Tag: Jeremy Corbyn

Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, in the House of Commons on 6 July 2016.

Before addressing the issues raised in the Iraq inquiry report, I would like to remember and honour the 179 British servicemen and women who were killed and the thousands maimed and injured during the Iraq war, and their families, as well as the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of the invasion and occupation launched by the US and British Governments 13 years ago.

Yesterday, I had a private meeting with some of the families of the British dead, as I have continued to do over the past dozen years. It is always a humbling experience to witness the resolve and resilience of those families and their unwavering commitment to seek truth and justice for those who they lost in Iraq. They have waited seven years for Sir John Chilcot’s report. It was right that the inquiry heard evidence from such a wide range of people and that the origins, conduct and aftermath of the war were examined in such detail. However, the extraordinary length of time that it has taken for the report to see the light of day is, frankly, clearly a matter of regret.

I should add that the scale of the report, running to 6,275 pages, to which I was given access only at 8 o’clock this morning, means that today’s response, by all of us, can only be a provisional one.

The decision to invade and occupy Iraq in March 2003 was the most significant foreign policy decision taken by a British Government in modern times. It divided this House and set the Government of the day against a majority of the British people, as well as against the weight of global opinion. As Sir John Chilcot says, the war was not in any way a “last resort”. Frankly, it was an act of military aggression launched on a false pretext, as the inquiry accepts, and has long been regarded as illegal by the overwhelming weight of international legal opinion. It led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the displacement of millions of refugees. It devastated Iraq’s infrastructure and society. As the report indicates, the occupation fostered a lethal sectarianism that turned into a civil war. Instead of protecting security at home or abroad, the war fuelled and spread terrorism across the region. Sunday’s suicide bomb attack in Baghdad that killed over 250 people, the deadliest so far, was carried out by a group whose origins lie in the aftermath of the invasion. By any measure, the invasion and occupation of Iraq have been, for many, a catastrophe.

The decision to invade Iraq in 2003 on the basis of what the Chilcot report calls “flawed intelligence” about weapons of mass destruction has had a far-reaching impact on us all. It has led to a fundamental breakdown in trust in politics and in our institutions of government. The tragedy is that while the governing class got it so horrifically wrong, many of our people actually got it right. On 15 February 2003, 1.5 million people here, spanning the entire political spectrum, and tens of millions of others across the world, marched against the impending war. That was the biggest demonstration in British history.

It was not that those of us who opposed the war underestimated the brutality or the crimes of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Indeed, many of us campaigned against the Iraqi regime during its most bloody period, when the British Government and the US Administration were supporting that regime, as was confirmed by the 1996 Scott inquiry. But we could see that this state, broken by sanctions and war, posed no military threat, and that the WMD evidence was flimsy and confected. We could see that going to war without United Nations’ authorisation was profoundly dangerous, and that foreign invasion and occupation would be resisted by force, and would set off a series of uncontrollable and destructive events.

If only this House had been able to listen to the wisdom of many of our own people when it voted on 18 March 2003 against waiting for UN authorisation for a second resolution, the course of events might have been different. All but 16 Members of the official Opposition at that time supported the war, while many in my party voted against it, as did others in other opposition parties. There are Members here today on all Benches, including dozens of my Labour colleagues, who voted against the war. But none of us should take any satisfaction from this report.

We have to be saddened at what has been revealed, and we must now reflect on it. In addition to all those British servicepeople and Iraqis, civilians and combatants, who lost their lives in the conflict, many members of this House who voted to stop the war have not lived to see themselves vindicated by this report. First and foremost, it would do us well to remember Robin Cook, who stood over there, 13 years ago, and said in a few hundred words, in advance of the tragedy to come, what has been confirmed by this report in more than 2 million words.

The Chilcot report has rightly dug deep into the litany of failures of planning for the occupation, and the calamitous decision to stand down the Iraqi army and to dissolve the entire Iraqi state as a process of de-Ba’athification. However, the reality is that it was the original decision, to follow the US President into this war in the most volatile region of the world and impose a colonial-style occupation, that led to every other disaster. The Government’s September 2002 dossier, with its claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed in 45 minutes, was only the most notorious of many deceptions. As Major General Michael Laurie told the inquiry:

“We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence”.

Military action in Iraq not only turned a humanitarian crisis into a disaster, but it also convulsed the entire region, just as intervention in Libya in 2011 has sadly left the country in the grip of warring militias and terror groups. The Iraq war increased the threat of terrorism in our own country, as Baroness Manningham-Buller, former head of MI5, made clear to the inquiry.

There are many lessons that need to be drawn from the Iraq war and the investigation carried out by Sir John Chilcot in his inquiry; lessons for our Government, our country and this Parliament, as well as for my party and every other party. They include the need for a more open and independent relationship with the United States, and for a foreign policy based on upholding international law and the authority of the United Nations, which always seeks peaceful solutions to international disputes. We also need, and the Prime Minister indicated this, much stronger oversight of security and intelligence services. We need the full restoration of proper Cabinet government and to give Parliament the decisive say over any future decisions to go to war—based on objective information, not just through Government discretion but through a war powers Act, which I hope this Parliament will pass. As, in the wake of Iraq, our own Government and other western Governments increasingly resort to hybrid warfare based on the use of drones and special forces, our democracy crucially needs to ensure that their use is subject to proper parliamentary scrutiny.

There are no more important decisions a Member of Parliament ever gets asked to make than those relating to peace and war. The very least that Members of Parliament and the country should be able to expect is rigorous and objective evidence on which to base their crucial decisions. We now know that the House was misled in the run-up to the war, and the House must now decide how to deal with it 13 years later, just as all those who took the decisions laid bare in the Chilcot report must face up to the consequences of their actions, whatever they may be.

Later today, I will be meeting a group of families of military servicemen and women who lost loved ones, as well as Iraq war veterans and Iraqi citizens who have lost family members as a result of the war that the US and British Governments launched in 2003. I will be discussing with them, our public and the Iraqi people the decisions taken by our then Government that led the country into war, with terrible consequences.

Quite bluntly, there are huge lessons for every single one of us here today. We make decisions that have consequences that go on not just for the immediate years, but for decades and decades afterwards. We need to reflect very seriously before we take any decisions again to take military action. We should realise that the consequences of those decisions will live with all of us for many decades to come, and will often be incalculable.

Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, at the launch of the Chakrabarti Report in London on 30 June 2016.

The Labour Party is built on the values of solidarity, social justice, equality, internationalism and human rights. That is why I have devoted my life to it, and why nine months ago, I was honoured to be elected leader by over a quarter of a million people. That is, by the way, substantially more than the entire electorate that will have the right to pick the Conservative Prime Minister this Autumn.

After the tumultuous events of the past week in Britain, including the vote in last week’s referendum to leave the European Union, the need for us to unite around these values, to practice what we preach, and be judged by the highest of standards, is perhaps as great as it has ever been.

