Jeremy Corbyn MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Sept 2026 · Residential Buildings: Safety Remediation · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Dr Pinkerton) for securing this debate and for the excellent way that he presented the case. This issue causes unbelievable levels of stress for many of our constituents. We should briefly contrast the complications of getting remedial action to bring about safety and security for our constituents in multiple-ownership private sector developments with the relative speed and efficiency with which local authorities dealt with the problem of cladding after Grenfell. My own borough of Islington surveyed every property immediately, discovered unknown suspect cladding in a couple of places, and got on with it straight away. The issue was resolved very quickly. That was in 2018, but here we are, eight years later, and I have a considerable number of leasehold properties that have been built over the last 20 years or so where the residents, as the hon. Member for Surrey Heath pointed out, want to move on but cannot move or sell, and are paying massive insurance costs. I say to the Minister that the excessive insurance costs many residents are having to pay are not their fault. The problem should absolutely not be their responsibility; it should be the responsibility of the developers that caused it in the first place. If those developers no longer exist or are not prepared to pay, surely the default position should be that the Government as a whole are prepared to pick up that compensation. People are getting deeply into debt just to insure their own flat, but at the same time cannot move on. I want to make some quick points about local issues that I have raised many times with the Government. The first is about the Drayton Park development. I thank the Minister and her predecessors for at last getting to a situation where Government funding has been approved for Galliard Homes to help cover part of the fire remediation costs. I would be grateful if the Minister could assure me how quickly that work will now be completed. It has been subject to endless correspondence between my office, the local authority and many others just to try and get that remedial work done for the properties on Drayton Park in my constituency. Secondly, there are the works that need to be done for Newlon Housing on the Queensland Road site, which is adjacent to the Arsenal football ground. Remediation works have been delayed, apparently mostly because of delays and complications created by Newlon. Again, I have raised this directly with the Minister and her predecessors, and I would be grateful if she could assure me that that work will now be done. Many lease extensions have been granted over the years, but the complication is that the people living there have not seen the work done. Now their lease is being eaten up as the years go by, and the value of the place is reducing, so they are losing out in lots of ways. That leads on to the wider issue of leasehold reform, but that is not the subject of today’s debate. The final issue I want to raise is one that I have raised many times in the past, and I am quite unclear where we have reached on it. At Highbury Gardens, where Aviva is the head lessor, there was an issue about wooden railings on balconies that were deemed to be a fire risk. That issue has gone on for a very long time, and once again, the residents are stuck without any certainty about their future. I will not take much more time, but I will just say that we have a responsibility to get this done quickly. When the fire happened at Grenfell, an enormous shock was felt all over the country. Everything that happened at Grenfell was disgusting and disgraceful—we know that, and we do not want another Grenfell anywhere else. Local authorities have managed, by and large, to get the issue sorted out, but it is the miasma of insurance companies, leaseholders, ultimate freeholders, developers that disappear and go bust, and fire safety engineers who are in short supply or, in many places, non-existent that is the problem. At the end of the day, all the stress lands on our constituents. That is not right or fair and we need to get it sorted.

• 3 Sept 2026 · Global Biodiversity and Ecosystems: National Security · Hansard source

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  In two minutes, I will do my best, Sir Desmond. I am proud to represent a very small urban area of Britain in which, over the years, we have managed to increase the number of parks and open spaces. Our council takes an assertive approach in encouraging school gardens and promoting an understanding among children of the need for biodiversity. If we are to win the debate about biodiversity, it will be by convincing people who live in urban areas, who often sadly have very little interaction with the natural world, and where children are brought up without any understanding of the natural world, gardens or growing anything. A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to some children about hearing the cuckoo. Very sadly, none of them knew what a cuckoo was or had ever heard of one. I grew up in a country area where we had a competition over who heard the first cuckoo in spring. It is that sort of change in understanding that we have to bring about if we are to win this debate on biodiversity and sustainability on our planet. The Government are pledged to the 30by30 target for the oceans. That is fine, and I absolutely agree with it, but the problem with delineating figures like that is that it does not tackle the problem of river pollution going into the seas and the dangerous chemicals that go with it, which do not disappear but instead remain forever. Designating part of an ocean as a marine protection zone does not protect the entirety of the ocean; all it does is designate that area. We have to address the wider issue, which is the pollution emanating from our towns, cities and industries into our rivers and the water companies that do not deal with it. I have 13 seconds left, so I will simply say this: it is great that the House has come back to this issue and that so many Members want to speak today. We are beginning to reverse the downward trend in the environment debate in favour of a debate on real sustainability.

