Diane Abbott MP: speeches

Speeches

• 22 May 2025 · Church Assets: Historical Link to Slavery · Hansard source

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  10. Whether the commissioners have made an estimate of the proportion of the Church’s assets that may have a link to historical involvement with slavery.

• 16 May 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that far too many people do not have confidence in the face of authority, and that if a doctor raises assisted suicide with them—no matter how tactfully or professionally—they will feel that they are being steered in that direction?

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  Far from enabling the Government to put people into work, removing PIP will actually stop people working, because they depend on PIP for the extra cost of going to work. Perhaps the most preposterous argument for cutting disability payments is that it is the moral choice. This is obviously nonsense. In what universe is slashing benefits for the disabled moral? No one is taken in by that, not even those who think that all benefit claimants are scroungers.

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered Personal Independence Payment and disabled people. I am proud to have secured this debate today, and to be able to stand up for the disabled in the light of the catastrophic effects that the proposed cut to personal independence payments will have on them. This is the week after the council elections and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election proved disastrous for at least two major parties. The issue on everyone’s lips, and the cause of much of the disaffection, was welfare cuts, and specifically cuts to personal independence payments. I begin by thanking in advance all those who will take part in this debate, all those watching, all those in the outside world who are campaigning against the cuts and, above all, the disabled community itself, which, day by day, shows exemplary resilience and courage. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in her spring statement, raised the curtain on a series of welfare cuts: the health element of universal credit will be cut by 50% and frozen for new claimants, and the Office for Budget Responsibility has outlined that the planned cuts to disability benefits will reduce PIP for at least 800,000 claimants and cut health-related universal credit payments for 3 million families. And that is just the beginning.

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  It is indeed a cruel and brutal system that needs reform. It does not need cuts. Elements of the Labour party seem to want to claim that the loss of the by-election in Runcorn and the fact that Labour lost two thirds of the council seats we were defending was all about immigrants. However, voter surveys show that, far from being all about immigrants, the single most important reason for vote-switching was anger at the Government for the winter fuel allowance and welfare cuts, such as the proposed cut to PIP. Immigration came well down the list. Labour people who went out knocking on doors said that two issues came up over and again: cuts to winter fuel payments; and cuts to personal independence payments. However, despite the catastrophic results last week, the Prime Minister has made it clear that nothing will deter him from pushing ahead with these cuts. So far, his only concession has been to say that he will go “further and faster.” In my Hackney North and Stoke Newington constituency, well over 8,000 people are on either personal independence payment or disability living allowance, which translates nationwide to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of men and women whose fury will only mount as they find that, month by month, their payments are shrinking or disappearing altogether. The Labour leadership have not helped their case for cutting PIP by putting forward a set of contradictory arguments. On the one hand, they insist that they are helping the disabled by putting them back to work, but on the other hand, they say this cut will save £9 billion. Well, they cannot do both. Putting disabled people into rewarding, sustained employment, which we would all support, means spending money on training, therapy and childcare. In the short run, putting disabled people into jobs will not save money; it will actually cost more. The only certain way that cutting PIP saves the billions of pounds that the Government want is by making PIP recipients live on less, and this is something that Ministers claim they do not want to do.

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  There is no question but that my hon. Friend is correct. These cuts will put even more pressure on local authorities, which are already in difficulties. There is all this talk about getting disabled people into jobs—what jobs? The areas of employment where there are labour shortages tend to be minimum wage, like social care, or seasonal, like agricultural work. The DWP’s own figures show around 102,000 registered vacancies. Of those, only 807 can be done completely remotely, of which 127 are with employers that the DWP describes as Disability Confident, and of those just 10 are part time. Where are these jobs that the Government want to coerce the disabled into, and with what employers? The PIP claimants that the Government want to force back to work may have physical disabilities, but they may also be severely depressed or have mental health problems. Most employers will not tolerate the intermittent patterns of employment and long periods out of the labour market that come with those types of health problems. Furthermore, there is very little evidence that cutting benefits boosts employment—a point made by a group of concerned charities recently—and, as the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) said earlier, Ministers seem to miss the point that PIP is paid to disabled people regardless of whether they are in work. That means that many of the women and men the Government are taking PIP off already have jobs. Supporters of the Government’s cuts claim that, all too often, men and women on welfare are “taking the mickey”—I am quoting a Minister there—or making a “lifestyle choice”. People who describe welfare as a lifestyle choice obviously do not actually know many people who live on welfare. The poor housing, the struggle to pay for the basics and the humiliation they often endure mean that it is not a lifestyle that anybody would choose.

