we are doing to help the self-employed. We are cutting income tax—that helps the self-employed. We are introducing the employment allowance to cut the national insurance budget for the self-employed—that helps. Above all what we are doing is creating an economy with 2 million more people in work—an economy that is growing, wages that are rising, and inflation that is at zero. All these questions on tax credits in a way come back to the same point, which is how you build a strong and secure economy. You do not do it on the back of a massive deficit and an ever-increasing debt, which is what Labour left us with.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

This is all very strange, because the Prime Minister seems to have changed his mind on this subject in rather a large way. John emailed me to say:

“The Prime Minister solemnly declared on National television shortly before the last”—[Interruption]—

yes, solemnly, and I am solemn as well—

“shortly before the last general election that tax credits would not be affected.”

Is there any reason why this change has come about or any reason why we should believe the Prime Minister on any assurances he gives in relation to tax credits?

[The Prime Minister]

What we said before the election is that we would reduce welfare by £12 billion as part of getting the deficit down, part of getting the economy growing, and part of creating 2 million jobs. That is what happened at the election, and we are keeping our promises by delivering that stronger economy. The hon. Gentleman talks about something strange happening. Something quite strange did happen last night: we had a vote on tax credits and the deputy leader of the Labour party did not turn up. Can he explain that strange outing?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

If the Prime Minister cannot answer now on tax credits and the devastation that is causing—[Interruption.] Thank you—and the devastation that the cuts are causing to many people’s lives, can I ask him to deal with another subject, namely the steel industry? Does he appreciate the devastating effects that the Government’s non-intervention in the steel industry are having on so many people? I have got a question from a maintenance fitter at the Tata steelworks in Scunthorpe. He is helping to produce steel for Network Rail and many companies that were exporting it. He wants to know what the Prime Minister is going to do

“to support the steel industry and its workers facing redundancy.”

Is it not time to walk the walk rather than talk the talk about an industrial strategy?

[The Prime Minister]

We do want to help our steel industry, and we recognise—[Interruption.] Well, I will set out exactly how we will help the steel industry. It is in a very difficult situation. World prices have collapsed by more than half, and the surplus capacity in the world is more than 50 times the UK output, but our plan is to take action in four vital areas—in procurement, in energy costs, in unfair competition and dumping, and in tax and Government support. [Interruption.] Opposition Members are asking, “What have you done so far?” Well, let me take one example. We changed the procurement rules so that it was easier to source UK steel. That is why Crossrail—26 miles of tunnels, the biggest construction project anywhere in Europe—is being completed using almost exclusively British steel. That did not happen under the last Labour Government; it does happen now.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Is not the real problem that the Government do not actually have an industrial strategy to protect this country’s most important industries? If they had, they would not have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this House three times in the last eight days. Thousands of jobs have already gone or are at risk in Redcar, Scunthorpe, Rotherham, Motherwell, Cambuslang, Wrexham and across the west midlands. Is it not time for concrete action today so that there is Government intervention and support for our steel industry and so that we have a viable steel industry for the long term, which this country desperately needs?

[The Prime Minister]

We do want a strong and viable steel industry, and that means taking action across all the areas that I mentioned. Let me mention another one: energy costs. We have already put £50 million into cutting energy costs, and our plans will mean hundreds of millions of pounds extra to cut them.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

On energy, we will save hundreds of millions of pounds. I say to the Leader of the Opposition that last week in the House of Lords the Labour party voted to add to energy bills by opposing the measures we are taking on wind power. So, yes, we do have a strategy; we do have a plan and we should be working across the parties to deliver it. I met the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and neighbouring MPs back in November last year to make sure we could take all the action necessary, and across each of these areas that is exactly what we will do.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Well, the Prime Minister met those Members to discuss the issue 11 months ago, but he has yet to go to the European Union to discuss how the British Government could intervene to protect our industry.

The final question I want to put to the Prime Minister comes from Louis. This is deeply embarrassing to all of us in this House and, indeed, to this country as a whole. He writes:

“The United Kingdom is currently being investigated by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities because of allegations of ‘grave and systematic‘ violations of disabled people’s human rights.”

This is very sad news indeed, but it is even sadder that we need to be investigated because of violations that have occurred. Will the Prime Minister commit to co-operate fully with the inquiry and publish in full the Government’s response to it, so that we can ensure that people with disabilities are treated properly and legally and given full respect by and opportunities in our society?

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me take up the hon. Gentleman on the point he made about intervention in Europe. We have been doing this for months, making sure that there is proper action against dumping in the European Union. We have taken the cases to the European Commission and will continue to do so.

On the issue of helping disabled people in our country, tens of thousands more disabled people have got into work under this Government. Because of legislation passed by a previous Conservative Government, we have some of the strongest equality legislation anywhere in the world when it comes to disability. Of course I will look at any United Nations investigation, but sometimes when you look at these investigations you find that they are not necessarily all they are originally cracked up to be. There are many disabled people in our world who do not have any of the rights or any of the support that they get here in Britain, and I think we should be proud of what we do as we co-operate with this report.

European Council

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement.

I note that the issue of the UK’s in/out referendum was deferred, yet again, to the December European Council meeting. I think that all of us across the House and people across the country would echo the words of Chancellor Angela Merkel when she asked the UK to

“clarify the substance of what it is envisaging”.

There have been indications from Government advisers that the Prime Minister is trying to diminish the rights of UK workers through opt-out or dilution of the social chapter and the working time directive. However, other sources say the Prime Minister has retreated on those proposals. Working people in Britain are losing trust in a Government who attack their trade union rights and cut their tax credits, while giving tax breaks to millionaires. Will the Prime Minister today finally confirm to the House whether there will be an attempt to opt out of, or dilute, the social chapter and the working time directive?

Following reports in the weekend press, which seems to have been extremely well briefed, will the Prime Minister confirm that Britain will remain signed up to the European convention on human rights and will not repeal the Human Rights Act 1998? The lack of clarity and openness from the Prime Minister means we do not know on what basis he is negotiating. Too often, we have been guided by anonymous press briefings from his inner court. Let me say this to the Prime Minister: we will be on his side to support the proposed “red card” mechanism to give national Parliaments greater powers of influence over European legislation. In fact, it is such a good thing that it was in Labour’s manifesto at the general election. Does he agree with Angela Merkel, as we on the Labour Benches do, that

“there are achievements of European integration that cannot be haggled over, for example the principle of free movement and the principle of non-discrimination”?

Again, clarity from the Prime Minister on that would be welcomed not just, I suspect, by his own Back Benchers but by millions of people across the country.

We believe we need stronger transnational co-operation on environmental and climate change issues, on workers’ rights, on corporate regulation and on tax avoidance. We will continue the European reform agenda. Labour is for staying in a Europe that works for the people of the UK and for all the people of Europe. We will not achieve that if all we are doing is shouting from the sidelines. On the referendum, will the Prime Minister confirm that the Government will now accept votes at 16 for the referendum, as per the amendment in the House of Lords?

I turn now to the refugee crisis. We are concerned that some within Europe would like to outsource the refugee crisis to Turkey to solve it. There is a responsibility for all European nations to act in a co-ordinated way, first to help the refugees, and secondly to try to resolve the conflict that is driving so many Syrians to flee. I have said it before and I will repeat it in the House today: I praise the Government for the level of aid they have provided for the camps in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. That is welcome and it is supported on the Labour Benches. However, we must do more to aid those who have come to Europe. Turkey, I understand, has made a request for £2.2 billion in aid to support it in dealing with the 2.5 million refugees in its country. Will the Prime Minister give the House a little more detail on these negotiations and inform the House what negotiations there were at the Council for all the countries of Europe to welcome their fair share of Syrian refugees, including, of course, this country?

