The comments made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Attorney General, on Twitter on 20 October 2022.
Whoever takes charge of the Tory shambles next, their plan is to inflict another massive round of spending cuts on our public services, entirely as a result of their disastrous actions this past month. They must tell the truth about why that is happening, and what it will mean.
The speech made by Emily Thornberry on 27 September 2022.
Conference, it’s a pleasure to be back in Liverpool.
But I must start with an apology. The last time I stood here in 2018, I was shadowing Boris Johnson. When our conference was cancelled in 2020, I was shadowing Liz Truss.
So, I don’t know what this curse is, but I apologise in advance for the catastrophic period in our national history that will be the premiership of Suella Braverman.
It could get worse though. We may need an emergency motion stating that Keir cannot under any circumstances make me shadow Jacob Rees-Mogg.
But whoever leads the Tories, we know they are hell-bent on tearing apart the society that we have sought all our lives to make stronger and fairer. That is why we are all in politics. That is why we fight to get into government.
But we can never build that society without the foundation of laws that apply equally to everyone, and a criminal justice system that enforces them; a foundation becoming weaker every day the Tories stay in office.
Think about the almost 99 out of 100 women who suffer the ordeal of being raped but never see their attacker charged, or the tiny minority who do, but have to wait three years for their day in court. Those figures should shame ministers, but instead they just shrug and let them get ever worse.
Think about the epidemic of fraud sweeping Britain, destroying lives and wrecking dreams, cheating workers out of their wages and pensioners out of their savings.
Asked about that seven months ago, Kwasi Kwarteng said that fraud was not the kind of crime “people experience in their day-to-day lives”, just the kind of insight and empathy which gets you promoted to Chancellor under Liz Truss.
But if the consumer fraud gangs are able to ply their parasitic trade with impunity, it is nothing compared to those committing corporate fraud.
In 2013, I published a report urging the government to tackle those companies committing fraud at the expense of their employees, their competitors, and all too often the public purse.
In the decade since I published that report, just seven companies have been convicted of corporate fraud. In that same period, 5,000 times as many people have been convicted of benefits fraud.
That shows this government’s double standards, but also their downright indolence. Faced with a complex challenge, they have simply waved the white flag to white collar crime, and stop trying to convict those responsible.
Another addition to their special club of criminal impunity, along with burglary, vehicle theft, street robbery, and to their eternal shame, rape and sexual assault.
But that will all change under a Labour government.
As Steve and Yvette will spell out, we will end the era of criminal impunity. We will give protection and security to women and girls, the elderly and the vulnerable. And we will send the message loud and clear to all those who prey on our communities, that we are coming for you.
That goes as well for corporate fraudsters. As I have set out in a new report today, we will change the law to make it easier to prosecute companies for fraud, and send the message loud and clear to unscrupulous bosses, that if you refuse to play by the rules, then we are coming for you too.
But when it comes to out-of-control individuals who consider themselves above the law, the biggest problem facing our country is not the criminals on the street or in the boardroom, but this current Tory government.
From Rwanda and Northern Ireland to Covid contracts and workers’ rights, this is a government which treats the law not as a guardrail to keep it on the straight and narrow, but a barrier to be torn down whenever it gets in their way.
That does not on its own explain the fact that so many crimes now go unpunished, or the record backlogs that have brought our courts to breaking point, or the collapse of legal aid as our guarantee of equality before the law.
But what it does explain is how those cracks can emerge in the foundation on which our society is built, and the government could not care less.
That is why, like every other crisis facing our country, we will only start to repair our justice system when we succeed in changing our government.
So let the message go out loud and clear from this conference to a Tory government that treats the law with contempt and threatens the foundations of our society, your own era of impunity is over.
Labour is stronger than ever, more united than ever, more determined than ever, and you’d better believe that we are coming for you.
The tribute made by Emily Thornberry, the Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury, in the House of Commons on 9 September 2022.
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey).
Queen Elizabeth was just 10 years old when her uncle abdicated and she became heir to the throne. She was just 13 when war broke out, and in the six years that followed we saw the pattern of her whole life to come: standing with her people at home and across the Commonwealth in those dark hours, sharing in their grief when her own uncle fell in service, leading our national celebrations when victory and freedom were finally secured and, throughout the war, setting the perfect example by rolling up her sleeves and doing her bit for the collective effort.
