Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I only want to make four brief points, which are based on my experience in my own constituency. At the height of the number of asylum seekers being placed in hotels, I think I had the largest number—I think I still have. I had 2,500 asylum seekers in my constituency. I welcomed that; I welcomed them into our community. Our community in Hayes and Harlington has always risen to support people in need, and I was proud of the local community. There are four points I want to raise from the lessons of dealing with those asylum seekers, touring around the hotels and dealing with casework. In fact, one of the hotels is next to my constituency office.

One point is the point made by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron): these are desperate people—desperate people—and they will not be deterred from coming here, having experienced what they have experienced back in their home country and the way in which they have travelled here. Given the desperate circumstances they are in, in both instances, they will not be deterred by this legislation. They know, as we do, that this is a political stunt rather than anything else.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way on that point. It has been my privilege to visit Calais on a number of occasions over the past few years and I have had many conversations with people there. They are desperate; they are poor; they are hungry; they are homeless; they are victims of war and human rights abuses; and they are being treated as though they are enemies of the whole community here. They are not. They are people trying to survive in a very difficult world, and our message seems to be the opposite of all the humanitarian law that has been passed into common parlance over the past 70 years.

[John McDonnell]

The other lesson I have learnt from meeting a wide range of asylum seekers—and this, in a sense, follows on from what my right hon. Friend has said—relates to the skills they can bring to our country, and how desperate they are to make a contribution. All they want is for their cases to be processed, because the vast majority, even those detained in the two detention centres in my constituency, will win their cases and be received into the community. Their problem is that the processing situation means they cannot travel here through the normal processing arrangements, and when they do get here they are having to wait for up to two years just to have their cases heard. I do not think that the provisions in the Bill will deter desperate people from coming here in this way.

My second point concerns the amendment relating to the assessment of children. The hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), who is not present now, mentioned me because we both represent the London Borough of Hillingdon, which has accepted more unaccompanied children than any other borough because of its proximity to Heathrow. We have had a problem with age assessments, but it is not the problem that the media home in on, which is elderly people being assessed as children; it is the other way round. Children are being forced through a process that can be very demeaning and can have an impact on their mental health, and then are eventually found to be children, as all the statistics demonstrate. It is a brutal system. All that the amendment would do is ensure that assessments are carried out by those who are experienced in the process, namely local authorities.

Arms Export Licences: Israel

Debate between John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Lots of people want to speak, so I will be as brief as possible. I want to ask a number of questions, but I will just say as a preface that when someone has been in this House long enough and sat through the discussions about the various wars taking place, they get an understanding of the nature of war and of war crimes legislation. Whatever Hamas did, whatever people think, it was a war crime, and we have condemned that absolutely, but we created legislation globally after the second world war to determine how states could legally react to war crimes like that. Article 8 of the Rome statute, which set up the International Criminal Court, specifically designated war crimes: first, the use of weapons that were indiscriminate in their impact—that is, that affected civilians—and, secondly, the denial of the basic resources to survive, for civilian populations in particular. That is food, water and heat. The third element of war crimes under article 8 was the forced displacement of people from their homelands. I am afraid that whatever people think about what is happening in Gaza at the moment, what we are seeing are war crimes, according to the Rome statute; that is the case by any definition, but certainly on those three points. That is how we guide our reaction to activities by any state, whether it is Israel, Saudi or whoever, and, in guiding our behaviour, we have to recognise that if we in any way aid or provide support to a state acting in that way, we become complicit in those war crimes. That is the reality of where we are at the moment. I feel for the reputation of our country in the future because of the current behaviour of our Government.

A letter was written from a number of key organisations, and I want to raise the questions in it. It was written by Asad Rehman, chief executive of War on Want; Katie Fallon, director of advocacy at the Campaign Against Arms Trade; Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive of Amnesty International UK; and Yasmine Ahmed, UK director of Human Rights Watch. I want to raise some of the questions that they have asked. Has the Minister seen the letter? First, it calls for an immediate suspension of the extant licences and new export licences for Israel given the clear risk, in their view, that the component parts that are being transferred from the UK

“might be used to facilitate or commit…violations of international law”.

That includes actions that they believe are tantamount to war crimes. The question from those organisations is this: will the Government now suspend those licences?