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  I entirely agree, and I would add that if Ministers think that the recent local election results were bad, they should wait until next year’s council elections in Scotland, Wales, big city conurbations such as Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool, and every single London borough. There are people in No. 10 who believe that we did not go far enough. A nameless No. 10 adviser said: “We didn’t go big enough the first time round…It’s a fairness issue”. Another nameless Government source said: “We should’ve done it all in one hit—we didn’t go far enough.” I wonder how many poor or disabled people those people have ever met or known. The Government should drop the cuts to the winter fuel payment and review the personal independence payment. They should consult the disabled and organisations that work with them, and genuinely improve and reform it.

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. The Government insist that the rising disability benefits bill means that something must be done, but in a recent report, the New Economics Foundation revealed that the disability benefits bill has risen because there has been a rise in the number of disabled people and a rise in deprivation. But, as we learned from David Cameron’s round of austerity, cuts have consequences that severely limit, or even eliminate, their supposed savings.

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  It is indeed a political choice. I would prefer my Government to introduce a wealth tax or some taxation system that asks the very wealthy to pay a little more than take money away from the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society. But the Government refuse to accept that there is anything wrong with cutting benefits for the disabled. Instead, they say that there has been a “communication problem”. Some of us have tried explaining to Downing Street that they could employ the best communicators in the world, but these welfare cuts will be impossible to sell to the public and will undermine Labour’s position in communities.

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  The Minister has again repeated the line that the number of people claiming PIP has shot up and that there must be something dubious about that. I ask him to look at the New Economics Foundation report that came out today, which says that the reasons why the number of people claiming has gone up are a rise in the number of disabled people, a rise in deprivation, long covid and the pressures on the NHS. The Minister said we were asking the Government to put their head in the sand; no—we are just asking the Government to talk to the disabled and their supporters and not ram through legislation without giving us sufficient information. This cruel and misconceived legislation will not end well politically. Meanwhile, millions of the disabled will live in fear. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered Personal Independence Payment and disabled people.

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. We need an equality impact assessment now, and I cannot understand why the Government are introducing these random welfare benefit cuts without allowing MPs to understand fully what the consequences will be. The fact that the proposed welfare cuts come on top of the cut to the winter fuel allowance and the failure to raise the child benefit ceiling makes everything worse. The furious response to their proposed welfare cuts, particularly the cuts to personal independence payments, seems to have come as a surprise to the Government. PIP is a benefit intended to help people who have a health condition or disability with the extra costs of living. Unfortunately, some people, including some Ministers, talk about it as if it were a handout.

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  We undoubtedly need more information before we can meaningfully vote on these proposals. Some of us are old enough to remember Mrs Thatcher and her poll tax, which was her undoing. It is not too late to drop the winter fuel tax and the cuts to PIP. I plead with my Government to do so.

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  PIP is certainly not an income, and I imagine that the Minister will be in contact with Leicester city council to try to understand what it thinks it is doing. The new points system that the Government are suggesting for people to qualify for the maximum level of PIP is particularly concerning. For instance, it will mean that people who cannot wash below their waist could lose points and lose benefits, and be expected to find a job. Focus groups are revolted when they hear that. The country’s anger at these cuts boiled over last week in spectacular fashion with the by-election in Runcorn, where Labour lost its 16th safest seat.

• 7 May 2025 · Personal Independence Payment: Disabled People · Hansard source

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  I entirely agree. Furthermore, it seems to me that Ministers have not really looked into the costs that PIP is covering, otherwise they would not be talking about slashing it in this way. I wonder whether it ever occurs to the Government that voters will begin to notice that whenever they want money, they take it from the most vulnerable—old people, poor children and now the disabled. When we suggest a wealth tax, they recoil in horror, yet a 2% levy on men and women whose assets are worth more than £10 million would affect only 0.4% of the UK population and raise £24 billion a year. Politics is the language of choices, and sadly, this Government are making a conscious choice to balance their books on the back of people on welfare in general and the disabled in particular.

• 30 Apr 2025 · Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill · Hansard source

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  Just to respond to the point that the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) has just raised, the guidelines did not pick out race and ethnicity. In fact, they listed a number of circumstances in which a pre-sentence report might be considered appropriate, such as someone facing their first custodial sentence, someone who is under 25, someone who is a woman, pregnant, a primary carer or a dependent relative, someone who has said they are transgender or someone who may have addiction issues. Far from the Sentencing Council picking out race and ethnicity, that was only one in a long list of circumstances in which it suggested a pre-sentence report might be appropriate.

• 30 Apr 2025 · Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend refers to blockages. How can he describe Members of this House, and people in the community who are trying to stand up for a fair and just criminal justice system, as blockages?