My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who is heading up Labour’s taskforce on refugees, has said:

“There is chaos at borders across Europe, people are dying and children are walking miles, sleeping in the open despite the falling temperatures. It is unbelievable we are seeing scenes like this in a continent which includes four out of the top ten richest countries in the world.”

European Council conclusion 2(d) states that we should be

“providing lasting prospects and adequate procedures for refugees and their families, including through access to education and jobs, until return to their country of origin is possible”.

Will the Prime Minister consider any necessary amendments to the Immigration Bill to ensure this is the case?

The Under-Secretary of State for Refugees, the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), was unable to provide figures to the Home Affairs Select Committee last week. Will the Prime Minister now inform the House how many Syrians have been accepted under the Government’s vulnerable persons relocation scheme, and will he give a substantive reply to the letter from 84 bishops calling on him to accept 50,000 refugees? If Britain played a more positive role on this front, it might create the good will in Europe to make headway in his other forthcoming negotiations. In addition, is it not right that we should take firm action against the evil trade of people smuggling? I note what the Prime Minister said about the naval operation and the role played by the Royal Navy, but will he give us more details to clarify the command structure and rules of engagement for this operation, given that innocent refugees will be in close proximity to them?

Does the Prime Minister agree that the refugee crisis will not be solved and that therefore there should be a duty on all European nations to fulfil the UN target of spending 0.7% of GDP on international development, as is happening, with cross-party support, in the UK? Will he work with us to put pressure on fellow EU nations to increase their aid to that level? Currently, only Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark and we achieve that figure.

The situation in Syria is complex, and I welcome the words from the European Council that the

“EU is fully engaged in finding a political solution to the conflict in close cooperation with the UN and the countries of the region”

and its recognition of the

“risk of further military escalation”.

The humanitarian crisis has seen half the population of Syria flee their homes—including, let us not forget, millions to neighbouring countries, which have borne the greatest burden—as well as hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrian civilians killed, the vast majority of them at the hands of Assad’s forces. The people of Syria need a political solution, and the world needs an answer to ISIL’s abhorrent brutality, which indeed threatens us here too.

We need concerted action to cut off the supply of money, arms and fighters to ISIL, and a co-ordinated plan to drive it back from Iraq and Syria. I once again urge the Prime Minister to consider working with our allies to establish safe zones in Syria so that some of the millions of displaced people can return to their homes, humanitarian aid can get in and we can stop the killing. Does he agree we should urgently be seeking a new UN Security Council resolution on a comprehensive approach to the Syrian crisis, including action against ISIL? What action is he taking in that regard?

Briefly on Libya, the European Council conclusions state:

“The EU reiterates its offer of substantial political and financial support to the Government of National Accord as soon as it takes office.”

Will the Prime Minister indicate when this will take place?

Finally—[Hon. Members: “Hooray!”]—I turn to a subject that will be of great interest to all Government Members, and that is Redcar and the other steelworks. Will the Prime Minister tell the House whether he took the opportunity to speak to his Italian counterpart about the role the Government could play in protecting vital infrastructure, such as the steelworks in Redcar, while keeping within EU state aid rules? Will he learn from other European Governments so that a similar fate does not befall Tata steelworks in Scunthorpe or sites in Scotland? Was the dumping of Chinese steel raised at the European Council, and will he be raising the dumping of subsidised Chinese steel on European markets with the Chinese President when he meets him this week, especially given today’s announcement that Caparo steel, which employs 2,000 people in Britain, is about to go into administration?

We need a full debate in Government time and ahead of the December meeting on the negotiating points the Prime Minister has raised in response to the European Council. I hope he will give us some positive news on at least that point.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his detailed questions, to which I shall try to respond in detail.

Taking his last point first, of course we are doing everything we can in Europe to help our steel industry, which is why we voted in favour of dumping tariffs against the Chinese and will do everything we can to help our steel industry, including by looking at how we help with high-energy usage and the necessary clearances there.

As to whether we will raise the matter with the Chinese, we will of course raise all these issues. That is what our relationship with China is all about. It is at such a high level that no subject is off the table, and all these issues, including the steel industry, will of course be discussed.

Let me go through in order all the questions that the hon. Gentleman asked. First, he claimed that the discussion of our referendum had somehow been deferred once again, but that is simply not the case. This process was launched in June, as I always said it would be, although people doubted it would happen. There was always going to be an update in October, and then a full discussion in December—and that is exactly what is happening.

The hon. Gentleman asked what we were delivering for working people in Europe. I would point out that we are delivering 2 million jobs here in Britain for working people, with tax cuts for 29 million working people. I have set out in this statement again the reforms that we are pressing for in Europe.

The hon. Gentleman referred to a briefing in the weekend newspapers that he said seemed to be surprisingly well sourced about our plans. I am amazed that he feels it necessary to read or believe everything in the newspapers; I would have thought that that would be a route to deep unhappiness, so I advise that he desists at once. Let me tell him that our plans for a British Bill of Rights are unchanged. We want to get rid of the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights.

We do need to reform free movement; it should not be free movement for criminals or for people who are benefit shopping, for example, and we are already taking steps to ensure that that is not the case.

The hon. Gentleman specifically asked whether votes at 16 would apply to the referendum. We voted in this House of Commons on votes at 16, and we voted against them, so I think we should stick to that position. I welcome the fact that everyone on the Labour Benches now seems to welcome having a referendum, even though they all campaigned against it at the last election.

On Turkey, refugees and Syria, I thank the hon. Gentleman for what he said about the British aid programme. It is right that we are making such a major contribution to the refugee camps. The precise deal with Turkey has not been finalised—some items are still being discussed—but I think it right to offer some financial support to Turkey when it is housing more than 2 million refugees and some 88% of them have stayed within the country. We obviously want Turkey to do even more to make sure that people do not get on dangerous dinghies and launch themselves into the Mediterranean, which is what the recent discussions have been about.

The hon. Gentleman asked what share of migrants arriving in Europe we would take, and I have explained that that is not the approach we are taking. We are not members of Schengen and we are not compelled to do that. We are taking people out of the refugee camps, which does not encourage people to make this journey. I have to say that in the discussions we have in Europe, there is a lot of respect for the British position. Indeed, the EU Commissioner on refugees said:

“I commend the UK for offering to take 20,000 refugees, it shows the UK is doing something beyond normal. The UK has a great reputation on migration”.

That is the view of the EU Commissioner.

On numbers, we have said that we want to see 1,000 refugees brought to Britain by Christmas, and we will report on that after Christmas to tell people how we have done.

As for the bishops, no one has more respect for them than me—[Interruption.] Yes, but on this occasion I think they are wrong, and I shall say so very frankly. I think the right thing to do is to take 20,000 refugees from the camps. If we become part of the mechanism of distributing people around the European Union, we are encouraging people to make the dangerous journey. I would like the bishops make a very clear statement, as the hon. Gentleman just did, that Britain has fulfilled our moral obligations by making a promise to the poorest countries and the poorest people in the world to spend 0.7% of our gross national income on aid. How many other big countries that made that promise have kept it? Let us hear an in-depth intervention from the bishops on that issue.

Finally, on Syria, the hon. Gentleman is right to say we need a political solution and that we should cut off the money and supply of weapons and fighters to ISIL. However, I do not believe that is enough; I believe we also need to be taking military action against ISIL, as we are in Iraq.

On the issue of the United Nations Security Council resolution, I am all for setting these things out in UN Security Council resolutions, but we have to deal with the plain fact that there is every chance that the Russians will veto such a resolution. I do not think we should stand back from taking our responsibility and safeguarding our country simply because we cannot have a UN Security Council resolution. I thank the hon. Gentleman for all his questions and hope that those were satisfactory answers.

