Jeremy Corbyn MP: speeches

Speeches

• 20 Jan 2026 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 20 Jan 2026 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 20 Jan 2026 · Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments. Fundamentally, I spoke about Diego Garcia and the Chagos islands for many years because of the injustice that was done and the islanders’ right of return. The whole point has been to gain the right of return, which has been won through this Bill for the outer islands and, in a limited form, for Diego Garcia itself.

• 20 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The Israeli occupation of the west bank has resulted in almost 1,000 deaths over the past year and a half. We have seen the loss of villages, the loss of life and the continued enabling of settler violence against ordinary Palestinian people in their villages, and this morning there are reports that the Israel Defence Forces are now demolishing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency headquarters in Jerusalem. When are the British Government going to do something serious, with sanctions against Israel for its continued illegal occupation of the west bank?

• 13 Jan 2026 · Iran · Hansard source

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  The horrendous loss of life in Iran this week has to be mourned, as does the horrendous loss of life of Palestinians in Gaza over the past two years. The British intervened in Iran in 1952 and brought about regime change. Is the Foreign Secretary aware that external regime change attempts in Iran are very unlikely to work and will actually create a much worse situation? Will she give us an undertaking that Britain will not be involved militarily with either Israel or the USA if they try military activity in Iran now?

• 5 Jan 2026 · Venezuela · Hansard source

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  Has the Foreign Secretary had an opportunity to study the United States national security statement that was made at the end of November, in which it appears to give itself the right to intervene in any country in the western hemisphere in order to exploit raw materials and minerals? Is she not concerned about the overt threats that are now being made against Colombia and Cuba, as well as about the illegal kidnapping of Maduro? Is she going to make any representations to the USA about that as well?

• 18 Dec 2025 · 15th Anniversary · Hansard source

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  I thank the Chair for his report. He will be aware that when we had a debate on digital ID, inspired by a public petition, there was a massive turnout and massive participation. It was very crowded, which was a good sign, but many of us thought that a debate of such magnitude and importance ought to be held in the main Chamber. Is his Committee making representations to get more time in the Chamber for debates that are inspired by a very large number of people signing a public petition? Certainly, when there are over a million signatures, we ought to be thinking about having a debate in here, not in Westminster Hall.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Christmas Adjournment · Hansard source

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  I join the House in wishing you a very merry Christmas, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank all our office staff and all staff in the House for everything they do to assist us over the year. This morning, I was at a very well-attended press conference with my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) and the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). We listened intently to the families of a group of eight prisoners who are undertaking a hunger strike. They gave us harrowing accounts of the physical condition that those prisoners are in. I should stress that none of them has been convicted of anything; they are all remand prisoners and are all awaiting trial. Some of them have been in prison for a very long time and have at least a year to go until their trial may or may not be heard. I am very well aware of the sub judice nature of this matter, and I will not stray into issues of the trial itself or of their guilt or otherwise. My contribution solely concerns their conditions in prison and the operation of the prison rules—a matter that I have raised several times in the House.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Christmas Adjournment · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right: there is a presumption of innocence, which is the basis of the British judicial system. We have prison rules that guarantee that prisoners are fairly treated and have access to medical services when they desperately need them. My concern is about what access those prisoners have had to medical support when they have desperately needed it. Last week, I visited Amu Gib, a prisoner from my constituency. She is still in prison and is desperately in need of medical assistance. The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington, the hon. Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) and I have just written to the prison governor as follows: “We write to you jointly today with the utmost urgency requesting a meeting with yourself…to discuss the…delay in calling medical staff and ambulances when the prisoners are in clear distress and in increasing pain; inconsistent administration of essential daily nutrients, apparently due to a lack of supply…10 day delay in acknowledging the start of the hunger strike…non-association orders between prisoners; slow communication/no communication with the families.” The families are obviously desperately concerned. That is why all I asked of the Secretary of State for Justice, and all I asked of the Prime Minister yesterday, was an undertaking that the Ministry of Justice will meet the legal representatives of those in prison in order that their conditions can be discussed and considered. So far that has been absolutely refused. The media in general has not reported on this, despite the drama surrounding it and the importance of the issue. I urge Members to think for a moment about how desperate a situation someone must be in to have no alternative but to take hunger strike action to bring attention to it. I hope that the Government will hear this call. When I raised this issue last week in business questions, the Leader of the House very kindly and efficiently passed on my request to the Ministry of Justice and copied me into the letter he sent. I thank him for that, but we still have not had a substantive reply from the Ministry of Justice. I hope that when it hears this debate, the Department will recognise that it has a responsibility for the welfare and medical condition of prisoners and for the way in which they are supported in every one of our prisons. That includes people who are taking protest action because of their very strong belief in what they are trying to achieve. When the Leader of the House replies to the debate, could he confirm that he will once again ask the Ministry of Justice to get involved and meet the legal representatives of the prisoners?

