Autumn Statement Distributional Analysis, Universal Credit and ESA
Debate between Robert Flello and John McDonnell(7 years, 5 months ago)
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John McDonnell
I fully agree with my hon. Friend. There is a week in which we can overturn at least an element of that brutality. This week, we need to seize upon the chance as best we can, across parties, to deliver change.
From our privileged position in this House, I firmly believe that before we consider cuts to basic support for low earners and disabled people, we have a moral duty, as my hon. Friend said, to fully appreciate the plight of many of our fellow citizens and the impact that any changes that are forced upon them could have. There are some basic facts that we need to face up to—basic facts that depict the harsh reality of the lives of so many members of our community. Nearly 4 million of our children are living in poverty. The scandal is that two thirds of them live in families where someone is working. Thanks to low wages, zero-hours contracts and forced or bogus self-employment, which has been exposed today, the promise that work will lift people out of poverty is a broken one for many.
If a basic responsibility of the Government is to ensure that their population is adequately fed and housed, they are failing. A million emergency food parcels were given out by food banks last year to families who did not have sufficient income to feed themselves. The latest reports confirm that the numbers are rising. This year, 200,000 children in our country will be dependent on a food bank to get a decent meal at Christmas. One survey reported that more than 20% of parents had regularly not eaten so that their children could eat. Others report the frequent choice between eating and heating. This is 2016.
On the duty of the Government to ensure that people are adequately housed, they are failing again. Rough sleeping has doubled in recent years. The equivalent of 100 households a day are evicted from rented homes—a near-record 40,000 in the year to date. Some 1.2 million households are stuck on council housing waiting lists. In my constituency tonight, there will be families sleeping in beds in sheds that have been rented to them.
As for the Government’s responsibility for disabled people, as the UN report concisely summed it up, the Government have—and I quote—systematically or gravely violated the rights of disabled people. Independent research suggested that Government efforts to push people off claiming disability benefits have been associated with more than 500 people committing suicide in three years.
Three years ago, I led a debate following the presentation of the War on Welfare petition, which highlighted the call for an overall impact assessment of the Government’s policies on disabled people. I cited the immense human suffering caused by the brutal implementation of the work capability assessment and the latest round of cuts to benefits and care services. I cited examples of people who had tragically taken their own lives in despair following the WCA and the penalisation through sanctions. We now know that those suicides were not isolated examples, but that there have been hundreds.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Of course, there is a double whammy, because people who are suffering and being punished in that way are not likely to get access to good mental health services or NHS services, because those are being cut and wound down across the country as well.
John McDonnell
I have listened carefully to the Prime Minister’s responses to a number of questions about cuts to mental health services at Prime Minister’s Question Time. I hope that her commitment to social justice will result in the reversing of some of those cuts, particularly to mental health walk-in services, which were raised at the Prime Minister’s questions session before last.
High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill
Debate between Robert Flello and John McDonnell(10 years, 6 months ago)
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John McDonnell
I understand that, which is why I said that Members south of Birmingham know roughly what the route will be.
I was given promises and undertakings in this House about the process that would be followed to determine the route of the link to Heathrow. At least we thought we had some certainty on the time scale for the consultations. In fact, I was holding public meetings to go into some detail about the compensation arrangements for whatever option was to be proceeded with. Now it is all up in the air again and the route that the link will take is uncertain. The Government have opened discussions about a potential third runway at Heathrow. Sometimes Members can become paranoid in this House and think that they are coming for them.
John McDonnell
I will not take it too personally.
Frankly, my constituents have had enough of political fudge after political fudge. What they want to know, and they want to know it soon, is where the line will go, how they will be affected, how we can cope with the social, environmental and economic consequences, and how they will be fully compensated.
Colombia
Debate between Robert Flello and John McDonnell(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Robert Flello
The hon. Gentleman is correct that that causes further problems. I know that indigenous people are still having their lands taken.
The politicians, trade unionists, activists and media commentators that President Santos denounces are not terrorists, but he knows beyond doubt that it is effectively a death sentence to say that they are. Yet still he does it. Is it any wonder that I and others are sceptical?
I will turn my attention to the events of recent weeks. As a result of the west’s unending drive towards profit without conscience, the US-Colombia and EU-Colombia trade agreements have been put in place with very weak labour and human rights conditions. Trade agreements already disadvantage poor peasant farmers in Colombia, so it is not surprising that they have been protesting. It is estimated that approximately 250,000 peasant farmers have protested, despite the dangers they know they face.
