Clive Lewis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jul 2025 · Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for giving way, and for some of the things that he has said. Everything he has spoken about could be dealt with under criminal law. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah) mentioned the suffragettes. I think we need to give the context of a little bit of history. The suffragettes carried out a campaign of window-smashing, poster and paint defacement, cutting telegraph and railway lines and targeted bombing and arson, but specifically avoided harming people. There is a long history in this country of direct action that pushes the boundaries of our democracy. It is very difficult for all of us, but this is still direct action, not terrorist action.

• 2 Jul 2025 · Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism · Hansard source

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  Let me first associate myself with the very good comments of the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart). I agree with the proscription of the two far-right fascist organisations—I think they should be proscribed—but can we as a House accept that there are those of us present who have a different take on today’s proscription of Palestine Action? We do not have to agree with the behaviour or actions of Palestine Action to make the case today that this proscription is wrong. I ask hon. Members to acknowledge that the many of us here today who take a different view on this issue are as much a part of this democracy as those who agree with the proscription. It is just that our take on the delicacy of our democracy, on what this proscription does and on how it undermines our democracy happens to differ from that of other people. There are Opposition Members who have repeatedly said that they understand and empathise with constituents who have smashed and vandalised ultra low emission zone cameras and low emission zone cameras. Direct action is not just of the left; everyone in our democracy can partake in it. This is a judgment call about how we best protect our democracy and an acknowledgment that not all threats are external or violent. Some threats are based on the decisions that we take in this place. Sometimes, we might take decisions that fundamentally undermine our own democracy. I have no doubt that some of us will be called terrorist sympathisers by some who disagree with our position, but that would be wrong. Look around the world and watch as democracy and the rule of law are systematically smashed. Corporations and the wealthy have increasing power and wealth to influence our democracy. Look over the Atlantic at the United States. Our democracies are delicate; our democracies are precious. The decisions we take in this place determine whether those democracies will survive into the future. I look around the world and around this country—I look at the authoritarian right party that is 10 points ahead in the polls—and I worry about the future of our democracy. This Government—our Government—have to make decisions that take account of the possibility that we might not be in government one day. It may be the authoritarian right who are in government, and they will take this further, faster and deeper than we ever have, so we should be putting in fireguards now, protecting our democracy, and this measure does not do that. In conclusion, I understand what terrorism is. I was in London on 7 July 2005 and I watched my community—this city—attacked by real terrorists. At that point, rightly or wrongly, I decided that I was going to Afghanistan to fight the terrorists. I went because I love this country and I love our democracy and I want to see it protected. Today’s proscription order against Palestine Action undermines that, and I wish that my Government were not doing this.