• 17 Dec 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Yesterday, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Jake Richards), declined a meeting with the representatives of a number of hunger strikers in prison at the present time. These are all remand prisoners; they have not been convicted of anything. Since then, a further prisoner, Qesser, has been taken to hospital, as others have been. Many people are very concerned about the regular breaches of prison conditions and prison rules in respect of these hunger strikers. Will the Prime Minister make arrangements for the Ministry of Justice to meet representatives of the hunger strikers to discuss these breaches of the conditions that they are experiencing?

• 16 Dec 2025 · Prison Safety · Hansard source

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  The Minister will be aware that a number of prisoners are currently undertaking a hunger strike. They are remand prisoners, and some of them do not have a trial date until 2027. Deep concerns have been expressed by them, their families and their legal representatives about access to medical treatment, as well as how they have been treated when taken to hospital. Would the Minister be able to meet their legal representatives, and their families if necessary, to discuss the situation and try to help with the safety of these prisoners?

• 15 Dec 2025 · Sudan: Humanitarian Situation · Hansard source

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  Will this country be more robust with the UAE on its financial support for the RSF, the clear supply of weapons to the RSF, which have come from somewhere around the world, and the interesting similarity between the areas occupied by the RSF and those where there is a massive supply of minerals and oil that will be available to it in the future? Is this not just a grab for the natural resources of Sudan being undertaken by the RSF on behalf of bigger actors around the world?

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

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  The Leader of the House will be aware of the points of order raised yesterday by the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and me, and the question today from the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), concerning the situation facing the Palestine Action hunger strikers in prison at the present time. It is important that the Secretary of State for Justice comes to the House and gives us an opportunity to question him about what appear to be serious allegations concerning breaches of prison rules in respect of all the hunger strikers, difficulties in obtaining medical support and help when they desperately need it, and issues of association and activities in the prison. They are all remand prisoners—they have not been convicted of anything—and they are being held for an inordinately long time until the trial takes place. These are serious issues about justice within our society. The Secretary of State for Justice should come here and answer questions about them.

• 11 Dec 2025 · National Plan to End Homelessness · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for the statement and for the aspiration to end homelessness, which is extremely welcome. I have two areas of concern. One is the insufficiency of council house building happening at the moment and the way in which almost every local authority seeks, in their terms, to balance a development, which includes properties for sale or properties for a rent much higher than a social level. That means that, in constituencies such as mine, a social cleansing of an entire borough ends up taking place as people cannot get council housing because so much is being built for other people to make money out of. The second issue is related to the private rented sector. Even though I welcome the end of section 21 evictions, they are still going on and will do so until May. Hundreds—actually, thousands—across the country have been evicted through that process. Can the Minister not do something to bring forward the abolition of section 21 and look at the real issue, which is rent control within the private rented sector, because we are subsidising it through taxpayers’ money?

• 11 Dec 2025 · US National Security Strategy · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister not think that the Government’s response is extraordinarily low-key and acquiescent to a declaration by the US that it gives itself the right to interfere in the internal affairs of any country around the world with which it does not agree? This is an extraordinary state of affairs. Will she make any comment on what is actually an act of piracy in the Caribbean, where the US has seized and taken into custody an oil tanker with no basis in international law and without any kind of military threat being made to the US? This act seems to me to be wholly illegal within international law.