How have President Santos’s Government responded in recent weeks? At least 10 people are dead, more than 800 are wounded and 512 people have been arrested, including 45 children. A curfew was imposed and 50,000 troops were put on to the streets of the country to crack down on strike action. The social movements have said that this amounts to an undeclared state of siege, with demobilised right-wing paramilitaries used to attack demonstrators. However, the peasant farmers have been joined in their protests by health workers and students. Video evidence shows horrific beatings, torture, systematic vandalism and theft of the few possessions and food owned by the peasant farmers by the police. Human rights organisations have catalogued sexual abuse, torture, degrading treatment, beatings, indiscriminate use of tear gas and rubber bullets, and intimidation. As a result of this unchecked state violence, the people of Bogota came out on to the streets in their thousands.
On 29 August, President Santos made a speech putting the blame on the protesters, and sent in the ESMAD riot police. In the same speech, he smeared the Patriotic March movement, knowing full well that it would put them in danger. This followed his public statements about the June protest in Catatumbo, which lead to four protesters being killed.
NIZKOR, a collective of high profile and respected human rights organisations in Colombia, has catalogued the appalling behaviour of the riot police. It reported that ESMAD has been acting in the Boyaca department as an occupying army that has supplanted civilian authority and committed systematic, generalised and indiscriminate violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, as well as acts of vandalism and the excessive use of force. The following are just some issues it has reported: indiscriminate shooting of police-issue weapons against the population; sexual abuse of youths by police agents, as well as repeated threats to sexually abuse women, partners and daughters of the peasants; acts of torture and other mistreatment that involve the arbitrary use of tear gas in enclosed spaces, including in nurseries with 3 to 6-year-old children inside, as well as the use of elements projected or applied to the bodies of the inhabitants; attacks against helpless youths and minors, who are taken from the demonstrations and assaulted while alone; the indiscriminate firing of tear gas from helicopters over gatherings of people; the arbitrary invasion of homes of peasants and the destruction of their property; the identification, false accusation, persecution and threatening of leaders of the agriculture strike in Boyaca; mass arbitrary arrests of demonstrators; looting, theft of money and other common crimes committed by the security forces while accompanied by the investigative police, even in the capital of the department; the occupation of institutions protected under international humanitarian law such as the Pan-American Educational Institute, the New Bolivarian school and the Paloblanco school, all in Boyaca; and the use of ambulances for the transport of members of ESMAD, the riot police, which in itself constitutes a violation of international humanitarian law.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
It is exceptionally worrying that there has been an escalation in the targeting of human rights defenders, with 37 dying in the first six months of this year.
Robert Flello
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is that escalation that led me to secure the debate.
On 28 August, NIZKOR reported that in addition to the previous offences it catalogued, ambulances were being prevented from going into areas where the security services had injured, and in some cases killed, inhabitants. It is worried that civilian authorities find themselves intimidated or supplanted by curfews, militarisation and the hiding of the identification of riot police and police. I welcome the negotiations that are now taking place between the strikers and the Government, but it took 21 days, many deaths and the arrest of many activists to lead to them.
Let me turn now to the arrest of the deputy president of the agricultural workers’ union. Huber Ballesteros is a prominent agricultural workers’ union leader. He is on the executive of the Colombian equivalent of the TUC, and is a leader of the peaceful, socio-political Patriotic March movement, which, as I have said, has been smeared by President Santos. In the classic, tried-and-tested method of the Colombian Government, Huber has been arrested and is in prison accused of rebellion and financing terrorism. It is the old Colombian Government trick of saying that there are incriminating e-mails on laptop computers and using non-credible witness statements, which have been discredited in previous failed cases and criticised by the UN. So-called evidence that would make a British court wince with shame is trotted out to justify this false imprisonment.
There is a certain irony in the fact that Huber should be accused of funding the FARC guerrillas, when the current Defence Secretary has previously said that FARC funded the Patriotic March. One would have thought the Colombian Government could be at least consistent in their wild accusations! In a way, I am grateful that Huber has not met the same fate as Henry Diaz, the agricultural workers’ representative I met 18 months ago in Putumayo district, whose clothes were found, symbolically, between two military checkpoints last year—disappeared and murdered for the crime of representing peasant farmers.
Huber’s reputation internationally is such that he was to be a guest at the TUC conference this week. He is widely respected by Canadian, Irish, UK and US politicians and trade unionists. Sadly, he must travel everywhere in Colombia with a team of bodyguards. Huber is now in La Picota prison. According to Mariela Kohon, the director of Justice for Colombia,
“the prison is intensely overcrowded, prisoners are routinely denied any medical attention”
at all. Indeed, in November last year, she met a prisoner in this very same prison who had literally carved off a slice from his face to remove a tumour.