• 16 Jun 2025 · Windrush Day 2025 · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for opening this timely debate—she made a fantastic speech—and hon. Friends for their contributions. I want to touch on the story that Windrush tells of this country. Stories are important; the stories we tell ourselves define us as a country. It is right that we celebrate the Windrush generation and their contribution, but as other speakers have said, there is a dark side to this story. I do not want to be too negative, but I want to touch on some of that dark side, because it is important and instructive, given where we find ourselves, as a country and a world. I would not be standing here today as a black Member of Parliament if one of my ancestors in Africa had not been abducted and put on a slave ship. For generations after that, my ancestors were beaten and made to work in the most terrible conditions to make money for someone in this country, or for their slave master in the Caribbean. Yet because of those ancestors, I stand here today. History is complicated—I think we can agree on that—but that does not mean that we should not try to unpick it. Looking around at my colleagues, I must say that it is politically fashionable in some quarters to say that many of us are recipients of DEI—diversity, equality and inclusion policies—that we have been gifted our places, and that anyone who comes from the black community, is a women or has tendencies or sexualities that are not seen as the norm has been gifted their position. Anyone who understands the Labour party selection process will know that is not the case. In fact, many of us faced a double whammy—we are both working class and black. It takes a lot to get into this place, and yet we are here, and we are not going anywhere. I remember back in 2021, when the Conservatives, who were here on the Government Benches, under Boris Johnson, produced the disgraceful race report. I think they want to forget that. I would be interested to hear what the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross), thinks about that report now. It said that structural racism does not exist, it is a figment of our collective imagination, we have effectively been dreaming about it for 400 years, and there is no link between empire, slavery and the racism that stretches from that all the way to the Windrush scandal and beyond. Indeed, that notion of outsiders—of foreigners—figures in much of our immigration debate to this very day. What is racism? It is a hierarchy of worth. We see it all around the world in conflicts: “If you are from this part of the world with this ethnicity, your worth is this much, but if that is your ethnicity, your worth is that much and you can take that much suffering. And if you’re up here, you don’t need to suffer; you’re part of the elite.” That is what racism is: a hierarchy of suffering. We cannot forget that it is real and allow people to tell us that our history is something in which only good things happened, where things were shiny and nice, and that we had an empire to help and develop the rest of the world. I remember when I was going on the ITV breakfast programme, and I had to have a chat with the producer beforehand. He said, “Clive, you do realise that the railways in India have helped India to get into the 21st century and to industrialise? The British built those railways.” I replied, “You know, you’re right, but that is why it’s so complicated. Do you think for a second that the British built the railways in India for the benefit of the Indians?” The answer is no; they built them to extract vast wealth from India, and it just so happens that the Indians can now use that railway network to industrialise and make themselves richer. History is complicated. I will finish with this. There is a movement around the world; in Germany, in Europe and, dare I say it, in the United States, whose President believes that a genocide is happening in South Africa—really, he believes that, and he is coming here for a state visit. All around the world, there is an attack on history—on good history. Good history is complicated; it tells a complicated story about this country and its past. I have served this country knowing full well its history in empire, knowing full well its history in slavery. I have served it because I love this country, warts and all. I do not need to tell myself a story about this country being perfect in the past and only doing things for the good. I love it, warts and all, because it has given me and my family, friends and community so many opportunities. My dad was welcomed to this country by my mother’s English family. The trade union movement welcomed him. Our history is complex. The Labour party is complex. The country is complex. History is complex. Let us never forget that, as we go forwards. We must understand that history is complex for a reason because—and this moves me—we are all human beings, and human beings are complex themselves. That is why our history is complex and that is what we need to understand. As we move forward, talk about Windrush, celebrate Windrush Day, and pass legislation in this place about black people, about immigration and about asylum seekers, let us remember our complex history and try to do better in the future.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Around 50 years ago, Margaret Thatcher’s revolution tore up the rulebook on political and economic management. She rewrote it with a single unwavering principle: that the pursuit of profit would serve the public good, even when it came to vital public services—even when it came to water. We often say that society stands on the shoulders of giants, but giants cast long shadows, and Thatcherism’s shadow looms dark over our water system today. Whether we see ourselves standing on her shoulders or trapped in her shadow, one thing is undeniable: she proved that the world can be made differently. And if it can be made differently once, it can be made differently again. That, as the brilliant anthropologist David Graeber understood, is the hidden truth of the world. It is something we create and can choose to create anew. We can do it better. Today, I want to show this House and this country that water is the lens through which we can imagine something better—a better way of running our economy, a better way of safeguarding our environment and a better way of empowering the public, for whom democracy supposedly exists. But that requires something very difficult: it requires us to break free from the constraints of our imagination and to let go of the idea that this economic model is all there is or all there ever could be. It saddens me to say that the Government’s Water (Special Measures) Act 2025 perfectly exemplifies this failure of imagination. One of its leading proponents has a particular rhetorical flourish they love to use when dismissing calls for public ownership of water. They say, “I’m more interested in the purity of our water than the purity of our ideology.” I love that quote. I love it because it lays bare just how deeply the ideology of privatisation, and all that goes with it, has embedded itself. So entrenched is it within our collective consciousness that we no longer recognise it as an ideology. We no longer see it for what it is: a systemic exploitation of a common resource for private gain. Instead, it has simply become the natural order of things. But how much longer can this go on? Since the crash of 2008, this ideology has been faltering under the weight of its own contradictions, yet its grip on British politics remains vice-like. Austerity, exploitation and corporate price gouging are still treated not as choices but as inevitabilities. Why? Because too many politicians on both sides of the House refuse to contemplate alternatives. For those on the other side of the House—on the Opposition Benches—I get it: this is their ideology. They are defending their class, and I would imagine they would go further still if they could. But on this side of the House, we have no excuse. We should be standing up for our class: working-class people—the public. Instead, we wrap their ideology in the language of fiscal responsibility, economic prudence and stewardship of the economy. But it is not fiscal responsibility when we balance the books on broken backs. It is not stewardship when the ship has been sold off and the crew left to drown. It is not prudence. It is power maintenance.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  One second. If scientists tell us the climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity and to this country, we must treat it as such: an existential conflict. In that context, the actions of these companies—selling off reservoirs, failing to invest, polluting our water—are not just negligent; they are acts that actively undermine our national water security. In any other existential crisis, we might call that what it is: sabotage. And in a time of national peril, sabotage has another name: treason. Let me explain why this matters to me personally. When I served on tour in Afghanistan back in 2009—not in a boy band—I experienced something utterly alien to me: the gnawing fear of thirst; not the mild irritation of forgetting a water bottle, but the deep physical worry that there may not be enough clean water to get through the day. In Britain, we have been blessed: water falls from the sky; it fills our rivers, it soaks our fields, and we joke about it—it is part of who we are. But in Afghanistan there was no humour; only heat, dust and desperation. There I saw children trekking miles through the desert, not for food, not for money, but to beg for clean bottled water. Once we have seen that, and once we have felt that fear, we can never take water for granted again. We never again believe it is something we can waste or pollute or privatise without consequence. That is why I have brought forward this Bill: because anger is not enough; outrage, no matter how justified, will not fix the pipes, stop the sewage or fill the reservoirs. We need a plan. We need a strategy. We need a future. We can do it better. My Water Bill delivers that. It sets out the high standards our country deserves and the democratic governance our water system desperately needs. First, it establishes clear, ambitious targets to stop the sewage in our rivers and on our beaches, to restore our water to high ecological and chemical standards, and to deliver universal, affordable access to water as a basic human right—a right we have never had before in this country. It demands a system designed not just to extract profit but to adapt, to build resilience in the face of climate change, and to harness nature-based solutions that work with the environment, not against it. Secondly, it transforms governance. The Bill introduces representation for workers and local communities on the boards of water companies. It gives voting rights to employees and customers, so that those who use and maintain a system have a real say in how it is run. Water is not a commodity but a common good, and those who depend on it and pay for it should help govern it. Thirdly, the Bill lays the foundations for a democratic future. It establishes a commission on water ownership to advise the Secretary of State on long-term strategy, looking at international best practice, especially in OECD countries, where public water ownership is the norm, not the exception. Crucially, it creates a citizens’ assembly on water ownership to bring the public into the process, to deliberate, debate and decide how we can govern this most precious of resources. The public care, but how do I know that? I know because a small fraction of them are in the Public Gallery today, having travelled here from all over the country; I know because of the thousands of emails that have been sent to MPs across the House; and I know because those people will never stop campaigning until this injustice is resolved. They know that we can protect something not by selling it off, but by standing up for it, involving people in its care and ensuring that it serves the public, today, tomorrow and for generations to come. My Bill offers a pathway out of crisis. It offers control, resilience and democracy. It is not just about cleaning up our rivers, but about cleaning up the system that allowed them to be polluted in the first place. Privatisation is not just a problem—it is the problem. We can do it better. I can hear some people on the Labour Benches thinking, “But we have just passed”—