• 30 Apr 2025 · Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Sentencing Council has at no point suggested treating defendants differently according to their ethnicity or religion. All it has tried to do is ensure that judges and magistrates have the maximum information.

• 30 Apr 2025 · Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill · Hansard source

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  I entirely agree with Members who are making the case that we should all be equal before the law. The problem is that the figures show that that is not the case, and it has not been the case for decades. If we look at the statistics for the numbers of people in prison, black people make up 12% of the prison population, yet we only make up 4% of the general population. That tends to raise the concern that we are not equal before the law across the whole custodial and criminal justice system. I remember that years ago, before some Members were in the House, you could not say anything about institutional racism in the police force and how black people were treated by the police. It took Stephen Lawrence and the Macpherson inquiry to get politicians and people who speak for the state to even acknowledge that there was such an issue as institutional racism in the police force.

• 30 Apr 2025 · Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 30 Apr 2025 · Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill · Hansard source

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  Nobody is trying to stop judges sentencing in individual cases. All the Sentencing Council was seeking to do was ensure that judges and magistrates had the maximum amount of information before coming to a decision on the sentence.

• 22 Apr 2025 · Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill · Hansard source

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  I can say with confidence that the Sentencing Council is talking about issues to do with race and criminal justice because of a history, going back decades, of problematic issues in relation to race and criminal justice. I will come to those later. The independence of the Sentencing Council is crucial, and the idea that anybody in the Chamber is standing up for law and order yet seeks to undermine its independence—and by implication, that of the judiciary as a whole—is quite remarkable. Next, what do the guidelines actually say? Much of the debate implies that black and minority persons are singled out for pre-sentence reports under the guidelines. On the contrary, there is a whole list of people in the guidelines on whom, the Sentencing Council suggests, judges and magistrates might ask for a pre-sentence report. Those persons include those at risk of committing their first custodial sentence; young adults; women; ethnic minorities; yes, cultural minorities, of course; pregnant and post-natal women; and the sole or primary carer for dependent relatives. The Sentencing Council is clear that that is not an exclusive list; ideally, every defendant should have a pre-sentence report. The aim of the guidelines is to ensure that judges and magistrates get the most information possible. Who could object to garnering more information on any defendant? It is certainly not the intention of the guidelines to dictate the sentence in any given case. Yet it is being argued that a pre-sentencing report will discourage a judge from sending an offender to jail. We are asked to believe that our judiciary is weak-minded and susceptible, and that it will not live up to its centuries-old standards, which, as we heard earlier, go all the way back to Magna Carta. However, the House was also told earlier that our judiciary is world-class and highly regarded. Both propositions cannot be true.

• 22 Apr 2025 · Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill · Hansard source

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  Is the Lord Chancellor aware that the Sentencing Council guidelines, and indeed the Bill, turn on issues that some of us have campaigned on for decades? I think that there would be concern if the Bill undermined the independence of the judiciary.

• 22 Apr 2025 · Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill · Hansard source

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  I can see that, when it comes to this legislation, I am in a minority—it is not the first time, and I suspect that it will not be the last. There has been a great deal of misinformation about the Sentencing Council’s original guidelines, both in the run-up to and during the debate, so I, with all humility, want to insert some facts into the debate. First, it is important to recognise what the Sentencing Council actually is. Much of the debate today and in recent weeks has seemed to presume that it is a bunch of heedless young barristers and social workers. On the contrary, the Sentencing Council is largely composed of some of the most senior judges in the land. They include: Lord Justice William Davis, its chair, who was called to the Bar in 1976; His Honour Judge Simon Drew, a circuit judge sitting in the Court of Appeal; Lord Justice Tim Holroyde, lord justice of appeal and vice-president of the Court of Appeal; and the honourable Mr Justice Mark Wall, who was appointed a High Court judge in 2020. There are also some senior probation officers and magistrates. That is hardly a cohort of men and women who need the firm hand of an MP on their shoulder to explain to them what the rule of law is.