Secondly, do the Government know whether British weapons or military equipment are being used in Gaza or not? We have heard from one Back Bencher that they are. The letter notes that in the past the UK admitted that it had supplied equipment and that that had been used by the Israel Defence Forces during hostilities in Gaza in 2009. Lord Cameron, as he now is, then introduced a procedure to suspend the operation, and there was a complete review of what was happening with the weapons that we had supplied. I think the minimum that we should be asking for now is for the Government to undertake a Lord Cameron-type review to see exactly how what we have supplied is being used and whether it is being used in Gaza, because if it is, I am afraid we become complicit in the war crime.

Another question that the organisations have asked is just what monitoring is taking place by the Government—what mechanism is in place that effectively to monitor what is going on? The further question that is asked is this: on what basis do the Government consider that there is no clear risk that arms licensed to Israel will be used in prohibited conduct as identified, as my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) said, in the strategic export licensing criteria. This goes back to the fact that the Government have warned in the past that if any of these weapons are used in this way, they will suspend the licence overall. Again, have the Government even taken that into consideration?

One question that we have asked consistently as the provision of £474 million of exports to Israel have gone on is whether the Government applied the restrictions that we had called for to prevent their use in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or against Palestinians. At least there are instances in which we could accept that we have been providing sufficient support to Israel to defend itself from external attack, but to allow these weapons to be used in the occupied territories means that they will be used against Palestinians or, indeed, some of the Palestinians who are Israeli citizens as well.

My final question is to ask the Government whether there have been any shipments of spare parts from the UK to Israel of UK-supplied components for Israeli F-16 and/or F-35 aircraft. As has been said, those are the aircraft that have been used in the indiscriminate bombing of Palestinians in Gaza and have caused such civilian loss of life.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does my right hon. Friend think an additional question might be what is carried in the RAF planes that are leaving RAF Akrotiri and apparently flying directly to Israel?

[John McDonnell]

That is why I am asking the question: the key components of those planes could be being used in the bombing of Gaza and the huge loss of life.

I reiterate what others have said: I find it difficult to participate in these debates without becoming extremely angry or emotional on all sides—both because I want the release of the hostages and because 7,000 children have now died. That cannot be right, and I believe it is a war crime. Anything that we are doing to give aid or comfort in this direction will ensure that we will be condemned in the future.

Finally, a number of us met Yachad today. We met with heroes and heroines from Palestine, Palestinians and Jewish Israelis. They are trying to campaign for peace. As part of their heroic campaign, one of their clear demands is for a ceasefire, so that we can release the hostages and at least plan for the future in peace.

Sri Lankan Tamils and Human Rights

Debate between John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) not only on securing the debate, but on setting the scene so well. Briefly, I want to ask the question: how many more times will we have to come here and debate this issue before the UK plays its full role in securing justice for the Tamil community? Other Members in this Chamber have, like me, been around a long while in dealing with this issue. I can recall the situation before 2009, but I remember distinctly what happened at that time. The calculation is that more than 70,000 people—at least—were unaccounted for, with some disappeared. One of my constituents went back to Sri Lanka to try to find his family and he was disappeared as well. We have never heard from him since.

Like others, I have received the briefing from the Sri Lankan Government, and I have tried to examine it in relation to what I believe is the reality on the ground. The Sri Lankan Government claim that a process of reconciliation is taking place and that arrangements have been put in place that will ensure the protection of human rights and civil liberties, but those are certainly not the reports we get from our constituents who have families back in Sri Lanka. Let me give a few brief examples.

We have recently been told about what happened on Tamil remembrance day, when people were arrested and detained, and then memorials were smashed. That does not sound like the protection of civil liberties or respect being meted out to the Tamil community. The use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act has been a continuous abuse. The recent death in custody of a young man called Nagarasa Alex is another example of the result of the use of detention in this way. We know of claims that torture has taken place in some instances.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

I went to Sri Lanka on a delegation in 1984, when I raised with the then President Jayewardene the issue of the human rights system, the abuse of human rights and the use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. I have met many Sri Lankan families who have people missing from that period on. Unless they get closure and an understanding of what has happened to them, the horror for individual families will just go on and on. I am sure that my right hon. Friend, who represents many Tamil people, would endorse the need for us to get an open book on everything that has happened to every person who disappeared.