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  People talk about whether something can be taken out of public control and put back into privatisation. Of course, Parliament is sovereign and that can always happen, but there is a point about giving control to the public. Let us take the NHS, which is a public service. Any Government in the post-war period could have taken the NHS back into privatisation. Why did they not do so? They would not have dared, because it would have been so publicly damaging and politically destructive. That is what would happen with our water. Does the hon. Member agree? [Interruption.]

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I will be very brief. There is a crisis of democracy, and as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) has just mentioned, we are rejecting a citizens’ assembly. Such an assembly could have the technical support and technical capacity as well, but it would give a voice to the public. Instead, we have decided to give that voice to Sir Jon Cunliffe, a lifelong Treasury insider who works in the City of London and who will make a decision based on its interests. Can she not see the problem here, and the lack of confidence the public have in the democratic decisions that are being taken by people like that?

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I agree with him wholeheartedly and I am just about to come to that point in relation to what the Water (Special Measures) Act does and does not do. It addresses some of those points, but as we have already discussed, privatisation is not just a problem, but the problem, and it is a big part of why so much has gone wrong. Unfortunately, the Water (Special Measures) Act does not live up to what was promised or what is needed, and it certainly does not live up to its name. However, it is a start, and I praise my colleagues on the Front Bench, including the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy), who has done so much work in this area. Unfortunately, the Act is not a solution. Remarkably, my Government’s Water (Special Measures) Act does not even define what clean water means. There are no standards or targets—just vague intentions handed over once again to a regulatory system that has already failed us and to the companies that caused the mess in the first place. It says nothing about better governance, and absolutely nothing about the big, fat, humongous elephant in the room: who owns our water? If we do not deal with ownership, we cannot deal with accountability. If we cannot deal with accountability, we can forget clean water. No—we must go further on clean water standards, corporate accountability and what happens when companies fail.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  May I make a more general point? If the Bill went into Committee, we would look at this in far more detail, but a big part of the Bill is about a mission and our direction of travel. It is about tackling the crisis in democracy, and trusting our fellow citizens to give a point of view, with guidance from experts, so that we can make a decision. When the founders of the renaissance or capitalism sat down, did they know that the renaissance would happen, or that capitalism would end up like this? No. This is about heading in a certain direction and having some imagination—

