Barry Gardiner MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Dec 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  May the blessings of Christmas be with you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and all who serve in this place. Few of us can imagine the extraordinary difficulty of studying for university exams in a war zone, so I was delighted about, and commend the Government for, setting up the scholarship scheme for students from Gaza who won places at UK universities. These students—some of the brightest of their generation—will rebuild that war-torn place, but the Leader of the House will know that the scholarships scheme is due to end on 31 December, and there are still some students trapped in Gaza who need to be evacuated, with their children. Perhaps he could speak to the Home Secretary and ask her to set out, in good time, what provision she will make to ensure that those students and their children are not left behind, and to ensure that we honour the commitment we made to them by extending the scheme beyond the end of this month.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Kashmir: Self-determination · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) spoke with great passion, but it is a passion that I fear clouded his recollection of some of the history. Under the Indian Independence Act 1947, the rulers of each of the princely states had the responsibility to choose between the two emergent nations, and Kashmir’s ruler Maharaja Hari Singh had to decide whether to accede to India or to Pakistan. As he was doing so, Pakistan’s militia and troops invaded the part of Kashmir now known as Azad Kashmir. He then signed the legal instrument of accession to the dominion of India. That clarified the position of Kashmir in international law: Kashmir became a part of India. It is also clear that Pakistan was the primary aggressor in the dispute. On 1 January 1948, India referred the situation to the UN Security Council. After much deliberation, the United Nations passed resolution 47, which my hon. Friend adverted to. However, again he showed a selective memory, because in fact the plebiscite had the precondition that Pakistan should secure the withdrawal of all its tribesmen and troops and Pakistani nationals from occupied Kashmir and put an end to the fighting in the state. That never happened, so the plebiscite that would have followed did not follow either. The subject of this debate is the issue of self-determination, so I propose to examine the total lack of self-determination that the Kashmiri people actually have in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. As a constitutional entity, so-called Azad Kashmir, which is better known as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, is not just strange but unique. It has been given the trappings of a country with a President, Prime Minister and even a Legislative Assembly, but it is neither a country with its own sovereignty nor a province with its own clearly defined devolved authority from the national Government of Pakistan. Under section 56 of the AJK interim constitution of 1974, the Pakistan Government can dismiss any elected Government in AJK, irrespective of the support they might have in the Legislative Assembly—no respect there, then, for self-determination. Strangely enough for an entity that purports to be a country, the constitution bars anyone from public office and prohibits them from participating in politics unless they publicly support the principle of Kashmir acceding to Pakistan. Imagine that—a country whose politicians can be politicians only if they say they do not want to be a country. It will therefore come as little surprise to hon. Members when I say that all the major civil and police administrative positions in AJK are held by Pakistani civil and military officers. It may also come as no surprise to find that the putative country has no representation in the Parliament of Pakistan. The territory’s local representatives are excluded from not just Pakistan’s Parliament but even those Pakistani bodies that negotiate inter-provincial resource allocation or federal taxes—so much for “no taxation without representation”. It is not a country. It is not a province. It is not a state. It is a satrapy. Were I not a British MP conscious of the fact that much of this mess is a legacy of our colonial past in the region, I might also describe it as a prize of war. But then, of course, that is precisely what Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is: a territory taken by force, not permitted even the freedoms of other Pakistani citizens—

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. He is absolutely right, and that money gets recycled throughout our economy. I think it is a scandal that more than 60% of people in receipt of universal credit are actually in work—often working two jobs to make ends meet. That is a scandal because it means that those employers are not paying their workforce at a level that we, the rest of society, consider to be enough to live on. We, the taxpayer, are subsidising those companies’ wage bills so that they can pay their shareholders higher profits. The Budget does not reverse structural inequality or shift the dial on growth. It is also a Budget that whispers when it should be screaming about the catastrophe that will collapse our economy within the next 25 years. Let me talk about the figures that matter and about the budgets that are actually going to change our lives. Over the past 800,000 years, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has varied between 180 and 300 parts per million. During the last 10,000 years—the period of human civilisation—it has varied between 260 and 280 parts per million, which has given us humans a relatively stable temperature and climate. When we started the significant use of fossil fuels in the 19th century, the concentration of CO 2 was at 280 parts per million; today, it is at 424 parts per million. As a result of those emissions, global mean temperatures have risen by nearly 1.5°C. That is the level that we know gives us only a 50% chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. What does dangerous climate change actually mean? It means the systematic collapse of our economy. It means refugees fleeing parts of the world where life has become impossible because of temperatures persistently above 40°C, drought and failing crops. It means unprecedented societal chaos as supply chains fail and competition for food turns to violence. It means war. What the Government have failed to understand is that they cannot weigh up the cost of addressing climate change against the cost to the economy, when the whole economy depends on keeping climate change under control, so the first budget we need is a global carbon budget that sets the quantity of CO 2 that we can emit if we are to meet our Paris temperature agreements. If we are to stay below the 2°C threshold, we have only 530 billion metric tonnes of CO 2 that we can release into the atmosphere. That may sound a lot; in fact, it is only 13 years of emissions at their current rate. The budget to stay within 1.5°C is a lot worse: just 130 billion metric tonnes, which is just three years of emissions at today’s level.

• 16 Oct 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The long-awaited report by the Joint Intelligence Committee on the link between biodiversity, sustainability and national security is still not with us. Lord Dannatt and other senior military figures have increasingly expressed concerns about the threat the collapse of global biodiversity poses to our food security and the security risks arising from climate change. Can my right hon. Friend assure us that, contrary to recent press stories, the JIC report has not been blocked, and can he tell the House when it will be published?

• 1 Sept 2025 · Borders and Asylum · Hansard source

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  It has come to my attention that in government, the job of Home Secretary does not always attract the greatest thanks, so I want to thank my right hon. Friend for the response that she and her Department have given to the letter from 100 colleagues about the Gaza students, and for what she said this afternoon about considering a permanent scheme. Will she confirm, however, that the visas, when they are issued, will be the same as any international student visa, in that the scholars will be able to bring their families and dependants with them?

• 10 Jul 2025 · UK-France Nuclear Partnership · Hansard source

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  Is the Minister as surprised as I was to find that the shadow Secretary of State only half quoted that sentence from the report in Navy Lookout , about making it clearer that “no extreme threat” to European security would go unanswered by both countries, but failed to look at the real purpose here—that it signals a strengthened deterrence posture, as Russia has repeated its threats to use nuclear weapons? Does my hon. Friend agree that this shows that the relationship, which was damaged by Brexit, is now being recreated by this Government? The AUKUS pact and defence co-operation is now a clear priority for this Government, with the European Union, and that is embodied in this new relationship with France.