[John McDonnell]

My right hon. Friend provides evidence of the long history of this, including the long history of the PTA being used to detain, with example after example of its use involving not only torture, but deaths in custody. From what we hear, the new legislation being proposed might be worse than the PTA itself. This is the problem we face.

The issue that comes up time and time again in the Tamil community in my constituency is the continued militarisation of their Tamil lands and the way that those lands are being used. We have to recognise the operation of the military within Sri Lanka. They are not just a military establishment; they are a whole industry in themselves, often profiteering at the expense of the Tamil community, particularly through the seizure of the Tamil lands. The process of demilitarisation has hardly been evidenced by the Sri Lankan Government.

Why is all this happening, and why are the Sri Lankan Government continuing to operate with impunity? I think this represents a collective failure by the international community, including the UK. We have not done enough to pressurise the Sri Lankan Government. We have not taken the action that I thought we were going to take and targeted those identified as abusing human rights—in effect, we are talking about war criminals as well—in a way that we have in respect of other countries, for example via the use of the Magnitsky clause. From what I have seen, or from the evidence we have had, I do not believe that the Magnitsky provisions have been used a single time to sanction the human rights abusers from Sri Lanka. Let us congratulate the United States and Canada, as they have used those provisions. We should be following their example.

As for the truth and reconciliation commission that has been established anew, I believe it is the 15th or 16th that has taken place. What we were pressing for before is that this should be an independent, internationally convened commission, not just an in-house one, where the country is almost marking its own homework.

Finally, we have previously raised the reference to the International Criminal Court, because it is clear that during that period, certainly in 2009, there were offences against the Rome statute that could constitute war crimes.

I believe that we should now maximise the pressure that we can put on the Sri Lankan Government. We should now look at the use of sanctions and reviewing all aspects of our bilateral relationship with Sri Lanka. We have raised this before, but I believe that we should not have given Sri Lanka the benefit of developing countries trading scheme status and the concessions that brings. That is the only way to influence the Sri Lankan Government to abide by at least some of the commitments that they have given us to protect human rights and civil liberties and respect the rights of the Tamil community overall.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn

Report stage
Wednesday 25th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I echo the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge)? If we descend into accusations that those who do not support the Bill are antisemites, or that those who support it are Islamophobic, I think we are lost, to be honest. It is important that we are careful about our language.

There is a profound misunderstanding about what we are debating. If this is about the BDS movement itself, there are mechanisms that the Government can use to proscribe an organisation. But the debate on this Bill should be about BDS as a method, a tactic. I have supported boycotting, disinvesting and sanctioning a whole range of regimes. I campaigned with and supported the anti-apartheid movement of BDS with regard to South Africa. Actually, a large number of Members on both sides of the House supported that. I also did so with regard to Saudi Arabia and its execution—tragically, it is still doing this—of members of the gay community. I have campaigned with others across the House with regard to Sri Lanka and the persecution of the Tamils, including the murder of a number of my constituents when they visited their families. I am doing the same at the moment with regard to Bahrain because of its imprisonment of the political opposition. It is the same with Russia. I was a founder member 10 years ago of the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign and we have been calling for sanctions against Russia for years—in advance of even the Government, to be honest. It is the same with Iran. I chair the Iranian workers’ movement committee, which supports trade unionists campaigning in Iran, many of whom are unfortunately in prison. There is also the Uyghurs.

On all of those, I have urged the use of BDS because when other representations and diplomacy fail, there are not many options left. One of the options, unfortunately, is the use of arms. In not promoting that, we have tried to find a middle lane, and that is economic isolation to try to influence. To be frank, it did work in South Africa. That is why we have tried to ensure that it is a mechanism that can be drawn upon. I agree, however, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) on the Front Bench. The important thing is to ensure that if we use this mechanism, it is used properly and fairly and that we do not discriminate against one particular country. That is what I have not done. I have called for BDS with regard to goods coming from the occupied territories and Iran because they are against the international order.

Having sat in this House for 25 years and listened to speeches from Conservative representatives, I have learned a bit about conservatism, so what I find extraordinary is that this Bill is profoundly unconservative. Those on the Government Front Bench seem to be rejecting many of the individual amendments in front of us. I have listened to Government Members arguing that the Conservative party stands for freedom of speech, support for the law, the rights of property, the democratic rights of this Parliament, local government and other agencies, devolution of decision-making, and support for the action on the environment and human rights.

