Coronation: Policing of Protests

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Chris Philp

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I do not accept that. I have already pointed out the operational independence of the police and I have said that briefings by the Met on the coronation were received not just by Home Office Ministers, but also by the shadow Home Secretary and the Mayor of London, all of which was completely proper.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

The whole world could see on Saturday the effects of the public order legislation on policing, trying to prevent legitimate peaceful protest in a democracy. Will the Minister reply in a considered and reasonable way to say that he will undertake a full review of the operations of the Public Order Act thus far on preventing peaceful protest in this country, as an example of how a democracy is prepared to admit it has got something wrong and change it?

[Chris Philp]

No. What we saw on Saturday was the police doing their best, in very difficult and challenging circumstances, to prevent disruption while allowing and facilitating peaceful protest, which indeed went ahead.

Immigration Rules: Supported Accommodation

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Chris Philp

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I thank my hon. Friend and Stoke-on-Trent for their work to welcome genuine refugees, including as part of the resettlement programme. He raises a good point, because some parts of the country decline to take unaccompanied asylum-seeking children as part of the national transfer scheme, thereby putting enormous pressure on gateway authorities such as Kent, Portsmouth, Croydon and Hillingdon; and many other authorities, despite proclaiming themselves to be cities or even nations of sanctuary, often do not give consent for dispersed accommodation for asylum seekers. I say to any of those local authorities and to the devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales: please help us by accepting unaccompanied asylum-seeking children under the national transfer scheme, particularly from Kent, Portsmouth, Hillingdon and Croydon, and please give consent for dispersed accommodation, because it is essential that we have that available to accommodate people who are seeking asylum.

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

Does the Minister recognise that this is a huge global issue; that there are almost 80 million refugees globally; that 85% of them have been taken in by the poorest countries in the world, not the wealthiest; that all of them are human beings; and that those who have made their way to this country, historically and in the current time, have made a massive contribution to our lives and our wellbeing? Can he say something positive about the contribution that refugees make to our society?

In the light of the new regulations, can the Minister give us an assurance that no refugees will be destitute while they are waiting for a decision, that none will be left homeless and that none will be left without food? Sadly, in all our cities one comes across people who are making apparently legitimate claims for asylum but are left in a position of destitution and forced to rely on the faith community merely to survive. Does the Minister not think that we can do a bit better than that in the fifth richest country in the world?

[Chris Philp]

I have already given the assurance about destitution to the shadow Minister and to the Chair of the Select Committee. The right hon. Gentleman will know that the asylum system in general does provide support, accommodation and other support, the cost of which is getting on for £1 billion a year, so it is generous in nature. He talks about the refugee problem around the world, which we recognise. That is one reason why we spend a great deal of money on overseas aid. Even after the recent adjustment, that will still be many, many billions of pounds, probably in the region of £10 billion, which is more than almost every other country in the world, so we are doing our bit that way.

We are also doing our bit through the resettlement scheme, which I talked about earlier. It is the largest resettlement scheme of any European country—25,000 people over the past five years. Of course I accept that the people who choose to make their home in this country can, and very often do, make a significant contribution, which we welcome. That is why the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), set up the points-based immigration system with the Home Secretary, which went active very recently. It is essential that people either claiming asylum or entering the country for work and other purposes do so legally, and all Members of this House, including the former Leader of the Opposition, should be very clear with migrants in Europe that they should not attempt this dangerous crossing and they should not pay dangerous people smugglers. If they need protection, they should claim it where they are in Europe.

No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Chris Philp

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government.

Last night, the Government were defeated by 230 votes —the largest defeat in the history of our democracy. They are the first Government to be defeated by more than 200 votes. Indeed, the Government themselves could barely muster more than 200 votes. Last week, they lost a vote on the Finance Bill—that is what is called supply. Yesterday, they lost a vote by the biggest margin ever—that is what is regarded as confidence. By any convention of this House—by any precedent—loss of confidence and supply should mean that they do the right thing and resign.

The Prime Minister has consistently claimed that her deal, which has now been decisively rejected, was good for Britain, workers and businesses. If she is so confident of that—if she genuinely believes it—she should have nothing to fear from going to the people and letting them decide.