So although I asked Shami Chakrabarti to carry out her inquiry after some disturbing and damaging incidents earlier this year, I believe that its findings and recommendations are of even more importance for our party, country and wider world today.

Whatever your views on the outcome of the referendum campaign – and two thirds of Labour supporters voted Remain – we need to reflect for a few moments on some of the hateful language used by some of the most prominent participants in it.

Boris Johnson, current favourite to lead the Tory party, compared Hitler’s murderous tyranny with the European project created from its ashes and questioned Barack Obama’s motives because of his “part-Kenyan heritage”.

That was no dog whistle. That was a fog horn – a classic racist trope – casting doubt on someone’s motivation because of their race.

The Justice Secretary Michael Gove compared pro-Remain economists to Nazi collaborators, a startling example of the way in which the Nazi regime and the Holocaust can be minimized, trivialized or even forgotten by ill-judged comparisons.

And Nigel Farage warned of mass sex attacks should the Remain Campaign win, calling it the “nuclear bomb” of the Brexit campaign. Is it only me who just doesn’t find him funny any more?

These are hateful comments – no question. They are unworthy of  the millions who voted to Leave, not out of xenophobia or racism, but often as a desperate response – yes to austerity, but also to years of being ignored and left behind by the Westminster elite.

The people of Britain – and especially the young – need a strong, united, principled and kind Labour Party more than ever. They didn’t crash the banks, heat up the planet or start the wars of the past decade or so. But the risk is that they will have to work harder for longer, quite possibly for less pay, because of what the powerful have done in their name.

Divide and rule is the oldest trick in the book – whether used by imperial powers abroad or hate-mongers at home. Turn people against each other. Use race or religion or anything else you can find and hope they will be too distracted or consumed to take on the great inequalities of wealth and power in the world.

For over a hundred years, the Labour Party of Keir Hardie, Ellen Wilkinson and Manny Shinwell has existed to offer working people another way: solidarity instead of division, equality instead of injustice, inclusion instead of isolation, internationalism instead of narrow nationalism, and human rights for all.

But we cannot do our duty, if we do not look at ourselves as well. Say what you like about me, but I’m no hypocrite. When I look in the mirror, it is less for sartorial elegance than to examine what’s in my own eye before pointing out the specks in others. I urge others in politics to do the same.

This is why I asked Shami Chakrabarti and her colleagues to take on the vital work of looking into our own Party before we criticise others. That is what she and her team have done. And I’m here today to launch and recommend their work to our Party and to put my weight behind its immediate implementation.

Under my leadership, the Labour Party will not allow hateful language or debate, in person, online or anywhere else. We will aim to set the gold standard, not just for anti-racism, but for a genuinely welcoming environment for all communities and for the right to disagreement as well.

Racism is racism is racism. There is no hierarchy – no acceptable form of it. I have always fought it in all its forms and I always will. But while we respond to hate with universal principles we must also remember people’s particular experience, if we are too ensure that not one person feels vulnerable or excluded from their natural political home.

The Jewish community has made an enormous contribution to our Party and our country – Jewish people have been at the heart of progressive and radical politics in Britain, as elsewhere, for well over a century.

But they are also a minority amongst minorities and have had good cause to feel vulnerable and even threatened throughout history. This should never happen by accident or design in our Labour Party. Modern antisemitism may not always be about overt violence and persecution, though there is too much of that even to this day. We must also be vigilant against subtler and invidious manifestations of this nasty ancient hatred and avoid slipping into its traps by accident or intent.

For the avoidance of doubt, I do not believe in name calling and I never have. “Zio” is a vile epithet that follows in a long line of earlier such terms that have no place in our Party. Nor should anyone indulge in the kind of stereotyping that can cause such hurt and harm.

To assume that a Jewish friend or fellow member is wealthy, part of some kind of financial or media conspiracy, or takes a particular position on politics in general, or on Israel and Palestine in particular, is just wrong.

Our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu Government than our Muslim friends are for those of various self-styled Islamic states or organisations. Nor should Muslims be regarded as sexist, antisemitic or otherwise suspect, as has become an ugly Islamophobic norm. We judge people on their individual values and actions, not en masse.

No one should be expected either to condemn or defend the actions of foreign powers on account of their faith or race. At the same time, we should have the sensitivity to understand how upset many Labour party members and supporters are likely to feel about various human rights abuses around the world.

Human rights language is so much more accurate and persuasive than the kind of language that was often resorted to in the Brexit debate. That is no doubt acceptable in other places and other parties, but it shouldn’t be here, on my watch, or in our name.

I will continue – as Labour Leader – to pursue the causes of peace and justice in Israel-Palestine, the wider Middle East and all over the world. But those who claim to do so with hateful or inflammatory language do no service to anyone, especially dispossessed and oppressed people in need of better advocacy.

Of course we as Labour Party members must all be free to criticise and oppose injustice and abuse wherever we find it. But as today’s Report recommends, can we please leave Hitler and Nazi metaphors alone (especially in the context of Israel). Why? Because the Shoah is still in people’s family experience. If every human rights atrocity is described as a Holocaust, Hitler’s attempted obliteration of the Jewish people is diminished or de-recognised in our history. Other human rights atrocities from African slavery to the killing fields of Cambodia, the Armenian and Rwandan Genocides are all of course to be remembered, but diluting their particularity or comparing degrees of evil does no good.

Pursuing a more civil discourse does not in any way mean stifling free speech. I for one, will continue to meet, discuss and debate with all-comers in the cause of peace, progress, justice and human rights around the world. Though I acknowledge the need for the Party’s Leader to spread his or her time around a greater range of issues, I do not believe that anyone should be judged for the platforms they share or the human rights causes they take up, as long as they fight hate with every breath.

And to those who have been afraid of so-called “witch-hunts” by the press in recent months, those who perhaps worry that debate and speech around difficult and important issues risks being shut down in our Party: I commend and endorse the Report’s recommendations about improving natural justice, transparency, consistency and accountability in the conduct of Party discipline.

But not being racist and not being hateful is not enough for our Party to be the inclusive and vibrant political movement that Britain so sorely needs. If we are to unite and lead our country we must be the most welcoming and empowering place in which our diverse communities can prosper.

I am very concerned about the Report’s findings on how too many black and minority ethnic members of our party have felt for too long. We must act against long term “special measures” placing local parties under limited democracy. I will also take action with colleagues to seek to improve the representation of black and minority people at every level of staffing and leadership within the Labour Party.

We will work with our Trade Union affiliates and others to achieve the best programme of activist and leadership education possible. We will talk, read, learn and organise together. We will learn from each other’s personal experiences but also share each other’s considerable campaigning and political skills.

The last year – with all of its highs and lows – has left me with every confidence that Labour is has the potential to be a powerful and transformatory movement, capable of winning the next General Election (whenever it comes), and many more elections after that.