Let me turn to the amendments on freedom of speech. Amendments 28 and 3 prevent the Government introducing a gagging order on even just talking about this—having a debate about it. That is profoundly unconservative. I cannot believe that Government Members are not supporting those amendments. On the issue of rights of property, I say to the Conservative Member whose constituency I cannot remember that we are both members of the local government pension fund. The Government are overriding the rights to my property, which is my pension fund. I cannot believe that the Conservatives are doing that. That is my stored wages for over 20 years of service in local government over which I now lose control, and the amendment simply says that the members of that pension fund will be allowed to decide.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My right hon. Friend will recall the days when we managed to persuade the GLC pension fund not to invest in apartheid South Africa, but, as I am sure he will agree, the fundamentals of the Bill are that it actually reduces a very large area of freedom of speech for elected local councillors. That, to me, undermines the whole principle of representative democracy within our society.

[John McDonnell]

I agree. I was chair of finance at that time. It was interesting because there was an awful lot of cross-party support on that, as we were then at the stage of the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela, and the worst oppressions that were going on, including what happened in Soweto.

Let me go through the amendments themselves. On devolution and local decision-making, all that amendments 5, 16, 34 and new clause 2 do is ensure that local democracy takes place. The arguments that I have heard from those on the Conservative Benches on several occasions is that local councillors should have the right to represent their local communities and, above all else, they should listen to their local communities. When there have been rows on the Government Benches, it is often as a result of councils not having listened to their local communities, and sometimes I have agreed. These amendments simply enable the local community to express their views and for that to be taken into account.

On environmental concerns, amendments 8, 10, 15 and 11 are simply reinforcing many of the policies that the Conservative party has been advocating in our attempts to get to net zero and protect animals at the same time. I have often heard Government Members saying that upholding the law is an essential part of conservatism. Well, that is what amendments 6 and 17 do. They are simply saying that the use of this mechanism can be helpful in upholding international law.

This Bill is a bad Bill. I agree that there might be the potential to gain consensus on it. One way forward is through the amendment that the Labour Front Bench has tabled to try to look at human rights in general to see how statements defining human rights can be made by Government, and that then influencing what happens in other decision-making areas, such as in local government, pension funds and so on. I believe that there is an opportunity for that, but what I come back to is that this is not the time to do something that in any way divides our communities. If the Bill is in any way amendable, let us just pull it. The Government have done that before. There has been a pause on legislation, allowing wiser heads to come together and to come back with something that actually might work.

If there are arguments about the BDS movement, and I totally condemn some of the statements that I have heard from some of the leaders associated with it, that is a separate issue. This is about a method of trying to influence individual countries to behave in line with international law, protect the environment, and so on. It is about trying to set standards in other countries that we want to promote globally anyway.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn

2nd reading
Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Reference has been made to Bob Kerslake consistently throughout today. Bob and I were friends. I go back longer than most, because I go back to 1981, when I was a young man and a GLC councillor and Bob was a young man and a GLC officer. I fully concur with all the tributes that have been paid, but I also want to say that he was a good man. He was a very good person and a good friend, and we will miss him.

Let me come on to this debate. I do not want to repeat some of the arguments, but I want to get on record for my constituents why I am voting the way I am this evening. I will vote in solidarity with the amendment, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on her speech, but I will also be voting against the Bill, because I cannot do anything else.

The debate has largely focused on the specific BDS movement and Israel. Just to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), I want to talk about the right to boycott, to disinvest and to sanction as an issue. At the weekend I drafted an article, because I wanted to get clear in my own mind the whole issue around boycotts and the past history of the boycott, disinvestment and sanctions movement. To be frank, virtually all of my life I have been involved in some boycott, disinvestment or sanctions campaign, so it was almost like a flashback. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), I was outside the South African embassy when the City of London anti-apartheid group was on a 24-hour permanent picket.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I was arrested there.

[John McDonnell]

He was arrested; I was not. I was there on Christmas day simply singing carols.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

You got off lightly.

[John McDonnell]

I got off lightly. All we were singing for was the release of Nelson Mandela.

For the other one, I plead guilty. I was one of the organisers of the demonstrations over a decade ago against the royal visit of the Saudi leaders. We were calling for no public contracts to be awarded to companies operating in Saudi Arabia, because at that time they were beheading gay people for being gay. That was later focused on military support from this country for the Saudi attacks on Yemen. The list of BDS campaigns that I have supported goes on and on. I campaigned against the Bahraini regime and its ongoing brutal repression of the country’s democratic movement, and the continued imprisonment of opposition political leaders. We have met some of them over the years, and they are still inside.