Syria: Refugees and Counter-terrorism

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. There are a number of people who are fleeing the appalling conflicts for whom we need to find a home, but clearly there are people who have been crossing the Mediterranean—particularly those coming from Libya on the central Mediterranean route—who are economic migrants in search of a better life. Part of the comprehensive approach that Europe needs is to ensure that there is a way of breaking the link between getting on a boat in Libya and getting settlement rights in Europe. Going back through history, whenever countries have had huge problems in this regard, they have needed to break that link to discourage people from making the trip if they are not refugees.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

At the Home and Interior Ministers summit next Monday, will Britain now sign up to be part of a Europe-wide response to assist refugees from all parts of the world and ensure that they have somewhere safe to go, so that Britain plays a much greater role than it does at present, including sorting out the misery and desperation of people living in the camps in Calais and other places? They are human beings, too, who need some help and support.

Can the Prime Minister say anything about the welcome remarks made by the Foreign Secretary during his visit to Tehran, when he indicated that the new relationship with Iran meant that there was a possibility of wider political involvement in bringing about some degree of progress in and possibly even a solution to the desperate crisis facing Syria through a summit of all the nations of that region plus, of course, Britain, the USA and Russia?

[The Prime Minister]

We do not believe it is right to take part in the European relocation quota because we think that a better answer for Britain, which is such a major investor in the refugee camps, is to take people directly from the camps. In that way we will not encourage more people to make this perilous journey. By taking a long-term view, and looking at the asylum seekers we have taken and the people we have resettled from around the world, I would say Britain is absolutely fulfilling our moral responsibility, and we absolutely play our part.

In terms of the hon. Gentleman’s question about Iran, of course there is an opportunity for greater dialogue with Iran now that this nuclear deal, which I think is a good deal, has been done, but Britain should enter into that in a cautious and sceptical way. We ought to remember that Iran is still a supporter of terrorist organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah, which I know he describes as friends but which I see very much as enemies. We also need to make sure that Iran is playing a positive role in Syria, rather than the role it plays now of propping up the hated Assad regime.

Tunisia, and European Council

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but that reinforces the point that, because we are not necessarily dealing with a network, anybody who has information and is worried about someone who is going wrong—who is getting radicalised and is either visiting extremist preachers or looking at extremism online—needs to act. Otherwise, it could end the way it has in the past few days.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Obviously, what happened is appalling, tragic and terrible and has to be condemned in every way, and we should support those people in Tunisia who are doing their best to build a free, democratic and secular society with less unemployment and more youth engagement.

I want to take the Prime Minister back to the point made by the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee about the situation in Libya. Does not he think that the destruction of so much of Government and society in Libya has caused, and provided an opportunity for, the problem to get worse?

[The Prime Minister]

If the hon. Gentleman is asking whether I regret the action we took to stop Colonel Gaddafi massacring his own people in Benghazi, then no, I do not. The cause of terrorism is people choosing to take up terror. At the same time, should we try to build these countries and governance? Yes, of course we should, but we should never forget where responsibility lies.

G7

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. and learned Friend makes a very good suggestion. We have already set up the Open Government Partnership, which is an international organisation encouraging transparency from its members, and we are going to hold the anti-corruption summit. Because we have met our 0.7% pledge, we are able to make the running and make the arguments on this issue. People know that we have kept our pledges about the money, so we can now talk about the corruption. His suggestion is a very good one.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

During the long discussions that the Prime Minister was able to have with other leaders of the G7—apparently they were walking around a very nice park while they were doing it—did they manage to discuss seriously two things? First, did they discuss why ISIL is so powerful, so successful, so well funded and, crucially, so well armed with efficient, modern high-calibre weapons? Secondly, was there an opportunity for a longer discussion about the past 15 years of western foreign policy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and other places, which appears to have created the circumstances under which an organisation such as ISIL can grow, and indeed is still growing? Was there an opportunity for reflection on that?

Debate on the Address

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 27th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood). He has had a long and distinguished career, and he has a reputation as a deep thinker, but I really disagree with practically everything he says.

I should like to begin my remarks by thanking my constituents in Islington South and Finsbury for returning me to this place with such a convincing majority. I took my seat 10 years ago with a majority of 484. In this election, more people voted Labour in my constituency than had been the case for 50 years, and I now have a majority that is larger than the total number of people who voted for me in 2005. I am grateful to my constituents, although of course it could have been a better night. We were all very disappointed indeed that we did not come back as part of the Government, but I pledge now that I will not let my constituents down and that I will do everything I can to ensure that their lives are made better, not worse, over the next five years.

Many bread-and-butter issues are causing great concern, and it might well be the case that the Tories did not really expect to win the election—certainly not with a majority. They certainly expected to be able to knock a few rough edges off that manifesto by going into coalition discussions. How are they going to pay for the £7 billion-worth of tax cuts? Where are the £12 billion of unidentified welfare cuts going to come from? We hear various leaks: disability benefits, carers allowance and statutory maternity pay are all facing the chop, but that still does not amount to £12 billion, so where are the cuts going to come from?

The Conservatives say that a benefit cap of £23,000 will reward hard work, but we know from the past two years that such a cap does nothing of the kind. In my constituency, it pushes people out of Islington; children from established families in Islington have to leave their primary school and move out—not because £23,000 is not enough for the family to live on, but because it is not enough for their landlords to live on. The rents are so high and these people are expected to pay ridiculous amounts. Neither the Conservative manifesto nor the Queen’s Speech contains any answer to the housing crisis in inner London, across the south of England and, indeed, across the country. It is no answer to the housing crisis to say, “We will allow people who have secure tenancies in good affordable housing to buy those properties at a huge discount and local authorities can then pay the housing associations compensation by selling more affordable housing.” The only answer to our housing crisis is to build more homes.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her re-election as my parliamentary neighbour. She has made points about building more council housing and stopping the sale of housing association and council housing. Does she agree that it is also important to devolve powers to London, so that we can have full regulation of the private rented sector? We would, be able to make the exorbitant, extravagant and appalling rents charged in the private rented sector a thing of the past and end the social cleansing of central London, which is happening because of the strategy she describes.

[Emily Thornberry]

My hon. Friend speaks from his constituents’ experiences, which are similar to those of my constituents, and of many people who have lived in central London for generations and want to continue to do so but find that the current private market is completely unaffordable. Other capital cities across the world have some form of regulation of rents, but ours does not. Merely allowing capitalism, red in tooth and claw, without any form of regulation will not be enough to solve the central London housing crisis. I agree with him on that point.

I suspect there will be extensive debate on those issues throughout this Parliament—I will return to them again and again—but today I most wish to ask how we answer a question asked of me last week. At a dinner, I was sitting next to an artillery officer who has the same first name and age as my eldest son. When he said he had not met an MP before, I asked him what his one question to an MP would be. This lad, who is prepared to put his life on the line for us, said, “What are we fighting for?” I said that I did not know. A few years ago I would have said, “You are fighting for Britain, which has reached a time in its maturity when it is coming to terms with its colonial past. It has a place on the Security Council, is close to America and is part of the European Union. We have close relationships with the Commonwealth and friends across the world. We feel that our role is to promote human rights and international law. We have definitely made mistakes but we are a force for good internationally and we have a strong national identity.” I would have said that then, but I do not think we can say it now, and I really do not know where we are going.

The growth of petty nationalism is profoundly worrying to us all, and I do not want to see the break-up of Britain. I am Anglo-Irish, British and a Londoner, and I am part of Europe. I am a European and an internationalist. That very identity is being challenged at the moment and we are slipping down a slope, but nobody seemingly has the true will to stop this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mitchell]

It is not the Lord Chancellor’s advice that I am looking for, but his skills in engaging everyone, including Parliament, in the extremely important debate that we must have before the Government come forward with legislation.

