Category: My work

For almost 30 years I have championed the fight against animal cruelty and have signed countless Early Day Motions opposing practices and actions involving cruelty to animals.

In my view all forms of blood sports are cruel and have no place in a modern, decent and civilised society.  I pledged in 2019 to keep blood sports banned on animal welfare grounds.

I believe the Hunting Act should be strengthened to close existing loopholes, such as illegal foxhunting under cover of trail hunting that is really just a smokescreen to hide the illegal killing of foxes.

Certainly, trail hunting should not be allowed on Government land. It is clear that allowing trail hunting on Ministry of defence and even forestry land means that these activities are even more away from the public gaze and secretive.

You can be confident that I will continue to speak out inside and outside of Parliament against cruelty and illegal actions such as the illegal killing of foxes under the guise of trail hunting.

The pandemic has had a severe impact on people affected by dementia, including those living with dementia and their family, friends and carers.

I welcome the work of the Alzheimer’s Society and others to bring more attention to the, often hidden, impact of this crisis on people living with dementia and on the need for significantly more support for people with dementia and others who require care.

At the last General Election, I stood on a pledge committing to integrating properly funded social care services. Like the Alzheimer’s Society, I am very concerned about the medical, mental and financial issues facing those who suffer from dementia.

I believe that the inadequacies in the support for people living with dementia stems from the wider crisis in social care which preceded this pandemic. Before the covid-19 outbreak, around 1.5 million older people were not receiving the care they needed.

It saddens me that at least £7 billion has been cut from adult social care since 2010. I know that The Alzheimer’s Society urged the Chancellor to include a £2.4 billion Dementia Fund in the 2019 Spending Review to overhaul the social care sector, but the Government only provided an additional £1 billion for both adult and children’s social care.

I share your deep concern about the effects of lockdown on people living in care homes with dementia and want to see visits resume as soon as it is safe to do so. I also agree with you that wherever possible the Government should publish data on the number of and percentage of staff and residents in care homes who have been vaccinated. This is important because seeing the rising number of people vaccinated by potentially gives people hope.

I have campaigned for many years on environmental issues, the threat to nature, global warming and environmental destruction. I have consistently raised these issues in Parliament.

I am totally opposed to the Government’s decision to lift the ban on neonicotinoid pesticides. In 2018, the Government’s then Environment Secretary, Michael Gove MP, said that the Government would keep the ban on these pesticides in light of the evidence of the harmful impact they can have on wildlife. I am concerned that this decision has been reversed without persuasive new scientific evidence to support such a move.

In 2019 I stood on a manifesto that pledged to create a Plan for Nature that would set legally binding targets to kick start the restoration of species and habitats. Killing bees will only do the reverse.

On 26 January this year I voted for an amendment to the Environment Bill that would have increased scrutiny of any attempts by the Government to allow substances that were banned under EU law due to environmental concerns to be used. This amendment would have made it harder for the Government to reverse the ban on neonicotinoid pesticides.

Unfortunately, this amendment was defeated with Conservative MPs voting against this measure.

I will continue to speak out in Parliament and beyond in support of environmental protections and oppose this Government’s attack on our nature and the environment.

So many people in Islington North and beyond have been in touch about the cladding issue which features prominently in parliamentary business.

I have met with constituents about this (perhaps you were one of them), and in the last days of December 2020 I wrote calling for Government support for those facing uncertain futures because of unsafe properties, be they leaseholders, housing associations or anyone else.

Quite simply, it is outrageous that people are still not protected from unsafe cladding, years after the Government promised action. And for the very many who bought their property in good faith, the financial burden of remedying cladding effects should not fall to them.

This issue is causing a great deal of distress to many in Islington and beyond, despite the fact that to date there have been many voices (from all political parties including Prime Ministers, ministers and different MPs), insisting that the Government come up with answers, and urgently.

Those responsible for these buildings being dangerous must pay to make them safe.

I will continue to support all those affected by this wholly unacceptable cladding issue.

I have campaigned for years for more funding for the NHS to ensure we have a service that works and that frontline workers like nurses get decent pay. And I have continuously opposed the creeping privatisation we have seen over recent years.
I have repeatedly called for a long-term investment plan for the NHS and social care sector, funded by increasing taxation on the very wealthiest in society.

Rishi Sunak gave pay rises to doctors and dentists earlier in the year, but not to nurses, and this is obviously unfair. In fact, he used the excuse that nurses agreed a three-year deal in 2018, which means the average nurse receiving a 4.4% rise this year. But the vast majority of frontline nurses are said to be in Band 5, so on average this meant that nurses got just a 1.65% rise in April, and this is totally unacceptable in my view.