But my confidence and optimism are not naive. We all know that despite the overwhelming mandate I was given by Labour party members and supporters last year – we’ve all had a torrid few days.

Whatever now takes place in our party, politics should be conducted in a decent manner. When I stood for the leadership last summer I called for a kinder, gentler politics, that’s still work in progress.

Some people may equate “leadership” with nastiness. I disagree. Decency is no disqualification for leadership – in fact it should be a pre-requisite.

Those loyal to my leadership, and to Labour’s core values, want to pursue the new politics with decency and civility, and see strength and not weakness in living those values.

I ask Labour people to do as I do. To be kind and respectful to each other and our neighbours, and to be as courteous as we are courageous with our opponents.

I believe that approach to be closer to the values of the British people than so much of what they have witnessed on the political stage over many recent years.

I want to express huge thanks to Shami Chakrabarti, David Feldman and Jan Royall, as well as to Deok Joo Rhee and Godric Jolliffe – and all who submitted their views and took part in this comprehensive exercise.

Britain deserves better – so let’s offer it. Come together as a party and then unite and lead our country through these incredibly challenging times.

Below is the text of the statement issued by Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, on the no confidence vote being held on his leadership on 28 June 2016.

In the aftermath of last week’s referendum, our country faces major challenges. Risks to the economy and living standards are growing. The public is divided.

The Government is in disarray. Ministers have made it clear they have no exit plan, but are determined to make working people pay with a new round of cuts and tax rises.

Labour has the responsibility to give a lead where the Government will not. We need to bring people together, hold the Government to account, oppose austerity and set out a path to exit that will protect jobs and incomes.

To do that we need to stand together. Since I was elected leader of our party nine months ago, we have repeatedly defeated the Government over its attacks on living standards.

Last month, Labour become the largest party in the local elections. In Thursday’s referendum, a narrow majority voted to leave, but two thirds of Labour supporters backed our call for a remain vote.

I was democratically elected leader of our party for a new kind of politics by 60% of Labour members and supporters, and I will not betray them by resigning. Today’s vote by MPs has no constitutional legitimacy.

We are a democratic party, with a clear constitution. Our people need Labour party members, trade unionists and MPs to unite behind my leadership at a critical time for our country.

Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, in South Yorkshire on 16 June 2016.

Thank you for inviting me here to South Yorkshire. I appreciate the time of the workforce and the support from the management to enable this to go ahead.

Talking of the workers here, I’m guessing you were delighted when you heard you were going to get an extra hour’s break from work. And so I can only imagine the disappointment when you then learned that hour was for listening to a politician talking about Europe.

But there is no doubt we all face a vital vote just a week away and I want to have a serious conversation about it and set out some of Labour’s ideas about Europe, and how to reform it.

Not many people are grateful for the work politicians do. I don’t have any difficulty understanding why, the political class has let our country down in so many ways, but today I want to try and restore a bit of faith in politics, and set out how politics done in a different way, can improve our lives and our communities.

The work you do here in developing the manufacturing base of the future is crucial to our economy. We need many more sites like this, backed up with a proper industrial strategy to use their innovations to build an economy of the future that can deliver for all.

The Chancellor George Osborne promised “a march of the makers” five years ago, but that has signally failed to materialise. Once again we’ve been given a soundbite, but very little action on the ground.

What this referendum campaign has shown, more than anything, is that politicians have failed, and are failing, to come up with solutions to the problems that people face across Britain.

The insecurity of work the lack of good well-paid jobs, the high cost of housing, whether to rent or to buy, how we adjust to, and pay for, an ageing society, the failure to ensure decent economic growth in all parts of the country and in which we all share.

That is the failure of politicians, not of the EU or of EU migrants for that matter.

Too many voices in this debate are only playing that old trick the blame game. And when politicians play the blame game, it’s usually because they have nothing serious to offer themselves.

Those pushing us to leave the EU, Conservative MPs like Iain Duncan Smith, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, say that more money could be spent on the NHS if we left, they’ve also promised more money for farming, for fishing, for university research, for tax cuts. They’ve promised our EU contribution over and over again.

But does anyone really believe they’re the saviours of our NHS? Hardly. They really are wolves in sheep’s clothing:

These are the same Tory Ministers and MPs who voted to:

– cut mental health budgets

– scrap nurses’ and midwives’ bursaries

– slash social care for the elderly and disabled

– open up ever more of the NHS to private companies and private patients

– pick damaging and unnecessary fights with junior doctors.

Now they want to use people’s real concerns about the impact of EU migration to turn the campaign into a referendum on immigration.

It’s easy to blame people who come to this country, to blame the outsider, to blame bureaucrats in Brussels. It’s also very convenient for politicians too. If you’re blaming a scapegoat you’re not blaming the people with the real power, the corporate elite and the politicians in government who do its bidding.

Politicians certainly need to take responsibility, so let me make a start.

I mentioned the banking crash yes, that was the fault of bankers but the Conservative governments of Thatcher and Major scrapped financial regulations that would have prevented that crash and Labour failed to re-regulate. So blame our own governments, don’t blame the EU or immigrants.

It was those same governments of the 1980s and early 90s that deregulated the labour market so that zero hours contracts could flourish and the share of wealth going to workers fell off a cliff. It is unscrupulous employers and politicians who have allowed temporary contracts, agency and enforced part-time working, and bogus self-employment to mushroom. So blame the politicians who opened the door to rampant job insecurity.

When people migrated here from the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s there was very little debate about migrants driving down wages and undercutting because then we had powerful employment protection and strong trade union rights.

The veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner talked yesterday in Parliament about Shirebrook. For many years that site was a coal mine where Eastern European miners working alongside English colleagues doing the same job, earning the same pay and in the same union.

Today that same site is owned by Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct where he employs 200 full-time employees and 3,000 people, mainly east Europeans, on zero-hours contracts.

Today we have a deregulated labour market that allows unscrupulous employers to undercut local pay by exploiting migrant workers and undercut good businesses by forcing a race to the bottom. So migrants aren’t driving down wages. Unscrupulous employers are because the government allows them.

Actually by working with the European Union, Labour governments brought in the agency workers’ directive the working time directive and a whole package of legislation that helped to protect workers across Europe.

Migrants that come here, work here, earn here and pay their taxes here.

But, do you know what? There are other forms of free movement that really anger me. The free movement of money abroad to dodge the taxes that fund our public services, the free movement of our country’s wealth and corporate profits into tax havens.

Does anyone here own an offshore trust? Do any of your family or friends own an offshore trust? So who was David Cameron standing up for when he wrote to the EU in November 2013 opposing proposals transparency into who owns these shady offshore trusts?

From cuts to disability benefits and cuts tax credits, to tax breaks for the super-rich and corporations. We have a Government making the wrong choices and sticking up for the wrong people.