I have campaigned against the Sri Lankan Administration owing to their genocidal attack on the Tamils, with their continued abuse of human rights, their use of torture, the disappearances, and the colonisations of Tamil homelands. Again, I have lost constituents who have been disappeared when they have gone out there. I campaigned for sanctions against the military junta in Myanmar to halt the attacks on the Rohingyas and to demand the freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Yes, I have supported the boycott of goods coming from the Palestinian territories occupied illegally by Israel. The campaign in my constituency was undertaken by young people when the bombings in Gaza were killing young people there. In solidarity, young people in my constituency went round the local shops asking them to check where their goods were coming from and urging them not to sell goods from the occupied territories.

There has been some reference to BDS campaigns being associated with antisemitism. That is not what I have witnessed in my constituency, but if there is evidence that individuals associated with these campaigns are antisemitic, we already have laws to deal with that, and I believe that the full force of the law against racist behaviour should therefore be deployed.

More recently, I have called for sanctions against the Chinese Government for the barbaric treatment of the Uyghurs, and also because they have imprisoned a group of my Unite trade union friends who worked with me on the British Airways campaigns. All they were demanding was adherence to democracy by the Chinese, and they have been inside for two and a half years, without any form of access to their families in many instances.

The common factor in all those campaigns is that they would not have been supported by Government policy. Therefore, they would have been rendered illegal in their demand for action by public authorities to boycott, disinvest and sanction. I agree with the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) that there needs to be clarity about who is making foreign policy and what is being referred to, because actually the Bill makes the Secretary of State ex cathedra—infallible—and puts at his whim decisions about what is right and what is wrong across the globe, when Governments in this country have consistently got it significantly wrong. They have certainly not backed such campaigns and would have outlawed them overall.

All those campaigns have focused on pressing for action from Government, local councils, pension funds, private companies and investors. It is interesting that a few hon. Members have mentioned the focus on the local government pension fund. I declare an interest as a member of the local government pension fund, and I think it is up to members of the fund to determine its investment policies. I must say, as a constituency MP, that the campaigns have reflected the diversity of my constituency. There is not a campaign that has not involved a constituent or group of constituents or has not been asked for by my constituents. It is a matter of standing in solidarity.

The advice of every human rights lawyer I have spoken to so far, and all the briefings from human rights groups and trade unionists, have all made it clear that that range of activities will be outlawed and it will be made illegal for decision makers even to talk about the strategy. That is why I oppose the Bill. I am voting against it because we have heard today, right across the House, that not a single clause has stood up to scrutiny. Therefore, I do not believe it can be amended; it is fundamentally flawed and should be defeated.

Let me make one final point, as an aside. We should change the Standing Orders or look at “Erskine May”, because it would have been useful if the Secretary of State coming here to present the Bill had actually read it or addressed the same Bill that we are addressing in this debate. All we saw today was a diatribe of the lowest politics we have seen for a long time, which divides our community unnecessarily and, to be frank, appallingly.

Public Order

Debate between John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

No. He was not listening, was he? What happened was that they campaigned and they were given a commitment by the leader of a political party, but that was reneged upon as soon as he got elected. Where do they go? They had used the democratic process and they were betrayed—they were so angry. They went on to the streets, and they were joined by Conservative MPs. What do they do? They block roads, they sit down in the street and they threaten to sit down in front of bulldozers. That was my invitation to Boris Johnson when he was first elected, and he said, “Yes, I’ll be with you in front of that bulldozer.” Why? Because John Randall, the Conservative MP before him—by the way, he was an excellent constituency MP—said exactly that. In fact, he had raised the issue himself.

People felt completely frustrated. What I am arguing, on behalf of my constituents, is that this measure puts the local police and local protesters in an almost impossible position.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My right hon. Friend is making a very good point about the third runway. History will show that the demonstrations absolutely worked: the third runway has not yet been built. Personally, I hope it never is. There are those who say protest does not work, but the right to roam our countryside happened only because of the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in the 1930s. People took brave action to win rights for all of us. Those are the rights we all enjoy. We should not just legislate them away, which is what this law is doing.