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  I will obviously come to many of those points later in my speech, but let me make this point now: I do not believe in nationalisation, and this Bill has nothing to do with nationalisation. This is about giving the public a say over their water. It is about governance, standards and democracy.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  At the beginning of my now seemingly rather long speech, I think I referred to a failure of imagination. Ask what Margaret Thatcher would have done when she was faced with similar problems. She would have fought her way through it. She changed the very fabric of our economy, our democracy and our politics, and she made it work. We can do the same, because the public are behind us. They want this to work.

• 28 Mar 2025 · Water Bill · Hansard source

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  No, I do not. We have a distorted electoral system. Bring on proportional representation, because if we had PR, we would have had a different Government in 2019 and most definitely in 2017. Sometimes politicians have to do what they believe to be right and lead from the front. I think we should lead from the front.

• 16 Dec 2024 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Listening to the right hon. Lady and the excuses that the previous Government have made for what they did, it seems that what you were doing was equivalent to polishing one of the many turds that you will find in the Thames. Perhaps you would like to listen to your main electoral competitor, Reform UK, which actually has a policy for public ownership—I was quite surprised to find that out myself. Perhaps you think that that could solve many of the problems in UK waters.

• 3 Sept 2024 · Healthcare Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his interesting question. I am not happy with the removal of the winter fuel payment—of course I am not—and I do not think anyone on this side of the House will be happy with it, but I also understand that there are two points in the year when you support your Government: the King’s Speech and the Budget. I am not looking to break that, but like many of my colleagues I have severe concerns about the impact this proposal will have on people’s health and wellbeing and on their pockets. I have every confidence that my Government will put in place the best possible response to the £22-billion hole left by Conservative Members. I just do not think that the removal of the winter fuel allowance is necessarily the right way forward, but we shall see what happens in the days and weeks ahead. My question to the Minister is this: does she believe—this almost pre-empts the question asked by the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew)—that the cut to winter fuel payments will improve the situation in terms of fuel poverty and its impact on health? Another example is financial insecurity. Age UK Norwich told us that 35% of Norwich wards fall within the top 10% of the most deprived areas in England. There has been a 35% rise in food bank use in the city, fuel poverty is at nearly 16%, and 68% of Age UK Norwich inquiries are about money, debt or bills. Another example is poor housing and malnutrition. We have quite extreme malnutrition in Norwich. Norfolk has the highest malnutrition rate in England; malnutrition affects one in five people in Norfolk and Waveney. Jade Hunter, the headteacher of West Earlham infant and nursery school, told The Guardian : “We do get a lot of bad chests because they’re in damp homes that are maybe mouldy, and we get a lot of sickness and diarrhoea because the quality of the food they’re eating isn’t great”. She told me that one way teachers know children are hungry is that they chew their pens and chew sand. That shows that they are not being given what they need to thrive at school. Before I conclude to allow others to contribute, I would like to ask the Minister some more questions. We know there will be a Government review of NHS England structures. There is an incomprehensible patchwork of bodies covering different geographical areas, including the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS foundation trust, the East of England ambulance service, the NHS Norfolk and Waveney integrated care board—the list goes on. Are there plans to simplify those structures and make those bodies more accountable? I understand that NHS reorganisations and reforms are not always popular, particularly with staff, but I wanted to ask that question. Secondly, before the general election, all Norfolk MPs called for an undergraduate dental school to be established at the University of East Anglia. With my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) and many others across the region, I have been working on that proposal, so will the Minister tell us whether there has been any news or developments? Such a school will be critical to beginning to end the dental desert in Norfolk and Waveney—dentist provision in Suffolk is in almost as bad a state. Finally, I campaigned for mental health before I was an MP, I and continue to do so to this day, despite the difficulties. Despite the past 15 years of so-called change and reform in our local mental health service, it is still arguably the worst in the country. Will there be a statutory public inquiry into the systemic failure of mental health services in Norfolk and Suffolk? This scandal—this slow-motion disaster—has gone on too long, disrupted and ruined too many lives, led to people dying unnecessarily, and caused much grief. People need answers, and if we are to learn lessons from what has happened in the past 15 years, we need an independent public inquiry to get to the bottom of these issues.