Or take another example, a couple of years ago, the EU also came forward with a proposal to restrict bankers’ bonuses and what did George Osborne do? Again he rushed to Brussels within an army of taxpayer-funded lawyers to oppose it and he lost.

But what about the positive solutions? I won the leadership of the Labour Party by a landslide because our campaign stood for something different, straight-talking, honest politics.

If there’s a problem we will work to find a solution – not someone to blame.

Start with immigration the biggest issue for many people in this referendum campaign.

EU migrants pay in more in taxes than they take out in benefits. They contribute to our society and 52,000 of them work in our NHS saving our lives, caring for our loved ones.

But large increases in migration in particular areas can put a strain on our stretched public services, already hammered by government spending cuts – local schools, GPs surgeries and housing.

So we are calling for a Migrant Impact Fund to pump extra cash into local areas where large scale migration puts a strain on public services – on schools, GPs surgeries and housing.

Such a fund used to exist, Gordon Brown established it in 2008 but David Cameron abolished it two years later. He was also the guy who pledged he would cut net migration below 100,000, if you remember. But today it’s well over 300,000 far higher than at any point under Labour governments and local authorities and public services have had their budgets slashed at the same time.

And, as I raised with David Cameron yesterday in parliament, we can and we must act now to end the scandal of jobs here in Britain that are only advertised abroad.

As I said before, if you want someone to blame, blame politicians and some of the appalling employers they protect.

And if we want to stop insecurity at work and the exploitation of zero hours contracts that are being used to drive down pay and conditions, why don’t we do what other European countries have done and simply ban them?

Zero hours contracts are not allowed in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland and Spain. It seems we’re the odd one out. Our politicians now in power are choosing not to tackle exploitation, but we will.

We have to clamp down on exploitation as we’ve seen at Sports Direct in Shirebrook and hire many more workplace inspectors to enforce the minimum wage. I don’t want to see workers here being exploited and driving down wages and conditions. We can stop this, and we must.

Many of you from this part of South Yorkshire will remember that miners used to get free coal. In Denmark, Portugal and Germany today communities are setting up energy companies which sell electricity back to them at discounted rates. But ridiculously, it’s illegal to do that here.

We need to learn from the best in Europe.

Just down the road in Nottingham, Robin Hood Energy – a community energy scheme – has been established by the Labour council, no private shareholders, no director bonuses. Just low and competitive energy tariffs, but they could be lower still, and more councils would be doing the same if we had the same rules as elsewhere in Europe.

Labour is calling for a vote to remain in Europe at next week’s referendum because we believe staying in the European Union offers our people a better future in terms of jobs, investment, rights at work and environmental protection.

But we are also campaigning for reform of the European Union because we are convinced Europe needs to change to work for all, to become more democratic, strengthen workers’ rights, ditch austerity and end the pressure to privatise.

So we have a vision for Europe, and an agenda for change, I have been discussing with leaders and governments across Europe.

Because in our globalised world we cannot live in isolation, we achieve far more by cooperating and working together with other countries.

Think about pollution, we could have the best environmental protection in the world, but if our neighbours are pumping poisonous chemicals into the air, or dumping waste into the sea, that will damage us regardless. Pollution doesn’t respect national borders.

Next year the UK will have the presidency of the European Union, if we vote to remain. That means Britain can lead, can push our agenda for change, our vision for Europe.

On tax avoidance, our Revenue and Customs estimates that there is a £34 billion tax gap. Little infuriates people more than the super-rich class and big business acting as if paying taxes is optional only for the little people.

There are proposals now in Europe for country-by-country tax reporting, which means that companies pay their taxes in the countries where they make their profits.

Labour members of the European parliament have backed this plan every time, while Conservatives ones oppose it, time and time again.

We also have a special obligation to tackle tax havens, since so many of Britain’s overseas territories and crown dependencies are tax havens. So we must support an EU-wide blacklist of tax havens, to sanction them and back measures to eradicate them.

On workers’ rights, we need far stronger action across Europe. There is a little known EU directive, for example, called the Posting of Workers Directive. It allows companies that win contracts in another part of Europe to take workers to other countries. They can post their workers abroad temporarily, rather than go through new recruitment processes.

But legal judgements have opened up loopholes meaning that these companies are able to undercut the going rate in one country by paying the going rate in another.

In extreme cases it has meant workers not being paid the minimum wage of the country they’re working in because it is above the rate of their home nation.

This loophole can and must be closed and there is a proposal on the table to do so. Labour would work to secure agreement from other countries to back it.

I mentioned the scandal of zero hours contracts earlier too. As well as outlawing these exploitative contracts in Britain, we should go further and work with our allies to establish a European minimum standard of rights at work to stop undercutting and give people the job security they need.

And now that Germany has introduced a minimum wage there is an opportunity to move towards a European-wide minimum wage – linked to average pay and the cost of living in each country to halt the race to the bottom in pay and conditions, and increase wages across Europe.

On the refugee crisis, Europe has had to respond to a crisis on our borders on an unprecedented scale. It is the biggest refugee crisis in global history. We – as a continent, all of us – have made mistakes but now we have to learn the lessons.

If our union means anything, it means coming up with an agreed and united response that shares the responsibility.

On energy and the environment, under the Tories, the UK has slipped from 3rd to 13th in the world as the best place to invest in renewables.

Subsidies for renewables have been cut by this government, yet the European Investment Bank has invested nearly £1.5 billion since 2007 – a quarter of all its renewable funding. The European Investment Bank has been bailing out this government’s failure to invest.

Across Europe, investment in renewable energy is coming from government and being supported properly, renewable energy is increasingly being owned by local communities, schools or workplaces. These decentralised energy grids are more efficient, less polluting and give us all more control.

So we need to learn from the best practice across Europe, and find a mechanism to promote and encourage socially-owned clean energy across our continent.

Our government has watered down our commitments under the EU energy efficiency directive, we would recommit to that because the technology is there to make every new building a near-zero energy building.

We must have the vision and the strategy to create a sustainable economy, both in Britain and across our continent.

On banking regulation, we need to throw our weight behind a Financial Transaction Tax, sometimes known as the Robin Hood Tax.

There are currently 10 countries in Europe working together to secure a financial transactions tax across the European Union. This is a small tax on specific financial transactions to help prevent the sort of banking crash we saw a few years back, that led to the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s.

What was the British Government’s response to this proposal? To rush to Europe to oppose it, threatening legal action.

Labour wants to help drive this reform, to build support for an EU-wide tax as a step towards a global tax. We must reform our banking sector and discourage the dangerous practices that undermined the banks across Europe and globally.

The process is currently in a fragile state, despite the support of France and Germany, but imagine the impetus Britain’s support could give to the campaign, both in Europe and among major economies around the world.