Yet, while the second world war inspired millions to incredible feats and brought out the very best in our country, what we saw in those years from the young Princess Elizabeth was what we would come to understand as her normal. For the next seven decades she continued to set the perfect example of dedicated, selfless, timeless service and to embody the values that unite our people. She continued to share our grief when tragedy struck the nation, whether it was Aberfan or Dunblane or 7/7, when so many people in Islington were killed. She did not buckle when it touched her own family; she continued to stand with us in our darkest and most fearful hours, all the more so when she gave those messages of hope and courage that inspired all of us at the start of the pandemic. She continued to lead our national celebrations right up to the point in recent years when the biggest, most united celebrations of all were to mark her own birthdays and jubilees.
The Queen did all that for us; she lived her life for us. While she may have visited 200 hospitals or 2,000 schools, cut 5,000 ribbons, awarded 20,000 medals and shaken the hands of hundreds of thousands, she never forgot for one moment that although those daily duties were nothing out of the ordinary for her, they were deeply special for everyone she met, and she ensured that each of those individuals would go away with a unique memory of what she had said to them, how she had smiled at them and the interest that she took in their service to the country. For so many people, those encounters with the Queen will be remembered as the greatest moments in their lives.
I know that in Islington at the moment, lists are being compiled of the visits that she made to our borough and stories are being shared of the many times that we had the opportunity to see her and experience a meeting with her. We join today to thank the Queen for nine decades of devoted service, every one of them filled with her setting the right example; filled with giving her people courage, sympathy and joy; filled with making others feel special and doing it all day after day, year after year, right up until the very end. That record of duty would be unfathomable, astonishing and worthy of celebration in this House even if she had been a humble librarian or a long-serving charity volunteer, but to do all that in the pressure of her roles as heir to the throne and Head of State places her public service on a pinnacle that is unmatched in the history of our country and the like of which we will never see again.
On behalf of the Honourable Artillery Company, the Charterhouse and Farringdon Crossrail, all with whom she shared particularly strong links, and on behalf of the people of Islington South and Finsbury, who loved her so dearly, I thank you, ma’am. God save the King.
The post on Twitter made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Attorney General, on 3 January 2022.
I predict today’s Sunday Times story by @Gabriel_Pogrund won’t be the last time Liz Truss gets in trouble asking the taxpayer to foot the bill for her expensive tastes. She had a bit of form during her time as Trade Secretary. Let me take you through another example.
Back in December 2020, Truss and 3 staff went on a four-night trip to Singapore and Vietnam to sign the cut-and-paste rollover agreements to maintain free trade post-Brexit. After details of the visit were published on 7th May 2021, I asked how much it had all cost.
This was the first answer I got back, which was odd. If the only costs for the travelling party were flights and accommodation, who had paid for their meals and drinks? And why hadn’t that hospitality been declared? So my office put in an FOI on 1st June to ask them.
We got the usual delaying tactics on the FOI. First, they said they’d respond by 27th July. Then they pushed it back again to 24th August. But before then, on 5th August, I got this email providing a ‘corrected answer’ to my original PQ. Can you spot the corrections!?
How did they go from saying there were no subsistence expenses at all, to saying the travelling party incurred expenses of £1,000 per head, equivalent to £250 per night? And why did the cost of the accommodation go up £1,640 from the first answer to the second?
I never got answers to those questions, and some will say it doesn’t matter. But this is about character, and if Truss’s natural instinct is to hide the truth and hope no-one asks questions when it comes to small things, don’t be surprised when she does it about big things.
The comments made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow International Trade Secretary, on 22 September 2021.
Within the space of 24 hours, Boris Johnson has taken us from first in line to the back of the queue for a US trade deal, briefed reporters in Washington that we were seeking to join the USMCA instead, and now decided to ditch that idea as well, presumably after someone bothered to read the agreement and realised what it would mean for food standards and the NHS.
It is an utterly farcical way for the Prime Minister to carry on when representing our country abroad, and a shambolic approach to running the UK’s trade policy.