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

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  I will be brief, because a lot of colleagues want to get in. I compliment the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) on his superb presentation, which showed passion and knowledge of the issue. The fundamental issue, of course, is the one that the hon. Gentleman hit on many times: this is not a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan, but an international issue that comes from all that went on in the process of the decolonisation of British India in 1947-48. It was India that referred the issue to the United Nations for resolution, so India’s constant denial that it is a UN matter fits rather strangely with Indian political history ever since that time. The effects of the partition of Kashmir and the line of control have been beyond dramatic for both India and Pakistan. The partition encouraged massive levels of arms expenditure in both countries, doing enormous damage to the social infrastructure of both societies, in the ’50s, ’60s and ever since. It then encouraged both countries to develop nuclear weapons and to leave the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The inadequacy of British behaviour in the 1940s led to the militarisation of the whole of the subcontinent; the loss of thousands of lives in successive conflicts between India and Pakistan, as well as with China; and, of course, the ever presence of nuclear weapons. If we look at India’s and Pakistan’s expenditure on defence compared with the expenditure that should be going on education and social needs, we begin to see the consequences of the issue. Many people in this country feel very strongly about this issue. They are from Kashmir themselves, or they have grandparents, parents and many relatives in Kashmir; there is a very close relationship. They feel angry—the hon. Member for Bradford East put this well—that at every election, when party leaders happen to descend on Birmingham, Bradford or parts of London, they are given a note by their offices saying, “Say something about Kashmir, because it’ll go down well.” They do, and it does go down well, and that is the end of the story. Absolutely nothing has been done, by any Government, for a very long time to promote the idea that the people of Kashmir should be allowed to decide their own future. That is not to say that there are not serious imperfections in both Azad Kashmir and Jammu Kashmir. The Indian military presence in Indian-occupied Kashmir is now the biggest it has been for a very long time. Successive laws have been passed, particularly by the Modi Government, to reduce the special status of Kashmir—which at least gave a nod towards the idea that it was an international dispute to be settled—and, essentially, to try to fully annex it. I hope that, when the Minister replies, he will tell us that the Government recognise, first, that the issue should go to the UN, that the Government will push it at the UN as a permanent member of the Security Council, and that the Government will revisit the UN statements made in the 1940s and the many since. Secondly, I hope that the Government will do everything they can to encourage the self-determination of the people on both sides of the line of control in Kashmir. The idea that a beautiful place such as Kashmir, with such history and potential, should be divided and occupied by the military, and that resources go into the military and into what becomes a security state because of the tensions over the occupation of Kashmir is incomplete decolonisation. It is decolonisation that should have happened in the 1940s. Britain, because of its colonial history, has a very special responsibility to ensure that the people of Kashmir are able to decide their own future.

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

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  What plans do the UK Government have to take the issue to the UN? We must ensure the UN is seized of the issue in a way that it has not been. It has obviously tried to bring about a ceasefire when there has been conflict between India and Pakistan, but that is not enough; there has to be a fundamental resolution to the basic problem, which is the lack of a right to self-determination for the people of Kashmir.

• 10 Dec 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you for what you just said in response to the point of order from the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). Is there any way you can ensure that a Minister comes to this House to give a statement about the hunger strikers in the prison? I visited one of them yesterday, and I am deeply concerned about what is going on in our prisons: people are being held for an inordinate length of time on remand, and their access to justice is being delayed.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  Thank you for calling me to speak, Sir Edward. The number of Members here and the demand for the debate show two things: first, it should be held in the main Chamber, not here, and secondly there are massive levels of public concern over the statement made by the Prime Minister. I will refer to two quotes that I have received from constituents and that summarise the situation very well. One states: “Digital ID is a deeply illiberal idea that threatens privacy, autonomy, and the open society we should be standing for. It risks creating a two-tier Britain, where access to basic services—healthcare, housing, employment, even voting—depends on whether someone has the right app, paperwork, or digital trail.” The second states that such measures “entrench a presumption of suspicion, not trust, and put disproportionate burdens on the most vulnerable: migrants, the digitally excluded, the disabled, the elderly, and those without stable housing or documentation.”

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Member makes an important point. The huge number of people who have signed this petition indicates to me that many in this country are deeply concerned about the direction in which we are travelling. ID cards are one thing; restricting jury trials is another. Facial recognition at tube stations and now even in supermarkets is something that people find deeply disturbing. Across the country there is a whole vein of thought where people are feeling a quite reasonable sense of paranoia about the levels of surveillance that they are under at the present time. Members of Parliament would do well to try to understand that. This attack on civil liberties—that is what it is—means that utterly vast amounts of information on all of us will be stored, as they are already in the health service. Unfortunately, the Government are now making that available to private healthcare interests at the same time. There is a huge issue here about our data, our information and our privacy, which we would do well to remember. The last point I want to make is that the debate on this issue is being pushed by commercial interests that will make a great deal of money out of providing the necessary technical equipment to set up this surveillance system. They will do very well out of it, and we are being pushed into agreeing it by them. It is time for Members of Parliament to listen to what people are saying, listen to the concerns, have a proper debate in the main Chamber about this and say no to the Government, as we have said no before.