On migration, we should press at European level for a Migration Relief Fund available to local authorities all over Europe to assist in supporting and upgrading schools, hospitals and public services in areas of high migration within the EU.

On trade, we know that core purpose of the European single market scrapping trade tariffs and barriers between countries not just in Europe but dozens more has helped bring us jobs, investment and growth.

But EU legislation that pressures governments to privatise or deregulate public services, such as rail and communications, or restrict public ownership, needs to be reformed.

And we will not sign up to trade deals that are about privatising our public services weakening consumer protections, environmental standards or food safety standards.

That’s why – like France – Labour would veto the TTIP transatlantic EU-US trade deal as it stands.

By taking this approach, setting out a positive vision of hope and progress, and a clear agenda of reform for Britain’s EU presidency in 2017, I believe we can demonstrate that politics can make a difference. That we can improve lives and communities and show not only what the European Union is, but what it can become.

There is a warning for Europe here, whatever the outcome of next week’s referendum, that the EU must demonstrate its continued relevance to its people or it will be rejected. But it’s up to British politicians too, to lead that change.

I have tried to set out today some of Labour vision for Remain and Reform in the European Union.

More importantly I hope I’ve been able to restore a bit of faith in what politics can do. If you have a decent government committed to making our country and our world a better place.

I encourage you all to vote Remain on 23 June and then to support our campaign for the changes we want to see here in Britain and across Europe.

Things can and, with your help, they will change.

Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, at the People’s History Museum in Manchester on 21 June 2016.

Thank you for being here today and for that introduction, Diane.

Thank you to Alan Johnson for all of your hard work and mileage you’ve put into the campaign, and to all colleagues: MPs, MEPs, councillors and activists who are determined to make our remain and reform position clear.

Kate Green is the shadow secretary of state for Women & Equalities and an excellent advocate for that cause.

But, as you will all know a few days ago we lost one of the great fighters for women and equalities in this country so I would ask you all to reflect for a moment on the life of Jo Cox.

It’s a pleasure to be here today at the People’s History Museum which chronicles the struggles of working people over generations.

There are now under 48 hours until polls open in the European referendum I am very clear, and Labour is very clear we are for staying in.

One of the major reasons for that is about jobs and workers’ rights.

So it is fitting that we are here today in this building which reflects the gains that working people, trade unions and the Labour Party have won.

Today we live in a globalised world. The battles we fight today as a labour movement are not confined by national borders.

Workers, capital, and corporations move across borders. That is a reality whether we vote to leave or remain.

But only by remaining and working together with our allies across Europe can we regulate those flows and improve things for working people here in Britain.

It was a Labour government that introduced the Equal Pay Act in 1970 following a courageous campaign by women trade unionists.

By it was only in 1984 that law was strengthened and extended in Europe to mean equal pay for equal work of equal value in line with the EU Directive.

There was no limit on working time for workers in Britain until the Working Time Directive, which also provided for rest breaks.

Our rights to annual leave were underpinned by the EU too we would not have a right to 28 days leave without that membership.

But for too many people in Britain today – work is still not secure.

So we cannot be content with the status quo.

If we want to stop insecurity at work and the exploitation of zero hours contracts why don’t we do what other European countries have done and ban them?

Zero hours contracts are not permitted in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland and Spain. It seems we’re the odd one out. This Tory government is choosing not to tackle exploitation Labour would.

As well as outlawing these exploitative contracts in Britain we should go further and work with our allies to establish a European minimum standard of rights at work to stop undercutting and give people the job security they need.

And now that Germany has introduced a minimum wage is there an opportunity to establish a European-wide minimum wage – based on the cost of living in different nations to increase workers’ pay across our continent?

There is a little known directive called the Posting of Workers Directive nothing to do with postal workers, Alan although I do hope they get overtime for all of the referendum leaflets they are about to deliver! The Posting of Workers Directive enables companies that win contracts in another part of Europe to take their workers to work in other countries they can post their workers abroad temporarily rather than go through new recruitment processes.

However, some legal judgements have opened up loopholes meaning that these companies are able to undermine the going rate in one country by paying the going rate in another.

In extreme cases it has meant workers not being paid the minimum wage of the country they’re working in because it is above the rate of their home nation.

This loophole can be closed and there is a proposal on the table to do so Labour would secure agreement from other countries and back it.

The European Union is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. It is what we make of it and it can be an ally in our campaigning for better rights at work across Europe.

Because, in this day and age we can only strengthen rights at work here in Britain by strengthening them across Europe.

The only way to stop the race to the bottom on jobs and wages is to work together across our continent to raise standards for all. That’s what we did with rights for agency workers for part-time workers and on so many other issues.

Through the social chapter and other directives we have achieved a situation in which:

Over 26 million workers in Britain benefit from being entitled to 28 days of paid leave and a limit to how many hours they can be forced to work

Over 8 million part-time workers (over six million of whom are women) have equal rights with full-time colleagues

Over 1 million temporary workers have the same rights as permanent workers

340,000 women every year have guaranteed rights to take maternity leave

And it’s important to understand the benefit of these gains it means workers throughout Europe have decent rights at work meaning it’s harder to undercut terms and conditions across Europe.

Several Leave supporters have stated clearly they want to leave Europe to water down workers’ rights to rip up the protections that protect work-life balance that prevent discrimination and prevent exploitation and injustice.

That is why we say the threat to the British people is not the European Union it is a Tory-led Brexit

So remain and fight; don’t walk away in despair.

Today three million jobs in Britain are linked to our trade with Europe that is why our major manufacturers and our major trade unions are for remaining within Europe.

But it is not only jobs with a direct link with Europe that are at risk our whole economy is threatened by any potential downturn caused by Brexit.

Whatever you feel about the European Union we should not lightly be prepared to put at risk the jobs and rights of people in this country.

Our economy is fragile and insecure hit by six years of Tory austerity that have weakened wages weakened rights at work and weakened job security.

We know who gets laid off when there is a downturn: it is young workers, insecure workers; those most recently hired are often first out.

We know who gets hit hardest by any downturn, it is working class communities.

A vote to leave risks more Tory austerity and more wrong choices because those would lead the Brexit negotiations would be the Tory right cheered on by UKIP.

They won’t pay for any downturn with tax increases on the wealthy or big corporations but with cuts to the public services of those who can least afford to lose them.

Those running the Vote Leave campaign have supported every cut to public services every privatisation and every tax break for the richest.

And frankly their divisive campaign deserves to lose. A vote to leave will embolden the likes of Nigel Farage and embolden them to be more xenophobic and more divisive.

Migrants that come here, they work here, earn here and pay their taxes here.

Many EU migrants – 52,000 of them – work in our National Health Service; they are 10% of all our doctors and 5% of our nurses.

Many more work in other public services educating our children caring for our elderly and helping to run our public transport.

They also come here and establish businesses providing jobs for people here in Britain and paying taxes.