I was talking about tackling dark places. I should say that four newly re-elected Members of this House spent last week in Washington seeking the release of the United Kingdom’s last detainee in Guantanamo. It has to be said that a more unlikely group of political bedfellows would be extremely hard to find—me, the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). Although it was clear from the beginning of the visit that we agreed on nothing else at all, the one thing we absolutely agreed on was that Shaker Aamer should be released for transfer to the United Kingdom. I am confident that we made some progress on our visit, but it is the most extraordinary injustice. On his visit to the United States earlier this year, the Prime Minister asked that Shaker Aamer be released for transfer to the United Kingdom, and the President promised to prioritise the matter, but since then virtually nothing has happened.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments and for his company on that important visit. Will he use this opportunity to put as much pressure as possible on the Government to speak up for what was the decision of the last House of Commons and what I am confident will be the decision of this House of Commons? We want Shaker Aamer released. He has twice been cleared for release and held illegally—in my view—for 13 years. He deserves his freedom and his family deserve to see him back.

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and he is right, too, that this is a thorn in the side of the US-UK relationship. There is a huge online petition, and this has all the appearances of a slap in the face for the United States’ closest ally. I cannot think of any time since the second world war when a UK Prime Minister could have been treated so badly in his request to a President and the reaction to it. The House resolved unanimously on 17 March that Shaker Aamer should be transferred back to the United Kingdom. The message from Britain to the United States is to send Shaker Aamer back to Britain now.

Finally, in the five years since the last opening Queen’s Speech of a new Parliament, the world has become a much less safe and more challenged place, with serious difficulties facing us and our neighbours. One thinks of the threats spelt out by the Prime Minister on Ukraine, the Baltic states and the actions of President Putin, ISIL and the enormous humanitarian disaster that has engulfed Syria and Iraq, where a generation of children will be unlikely to get an education and, in many cases, do not even have a roof over their heads. At this time, however, Europe is facing largely inwards, dealing, quite rightly, with the problems of migrants coming across the sea from north Africa—some of the bravest people in the world—Ukraine, Greece and the euro.

There is precious little leadership from America either. We face this appalling catastrophe in the middle east and this grave threat from ISIL, which might soon have a port on the Mediterranean, but what strategy are the United Nations, America and Europe putting together to tackle this serious threat? There seems to be very little international leadership. Anyone who believes that the solution is to drop weapons worth £30,000 on cars worth less than £500 is living in cloud cuckoo land. It will require long-term, smart policies, political leadership and a political solution, but, in my view, we are nowhere near achieving that.

Tackling the alienation and deep poverty in our world—how right the Government are to stand by their commitment on international development and the 0.7% promise to the poorest people in the world—and making sure that better governance takes hold are the long-term policies that will start to make a difference, but for the moment the House must accept that there is precious little international leadership on tackling this grave problem facing all our constituents and many neighbouring countries.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

My hon. Friend puts his finger on one of the substantial problems here. It is important—this is part of the guidelines I described earlier—that prosecutors address their preconceptions and prejudices as to how young people who come forward with these allegations should or should not have been behaving, and how they should or should not react if they had been subject to those kinds of abuse. We also need to ensure that prosecutors challenge prejudices and preconceptions in court, so that in the presentation of prosecutions, evidence is called, where appropriate, to challenge those, and so that judges say what they need to say to juries to make sure that no one proceeds under a false preconception.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

3. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on implementation of the UK’s domestic and international legal obligations on human rights.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

6. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on implementation of the UK’s domestic and international legal obligations on human rights.

[The Attorney-General (Jeremy Wright)]

I have regular discussions with colleagues about a large number of important issues. As the House knows, by convention advice the Law Officers may have given is not disclosed outside Government. However, domestic and international human rights remain an important aspect of our law and key considerations in the Law Officers’ work.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Since human rights is an international issue and an international obligation, and rights are universal, will the Attorney-General take this opportunity to say he has no intention of withdrawing from the European convention on human rights and thus undermining the whole cause of human rights and justice across the continent and diminishing Britain’s ability to criticise anybody else for human rights abuses?

[The Attorney-General]

As I think the hon. Gentleman knows, I make a distinction between what is in the convention, which I wholly support, and the interpretation of the convention given by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, with which I have some disagreement, and I do not think we should confuse the two. Neither do I believe that it is axiomatic that the only way to have a good record on human rights is to be a member of the European convention on human rights and a signatory to it. Countries such as New Zealand, Australia and Canada, none of which, obviously, are signatories to this document, all have a very good record.

Similarly, it is not right to assume that countries that are members of the European convention on human rights have a spotless human rights record. That clearly is not the case either; one need only look at some of the countries that are signatories to see that. Membership of the convention is neither necessary nor sufficient for a country to have a good human rights record, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that a future Conservative Government will be utterly committed to the maintenance of human rights, both domestically and abroad.

Iraq Inquiry

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

I am afraid that the answer to that is well above my pay grade. My hon. Friend would have to ask the inquiry, or those responsible for the inquiry, about that. But I just say, parenthetically, that when this is all over, there will be many issues for parties on both sides of the House to consider about the conduct of such inquiries, not least whether they would be aided, as I soundly believe they would be, if counsel and high-grade legal teams were available to them.

There has been much nonsense around suggesting that it has been witnesses who have caused the extensive delays in the inquiry’s progress, and therefore its final report. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden for what he said, because these claims are wholly without foundation. A moment’s thought should convince anyone that no witness has had any interest in the inquiry’s being dragged out for this long. For example, to prepare for my evidence sessions in 2010 and 2011, I had to study hundreds of records. If the Maxwellisation process had taken place at the time, the detail from those records would still have been fresh in my mind. As it is, a further four years has elapsed, requiring fresh study of reams of documents. I am conscious too, as the whole House will be, of the anxiety and concern of those who have lost loved ones in the conflict at the delays in publishing the report.

When Sir John wrote to the Prime Minister last week with an update on the progress of his inquiry, he said that he could confirm that,

“individuals are currently being given the opportunity to respond to provisional criticism in the inquiry’s draft report”.

The House should note the use of the adverb “currently”, to which the adverb “recently” might have been an informative addition. It follows from this that no witness to the inquiry has remotely been responsible for any of the delays that have occurred to date. Nor, as Mr Blair has made clear in a recent statement, has he or any other witness been involved in delaying the process of declassifying previously sensitive documents.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Is there not then a question as to any obstruction that might have come from the office of George Bush, the former President of the United States, or the current White House, which seem to be very reluctant to reveal the details of correspondence and communication between former Prime Minister Blair and former President Bush?

[Mr Straw]

I have no information about any of the process of declassification.

At the same time, my hope is that in the Maxwellisation process, which is only “currently” under way, no one is suggesting that any person who is the subject of provisional criticisms by the inquiry should not be given a proper opportunity to consider those and to respond, with sufficient time, proportionate to the volume and complexity of the material involved. It has, after all, taken the inquiry more than five years finally to produce its initial report, and as the Prime Minister has conceded, even that may not be complete.

Let me deal briefly with the claims that if the last Government had established an inquiry earlier, we would have had the report by now. There are two responses to that. The first, the obvious one, is that no one anticipated delays of the length that we have seen. The then Leader of the Opposition’s complaint, when the announcement was made in June 2009, was that the inquiry

“is due to take—surprise, surprise—until July or August 2010.”—[Official Report, 15 June 2009; Vol. 494, c. 25.]

That is after that general election. There was never the remotest suggestion from anyone, nor anticipation, that this report would not be out well before the 2015 general election.

Secondly, although they were the subject of controversy, the previous Government did have sound reasons for not establishing an inquiry earlier than we did, because British troops were heavily involved in combat operations at the time when earlier calls were made. Our rationale—

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[Sir Richard Ottaway]

I will not give way to the right hon. Gentleman because I know exactly what he has to say and I will let him give his conspiratorial twaddle to the House in his own time, rather than mine. [Interruption.] I am sure he will let the House know shortly.