[John McDonnell]

I welcome that intervention.

The regulations put the local police in my area, as well as local protesters and the local communities in both the Hayes and Harlington constituency and the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency, in an impossible position. They seem to apply almost perfectly to our local situation. If I go through the various criteria, the first is “cumulative” impact. I am not sure how we judge cumulative. Is that over a limited period of time or a short period of time? We have been protesting there since 1978. Is that cumulative? Does the police officer have to take that into account at the local level, or should he or she set a limited timescale on that?

Future of the NHS

Debate between John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 23rd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

That is an extremely valid point that must be addressed. When some of us were doing health economics in the 1980s and onwards, we were always told that the level of funding required just to maintain a standstill operation for the growing ageing population was at least 4%. What happened under Labour was a 6% annual rate of funding.

I will be honest with the hon. Gentleman: when I was on the Government Benches and Labour was in government, I was asking for more. Gordon Brown, to give him his due, had a sense of humour; I always used to produce an alternative Budget, so he described me as the shadow Chancellor even when I was not. I did that on the basis that I thought 4% was not enough and, while 6% was right, we needed to go further, because it was about not just the ageing population but the increased levels of morbidity we were experiencing. In addition, as the hon. Gentleman mentions, new treatments come on board and are more expensive.

Even though I was looking for increased investment, beyond what Labour was doing then, Labour was not just keeping pace with the 4%, but was going beyond it at 6%. To be frank, although the hon. Gentleman swore in the Chamber earlier, he should have heard some of the language I used in 2010, because I was quite angry as well. Those of us who were there will remember that in 2010, investment dropped to 1%. We were saying to George Osborne, who was the Chancellor at the time, “You are going to reap the whirlwind here for dropping the level down to 1%, because it means an erosion of the services that are provided.”

In addition, that investment did not recognise our ageing population or the other emerging issues with morbidity. I understand that the covid inquiry will include analysis of the resilience of the health service to cope with the covid pandemic. I believe that a number of those representatives are seeking to have George Osborne appear before that inquiry, because he bears responsibility for that under-investment.

Other hon. Friends have mentioned mental health, and I agree that it has been the Cinderella service. When I looked at mental health funding, I found that it has increased at a faster rate than overall NHS funding—at times nearly 3% as against 1%. However, that follows years of small increases or real-terms funding cuts, and the number of NHS mental health beds is down by 25% since 2010.

Curiously enough, I was on a bus in my constituency yesterday with a former mental health nurse, who described to me the implications of that and the consequences for the individuals concerned. Community mental health nurse numbers were also impacted upon. Some of us will have dealt with the results of that in our constituencies; in my constituency, I have to say, it has meant dealing with suicides as well.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the impact of an inadequacy in healthcare provision falls on A&E departments, which take in people who have mental health crises but are ill-equipped to cope with them; on neighbourhoods that cannot cope with people going through crises; or on the police, who have to intervene simply to look after someone for whom there ought to be mental health provision. We fail to invest in mental health provision at our peril.

[John McDonnell]

Anyone who has talked with them will have heard local police officers say that they have become social workers, mental health workers and so on. In many instances, they are doing the best job that they can, but they need expert support, including from health workers in the community.

I looked at the figures, and there are now 1.6 million people on the waiting list for specialist mental health services. One of my concerns, which was raised in a debate some months ago, is what is happening with CAMHS —child and adolescent mental health services. Delays in treatment have increased massively since 2019, and waiting lists are getting longer. I have looked at the stats: 77% of CCGs froze or cut their CAMHS budgets between 2013-14 and 2014-15, which was the crunch year; 55% of the local authorities in England that supplied data froze or increased their budgets below inflation; and 60% of local authorities in England have cut or frozen their CAMHS budgets since 2010-11. Again, that is staggering.

To come back to mental health nurses, in 2010, we had 40,297 of them; we are now down to just 38,987. That does not seem a significant drop, but it is still a drop. As a number of Members on both sides of the House have mentioned recently, we are going through a mental health crisis—one that affects young people and young men in particular, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North has pointed out.

Let me come to the stats on social care. Age UK estimates that more than 1.5 million people aged 65 and over have some form of unmet or under-met need—[Interruption.] Excuse me—[Interruption.] Thanks a lot; I could do with something stronger.