Parties like UKIP whip up division and emphasise the problems but they don’t offer any solutions.

Identifying problems is not enough. As politicians we have to resolve them.

Housing is in short supply because governments have not built enough in the 1980s council housing was sold off without replacement and today the Tories have let housebuilding fall to the lowest level since the 1920s.

This year our NHS is in record deficit due to the Tories’ top-down reorganisation and their underfunding. They’ve cut social care for the elderly and disabled cut bursaries for nursed and midwives and cut mental health budgets.

They’ve allowed NHS Trusts to dedicate more resources to be used to treat private patients and have failed to train enough nurses and doctors. Now we rely on 52,000 doctors, nurses and other staff from the EU to work in our NHS.

Far from being a burden on our health service, migrants are saving it and saving lives here in Britain every day. You’re more likely to be treated by an EU migrant than be laying in the next bed down.

Our schools are about to suffer the largest budget cut since the 1970s yet there is a teacher shortage and class sizes are rising. Instead of finding the money to solve this the Tory government gave a tax break that benefits the richest 5% (capital gains tax).

Wrong government making the wrong choices and too often trying to blame someone else for the problems.

But large increases in migration in particular areas sometimes can put a strain on our stretched public services local schools, GPs surgeries and housing.

Some communities can change dramatically and rapidly and that can be disconcerting for some people. But that doesn’t make them Little Englanders, xenophobes or racists.

This isn’t the fault of migrants it’s a failure of government. We propose re-establishing a Migrant Impact Fund to distribute extra money to local areas where large scale migration puts a strain on public services on schools, GPs surgeries and on housing.

Such a fund used to exist Gordon Brown established a £50 million a year fund 2008 but David Cameron abolished it in 2010 we would reinstate it.

It could be funded through a combination of using EU underspend and reprioritising money from outdated existing EU schemes.

But if you want to find the main reason that our public services are struggling then it’s because of the cuts that this Tory government has made

And we mustn’t let them get away with playing that old game: divide and rule.

For all the arguments of recent weeks this Thursday’s decision can be boiled down to one crucial question. “What’s best for jobs in Britain, rights at work and our future prosperity?”

On 23rd June we are faced with a choice: Do we remain to protect jobs and prosperity in Britain. Or do we step into an unknown future with Leave where a Tory-negotiated Brexit risks economic recovery and threatens a bonfire of employment rights?

A vote for remain is a vote to put our economy and your future first. On Thursday please join me and join the overwhelming majority of the Labour movement in voting remain to protect jobs and rights at work.

But just as importantly join with us the day after to fight for a better society to campaign for reform and to strengthen jobs and workers’ rights across Europe.

We achieve more by working together we will achieve very little if we stand alone.

So let’s unite to make this country better to make the EU better and to make the world a better place.

Thank you.

Below is the text of the speech made in the House of Commons by Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, on 20 June 2016.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of tributes to Jo Cox.

Last Thursday, Jo Cox was doing what all of us here do: representing and serving the people who elected her. We have lost one of our own, and our society as a whole has lost one of our very best. She had spent her life serving and campaigning for other people, whether as a worker for Oxfam or for the anti-slavery charity, the Freedom Fund, as a political activist and as a feminist.

The horrific act that took Jo from us was an attack on democracy, and our whole country has been shocked and saddened by it, but in the days since the country has also learned something of the extraordinary humanity and compassion that drove her political activism and beliefs. Jo Cox did not just believe in loving her neighbour; she believed in loving her neighbour’s neighbour. She saw a world of neighbours and she believed that every life counted equally.

In a very moving tribute, Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International, said:

“Her campaigning on refugees, Syria and the rights of women and girls made her stand out as an MP who always put the lives of the most vulnerable at the heart of her work.”

Her former colleague at the Freedom Fund, Nick Grono, said:

“Jo was a powerful champion for the world’s most vulnerable and marginalised.”

She spoke out in support of refugees, for the Palestinian people and against Islamophobia in this country. Her integrity and talent was known by everyone in this House, and by the community of Batley and Spen, which she proudly represented here for the past year. It was that community in Batley and Spen that brought her up, as well, of course, as her wonderful family, with whom we share their grief today.

Her community and the whole country has been united in grief and united in rejecting the well of hatred that killed her in what increasingly appears to have been an act of extreme political violence. We are filled with sorrow for her husband, Brendan, and young children. They will never see her again, but they can be so proud of everything she was, all she achieved and all she stood for, as we are, as are her parents, as is her sister and as are her whole wider family.

Jo would have been 42 this Wednesday. She had much more to give, and much more that she would have achieved.

I want to thank the heroes who tried to intervene. Bernard Kenny, a 77-year-old former miner, saw the need and ran to Jo’s aid. He was stabbed and taken to hospital. I am sure that the whole House will join me in wishing Mr Kenny a speedy and full recovery—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Many shopkeepers and bystanders also tried to help, and administered first aid to Jo and Bernard, and there were also the police officers who made the arrest and the national health service paramedics who were on the scene so quickly.

In her maiden speech last year, Jo said:

“Our communities have been deeply enhanced by immigration…While we celebrate our diversity, what surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 674-75.]

We need a kinder and gentler politics. This is not a factional party political point. We all have a responsibility in this House and beyond not to whip up hatred or sow division.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you, Prime Minister, and Rose Hudson-Wilkin, our wonderful chaplain, for accompanying me to the vigil for Jo last Friday at the Priestley statue in the centre of the lovely town of Birstall. We—all of us—were moved by the unity and warmth of the crowd brought together in grief and solidarity.

I have been very moved by the public outpourings since her death—the hundreds of letters and emails we have all received in solidarity with Jo’s family in their hour of grief—and by the outpouring of charitable donations to causes close to her heart, the White Helmets, HOPE not hate, and the Royal Voluntary Service. Last night, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and I held a vigil outside our town hall, one of hundreds of vigils attended by tens of thousands of people right across our land who are so shocked by what has happened and want to express that shock and grief.

I also want to thank the other parties in this House, which have offered their sympathy and support at this very difficult time. We are united in grief at her loss, and we must be aware that her killing is an attack on our democracy. It is an attack on our whole society. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) wrote recently,

“Jo’s life was a demonstration against despair”.

In Jo’s tragic death, we can come together to change our politics, to tolerate a little more and condemn a little less. Jo’s grieving husband Brendan said:

“Jo believed in a better world and she fought for it every day of her life with an energy, and a zest for life that would exhaust most people.”

Today, we remember Jo’s compassion and her passion to create a better world. In her honour, we recommit ourselves to that task.

Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, at the Institute of Engineering Technology in London on 2 June 2016.

Today, we want to set out the positive case for remaining in Europe and for reforming Europe.

There are just three weeks to go until the referendum vote on 23 June but too much of the debate so far has been dominated by myth-making and prophecies of doom.