• 16 Jul 2026 · Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment · Hansard source

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  When the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) introduced the debate, he quite rightly drew attention to the huge work done by our constituency and parliamentary staff. It is right that we should thank them on this occasion and also thank all the parliamentary staff for what they do. I thank those in my local authority for what they do, in particular the street cleaners who cleaned up after the largest ever football celebration in Britain when Arsenal won the league. I am sure everybody will cheer that straight away—no. [ Laughter. ] I also want to put on record my thanks to two of the Members’ Tea Room staff who are retiring today, Godfrey Asare and Margaret Labulo, who have done fantastic work providing God knows how many cups of coffee and tea for all of us over many years. They deserve our thanks. I want to refer to a number of things very briefly. Yesterday was the Prime Minister’s last Question Time. He gave a characterisation of the Labour party he inherited when he became the leader that I profoundly disagree with and is completely wrong. The Labour party was not financially in any great problem when I ceased to be the leader; in fact, it had very large capital and cash assets at that time. Secondly, to call the party “morally bankrupt” and claim that it had been found to be “institutionally antisemitic” is completely wrong and will not be found anywhere in the Equality and Human Rights Commission report. I invite the Prime Minister to correct the record; I am sure he would wish it to be accurate. Many things will face the new Prime Minister when he comes into office. I hope he will fundamentally change our policy on Gaza and Palestine and on Iran and Lebanon, and at the very least cease military support and security co-operation with Israel. I also hope he will support my private Member’s Bill calling for a public inquiry into Gaza, in the same way that Sir John Chilcot undertook a public inquiry into the policy on Iraq. My constituency, like many others, has a large number of leasehold properties, often fairly newly built and many of them covered with unsafe cladding that needs to be removed. I am pleased that the Government have made some funding available to remediate unsafe cladding. That is good, but why are the developers not being given that bill? Why are they not the ones who are forced to pay for what they knew to be unsafe cladding when they put it in? I hope we can do something for the residents in Drayton Park, Highbury Square and former stadium buildings in my constituency, because they have suffered very high insurance costs and are unable to sell or move, simply because something was badly built and they were unaware of that when they bought the place. I wish to raise two other issues. I have a constituent, who I would rather not name because I think he deserves privacy, who suffers from advanced motor neurone disease. He is in a very bad way. He is getting nursing care from the local health service, and that is good. I have written several times to the Home Office asking that his family in Nigeria be allowed to visit. It has consistently refused to allow him to be visited by his son or any other member of his family. I appeal to the Home Office—I am sure the Leader of the House will pass this on, and I will follow up with another letter: please show some humanity for this man towards the end of his life, and let him at least have the opportunity to see the rest of his family before he passes on from a most terrible condition. The shop Fish & Cook on Blackstock Road is closing. I ask that this successful small business is not allowed to be turned into a 24-hour gaming place and that we are given the powers to stop this kind of thing happening on our high streets around this country.

• 13 Jul 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill · Hansard source

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  The media, Reform and all on the far right in Britain have created the most horrible and dangerous atmosphere in this country against refugees, migrants and minorities. They have promoted racism, and that racism has played out in the violence on the streets, the violence against mosques, the violence against synagogues, and the violence against any minority group within our society. They should think very carefully about what they say and how they depict asylum seekers and refugees. When I listen to the rhetoric in the media and follow it in some of the papers, it seems to me that they have taken leave of all aspects of humanity. The hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) said that he had been over to northern France to examine what was going on there. I have been over to northern France as well—I have been over to Calais and talked to people living in tents, and they are desperate. They are desperate people who once worked for the British Army in Afghanistan. They are desperate people who were bombed in Iraq or in Syria. They are desperate people trying to find somewhere in this world to survive, and what they find is hostility, danger and abuse. Nobody in their right mind would get into one of those dinghies and cross the channel unless they were utterly desperate to do so, so can we not just have a sense of humanity about this and have an international, Europe-wide approach to the issues faced by people who are desperate? Thousands have died crossing the Mediterranean, and hundreds have died crossing the channel. The historians of the next century will say of this century, “What were the politicians of Europe doing while all these people were drowning because they were trying to get to a place of safety?” Can we not instead accept the importance of international institutions and the value of the European convention on human rights, which protects all of our human rights, and try to have a humane system of doing things? In the last minute I have for my speech, I want to draw attention to the amendment I have tabled, endorsed by Members of the independent alliance group, which concerns the Afghan resettlement schemes. The people of Afghanistan have suffered grievously from the war. In August 2021, the Taliban took over in Kabul; the UK created resettlement schemes, and then dropped them all. Now, we have the horrible situation in which, although many Afghan families who have come to Britain as part of those schemes were told that the rest of their family could come, there are many dependants stuck in Afghanistan who can have no place here. The Government, through the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office, guaranteed that right of family reunion and guaranteed that extended family members could come here. When the Minister for Border Security and Asylum responds to the debate, I hope he will remember the words of the Afghan International Council in the United Kingdom, who said that “many Afghan families continue to endure the pain of prolonged separation”—

• 9 Jul 2026 · Timms Review: Interim Report · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his statement and the recognition that, for many people, claiming PIP is not an easy process; it is deeply stressful, particularly reapplications and reassessments or delays on appeal. There are appalling levels of stress in the community as a whole, and I hope that this can be addressed seriously in the future. Page 8 of the interim report mentions that future PIP spending will be within the envelope predicted by the OBR. Does that mean that there is going to be some form of cash limiting for PIP, or does the report accept the principle that personal independence payments—which are incredibly valuable—are based on an assessment of the needs of people, rather than a Treasury-based limit on spending?