In this week in 1910, the British electorate went to the polls. They did so because Herbert Asquith’s Liberal Government had been unable to get Lloyd George’s “People’s Budget” through the House of Lords. They were confident in their arguments, and they went to the people and were returned to office. That is still how our democracy works. When we have a Government that cannot govern, it is those conventions that guide us in the absence of a written constitution. If a Government cannot get their legislation through Parliament, they must go to the country for a new mandate, and that must apply when that situation relates to the key issue of the day.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

Is not the Leader of the Opposition engaging in a piece of shameless political opportunism, putting party interests ahead of national interests? Is he not simply trying to disguise the fact that he has no policy on this great issue?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

In 2017, the Prime Minister and her party thought that they could call an election and win it. They thought that they would return with an overall majority, but there was an enormous increase in the Labour vote—the biggest since 1945—during that campaign when people saw what our policies actually were.

When the Prime Minister asked to be given a mandate, she bypassed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), the shadow Foreign Secretary, pointed out, was designed to give some stability to the Tory-Lib Dem coalition Government to ensure that the Lib Dems could not hold the Conservatives to ransom by constantly threatening to collapse the coalition. The 2011 Act was never intended to prop up a zombie Government, and there can be no doubt that this is a zombie Government.

Military Action Overseas: Parliamentary Approval

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Chris Philp

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He has laid out a test, which he thinks could be met in emergency circumstances. Does that not mean that we may have a situation in which British forces need to be urgently committed, yet court action would end up determining whether or not that could happen? Would it not be wrong that judges, rather than the Cabinet, made those kinds of decisions?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am not quite sure where the hon. Gentleman gets that logic from, because it certainly does not come from anything that I have said. [Interruption.]

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Chris Philp

Wednesday 8th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the two Members who have made their maiden speeches today, the hon. Members for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) and for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Philip Boswell). I mean no disrespect to the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle when I say that we are all going to miss Sir Peter Tapsell and his view of history. I hope that all his recordings have been kept for posterity so that we can understand what a catastrophic mistake we made in Afghanistan—I agree with Sir Peter Tapsell on that.

The Budget we have just received today is the first Tory Budget for a very long time, but I have been here long enough to remember the last one. It is as though this is the land that time forgot, because this Budget is exactly the same. It has exactly the same narrative of cutting taxation for the very richest, making life worse for the very poorest and selling off state assets to pay for it all along the way.

It is time for the Conservatives’ strategy to be significantly challenged, and there are a number of points on which I wish to challenge them. The first is the Chancellor’s really strange statistic that Britain spends 7% of the world’s welfare budget, which is, he said, way above the average of every other country. He may be unaware of it, but many countries in the world have no welfare budget of any sort. In large swaths of Africa and Latin America, there is no public assistance for people in poverty or desperation. It is a ludicrous statistic plucked out of the air and used to justify a quite appalling attack on many of the poorest people in this country.

I long for the day when a Chancellor of the Exchequer introduces a Budget, in a way that very few have done in the past, and says, “The priority is to have an expanding and sustainable economy with sustainable jobs in an environmentally friendly way and to eliminate poverty and destitution at the same time.” We had none of that. We had all this anti-benefit narrative as though nobody was sleeping on the streets of Britain, as though the number of children growing up in desperate poverty was not increasing day after day, and as though there were no young people who are unable to do their homework because their bedrooms are too crowded with their siblings.

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is extremely kind to give way. [Interruption.] Yes, I wish him extremely well with his Labour leadership bid. I would be happy to support him were I a member of the party. Will he join me in welcoming the fact that the number of children in relative poverty declined by 300,000 over the past five years?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I welcome the fact that the Chancellor has changed the method of calculating poverty to produce the statistics that he wanted in the first place. He is doing extremely well on statistical changes, and I admire his gymnastics in that regard.

This Budget, with its benefit changes, is essentially an attack on the poorest and on young people. What do the Conservatives and the Chancellor have against young people? We start off with a third child onward policy. What is that about? If the Chancellor is saying that children deserve to be supported through child benefit—I guess we all agree on that—why does it stop after the second child? If a family happens to have four or five children—some of us come from families of three, four or five children—is he saying that the third, fourth and fifth children are less valuable than the first and second? What has been suggested is outrageous.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Indeed; my hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Although London has very high property prices and a number of extremely wealthy people—it is the centre for some of the world’s wealthiest people—it also has appalling levels of poverty. Some of those people in desperate poverty are being forced out of London by a combination of the high rents and the benefit cap, and the proposal now is to reduce the benefit cap. I am not pleased that we have to spend £25,000 or more on supporting some families, but from the way that this statistic is presented by the Chancellor, one would imagine that the entirety of that £25,000 went immediately to that family. Well, it does not; it goes straight into the pockets of a private landlord, just as the in-work benefit often goes to subsidise low wages. I am pleased that we are getting something approaching a living wage, though it is not very different from what the minimum wage would have been by that time anyway. We must look very carefully at the issues surrounding this Budget.