In the inquest conducted by Lord Hutton, he concluded that Dr Kelly took his own life. Although the case for war may have been exaggerated, he concluded that it was not “sexed up” in the sense that it contained false or unreliable intelligence. But the evidence that came out during that hearing was that the weapons of mass destruction that we had invaded Iraq to remove were, in fact, small-calibre shells and battlefield weapons—in other words, they were defensive weapons, not offensive weapons that would threaten the security of the western world.

When the report was published and we had the debate in the House on the Hutton inquiry, I intervened on Tony Blair and asked him if he knew that information on the day that we voted to go to war, and if not, why he had not told the House that. He replied that he did not know. So the question is, how could we be going to war when the Prime Minister of the day, who made the decision to go to war, was not properly briefed about the threat that we faced? I, the House and the nation want to know the answer to that. We expect that the Chilcot inquiry will provide the answers.

That the threat was only battlefield weapons was confirmed by the third inquiry, which was conducted by the Intelligence and Security Committee in 2003. It made no judgment on the rights or wrongs of the case for war, but it looked at the use of intelligence and it accepted that there had been convincing intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction programmes. That has subsequently been established to be manifestly wrong, so why was that information there? Again, we want the Chilcot inquiry and the Iraq inquiry to provide the answer.

The Intelligence and Security Committee inquiry led to the fourth inquiry—the Butler inquiry of 2004, which was a continuation of the ISC inquiry. Two members of the Intelligence and Security Committee sat on the Butler inquiry, together with Lord Butler, the chairman, who is now a member of the ISC, and Field Marshal Inge, who gave military advice to the committee. The final member was Sir John Chilcot. This was by far the most in-depth inquiry and looked at the many issues that had surfaced. It concluded that the 45-minute claim should not have been made in the way that it was. But—and it is an absolutely critical but—the inquiry still had not had full access to all the information, and questions remained. Those questions continue to reverberate. Eventually the Chilcot inquiry was established, and Chilcot had the great advantage that he was at least briefed when he started.

I feel that I have only scraped the surface of the high number of unanswered questions. I appreciate the enormity of the task faced by the Iraq inquiry. It has had to deal with former President Bush’s office, the security services, the Cabinet Office, Tony Blair’s office and the offices of the witnesses. It has had to cope with hundreds of hours of oral evidence and thousands of pages of written evidence. There has been personal illness on the committee. The committee has my sympathy, but six years? The prediction at the time, as has just been said, was that it would take two years. The Franks inquiry took six months and the issue in 2009, as has been said, was whether the Iraq inquiry’s report would be ready by the 2010 election. My only regret is that when it is published, I will not be here to debate fully the issues that have been raised.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The right hon. Gentleman and I have been involved in all the debates on Iraq. Does he recall that a number of us, maybe including himself, felt that the whole inquiry process was wrong, and that there should have been a judicial inquiry that could have been seen to be totally independent of what has been revealed by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), which is, essentially, that pretty well everybody is involved in some way along the line in the decision making or the prevention of evidence coming forward?

[Sir Richard Ottaway]

The hon. Gentleman is right—we have been debating these things for a long time. He neatly leads me into the final part of my speech, which is the appearance of Sir John Chilcot before the Foreign Affairs Committee next Wednesday, when, I hope, we can establish answers to such questions. I want to give him a chance to put the record straight.

Sir John Chilcot is a distinguished public servant who has done his best to assist the country. There is no finger of blame pointed at him, or there will not be next Wednesday afternoon, and I quite accept that he will not be able to discuss substantive matters when he appears before us. What I want him to talk about is the process, and I want him to guide us on how to streamline procedures for the future, and maybe to provide the answers to the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn).

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[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

It is always a great pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), but it is also a challenge, because I believe that he has one of the finest analytical minds in this place.

Twelve years ago, the UK went into what I believe to have been an unlawful war against Iraq. That happened against the background of the protestations of thousands of members of the public and dozens of Members of Parliament, and on the basis of legal advice that Parliament was not allowed to see.

The impact of the war can be measured in bodies. Between March 2003 and May 2011, when UK operations ended, 179 UK armed forces personnel lost their lives in Iraq. Of those, 136 died in combat. As was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), whom I congratulate on leading the call for this debate, the Iraq Body Count project estimates that between 134,000 and 151,000 civilians have been killed as a result of violence in Iraq since March 2003. The number of violent deaths, including combatants, stands at 206,000 and is still growing. The website reports that only yesterday, 26 people were killed in Iraq. That is because Iraq was not left in anything like a stable condition when the UK and US armed forces pulled out in 2011.

In March 2005, I visited Iraq and travelled to Basra and Baghdad. It was plain to see then, as it is now, that little preparation had been put into planning for peace after the war ended. It is a distressing place to visit. We found open sewers, a lack of any infrastructure and badly underfunded social services, if any. The thinking in Washington, after all, was that it would take only weeks to get rid of Saddam. A former White House adviser, Kenneth Adelman, said that

“demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.”

Instead, Iraq is a troubled, crippled state. How wrong the establishment was.

Six years ago, the inquiry was set up with the express aim of finding out why such a colossal mistake as this war was allowed to be made. At the launch of the inquiry, its chairman, Sir John Chilcot, said that the inquiry would be

“considering the UK’s involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish…what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned. Those lessons will help ensure that, if we face similar situations in future, the government of the day is best equipped to respond to those situations in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country.”

The scale of the inquiry was significant. Those of us who had opposed the war from the beginning had some hope that at last we would hear answers to the questions that we had posed since 2002.

How disappointing it is for me to stand here today, four years since the inquiry concluded taking evidence, with the knowledge that those answers are no closer to being published. Indeed, if the reports are to be believed, the conclusions are yet to be written. Those criticised by the report have, of course, been given the right of reply by means of the Maxwellisation principle, which we have just discussed.

After all is said and done, the Chilcot inquiry finished taking evidence in early 2011—I believe that the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) was the last to give evidence—and the expectation was that the findings would be published in the autumn of that year. Prevarication followed each delay and in November 2013 the inquiry said that it had reached an impasse over the release of crucial documents, including transcripts of the conversations between Mr Blair and Mr Bush. In May 2014, the inquiry announced that those transcripts would have to be published in a redacted form. Now, in January 2015, we learn that the findings of the inquiry will not be published until after the election, with no guarantee of when they will be published. It is becoming a farce—a very expensive farce—and an affront to democracy.

I have had grave misgivings from the very beginning about the independence of the Chilcot inquiry. I believe that it may well have been flawed and even compromised from the beginning. I have a particular interest in the transcripts of the conversations between our former Prime Minister and the then American President.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The right hon. Gentleman points to what I suspect will be a grave disappointment when the Chilcot report finally comes out. Would he then favour a totally independent judicial inquiry, so that we get to the bottom of this? I, for one, will not leave this subject, and I am sure that he will not either.

[Mr Llwyd]

The hon. Gentleman is right. He and I agree, as I believe does the right hon. Member for Blackburn, that it should have been a judge-led inquiry. It might have had two lay assessors, but it definitely should have had a counsel to the inquiry, who would have directed the line of questioning forensically and would not have been batted away by the simple answers that were given, often in artistic and heroic terms, by some individuals, the right hon. Member for Blackburn excepted.

The inquiry did not go into any real depth. Being a Privy Counsellor does not make one a forensic analyst. I am a Privy Counsellor and I happen to be a lawyer, so I am able to ask the odd question, but the fact that someone is a Privy Counsellor does not take them any further on from Joe Public on the Clapham omnibus. It was quite ridiculous. Those are some of my misgivings.

As I said, I have a particular interest in the transcripts of conversations between the former Prime Minister and the former American President. In 2008, confidential documents were dispatched to my office from an unknown source. The documents showed that discussions had been held between the leaders of the two countries in 2001 and 2002 relating to removing Saddam using military force. Mr Blair had committed us to war even then, before seeing any proof of weapons of mass destruction.