• 3 Dec 2025 · Venezuela: US Military · Hansard source

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  I compliment the hon. Member for Bicester and Woodstock (Calum Miller) on securing this urgent question. Could the Minister be very clear? What the US is doing, in bombing vessels at sea in both international and potentially territorial waters, is illegal, as is the harassment of Trinidadian fishing communities. The threat now of bombardment on the Venezuelan mainland is completely illegal within all sections of international law. Have the British Government made any representations to the US on this, and what role do the British Government play at the United Nations in the discussions about this issue? Does the Minister accept that this is an incredibly dangerous, massive build-up of military force in the Caribbean, and that it can only be dangerous to the people not just of Venezuela but of every other country and island within the region? Surely there should be some move towards peace, rather than allowing this military confrontation to develop.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Right to Trial by Jury · Hansard source

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  This is, I think, the third attempt by successive Governments to reduce the right to trial by jury. It is a fundamental right in our system that should not be undermined, and particularly not because the Government have a current and, hopefully, temporary problem with capacity. In answer to the hon. Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson), the Minister recognised that the Lammy inquiry of 2017 found that jury trials are more objective than judge-only trials, less likely to be racially biased and likely to give a fairer outcome. Is the Minister really content that we should be walking away from the jury trial system because of the current problems? Instead, is the answer not, as other hon. Members have suggested, to invest more in the system to deal with the appalling backlog, which she rightly says we have?

• 24 Nov 2025 · Gaza: Humanitarian Obligations · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is making a very interesting speech. As she rightly says, in the aftermath of the Iraq war, there was a de-Ba’athification policy, which had the effect of destroying all public services, allowing anyone to get weapons from the now dysfunctional army. It set off a whole chain of the most ghastly civil and local conflicts. That is a real danger. Things have to be maintained. In Gaza now, despite everything, there is still some degree of functionality in the operations of local government, which is attempting to make plans for the rebuilding of towns and villages all across Gaza. Surely we should be a little less judgmental of those involved and support them in trying to make a start on reconstruction.

• 24 Nov 2025 · Gaza: Humanitarian Obligations · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is a lawyer himself and far better qualified than me on these matters. I absolutely agree that justice requires us to act, otherwise we undermine the whole principle of international law. The long arm of international law might even reach to us—yes, to Britain—because we knowingly supplied weapons. We did that knowing that a genocide was going on, which makes us complicit in that genocide.

• 24 Nov 2025 · Gaza: Humanitarian Obligations · Hansard source

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  I welcome the hon. Member being returned to the House, as well as the comments that he has just made. The support for Gaza has been incredible, despite the denunciations of all the national demonstrations, which were called “hate marches” by the then Home Secretary. I have been on all 36 of them; I have spoken at every single one and I will continue to do that. I also recognise that all over the country, small and medium-sized demonstrations are being held in often very small communities. I think that well over 2 million people in this country have shown some degree of support for the Palestinian people through meetings, marches, demonstrations, emails, petitions, letters—a whole lot of things. This issue has moved people deeply, and those demonstrations have made a difference. The rhetoric by both the Conservative and Labour Governments started to change as the demonstrations got bigger; things have begun to change, and people have begun to understand the horror of the life of the Palestinian people. I will finish with this point, because other Members wish to speak. It is becoming winter in Gaza and the west bank, and despite their latitude, it is actually very cold there in winter. Long before the current bombardment, I recall once being an election observer in Gaza in January, and the weather was bitterly cold and horrible—I thought it was terrible then, but it is a thousand times worse now. People will be dying of cold and hypothermia when there are stacks of tents on the other side of the border in Israel that are not being allowed in. People will be dying because of operations conducted without anaesthetic when plenty of anaesthetics are available just across the border, waiting to get in from Egypt. This is an abominable situation. Can we not as a House say quite bluntly to Israel, “You’re wrong. What you’re doing is illegal and immoral. History will judge you for being the people who committed genocide against the Palestinian people”?