There are also other problems for young people, such as cuts in benefit, their inability to access housing or to get a reasonable level of room rate if they are single, the continuation of the low wage rates and the conversion of all grants into loans for those from poorer backgrounds who were hoping, planning and aiming to go to university. What is it that the Conservative party has against the young people of this country? I find it very strange.

I represent a constituency that, in housing terms, has about 40% council tenancies, about 30% social private rents and about 30% owner-occupation. Because of the benefit cap and the very high rents in the private rented sector, many people are being forced out of the community. The same thing is happening all across central London. Those who say that it does not matter because they do not represent a London constituency should think on: this principle could apply everywhere else. The Chancellor’s proposals on housing are very interesting.

[Chris Philp]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

No, I will not give way a second time.

First, the Chancellor does nothing to address the housing shortage—not the lack of council housing being built, not the lack of sufficient housing association properties being built, and not the lack of sufficient places being built for reasonable sale. The Chancellor’s solution is to force councils into right to buy, with a discount of up to £100,000—£100,000!—so that the councils are forced to sell off what is called high-value property because such property should not be owned by local authorities. The council in my borough is, to its credit, building homes. It has just completed a development of 25 new flats, but if the Chancellor’s proposals go ahead, we will have the ludicrous situation whereby nobody on the borough’s housing waiting list—nobody in housing stress—will get one because they will be sold on the open market to anyone who is able to buy them. What does that say to those people in desperate housing need who want to maintain communities in London or any other part of the country?

There is also the sale of housing association properties. Housing associations are quasi-independent, and their properties are not the Government’s to sell. I am concerned about the financial model of housing associations, which has gone down and down from having almost 100% public investment in the construction of new properties at the time of their foundation, so that they have effectively become building companies using private finance. There is no problem in borrowing private finance to build, but there is a problem if the rent model or building for sale at the end of the process does nothing to address the housing needs of the most desperate people in this country. What we are doing by stealth is privatising housing associations by forcing them to sell off their properties.

What happens to young people who cannot afford to buy—who have no bank of Mum and Dad—and who cannot afford to rent? Where do they end up living? Why is the age at which people here are able to leave home and live independently the highest in Europe, and why is it getting higher and higher? This Budget offers nothing to those people in housing stress.

The Chancellor is very keen on regulating local authorities, by increasing the rents for those on higher earnings and decreasing them for others, with no remarks about compensating the housing revenue account for the income lost, but he says nothing about regulating the private rented sector and tackling the astronomical rents being charged in some parts of London. In my constituency, it costs at least £350 a week to rent a two-bedroom flat; a house costs between £500 and £1,000 to rent. It is completely off the scale in terms of what most people can even begin to think about being able to afford.

Levels of tax evasion in Britain are high, and I am pleased that the Chancellor is prepared to address the issue, but why have the 15-year rule for non-doms? Why not abolish the non-dom status altogether? Why not, as part of the EU negotiations, consider the tax-evading loopholes that exist all over Europe? We have islands around our shores where tax rates are remarkably low. Switzerland manages to charge remarkably low rates of corporation tax, as do Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Monaco. Should we not be looking to close all those loopholes? Instead, the Chancellor proposes yet another cut in corporation tax and says that the way forward is to continue the race to the bottom in lowering corporation tax.

The Budget reflects the long journey from the Prime Minister’s hug a husky days and the promise of being the greenest Government ever to the sale of the Green Investment Bank to the private sector—with what sort of requirements for its future performance, I know not, because nothing is made clear in the Red Book—and the cancellation of at least two major rail electrification projects, which were trumpeted before the election and used as part of an election-winning strategy to show that the Conservatives had really got it on railways and really wanted the railways to expand. Instead, they have cancelled the electrification of the midland main line and the Manchester to Leeds line. Is the western region electrification safe? There are many other projects one begins to worry about because of those announcements.

At the same time, the Government are investing a huge amount of money in road building. It is as if the whole transport strategy has been turned on its head, so that instead of going for the more environmentally sustainable rail transport, particularly for freight, we are once again on a road-building binge in a country that is already polluted and has too many vehicles on the roads. Surely we should be trying to rebalance our economy in favour of sustainable transport. I am not saying that we have to get rid of all cars—obviously not—but our transport policies have to be more sustainable.