I am glad to see the Minister in his place, but I have been repeatedly disappointed that successive UK Governments have seized upon the slightest crumb—real or illusory—that Colombia has turned its back on state-backed murder and oppression. Parliamentary answers show Ministers heralding the peace talks, the national protection unit, land restitution and so on as being signs of a better Colombia. We should, of course, congratulate any effort to improve the situation, but Ministers should and must dig a little deeper and judge the Government of Colombia on results, not intent—on concrete actions, not words on paper. Protecting trade unionists because the Inter-American court has ordered it, while at the same time accusing the same people of being terrorists is not coherent. Neither is returning land to peasants while murdering protesting peasants. Engaging in peace talks while intimidating peace activists is, once again, not a coherent approach. We need to see civil society more included in the peace process, and victims from all sides given a voice.
It saddens me to say that our Government have for too long too naïvely accepted the word of the Colombian Government as fact. That can be seen in their welcoming the announcement that there will be no more impunity for military personnel at exactly the time as the Colombian law granting such impunity was changed. No wonder our reputation as a bastion of human rights in the world is so poor in Colombia, particularly among those at the front line of defending human rights. It is shameful to think that the average Colombian views the British as supporters of the oppressor, not the oppressed.
Instead of accepting the sweet words of President Santos, I hope our Ministers will now take a tougher public line, call for civil society’s involvement in the peace talks, publicly reject accusations that the trade unions and the opposition are linked to the guerrillas, get our ambassador to visit Huber in his prison cell in Colombia and speak out about the oppression being doled out with impunity.
If President Santos is genuine about wanting to bring Colombia to peace, he should free Huber Ballesteros. I have received letters from the ambassador, saying that everything is being done through proper process and that the Executive cannot intervene. Well, I am afraid that history has shown otherwise—that all too often the Executive intervenes, and not in a positive way. Now we have an opportunity to intervene positively. If President Santos is genuine, he should stop denouncing anyone he disagrees with as a “terrorist”, and he should call off his slavering, rabid riot police and their accomplices in the military and police. President Santos would, I am sure, want the rest of the world to view him as a saviour of Colombia and as the man who brought peace to his country. He can do that, but not by copying Uribe—he needs to be a man of peace, not an elected dictator.
Welfare Reform Bill
Debate between Robert Flello and John McDonnell(12 years, 3 months ago)
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John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
May I just make it clear that I oppose a benefit cap in principle? This policy has been borne out of prejudice and political expediency, rather than reason. In every recession there are scapegoats, and it is usually the poor, who become a political football for political game-playing and advantage. I am not morally willing to involve myself in that debasing political game.
We all have to bring our own experiences of our constituents to this debate, which has exposed differences in their lifestyles, and at times it has been apparent that we do live in different worlds. I do not begrudge Members and their constituents who are in good, well-paid employment, a secure home that they can afford and a decent environment, but that is not the experience of many of my constituents, or of many constituents throughout the country.
I have lived in my constituency for about 35 years, and I live in statistically the most deprived ward in the borough. The vast majority of people whom I see around me desperately want to do what is needed to ensure that their families have a good quality of life. They pay back into the community in many ways, they work long hours often in insecure employment and their pay, in many instances, is low and often below the London living wage.
The risk is unemployment, which over recent years in my constituency has increased by 52%, and over the past year by 7%, so there will be times when many of my constituents will not be able to find work. They struggle, above all else, just to provide a decent roof over their family’s heads, and that is because we face the worst housing crisis since the second world war. Housing supply has not kept up with housing demand, council houses that were sold off in the 1980s and ’90s have not been replaced by successive Governments, and there has been an expansion in buy-to-let, higher-rent-charging landlords, who provide many of my constituents with squalid housing conditions and overcrowding—Rachmanite landlords, who are building up lucrative property empires.
Robert Flello
Does my hon. Friend agree that, if a tenant complains, those landlords kick them out?
John McDonnell
Some Members will have seen recent television programmes that relate to my constituents and to Rachmanite landlords. It has not happened overnight; I blame what has happened over the past 30 years. So what is the logic of the cap for my constituents. Is it an incentive to secure work? The vast majority need no incentive; they are desperate for work. Yes, there is a small minority who will always refuse to seek work, but there are already sanctions for that, introduced by this and the last Government. I already have constituents turning up at my surgery who have been automatically suspended from benefits for three months for the slightest infringement, and they include many who suffer mental health problems or who simply cannot work through the system themselves.