My colleague, Adam Price, and I were visited by two very senior Metropolitan police officers—I believe they were from SO13—and questioned about the documents. The fact that they visited us made me believe that the documents were genuine. They were marked “Top Secret”. I believe that one was an American transcript and the other a British transcript. To this day, I have no knowledge of where they came from. I thought that the proper course of action was to say to the police, “I do know where the documents are, but I am not going to make them public until we have an inquiry. When that inquiry is set up, I shall take them to the inquiry personally so that it can look at them.”

I therefore decided to hand the documents over to the Chilcot inquiry when it was set up. I have doubts that they ever saw the light of day, but I do not know what has happened. After submitting the documents, nine months went by before I received any response. When one came, it simply informed me that I would not be called to give evidence. That is fine, but I have since found out that the way in which the gatekeeper to the inquiry, Ms Margaret Aldred—the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway) referred to her a few moments ago—was appointed as the inquiry’s secretary did not follow the procedures in the civil service code. The Cabinet Office refuses to disclose any paper trail relating to that appointment, if indeed there is one. Ms Aldred was appointed on the nod by Sir John Chilcot —the same Sir John Chilcot, by the way, who criticised Tony Blair’s Government as a “sofa Government”. A good example of sofa government is when someone rings their pal to say, “Come and be a secretary to my inquiry.”

Margaret Aldred’s appointment showed a glaring conflict of interest, since she had regularly chaired the Iraq senior officials group, which co-ordinated across Government. Ms Aldred met US officials in October 2008 to discuss Iraq, and she even flew to Washington for discussions with her counterparts in the three weeks before the inquiry was announced. It was Ms Aldred’s section of the Cabinet Office that drew up the plans for regime change, and it was the Cabinet Office—the Joint Intelligence Committee and its staff—that produced the so-called dodgy Iraq dossier.

What I would like to know is the following. Why has the inquiry stopped publishing documents on its website? It did so for the first year, then it stopped. What is the total number of individuals who have been granted a right to reply to the accusations against them, when were they contacted by the inquiry, and what time scale have they been given to respond? Why has the inquiry been allowed to be so cowed by the establishment?

I am afraid that those and many other questions have not yet been answered. I sincerely hope that they are in the near future, because otherwise it will be an affront to democracy, an insult to Parliament and, more importantly, a gross offence to people who have lost loved ones out in Iraq and to the people of Iraq themselves. Democracy demands that something is done urgently, otherwise this Parliament will be the laughing stock of the world.

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[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was worried for a moment that you were going to come up with the dreaded four-minute warning, so I am obliged to you.

It is a pleasure to be able to speak in this debate, but it is a pretty big indictment of our Parliament that there are hardly any Members here to take part in what ought to be an incredibly serious discussion, and a process of very serious self-criticism of the failure of Parliament both in 2003 and since to hold to account those who took crucial decisions on our behalf, the consequences of which all of us will live with for the rest of our lives, and the population of this country, and indeed of western Europe and the USA, are going to live with for many, many decades and generations to come. What happened in 2003 was a seminal disaster.

I respect the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) for his knowledge, his interest and his commitment, but I profoundly disagree with his analysis. It is essentially that we were good imperialists, then we became weak imperialists, and now we have got to be better imperialists. I have two messages. The first is that we cannot afford it. The second is that the lesson from the disaster of Auschwitz in the 70th anniversary of its liberation should surely be to say never again—never let racism raise its ugly head, be it against Jews, Muslims or anybody else—and also that we must learn a fundamental lesson: that the crazy triumphalism of the treaty of Versailles and that whole period in the 1920s led to the growth of the Nazis and to the disasters. The whole middle east region is still living with the disasters of Versailles—of the Sykes-Picot agreement and the borders we inherited.

[Rory Stewart]

The danger of the hon. Gentleman’s anti-imperialist rhetoric is that we are not going to come to terms with how to prevent genocides in the future. What is he proposing in terms of reform, energy, compassion and confidence to deal with an Auschwitz-Birkenau, a Bosnia or a Rwanda in the future, if all he has to say is that we are a small country that cannot afford to do anything in the world?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I propose a process of international law, a process of human rights engagement, a process of truth and honesty, and a process whereby we do not denigrate whole peoples and turn the other way when human rights abuses take place.

On a lesser example, but nevertheless an important one, we are apparently more interested in selling weapons to Saudi Arabia than we are in human rights in Saudi Arabia. That example can be multiplied in country after country across the world. If we were serious about human rights, we would not provide the Government of Bahrain with equipment to kill and injure demonstrators who oppose what they do. There has to be some honesty in the whole of our foreign policy, and if this debate does anything to make us start to think more seriously about foreign policy, rather than racing headlong into spending £100 million on Trident, developing more weapons and yet more weapons for our armoury, that will be something.

We have had inquiry after inquiry on Iraq. Parliament showed itself to be a failure and could not do it, and then there was the Butler inquiry and a Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry. We ended up with the Chilcot inquiry.

In 2006 I voted for an Opposition motion, despite the endeavours of the Labour Whips Office. I was not that bothered with its endeavours at that time—or on one or two other occasions for that matter—because I thought setting up an inquiry was the right thing to do. However, I do not think it is the job of Parliament to pass its duties on to somebody else and then complain vaguely when they do not report while saying that we are not going to interfere with the inquiry. This really is our failure. There should have been a serious inquiry, judicial-led in my opinion, with counsel that could have asked some really good questions of Tony Blair, the right hon. friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and a whole lot of other people. Michael Mansfield QC would have been a very good interrogator, and I think that after a few days of interrogation by him we would have gained far more truth than we did from these showman-like trips by Tony Blair to the inquiry and his lucrative tours around the world to say he would do the same again. He clearly has not learned the lessons from this.

I remember those debates very well. I am chair of the Stop the War coalition, and I have been involved in every demonstration I can think of against this war. Indeed, I spoke to that million-strong audience in Hyde park on 15 February 2003. There was something amazing about that day. I was there with many others in this House on that huge platform looking out on Hyde park, with 1 million people and hundreds of thousands more who could not even get into the park. That was after we had been told by the Cabinet Office that Hyde park was not available and we should hold the meeting in Battersea park. I resisted the temptation to go into Battersea park on a Saturday afternoon, however, and we persisted with Hyde park. I saw people there who politically profoundly disagree with me, and people who had never been at a public meeting or demonstration in their lives, but who were moved to oppose the war because of the obvious lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and why we had to go to war. Everyone there learned a lesson that day. The cynicism that we meet on the doorstep as we approach the next election is in part due to the contempt shown by Parliament on that day.

I shall not go on much longer, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I just want to say this. The idea that Members were not aware of the misinformation concerning Iraq really does not cut much ice. We had the dodgy dossier. I remember arriving in Parliament at 8 am to read that heroic document; I was the first to arrive at the downstairs Table Office. I knocked on the door at 1 minute to 8 and the people there would not open it, but the moment the door opened at 8 o’clock I put my hand in and grabbed two copies. I gave one to Glen Rangwala, an excellent academic from Cambridge, and I kept the other for myself. He went off to read his, and I went to my office to read mine. When we spoke on the phone 20 minutes later, we said, “This thing is utter nonsense. Who could possibly believe this stuff?” But the House did, and some members of the Security Council did, although France, Russia, China and a lot of other countries did not.

I also remember the extraordinary pressure that MPs were put under to vote in that debate. A number of us who could reasonably be described as Iraq sceptics met Tony Blair in a room at the back of the Chamber. After we had been around the track several times, with him not wishing to engage in the discussion and others wishing to do so, he started looking at his watch and saying, “We’ve got to go now.” I said, “Tony, just one question: why are we doing this?” He slapped his hand on the table and said, “It’s the right thing to do. That’s why we’re doing it.” When I said, “That’s not an answer”, he said, “That’s the only one you’re going to get.” That was the enthralling answer that we got from him.