Social Security and Pensions

Debate between John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 6th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I want to raise three issues briefly; some of this has been covered already but I want to reiterate some of it and go into more detail. The first is the benefit cap. The second is the triple lock. The third is the carer’s allowance, where I follow on from the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain).

This debate is primarily about the increase, but in the past these debates have been used to try to shape the debate on social security for the future. Much of what I say, therefore, may be aimed at the Government, but now that the Select Committee has announced its inquiry, part of it is aimed at the agenda for that inquiry.

Those of us who were in the House when the benefit cap was introduced will know that it was born in an era when the debate on poverty had descended into definitions of “skivers” and “strivers”; it was almost a reversion to the language of the Poor Law. We knew what impact it would have and we knew the numbers affected would increase rapidly. Just over 70,000 were being impacted at the start but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) said, this rose to 120,000 and above. The cap hit some areas in particular, including London constituencies. I am a London MP and I know that 44% of those affected are in London. It hit the black, Asian and minority ethnic community in particular; it has hit eight out of 20 from the BAME community, yet they represent three out of 20 in the population overall, so this was discriminatory.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My right hon. Friend is making a strong point. Does he agree that the cap has also been a major driver in forcing working-class communities out of inner-city areas, where there are now huge levels of private landlord speculations going on?

[John McDonnell]

I hope that Conservative Members and others who may not have had the experience of this recognise how it has affected our communities. I do not use the word lightly, but some of us have experienced what are almost forms of social “apartheid” within our communities, where certain sections of housing are no longer available to working-class people. In some instances, fenced communities have developed as a result. I highlight reports of what happened in my constituency as regards the Ballymore housing development.

I come back to the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham made, which is that the cap has had an impact on a large number of children, with the last calculation being 308,000; 70% of the people affected are single parents. As he said, this pushes people into deep poverty. I was looking at the figures and they show that the average capped household with two children is now £150 a week below the Government’s own poverty line. Scrapping the cap would increase benefits to them by an average of £65 a week; the cost would be £500 million, which is 0.2% of the total spending on social security. A marginal increase in the efficiency of tackling tax avoidance, an increase in national insurance beyond getting rid of some of the limits at the higher levels—that would easily pay for this marginal improvement but would have a dramatic effect on the living standards of so many people.

I campaigned against the breaking of the link between pensions and earnings when Mrs Thatcher introduced it, so I wholeheartedly welcomed the triple lock when it was introduced by a Conservative Government and I made that point in this House. I regretted bitterly, however, that the Government broke their pledge last year, because once the link was broken, a debate was opened up among some Members about the triple lock being no longer necessary. I am hoping that the statement about social security and pensions today reaffirms the message across the House that the triple lock is here to stay.

When we look at the figures, we see that one in five pensioners is in poverty; 2.1 million older people are in poverty; they get £40 a week less than the Government’s own poverty threshold; 1.3 million older people are now categorised as suffering forms of malnutrition; and we have always had a high level of excess deaths in winter among older people, with on average between 25,000 and 30,000 dying unnecessarily. I looked at the figures showing what has happened since the break with earnings. The proportion of those people living in severe poverty is five times higher than it was in 1986—we have had the largest increase in western European countries. So I make an appeal to Members from across the House. The triple lock was a major reform, and I thought we had built consensus on it. It should not be in any way undermined in the future.

I think the triple lock should apply to all benefits, and I hope the Select Committee will have that debate. I asked the House of Commons Library to give me the figures on what would have happened to carer’s allowance if the link had been kept since the 1980s. It is now at £76.75 but it would have been £146.42. Invalidity benefit is now £130.20, but it would have been £233.55. If we look at unemployment, we see that jobseeker’s allowance is now £84.80 but it would have been £185.49. There is a moral argument for maintaining the protection of benefits over time and trying to build consensus across the House on that, in the same way in which it was eventually built on the triple lock for pensions.

Finally, let me touch on carer’s allowance. I have been chairing meetings of unpaid carers or informal carers, as they describe themselves, over the past 18 months, and I just want to get the stats on this out there. I pay tribute to what the hon. Member for North East Fife has done with her legislation and the campaign she has waged. Some 8% to 10% of the adult population are informal carers; two thirds of carers are in employment—that is the whole point here; six in 10 of those who are caring for 35 hours a week or more are workless, which is three times the rate of those caring for less than 20 hours a week; and about 25% of informal carers are living in poverty, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s latest figures. Another figure, which I believe she has quoted in the past, is that it is estimated that unpaid carers across the UK provide £135 billion-worth of caring in our society, and that largely falls upon the shoulders of women. It is now time to recognise the significance of the role that these carers play and the fact of the poverty they live in.