• 3 Sept 2024 · Healthcare Provision: East of England · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered healthcare provision in the East of England. It is an honour to conduct this debate with you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. Before getting into the meat of the debate, I will give a brief overview of the broad context. The beating heart of healthcare provision in this country is of course the national healthcare system, arguably the closest thing to socialism that this country has ever seen, based as it is on the provision of healthcare by need, not the size of someone’s wallet. That is pretty unique, not just in this country but around the world. One could argue that this far-sighted policy has changed the very nature of our everyday reality. Our health is everything. Without it, we are more insecure, less productive and less happy. The security of good health and of access to care free at the point of use has revolutionised our society, helping us to live longer, more secure lives, and arguably creating social stability that affects economic productivity and perhaps even the strength of our democracy itself. Or at least it did so until about 60 years ago, when it began to be picked apart.

• 23 Jul 2024 · Immigration and Home Affairs · Hansard source

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  It is an absolute privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Helena Dollimore). I watched earlier as she was polishing her “Edstone” joke outside the Chamber, and it was delivered with aplomb. I am hoping, for colleagues’ sake, that I have to make this contribution to the King’s Speech debate only once; believe me, doing things twice is not what it is cracked up to be. Either way, it makes a wonderful change to be on the Government Benches to speak in a King’s Speech debate in which for once stability eclipses chaos, renewal surpasses decay and hope trumps despair. Let me tell my new colleagues that it is not usually like this, at least it has not been for the past nine or 10 years, maybe longer. Too often, we have been here making speeches that mourn the erosion of our democracy and our rights at work and that can only bemoan the continual and unceasing scapegoating of our communities, the destruction of our rivers, the undermining of our judicial system, the betrayal of international human rights and the deepening of a climate crisis. But not today, because this King’s Speech is a veritable cornucopia of progressive policies pregnant with the potential to unpick decades of drift and deterioration. I would not try to say that after a couple of pints. There are of course caveats. Announcements on the two-child benefit cap and arms export licences to Israel are but two issues we await to hear more on in the near future. In the interim, however, I for one welcome the announcement of our anti-child poverty taskforce. If done properly, it has the potential to lift thousands of children from my constituency and millions beyond out of hunger and hardship, and to give all our children the start in life they deserve—a start denied them by the last Government. However, we could go further. We could build new institutions and put power in the hands of those who need it most. One of the lessons I learned watching a Conservative Government close down Labour’s much-loved and beloved Sure Start centres was that, if we give communities the ability to wealth-build and thus help themselves, the institutions built cannot simply be switched off by an incoming Government hostile to poverty reduction. The late and great Robin Cook understood this. He lamented Labour Governments who “never change the system because they think they don’t need to. And when they lose, they have no power to change it.” The marginality of this Parliament and the rising spectre of right-wing authoritarianism demands that we legislate as if this were a one-term Government, and one that could easily be followed by a Government with little respect for democracy, tolerance, progressive values or even human rights. In this age of anger and perma-crisis, policy delivery is no longer enough. Transformative change, empowerment and new institutions to deliver are what is needed to future-proof society against the shocks to come. We do not have to look far for examples of what they could look like. The NHS is an institution that is the closest thing to socialism this country has ever attained, and it is the reason most Brits give as to why they are proud to be British. Let us repower and rebuild our local authorities—democratic institutions that for too long have been undervalued, underfunded and stripped of responsibility. Let us redouble our efforts to strengthen trade unions—institutions that push power back to people in the workplace. Such institutions, both new and old, will help undo 60 years of democratic erosion and make people feel empowered over their own lives. If we do this right, it will pull the rug from under the feet of the hatemongers and authoritarians, because they thrive on anger born of powerlessness, a sense of betrayal and a vacuum of purpose. People-orientated, democratic, institutional power blows them away. I want to conclude with this observation. The true risk to this country is not the rivers of blood, as some would have us believe, but rather rivers of excrement and rivers running dry. In only a few decades’ time, my constituency might not have drinking water, because of a combination of the climate crisis and corporate corruption in the form of price gouging and criminal levels of under-investment. Immigration and asylum did not lead us here any more than membership of the EU did. Failing institutions, the erosion of democracy and economic failure brought us here. It is that our Government must fix, so let us get to it.