It all leaves the Government not a single step closer to its manifesto commitment to cover 80 per cent of UK trade with free trade deals by the end of next year, and not the slightest clue how it is going to get there.
The speech made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Paymaster General, in the House of Commons on 16 September 2021.
Let me begin by welcoming the Paymaster General to his new role. I thank him for advance sight of his statement. In fact, I imagine he had about as much advance sight of it as I did—11.40? However, I sympathise with him, not just for being thrown into this particular deep end, but for the title that was given to him for today’s statement.
Before I go into that, let me say that the proposals that the Paymaster General has mentioned will demand careful consideration once we have been able to examine the detail. For example, he mentioned the recent Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport proposals for reform of the data regime. If they are anything to go by, every measure in that package will need to be carefully considered, not just on its own merits but for the implications for our trading relationship with Europe. There was also reference in the statement to GMOs, research and development, vehicle standards and artificial intelligence, and all kinds of other things may be hidden in the huge category of law that has yet to be reviewed. We will come back to this, I have no doubt.
Let me return to the title of the statement: “Brexit: Opportunities”. That is the title, yet the country faces continuing shortages of staff and supplies, exacerbated by the Government’s Brexit deal, while businesses across the country face mounting losses in trade with Europe directly caused by the Government’s Brexit deal, and the people of Northern Ireland remain stuck in limbo as the Government refuse to implement the Brexit deal that they negotiated. Into all that, along comes the new Paymaster General to talk about all the wonderful opportunities that await us because of the marvellous Brexit deal, which is working so well at present. If he will excuse the unkind metaphor on the first day of his new job, it is a bit like the Pudding Lane baker strolling around the great fire of London asking people running for their lives if they have any orders for Christmas.
On the issue of opportunities, I will happily have a debate with the Paymaster General, whenever he wants to have one, about how the Government are wasting the opportunities of Brexit when it comes to the lack of ambition and innovation in both the roll-over trade deals they agreed last year and the new negotiations that they have begun since. I will happily have a debate, too, whenever he wants to have one, on the merits of the Government’s strategy to downgrade trade with Europe in favour of trade with Asia, on the fantastical basis that we can make up all the losses our exporters are facing in their trade with the EU through the gains that we will make through trade with the Asia-Pacific. The flagship policy of that strategy is the UK’s accession to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, according to the Government’s own figures, will produce a £1.7 billion increase in UK exports to those Asia-Pacific countries over a 15-year period. That is roughly a third of what we exported to Luxembourg last year alone—the covid-affected year.
I will happily debate that strategy with the Paymaster General on another day, but what I want to focus on today, and what I urge him to focus on in the new role he has been given, is not the imagined opportunities of Brexit that might happen in the next year, two years or five years, but the real practicalities that need sorting out today—the holes that need fixing in our deal with Europe to support British businesses through this period of economic recovery and resolve the impasse in Northern Ireland.
Can the Paymaster General tell us where we stand on the Government’s efforts to secure mutual recognition of professional qualifications and regulatory equivalence for financial services, so that our key growth industries in the professional and financial sectors can get back to doing business in Europe with the speed and simplicity that they enjoyed before Brexit? Can he tell us where the Government stand in their efforts to seek mutual recognition of conformity assessments to remove the double testing of products that is costing our key industries both time and money? Can he tell us not just what the latest plan is to kick the can down the road in Northern Ireland, but how we are going to reach a sustainable and permanent solution?
On that note, may I ask the Paymaster General to clear up one specific mystery, which relates to the Cabinet Office? In March last year, without publicity and without an open consultation, the Cabinet Office and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs paid McKinsey consultants £1 million for eight weeks’ work to provide
“the most effective solutions to ensure food security and choice is maintained for consumers in Northern Ireland”
after checks on GB-NI goods were introduced. My question to the Paymaster General is this: if the best brains at McKinsey were given two months and £1 million by the Government to examine that problem and come up with a solution, what is the answer that they provided? Is the reality that they, like the Government, have no better alternative solution than a veterinary agreement—the solution that businesses want, the solution that the EU says would work, the solution that every Opposition party in this House supports, but the solution that Ministers are refusing to consider?