As for Northern Ireland, the Carer Poverty Commission was established last month and it is chaired by Helen Barnard of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Research from Carers Northern Ireland showed that nearly one in three unpaid carers in Northern Ireland were struggling to make ends meet, with one in four cutting back on essentials such as food or heating just to get by. I believe the situation is exactly the same across the UK for carers.

Let me make this suggestion: the unpaid carers I have met say that, like everybody else who works, they should be paid a living wage. They should at least get the minimum wage so that they can get by. At the very least, let us take the first step in that direction, which would be to recognise that maternity allowance is paid so that people can care for a child. Perhaps carer’s allowance should at least go up to the level of maternity allowance. If we can increase carer’s allowance in that way, it will enable at least some of those informal carers to be lifted out of poverty. I put that suggestion on the table for the Government to debate and for the Select Committee to look at as well.

As the WASPI women have been mentioned, I cannot help but do so too. This is an injustice that needs to be redressed, and it needs to be redressed soon, because many of the women who were affected are now late in life. We have already lost some of them, and many may not live long enough to see the recompense that they deserve. However, I fear that those who are placing their hope in the ombudsman’s assessment will be sorely disappointed by the levels that are recommended. If that is the case, I commit to returning to the matter on the Floor of this House to make sure that the campaign continues and succeeds.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 22nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Briefly, I have three points. First, this Bill is not an acceptable piece of legislation—it is an appalling piece of legislation. There is a refugee crisis, all around the world. We should recognise that and be more humane in our approach. I absolutely support Ukrainian refugees being able to find safety wherever they want to go and absolutely support any measures to welcome them to this country, because of the trauma they have suffered and because of this awful war; the same should apply to victims of wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq or elsewhere. Those people are just as traumatised and their lives are just as damaged.

Secondly, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) made a number of points on the 12-month rule that is apparently being introduced for victims of modern slavery. I hope the Minister can clarify that he is serious in what he says on this subject and that we are going to open the route for people who are victims of modern slavery to get permanent residence in this country as a place of safety. They have suffered grievously, from huge levels of abuse. As the right hon. Gentleman also pointed out, the numbers involved are not very large.

I am conscious of the time, but the third point that I want to make is about the new clause inserted by Lords amendment 36, subsection (2) of which refers to

“Visa penalties for countries posing risk to international peace and security”.

I would be grateful if the Minister could respond to my earlier intervention and that of other colleagues on the definition of who poses risk. There is no definition of which countries the measure refers to or how it will play out.

An activist for peace in a country which the Minister feels is a risk is clearly at double risk. The Minister said they can seek an application—of course they can, but how do they practically make that application? In addition, those who are not activists and who do not have any particular political views, but who are caught up in an international conflict, such as a married couple where one person is from this country and the other is from another country—it does not have to be Russia—also deserve a right to come to this country. I hope that this new clause does not make it even more difficult for them to come home when they want to.

[John McDonnell]

I am grateful to be called to speak again, as I spoke in the earlier debate. I think I have less than a minute and a half, so I will be brief. I want to speak to Lords amendment 22.

Those of us who have dealt with children who have gone through the age assessment process recognise just how traumatising it is for those children, many of whom are already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. That is why it is important that we minimise the numbers going through the process and make sure that it causes the least harm possible. I cannot fully understand why the Government object to this amendment, which, in my view, sets out the best practice we have been arguing for over a number of years.

The new clause introduced by Lords amendment 22 would reduce the number of people who go through the process by making sure that there is a “significant reason” to doubt the age. It would also ensure that the assessment is carried out by a local authority social worker, because—we have to be honest—Home Office social workers have been found lacking. That is not my judgment—it is the judgment of the courts. There is a difference of culture. The Home Office is about enforcement; the local authority is about supporting those who have been traumatised.

The new clause also introduces an element of best practice by making sure that the Association of Directors of Children’s Services draws health and other professionals into multidisciplinary teams, which we have been arguing for, so that we get the best possible and most objective assessment. There would also be an objectivity in the process that we doubt would be the case under the Home Office.