He did this, despite the fact that he and Boris Johnson recognised the selfless and dedicated service that they have provided throughout the Coronavirus crisis. I consider this to be exploitation, but it doesn’t come as a surprise.
In Rishi Sunak’s Autumn 2020 Spending Review, he promised a pay rise for doctors and nurses in the NHS, but we don’t know what this will be, and we’ll probably have to wait until the 2021 budget to find out.

He also said that all public sector workers earning less than the median wage (£24,000) will get a pay rise in next year’s Budget; I suspect this will be followed quickly by the announced public sector pay freeze which is being justified as paying for the cost of the Pandemic. This is unacceptable as the wealthy should make the biggest contribution rather than making front line workers shoulder the bill.

I fully support the long overdue, proper pay rise for nurses who continue to give such selfless dedicated service even though their real income has gone down. A 12.5% pay increase does not even take you to parity with the real value of nurses pay 10 years ago.

I will continue to push for what I would have done, which is a proper long-term investment plan for the NHS and social care sector, and I will do this inside and outside of Parliament.

Jeremy Corbyn: ‘There’s Always Money for War, but Never for Our Public Services’

Just prior to last week’s Spending Review, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced £16.5 billion over the next four years in new defence spending over the next four years, ensuring Britain’s role as Europe’s biggest military spender (and the second biggest spender in NATO) at this time of the national and international Coronavirus crisis.

This is the biggest increase in such spending in decades, and as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament have said, “In the face of the climate emergency, the coronavirus pandemic, and a major economic downturn, the Government is spending billions on weapons systems and extending sabre-rattling to outer space.”

This Tory Government has the wrong priorities – they prioritise mega profits for capital over the future of our climate, they prioritise nuclear weapons over protecting the international development budget, and now they are prioritising the projection of military power over dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

In terms of immediate priorities, many people will rightly simply not understand the Government’s decision to sharply increase the military budget during the COVID-19 health emergency.

We also mustn’t forget that at the start of this pandemic we had insufficient equipment, staff and infrastructure to control the spread of the virus and save lives.

And each week we still see more stories now – over eight months into the pandemic – of the national crisis in social care and hospitals having to cancel essential operations due to underfunding.

It seems there is always massive amounts of money to be found for wars and weapons of war but not for our essential public services including the NHS.

The Stop the War Coalition has put these sums in perspective, outlining that “£21.5 billion equates to almost twice that required to enable the current social care system to cope with expected demand and be properly staffed over the next four years, or it could provide funding to build 60 new hospitals.”

Additionally, compared with many other European countries, we are spending more on weapons and less on tackling climate change, with the recent Government pledge of £12 billion to combat climate change, paling in comparison to others.

Furthermore, this massive increase is on top of the defence annual budget of £41.5 billion – and on top of a Tory manifesto commitment for that budget to rise by 0.5% above inflation every year.

We also must demand to know if this increase in military spending will include additional spending on the Trident nuclear weapons system, the renewal of which is already a colossal waste of resources which could be better spent elsewhere.

If this is the case, it must be challenged. As CND’s recent report argues in detail, the huge security challenges and crises of our time – so exposed during this Covid-19 pandemic – the reality is that nuclear weapons can never keep us safe and our security would actually be best served by scrapping Trident.

It is also important to note that – contrary to some of the spin in parts of the Tory-supporting media – much of this money will be spent on increasing Britain’s offensive military capacity.

With regards to offensive military capacity, there is also much concern amongst peace campaigners about the announcement of a new ‘space command’ as part of the MoD funding package, which appears to be about following the US lead in terms of the militarisation of space, which would have deeply dangerous international consequences.

A new arms race based on using new technologies as the basis of potential weapons of mass destruction – in space or otherwise – offers no hope for humanity.

Instead we need to be prioritising dialogue to reduce international tensions, and working together to solve the great crises of our time, which are also threats to our security.

Poverty, human rights abuses, environmental destruction and disease are all security threats, yet neither the Government here or the international community are putting enough resources into tackling them.

And now the British Government has taken the disgraceful decision to cut international development spending in last week’s Spending Review, which hamper international efforts to tackle these threats and make us all less secure.

This decision feels like it is more about Boris Johnson appeasing his followers on the right of the Tory party and in the right-wing media than it is about our security or what is best for Britain.

We must then raise our collective voice for change. Internationally, this means those of us campaigning for peace and disarmament must use the 2021 review of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as an opportunity to push our demands back up the agenda.

Here in Britain the next strategic defence and security review is due this year, and we need to argue for an end to wasteful spending on nuclear weapons, through defence diversification and with greater public procurement in Britain to protect jobs and industries.

Let us build up the public pressure for a change of priorities – and put our planet plus people’s health and livelihood first.Published on December 2 2020 at https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/12/jeremy-corbyn-theres-always-money-for-war-never-for-our-public-services