The lesson surely must be that when the Foreign Affairs Committee interviews Sir John Chilcot next week, they must ask him how he is getting on with obtaining records of the barbecue discussion between Blair and Bush and the correspondence that took place, along with the handwritten notes that civil servants and the Foreign Office maybe did not know about. Perhaps a lot of people did not know about them, because I understand that it was part of Tony Blair’s charm and style to do things differently from anyone else so that people did not know what was going on. I also hope that the Committee will get from him an exact date for the publication of the report, but I think I shall be disappointed when it is published. I suspect that it will be full of redactions and that we will have to read a million words before we discover which bits have been redacted. This issue is not going to go away. We need to get to the truth, and we need a war powers Act to ensure that every MP is involved in decisions to send British troops abroad to war.

To follow up on something that the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border said, I agree that we need a serious debate on foreign policy and on our place in the world. Other countries that once had massive empires have learned these lessons. I recall being in Vienna in December when the Austrian Government proudly said, “Our Government have no nuclear weapons, want no nuclear weapons and will never have any nuclear weapons. We want to be a force for peace in the world.” That was once the centre of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Most of the other European countries that were once the centre of empires have learned lessons. Maybe the disaster of Iraq and the growth of al-Qaeda, ISIS and all those other forces that have been let loose by the disaster of the Iraq war will provide a lesson that we will have to learn the hard way, but if we do not learn it, we will suffer by having to repeat it again and again. I do not want to go to war memorials. I do not want to go to memorial services. I want us to be a real influence for peace, for justice and for human rights around the world. We do not achieve that by lying to Parliament. We do not achieve that by invading countries that do not have the weapons it was claimed they had.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) spoke before me and came up with some very practical suggestions about how things could be done. I am particularly pleased because those suggestions really underline the fact that we allowed the Government of the day to set up this inquiry in a haphazard and casual way.

I speak as someone who straddles two aspects of this matter. I was shadow Defence Secretary at the time and often spoke from the Dispatch Box in the run-up to the Iraq war. I am also taking part in this debate, in answer to the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), as someone who feels a deep responsibility for what has happened as a consequence of that war. It may surprise the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) that I agree with a phrase of his speech. It is that we need to understand the “set of conditions” that allowed us “to pursue this particular course of action”. It would have been nice if that had been put into the terms of reference, to which I will come in a moment.

The origins of the Chilcot inquiry go back beyond 2006, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) adverted. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing this debate, because it has proved already to be a very informative and interesting discussion.

Just to go back to the origins of the inquiry, I have in my hand the resolution that was tabled by the then Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith). Another five of us were named on the motion, including me and a future leader of the Conservative party, now Lord Howard of Lympne. The motion said:

“This House is concerned at the growing public confusion since the summer adjournment as a result of increasingly conflicting accounts of intelligence relating to and events leading up to the recent Iraq war and what has happened since; and calls for the setting up of a comprehensive independent judicial inquiry into the Government’s handling of the run-up to the war, of the war itself, and of its aftermath, and into the legal advice which it received.”

How long was it before we actually got an inquiry, and a rather watered down inquiry at that? Let me explain why we called for the inquiry at that point—and this is a significant point. I came back from Iraq shortly after the invasion, having been on a shadow ministerial visit to Basra and had a comprehensive briefing. I then tabled a paper to the shadow Cabinet on what I had found that had caused me a great deal of concern. The paper on post conflict Iraq mentioned

“the widening gap between expectations and reality.”

It said:

“Many are wondering how much longer before the coalition’s window of opportunity closes.”

I went on to explain that what we needed was a proper comprehensive plan, a road map and benchmarks in order to structure a proper coalition provisional Administration, backed by the necessary civilian and military resources. In the addendum to the paper, I wrote, “Quagmire?” and for that I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway)—and it may disturb him that I am doing so. Of all the speeches that we heard on that fateful day when we voted to go to war, his was the most disturbing. I chose the word “quagmire” because I remembered him saying that we were entering into a quagmire.

We had done our best to satisfy ourselves from the Opposition perspective that there was plenty of planning. It is true that there was plenty of planning in Washington, but the problem was that the Americans had more than one plan. They had a Rumsfeld plan and a State Department plan and there was a competition between the two of them over which should be implemented. But neither plan was based on any proper understanding, depth of assessment or analysis of what we were going to find when we got in there, which is why it became evident so quickly that we were facing a disaster. I wrote:

“Currently all the elements for protracted insurgency warfare exist, though there is every opportunity to prevent the situation deteriorating.”

There was an inability to get anyone to hear this message in Government and, I confess, even some in my own party—this was the Government’s problem, not our problem. It is the same kind of truth blindness to which my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr Holloway) referred in the British political establishment, in the civil service, among the political leaders.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Who does the hon. Gentleman think took the extraordinary decision to destroy the whole of the state structures in Iraq after the invasion, dismiss all the armed forces and the police and leave chaos behind?

[Mr Jenkin]

Yes, it was Ambassador Bremer. In my paper, I wrote:

“The Bremer administration has 3,000 US officials, only 16 of which are Arab speakers. 650,000 Iraqi Government officials have failed to return to work.”

There was a complete misappreciation in the first 100 days —the golden 100 days after the invasion—that we were sitting on a volcano. I remember asking questions from the Opposition Benches such as, “What are we going to do about the Iranian insurgents coming over the border?” The border between Iraq and Iran was completely open. There was flat denial that any of this mattered or was actually happening.

What this inquiry cannot do is resolve the controversies about legality or intelligence, which have been raked over so many times. So many other inquiries have looked at those things. What this inquiry must do is address the machinery of government problem, the capacity problem—the understanding problem to which my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), the Chairman of the Defence Committee so capably referred.

The Select Committee on Public Administration produced—this is the other side of the equation in this debate—no fewer than three reports in the last Parliament about how to conduct inquiries. We produced a report at the beginning of this Parliament entitled “Who does UK National Strategy?” The informal answer that I received from the then Chief of the Defence Staff, which we put in our report, was nobody. Nobody holds a strategic concept for the United Kingdom. No one creates a single document and keeps it updated on how we are to conduct our statecraft in this increasingly troubled world in which we are increasingly vulnerable.

I say to the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) that we found that the Foreign Office had an aversion to any kind of strategy. Culturally, it does not like the idea of being tied to a plan, misunderstanding that a plan is different from strategy. We need to learn. How does the machinery of government allow us to go to war without a better understanding of the consequences? Those consequences have led to a complete loss of confidence in this Chamber in the ability of Whitehall to make those judgments, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham said.

What sort of reform do we want to be able to drive—as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border asked? Why does this disconnect exist between what people in Whitehall think is going on or think that they are able to control and what the people on the ground find out is actually going on and are unable to control?

When I came back from Basra on that occasion, I remember reporting to the shadow Cabinet that I had asked the General Officer Commanding in Basra what message he wanted me to take back home. He said in slightly less proper language, “Where the hell is DFID? What is the plan? What are we meant to do now?” There was no plan. I do not apologise for complaining about the lack of a plan in the aftermath because it reflects exactly what the General was saying. There is a lack of seriousness, a lack of trusting people who come with challenging information and uncomfortable truths.

We need more capacity in Whitehall to learn and understand, to gather real knowledge and information—capacity for analysis and assessment, which paradoxically we do quite well in the intelligence field through the Joint Intelligence Committee, unless it is sat on by political appointees. We need the ability to choose realistic objectives for our foreign and security policy; to formulate comprehensive plans and then be able to implement them.