• 22 Apr 2025 · Sentencing Guidelines (Pre-sentence Reports) Bill · Hansard source

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  Well, either our judiciary is world-class and highly regarded, or it is so soft-minded that the very existence of a pre-sentencing report will make it rule in a way in which it would not otherwise have ruled. Decisions by judges and magistrates on individual cases are not the same as policy. The Sentencing Council itself is very clear that it does not seek to dictate policy; it is simply trying to ensure that judges and magistrates have the maximum amount of information. Leading King’s Counsel Keir Monteith says that there has been a deliberate misreading of the rules in order to generate a row, and I believe that is correct. Then we come to the talk, which I have heard on both sides of the House, about two-tier criminal justice. That can only mean that black defendants are treated more favourably than white defendants. Yet the facts tell us to the contrary. Ministers will be aware of the Lammy review, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy)—now the Foreign Secretary. It was a review of race in the criminal justice system, in which he found that “Despite making up just 14% of the population,” black and ethnic minority men and women “make up 25% of prisoners, while over 40% of young people in custody are from BAME backgrounds.” He added: “If our prison population reflected the make-up of England and Wales, we would have over 9,000 fewer people in prison—the equivalent of 12 average-sized prisons.” My right hon. Friend did not find a criminal justice system where black and brown people are treated more favourably than white people, and he did not find equality before the law. There is no reason to believe that things have changed since he drew up his review. We need to appreciate that not only do we have a two-tier system, but it is a two-tier system in completely the opposite way to what the Lord Chancellor suggests, and it has been like that for decades. The population wants to see our two-tier criminal justice system taken seriously. Members may remember the tragic death of Stephen Lawrence in the early 1990s. It took a Labour Government and a Labour Home Secretary to commission a judge-led inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence case. In 1999 the Macpherson inquiry reported. It spoke in an unequivocal way about institutional racism in the police service, and it spoke in a way that I had never heard it spoken about in this House or at the most senior levels in the state. Nobody since then has challenged the notion that there is institutional racism in the police. Do we have to have our own Macpherson inquiry into the workings of the judicial system before people will accept that institutional racism is an issue in the courts as well? It is not enough to say, “Well, you know, the facts point in that direction but we are not quite sure why the figures are like that.” We know why the figures are like that, and we have known that for decades. If we want to win the respect of the community as a whole, we must be seen to be working towards a fair criminal justice system, not just trying to score points off the opposition; and we must look at the long term, rather than the short term. We know that, in England and Wales, black people are much more likely to be arrested than white people. Specifically, black individuals are twice as likely to be arrested as white individuals. That disparity extends to imprisonment, with black individuals being more likely to be sentenced to prison and serving longer sentences than their white counterparts. Everybody knows that people are not treated the same, and it is misleading of Members on both sides of the House to imply that that is so. Peter Herbert, chair of the Society of Black Lawyers, said: “We have experienced racist two-tier policing for over 500 years. If we achieve equal treatment that is not two-tier as it is long overdue. We have never asked for special treatment only equal treatment.” The Lord Chancellor should pay attention to the wish of so many members of the community, in her constituency in Birmingham and my constituency in east London, and the wishes of so many millions of people in the community to see a fair criminal justice system that treats people fairly, not unfairly as has happened in the past. Members will know that it took the Macpherson inquiry to get a measure of understanding about criminal justice in policing. In closing, I will say this. It is interesting to hear the banter about this issue between those on the two Front Benches, but this is not an issue for banter. This is people’s lives; this is people’s liberty. I do not think that the debate is enhanced by some of the Trump-like narrative that we are getting from the Opposition. We do not need Donald Trump-type politics in Britain today. We need seriousness about the unfair discrimination in the criminal justice system, and a willingness not just to talk about it, but to do something about it.

• 12 Apr 2025 · Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill · Hansard source

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  Today, some of us have been surprised to hear the Opposition talk about a failure to prepare. The workers of Scunthorpe might say that they had 14 years to prepare, and failed. British Steel’s products are essential to industry, to this country’s security, and to the delivery of major infrastructure programmes across the country, including in London. British Steel supplies Transport for London with the power rail used on its transport network, which is not manufactured anywhere else in the country. For railways, including the underground, power rail from British Steel is essential to the everyday operation of the service, which supports up to 4 million customer journeys each day. The closure of British Steel would have a very serious adverse effect on Transport for London’s services, as it would on projects up and down the country—so, above all, Transport for London believes in the importance of a UK-based supply chain for steel. Finally, everyone in this House understands that the Bill is not about bringing steel into public ownership—whatever the Opposition assert—but some of us hope that moving on to nationalisation will not be ruled out. All of us on the Government Benches believe in what works, but privatisation certainly does not always work. The water industry comes to mind. Since privatisation, not a single reservoir has been built. Instead, billions have been poured into the pockets of shareholders. Now raw sewage floats in our waterways and rivers, and it is the consumer who will have to pay exorbitant charges for investment that should have been made all along. This House supports the Government in moving to save British Steel and the jobs of thousands and thousands of workers. It also supports the Government in moving so quickly and with such certainty to protect the country’s interests, including in relation to security, and in working to save the community in Scunthorpe, because one of the issues with deindustrialisation is the long-term effect on many communities up and down the country. We all support what the Government are doing.