In the final stage of this referendum, as we get closer to what is expected by many to be a very tight vote, it does not help the debate over such a serious issue if the hype and histrionic claims continue or worse intensify. I believe the EU has the potential to deliver positive change for the people of Britain if there was a radical, reforming government to drive that agenda. Too often what has held back the EU is having to move at the pace of the slowest. Too often that has been the British government.

And let me say up front to anyone listening who is not already registered to vote – Please register – you have five days to do so. We appeal especially to young people who will live longest with the consequences of any vote.

Just over a week ago, George Osborne claimed that the British economy would enter a year-long recession if we voted to leave. This is the same George Osborne who predicted his austerity policies would close the deficit by 2015. That’s now scheduled for 2021.

It’s the same George Osborne who said the British economy would be “carried aloft by the march of the makers” yet the manufacturing sector has stagnated ever since, and manufacturing employment declined.

The biggest risk of recession in this country is from a Conservative Government that is failing, failing on the deficit, failing on the debt, failing to rebalance the economy and failing to boost productivity.

Two weeks ago, Boris Johnson claimed: “It is absurd that we are told that you cannot sell bananas in bunches of more than two or three bananas.”

No, what’s absurd is for a senior politician, a former Mayor of London, to say “Vote to Leave the EU, they’re after our bananas!”

The Leave side has concocted a number of myths about the evils of the EU. Many are, frankly, bananas.

So let’s remind ourselves of the positives it was EU regulation that improved the UK’s beaches which, if you go back 30 or 40 years, were in a terrible state .

Britain used to pump our untreated sewage straight into the sea. Just 25 years ago one in four British beaches were too dirty to swim in. Now 95 per cent of our beaches have a clean bill of health.

Three years ago the EU voted to restrict the use of some pesticides that are strongly linked to the decline of the bee population, essential for our biodiversity. The coalition Government lobbied against the restrictions but they passed.

Too often the British government has had to be dragged kicking and screaming into acting to protect our own environment. As we know, we have a Prime Minister who has lurched from ‘hug a huskie’ when he became Tory leader to, a decade on, ‘gas a badger’ and ‘poison the bees’.

When recent court judgement ordered the British Government to do more to tackle air pollution, it was the UK Supreme Court in London, acting to enforce EU standards. A recent study found that EU air quality regulations are saving 80,000 lives a year across Europe. It’s time this Government acted to save lives here too.

European Union targets have been vital in encouraging the adoption of renewable energy. Some countries like Germany and Denmark have embraced this change, invested and revolutionised their energy markets, creating new high skill jobs and leading technological advance.

Britain has dragged its heels so much for David Cameron’s rhetoric of “leading the greenest government ever”.

It is an EU directive that has stopped the mobile phone companies from ripping us off if we make or receive a call abroad. It was the collective strength of 28 countries representing 520 million people achieved that.

The European Convention on Human Rights, empowering citizens to hold the Government accountable has strengthened our rights as citizens and stopped the Government gagging free speech and a free press.

It was the Labour Government who wrote the Convention into UK law through the Human Rights Act of 1998.

Today senior figures in the Conservative Government are discussing repealing that Act which has ensured the state cannot violate people’s human rights.

It is because of those human rights in law that we had the inquest into Hillsborough, so that those families finally got justice after 27 years – and congratulations to them for their tenacity and their dignity.

And it’s worth reflecting that if this Government repealed the Human Rights Act, and opted out of the European Convention, it would join Europe’s only dictatorship Belarus as the only other country not to support these universal human rights.

On rights at work, Europe through the social chapter and other directives has delivered:

Over 26 million workers in Britain benefit from being entitled to 28 days of paid leave and a limit to how many hours they can be forced to work;

Over eight million part-time workers (over six million of whom are women) have equal rights with full-time colleagues,

Over one million temporary workers have the same rights as permanent workers,

340,000 women every year have guaranteed rights to take maternity leave.

And it’s important to understand the benefit of these gains. It means workers throughout Europe have decent rights at work. Meaning it’s harder to undercut terms and conditions across Europe.

Several Leave supporters have stated clearly they want to leave Europe to water down workers’ rights. To rip up the protections that protect work-life balance, that prevent discrimination and prevent exploitation and injustice.

That is why we say, the threat to the British people is not the European Union, it is a Conservative Government here in Britain, seeking to undermine the good things we have achieved in Europe and resisting changes that would benefit the ordinary people of Britain.

A vote to Leave means a Conservative Government would then be in charge of negotiating Britain’s exit. Everything they have done as a Government so far means we could not rely on them to protect the workplace rights that millions rely on. A Tory Brexit negotiation would be a disaster for the majority of people in Britain.

But that’s not to say we can be satisfied with the European Union as it is. We believe Europe can and must do far more to meet the needs of our people. That’s why when we make the case to remain, we also make the Labour case for reform.

A Labour government will protect the gains that have benefited our people, while energetically pushing for progressive reform in Europe, in alliance with our allies across the continent. A vision of a Europe of co-operation and solidarity.

We can reform to get a better deal for consumers;

To strengthen workers’ rights across Europe and prevent the undercutting of wages,

To meet the challenges posed by migration and the refugee crisis,

To end the pressure to privatise public services,

To democratise the EU’s institutions and bring them closer to people,

And for reforms to ensure we generate prosperity across Europe to the benefit of all.

Many people will be taking a European holiday in the coming months they will benefit from lower air fares and cheaper roaming charges on their mobile phones. But there are other areas where working with our political allies in Europe and the 27 other countries representing over 450 million people. We can use our collective negotiating power to stop corporations taking consumers to the cleaners.

A few weeks ago, I raised with the Prime Minister the need for reform of the Posting of Workers Directive to close a loophole that allows workers from one country to work in another and be paid less than local workers doing the same job. Although the instances are relatively few, such incidents undermine community cohesion by exploiting migrant workers and undercutting local workers.

His loophole only benefits unscrupulous employers seeking to drive down wages and Labour is pressuring the UK Government to back the proposals on the table to close this loophole.

It is not migrants that undercut wages, but unscrupulous employers. Migrant workers are often the victims of the worst exploitation, and it is our duty to close loopholes and strengthen enforcement of employment protection here in Britain and across Europe.

A couple of months ago, I held talks with the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras who was elected on a clear anti-austerity platform to resolve his country’s financial crisis.

The way in which Greece was treated by its creditors, including the EU, shows that Europe has to develop fairer and more effective mechanisms to manage such crises for the future. No one benefits from enforcing unpayable debt with yet more destructive austerity and the ties of solidarity are undermined by such counter-productive action.

But although Greece has suffered from enforced austerity, the Greek President and the Greek people are clear that their country wants to stay within a reformed Europe.

That must be a Europe that works together to develop a strategy for renewed and shared growth, and for the gains of that growth to be shared more equally.