As we wait for the inquiry to conclude and to report its findings, we must reflect on the process that we feel has failed us. The first lesson is that it is too late—much too late. It started too late, and it is taking far too long. Why did we not set a time limit? Leveson was set a time limit; why did we not set one for the Iraq inquiry? I have struggled to find definitive terms of reference for the inquiry. In fact, the terms of reference are drawn from a long and rambling statement made from that Dispatch Box by the then Prime Minister, who boasted about how broad and comprehensive and utterly large it was going to be. One wonders whether the words “long grass” were lurking at the back of his mind—the longer the better.

This House failed. This House failed to create an accountable inquiry process. We let it happen. We were all so desperate for an inquiry, so desperate to get it started, that we lost our perspective. If this was a judicial inquiry, as we originally called for, the issues of conflict of interests of people involved on the fringes of the inquiry would not be allowed to arise. There would not be any question about people being able to give their evidence in public, immune from prosecution, which the Chilcot inquiry has been unable to do. We could have ensured the inquiry’s independence. Speakers in this debate have asked why there are no politicians, lawyers or military figures on the inquiry. All those questions were asked when the inquiry was set up, and we are all now ruing the fact that those suggestions were not adopted.

I will recommend that my Committee follows up this inquiry in the next Parliament, covering such questions as how inquiries are established, why, what for, how they operate, judicial or parliamentary, lessons from the terms of reference, how the timing is organised when they are set up and how long they are allowed to sit. I fear this inquiry will turn out to be a shadow of what we really need and we will not learn the lessons. We did not learn the lessons before we went to Afghanistan, before we went to Libya, before we threatened Syria, and these are lessons that we must learn.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Rob Wilson)]

I congratulate the right hon. and hon. Members who secured this debate on the Iraq inquiry. I thank all colleagues who have contributed to a very thoughtful and, at times, stirring debate. At times, with passions running high, it felt as though we were back debating the decision to go to war in the first place, all those years ago.

I am sure that I speak for all in the House in saying that when this inquiry was started in July 2009, none of us thought it would still not be completed by January 2015. It is frustrating and very disappointing that we still do not know when it will be published. It is clear that once it is published, the Government will need to look very carefully at what lessons could be learned for future inquiries. I am sure that everyone here will agree that the inquiry is unprecedented in its scope and scale. I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) that Sir John Chilcot is trying to leave no stone unturned. Never before has a UK public inquiry examined in such depth and detail a decision to go to war and its consequences over a nine-year period.

At the risk of junking the rest of my speech, I will try to deal with as many of the points that right hon. and hon. Members have raised as possible. May I first pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who made an excellent speech? He raised important questions about potential conflicts of interests, particularly regarding the Cabinet Secretary. The Cabinet Secretary was identified as a final arbiter in discussions about the declassification of documents because he is the most senior civil servant, is bound by the civil service code on impartiality and, crucially, can see the papers of a previous Administration. I am not aware of any opposition to his appointment to that role at the time.

I understand my right hon. Friend’s concerns about the process, but I have seen no evidence to date of Sir John Chilcot being prevented from going wherever his inquiry wished. The inquiry panel has had access to every paper, memo, e-mail or minute of a meeting—classified or otherwise—that it wished to see. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) rightly said, there is a difference between what is declassified and what is published.

The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) raised the involvement of the secretary to the Iraq inquiry in the foreign and defence policy secretariat. The appointment was agreed by Sir John in the full knowledge of that involvement, and he saw no conflict of interest, but the Foreign Affairs Committee may want to take that up and ask further questions.

The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and others asked about the involvement of the US. The US Government have not at any stage made any attempt to delay the publication of the report. They have not sought to block the disclosure of evidence, including the exchanges between the Prime Minister and the President of the USA, despite the fact that those exchanges are a privileged channel of communication. Because that decision was a very difficult one for the Cabinet Secretary, he consulted a number of parties, including US officials.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the declassification process. As Sir John has confirmed, the process of declassifying the most difficult and sensitive documents has been completed. In respect of other documents, Departments continue to meet every request made.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

If the British side is not blocking any correspondence or communications records between Blair and Bush, are the US or Bush blocking them? We need to be assured that all of that will come out if the inquiry is to have any credibility.

[Mr Wilson]

As I have said, there has been no attempt by the US to block any element of the inquiry. There have been discussions about the scope of what in the communications should be released. The gist of some conversations will be published, although they were previously confidential.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield asked why the Maxwellisation process has been held up. In a letter to the Prime Minister on 4 November 2013, Sir John Chilcot explained that the delay in Maxwellisation was due to the fact that the inquiry and the Government had not reached an agreement on the disclosure of the material that the inquiry wished to include in its report. Sir John acknowledged that disclosure of the material raised difficult issues, which had taken time to resolve but had been worked through in good faith by both the Government and the inquiry. The inquiry did not want to issue its provisional criticisms without a clear understanding of what supporting evidence would be agreed for publication. I think that the further delays in progress might be raised in the Foreign Affairs Committee on 4 February.

The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), who is no longer in his place, asked why we could not subpoena the evidence. The inquiry has identified the evidence it needs to reach its conclusions. The publication of that evidence without the context provided by the final report would lead to the issues being only partially understood.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker), who is not in his place, asked about Maxwellisation and Salmon letters. Salmon letters are sent before a witness gives evidence, while Maxwellisation happens before an inquiry publishes its report.

The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) asked about additional resources for the inquiry. That offer has always been on the table, not only from the Deputy Prime Minister but from the Government. The inquiry has, on occasion, asked for additional assistance and the Government have always provided it. I am not sure that Maxwellisation, which only recently started, as Sir John Chilcot has confirmed, could be speeded up by additional resources.

As many have recognised, it is a question of fairness that those who are provisionally subject to criticism are given the opportunity to make representations, and that the inquiry considers those representations properly. That process will take some time. It does not mean that the report will be watered down, as I understand the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale suggested recently. It will be up to Sir John and his colleagues to decide whether they accept the representations that are made.

The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) asked why the report should not be published before the general election. The inquiry is completely independent of Government, and the timetable and processes for completing its work are matters for the inquiry. I can imagine the outcry there would be if the Government interfered in an independent process, and rightly so. If she listened to my highly respected colleague my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, she would have heard that there is still a real possibility that this will be a very good report indeed.

European Council

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can certainly give my right hon. Friend that guarantee. In my view, the eurozone will do more things together. That is precisely why we need the treaty change, to give Britain a better place in a European Union where some members will be integrating faster. As for the €300 billion package proposed by Jean-Claude Juncker, it is not very clear at the moment how much of that is public, how much is private, how much is new, and how much will be generated by new money into the European Investment Bank. We will seek further answers on that in December.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Around the table in Brussels, did any Minister bring up in a humanitarian way the crisis of hundreds of people dying in the Mediterranean as refugees from war, famine and environmental disaster? European policies as a whole and western policies in part have contributed to this disaster. Was there any discussion of it?

[The Prime Minister]

We did not have a discussion at this Council on the migration pressures in the European Union, but we have done so before when I have made the point that some of the action taken in the Mediterranean has almost encouraged people to get on to completely unsafe craft and head off to sea. We need to ensure that we tackle all those problems, but our aid budget does a huge amount to try to help people stay in their countries—dealing with the sources of conflict and poverty—rather than leave and seek a new life in Europe.

Recall of MPs Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank my Friend for giving way on that point. I support the amendment we will vote on later. Clearly, what he says about expanding democracy and participation is true—it is welcome and good. Does he agree that there is a very large elephant parked outside the Chamber, namely the House of Lords, which is not subject to any kind of electoral accountability, and yet has a huge influence on legislation and can decide the future of Bills and laws in this country? Surely we need the right to recall or remove Members of the House of Lords.

[John McDonnell]

We will draft amendments for the next stage of the Bill. I had not even thought of amending it to that extent, but my hon. Friend makes an important point. We could make it a constitutional reform Bill.