That brings me to my final question—the great unanswered question when it comes to Brexit practicalities, which I hope the Paymaster General will not try to evade as so many of his predecessors have. When Lord Frost was asked on 24 June why he would not pursue the option, even in the short term, of a veterinary agreement with the European Union to resolve many of the problems at the border, he said:
“We’re very ambitious about TPP membership, so…it might turn out to be quite short term. That’s the problem.”
Can the Paymaster General answer two questions? First, why do the Government believe—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. Just before the right hon. Lady asks any more questions, let me say that she has significantly exceeded her time. I know that we are in a bit of flux, so I will allow her to finish, but I hope that she and others will note that keeping to time is important as a courtesy to others.
Emily Thornberry
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The questions I want to ask are these. First, why do the Government believe that signing a veterinary agreement with the EU is incompatible with their ambitions to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership? Secondly, if the answer is that joining the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership requires them to diverge from EU standards in relation to food safety, which is the only logical explanation for the comments that Lord Frost has made, can the Paymaster General tell us which specific standards they plan to diverge from?
I urge the Paymaster General, in his first appearance in his new position, to come out of the fantasy world that his predecessors have been living in together with Lord Frost and join us in the real world, together with Britain’s business community—the world of delays and shortages, red tape and bureaucracy, lost business and lost trade. It is a world that demands sensible answers and practical action from the Cabinet Office, not just another Minister addicted to dogma and wishful thinking.
The comments made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade, on 14 September 2021.
Liz Truss may have tried to bury this survey in the dead of night, but she must not hide from the legitimate concerns being raised by the British people.
First, there is still strong public support for trade deals, but the survey shows she risks putting that in jeopardy if she continues ignoring rising fears about the impact of her proposed deals on our farming communities, food standards and public services.
And second, she needs to consider whether it is right for her to rush ahead with her plans to take our country into the Trans-Pacific Partnership when – according to her own survey – almost three-quarters of the British people still know nothing about it.
The comments made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow International Trade Secretary, on 19 July 2021.
A maximum of 19 countries will see a reduction in tariffs as a result of these proposals, but for the poorest countries, there will be no direct financial benefit at all, and nothing to make up for the devastating cuts in overseas aid which Rishi Sunak sought to make permanent last week.
Of far more significance are the proposals buried in this consultation to ‘simplify’ the conditions to which trade preferences are currently tied, prohibiting genocide, mass killings of civilians, modern slavery, child labour, and other serious abuses of human rights and workers’ rights.
In the last year, Liz Truss has blocked the genocide amendment against China, resumed the sale of UK bombs for use in Yemen, and signed trade deals with tyrants from Egypt to Cameroon. So when she says she now wants to simplify the requirements our country makes on human rights when we give trade preferences, we urgently need to know which requirements she wants to get rid of, why, and with what consequences.
The comments made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow International Trade Secretary, on 15 July 2021.
What is happening to the Amazon rainforest is one of the worst man-made tragedies in history, and our own Prime Minister is one of the guilty men. He refused to support EU action in response to the Amazon fires in August 2019, and was thanked by the Bolsonaro government for doing so.
While the EU are now finally reconsidering their trade deal with Brazil out of concern for the Amazon, Boris Johnson is ploughing ahead with Britain’s negotiations regardless. And while Labour has proposed a due diligence law that would apply to all damaging deforestation, the Tory version only requires companies to comply with the local rules set by governments like Bolsonaro’s.
We will never stop and reverse the planet-destroying damage being done by men like Bolsonaro until governments like ours stand up to him, but under Boris Johnson, we are doing the opposite, standing by while he burns the Amazon with impunity.
The comments made by Emily Thornberry, the Shadow International Trade Secretary, on 16 July 2021.
In last year’s annual report, Liz Truss boasted about her achievements in this area, saying ‘I am proud of the £24.4 billion in Export Wins my department recorded in 2019-20.’
In this year’s report, slipped out without a press release last night, she has nothing to say about the catastrophic collapse she has presided over in government-backed export deals.
At a time when we urgently need to buy, make and sell more British goods to drive our recovery from the pandemic, Liz Truss has shown she is just not up to the task.
