Gaza Healthcare System

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

The situation in Gaza is beyond appalling in every way we can think of. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) on securing the debate, and also the wonderful Palestinian activists in his constituency, who do a fantastic job in drawing attention to all this.

We must have some sense of urgency. We have a continuation of the occupation. Israel is now using thermal weapons, which have killed over 2,000 people since last year. Those weapons basically vaporise the body, which is barbaric by any stretch of the imagination. Temperatures can reach as high as 3,500°C, which is the temperature achieved when a nuclear explosion takes place. If we look at the silhouettes of the bodies vaporised on the streets of Hiroshima, that is what the people of Gaza are now having to tolerate. That is disgusting at any level.

We have the continued occupation of Gaza by Israel. Then we have the so-called Trump peace plan—that is such a disgusting misuse of language it is unbelievable—which is actually a military reoccupation of Gaza. A very large military base is now being built in the north of the Gaza strip, presumably to assist the expulsion of many Palestinian people from Gaza and the construction of hotels, casinos and all the rest of it, which is what the dream of that wretched peace plan is. Can we not ask our British Government to do something serious and say that we totally condemn the Trump plan and the reoccupation of Gaza?

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

Order. I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman, but he knows that the terms of this debate are fairly confined to healthcare. He is perfectly entitled to set out the context, but I know that he will want to shortly come on to discuss healthcare specifically.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Thank you, Sir Jeremy.

I ask the British Government whether they will kindly do everything they can to allow MSF and all the others to continue working in Gaza, to respect the work of health workers and those assassinated by the Israeli occupation? Unless we look at the wider context, it is impossible to get a solution. That requires political action by the British Government to enable health workers to carry out their work.

As colleagues have pointed out, the consequences of the health disaster that is Gaza at the moment are large numbers of deaths, orphaned children and mothers dying in childbirth because of the lack of equipment. As the hon. Member for Stroud pointed out, it would be perfectly possible to get emergency medical equipment—operating theatres and so on—in very quickly. The world has beyond the capacity to deal with every health problem in Gaza. Why is it not being done? Because Israel will not allow it to happen and will not allow equipment to go in. Unless we are utterly determined as a country and a Government to get that medical equipment into Gaza, the situation will simply continue to get worse. We will be wringing our hands here in six months’ time, in a year’s time and so on—as many of us have been for many years—about the treatment of the Palestinian people.

The long-term consequences will not disappear. Communicable diseases will get worse, the sewerage system will get worse and the mental health trauma for future generations will not go away. I remember talking to Dr Mona El-Farra on the day after the 2006 election in Gaza, at which I was an observer. I went to her apartment in Gaza City and I said, “Mona, what’s the mental health situation for people in Gaza?” She said, “Jeremy, by my estimate 70% of the population are now suffering severe and profound mental health trauma.” That was 20 years ago, at a point at which there was some degree of hope for the future. There was some degree of optimism at that time. Now, there is no hope. There is no optimism. We are talking about the entirety of the population suffering from mental health trauma. That will carry on intergenerationally—and we are supplying weapons, which has allowed some of that to happen.

I simply say to the Government, “Do everything you can to demand access for healthcare workers, everything you can to get the equipment in there, and everything you can to end the occupation of Gaza and allow the people of Palestine to decide their own future in their own land, and decide what society they want to create there. It is not up to us to recolonise it; it is up to us to help them to liberate their own lives.”

Independent Water Commission: Final Report

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Absolutely. The state of the infrastructure does need to be examined. Like many Members, my constituents have endless complaints about that. Thames Water is one of the most frequent visitors to my constituency; it digs up the roads frequently. With the resulting road closures—which are absurd—Thames Water is much better at traffic management than Transport for London, actually.

I would also ask that we look much more seriously at river basin management. I remember visiting York with the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) during the flooding at that time. We had a long discussion with the Environment Agency about planning for flooding, which would involve restoring peatlands, upland planting, reintroducing beavers and others into rivers—that has an effect on a small scale, with lots of rivers and streams—and restoring floodplains. Those sorts of things are some of the most important things we can do.

Water should be taken back into public ownership—not old-style public ownership, with a board of governors or directors appointed by the Government, but a popular form of public ownership that would involve the brilliant workforce in all those companies, and their knowledge. The directors would come from them, and from local communities, businesses, local authorities and unions, so we would have a locally and popular-based water industry in our society. We could do it. Why don’t we try that?

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

I call Charlie Maynard, but the bad news is that I can only give him three minutes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Jeremy Corbyn

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.

Women Offenders and Older Prisoners

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 16th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Amess. I thank the Justice Committee for the considerable hard work that has gone into both reports, and the Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), for the way in which he presented the reports in this afternoon’s debate. I also welcome the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner)—it is good to see him in a full speaking role this afternoon. I am sure it will not be the last time.

Let me start with something that is perhaps obvious, but still worth saying: the Government are committed, of course, to ensuring that the criminal justice system is appropriate for all offenders. The Committee has highlighted the particular interests of two types of offenders, and I am grateful for its acknowledgment of some of the good work that has been undertaken in both those areas in recent years. However, it has also made it clear that there is more work to be done, which we agree with. I hope that the Government’s response showed how we are tackling those areas and recognised that there was more to do.

I begin with female offenders, on which there has been considerable debate this afternoon. I am almost tempted to conclude, given the balance of opinion in today’s debate—for my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), we are doing far too much for female offenders, and for one or two other contributors, we are doing far too little—that we may have got it almost exactly right, but I suspect that even that will not meet with approval from everyone in the Chamber this afternoon. However, as has been said, we have made it clear that we are committed to assisting female offenders to turn their lives around. To reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, we are committed to doing so for male offenders, too.

A large part of what my hon. Friend was describing related to the sentencing regime, and I entirely agree with him and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North that the sentencing regime should not treat women more leniently than men. It should pass the appropriate sentence in each individual case and that is what we expect sentencers to do, but sentencing in each case is a matter for the judiciary and for magistrates; it is not a matter for politicians. However, what we are concerned with is ensuring that, when the courts decide that someone, male or female, needs to go to prison, they do not go back to crime when they are released. On rehabilitation, which is I think where the burden of the Committee’s report was concentrated, it is right to recognise that different things work in the rehabilitation of different people. Distinct things can be done to rehabilitate female offenders, perhaps more so than male offenders.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

In our report, we made the point that smaller units, closer to the community, tend to work much better in improving the education and life opportunities of women in prison, and in reducing the rates of reoffending. I realise that that is a big change in the prison process, when we have a number of large institutions for women, but does the Minister have any specific plans to reduce the number of places in larger sections and bring in smaller units?