Many thousands of people have written to me, with their concerns about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (or T-TIP) the deal being negotiated, largely in secret, between the US and the EU.

Many people are concerned rightly, that it could open up public services to further privatisation – and make privatisation effectively irreversible. Others are concerned about any potential watering down of consumer rights, food safety standards, rights at work or environmental protections and the facility for corporations to sue national governments if regulations impinged on their profits.

I share those concerns.

A few weeks ago the French President, Francois Hollande, said he would veto the deal as it stands and to become law any deal would have to be ratified by each member state. So today we give this pledge, as it stands, we too would reject TTIP – and veto it in Government.

And there is a challenge to the Prime Minister, if it’s not good enough for France; it’s not good enough for Britain either.

David Cameron make clear now that if Britain votes to remain this month you will block any TTIP trade treaty that threatens our public services, our consumer and employment rights and that hands over power to giant corporations to override democratically elected governments.

The EU’s state aid rules, which limit the scope for governments to intervene to support our vital industries, also need to change. But so does how British governments interpret them. The steel crisis highlighted how Germany, Italy, France and Spain all did much better at protecting their steel industries.

They acted within EU state aid rules to support their industries, whether through taking a public stake, investing in research and development, providing loan guarantees or compensating for energy costs.

Nevertheless, the rules are too restrictive and national governments must have the powers to act to protect key industries.

We are committed to bringing the railways into public ownership. That is the democratic will of the public and of our party. That is why our MEPs are scrutinising the Fourth Rail Package currently being negotiated in the European Parliament to ensure that there is no obstacle to a fully socially owned rail network.

More widely, we need reform in Europe to ensure we put a stop to the drive to privatise and break up our public services and utilities. The experience of Britain’s many failed privatisations and the damage done by the outsourcing of our public services is an object lesson in why the pressure to continue this three-decades-old experiment has to be brought to an end. Here and across Europe.

When it comes to the refugee crisis, many European countries have made great efforts in response. Whether taking in large numbers of people fleeing persecution, or funding refugee camps in Lebanon and Turkey as Britain has done.

But collectively, as a continent we have failed, failed to co-ordinate our efforts, failed those countries like Greece and Italy that have seen desperate people land on their shores in unprecedented number. And, tragically, we have failed people who desperately need and deserve our help.

Labour is determined that this failure must never be allowed to happen again and that in future we co-ordinate our efforts as a continent.

On migration, we cannot deny the inevitable; we live in a smaller world. Most of us in Britain know someone who has studied, worked or retired abroad. We have reciprocal arrangements with the European Union. Our citizens, well over one million of them, live in other EU countries and EU citizens come to live and work here.

But it is not that simple, I’ve already talked about how some industries are affected by the undercutting of wages and the action that can be taken to tackle that. But some communities can change dramatically and rapidly and that can be disconcerting for some people. That doesn’t make them Little Englanders, xenophobes or racists. More people living in an area can put real pressure on local services like GPs surgeries, schools and housing.

This isn’t the fault of migrants. It’s a failure of government. The coalition government in 2010 abolished the Migrant Impact Fund; a national fund to manage the short term impacts of migration on local communities. By abolishing it, David Cameron’s Coalition undermined the proper preparation and investment that communities need to adapt.

We are clear, we would restore such a fund and it could be funded from unspent

We cannot and should not want to close the borders. Not for European citizens wanting to come here, tens of thousands of whom work in our NHS. And not for British citizens who want to take advantage of opportunities elsewhere in Europe.

But we do have to make sure that public services are able to sustain the communities we have here, part of that is through a Migrant Impact Fund, but partly too it is about reversing the damaging and unnecessary austerity policies that this government continues to impose on our communities and our country.

We, the Labour Party, are overwhelmingly for staying in, because we believe the European Union has brought investment, jobs and protection for workers, consumers and the environment.

But also because we recognise that our membership offers a crucial route to meeting the challenges we face in the 21st century, on climate change, on restraining the power of global corporations and ensuring they pay fair taxes, on tackling cyber-crime and terrorism, on ensuring trade is fair with protections for workers and consumers and in addressing refugee movements

Britain will be stronger if we co-operate with our neighbours in facing those challenges together.

Europe needs to change. Today, I’ve outlined some areas for progressive reform. But those changes can only be achieved by working with our allies.

There is an overwhelming case to remain and reform so that we build on the best that Europe has achieved.

But that will only happen if we elect a Labour Government, committed to engaging with our allies to deliver real improvements in the lives of the people of our country.

That is why we established the Labour In campaign, because we have a distinct agenda, a vision to make Britain better and fairer for everyone, by engaging with our neighbours.

So please use your vote on 23 June, to vote Remain and then campaign with us for the reforms we need.

Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, in London on 21 May 2016.

Thank you all for coming today to Labour’s inaugural State of the Economy Conference … Thank you to John and his Shadow Treasury Team for organising

Thanks in particular to Ha-Joon Chang … for his terrific speech on building a balanced and sustainable economy.

And to Sue Himmelweit, Paul Mason, Linda Yueh, Adam Marshall and Len McCluskey for their engaging discussions …

And thank you … most of all … to all of you who took part in the various workshops this afternoon … Debating some of the most important issues facing our economy and our society.

These discussions are invaluable.

It is only through active debate – like we’ve had today – between politicians and businesses … employers and employees … thinkers and educators … that we can build an economy for the future that delivers for all.

I’ve said before that we must change the way our party makes policy.

When politicians and their advisers sit round a table and devise policy … they rarely succeed in getting to grips with the real problems our country faces.

We need to involve more people in decision-making and consult far more widely outside politics.

I believe it’s essential to listen:

To the growing army of the self-employed … often struggling to make ends meet, and falling through the cracks in our social security system;

to entrepreneurs seeking to innovate and create wealth;

to trades unions who stand up for workers’ rights;

to our friends from progressive movements in countries across the world;

to academics; and

to business people shaping a more dynamic, responsive economy.

Only by engaging and debating these crucial issues … as we have done today … can we develop a comprehensive plan … to forge a new economy and the kind of Britain we want to live in.

I think we’ve come a long way already in the eight months since I became leader … John McDonnell, has started to lay out the framework of a new economics.

As John repeated today … an economy that allows people to flourish and prosper in the 21st century will be a very different kind of economy from that of the 1990s … let alone the economy of the 1940s or 1960s.

Building an economy for the future requires bold ambition … A New Economics … And that’s what today has been about.

Looking forward … And tackling – head on – the reforms necessary to build a fairer, more equal, more just society.

Today we’ve discussed the state of the economy. And the sad truth is… the economy is in a bad state.

What’s clear is that this government is not creating the economy of the future we need … Six years ago George Osborne said austerity would wipe out the deficit and cut the debt.

That’s the wonderful thing about George Osborne’s five year plans … they’re always five years away.

What we have instead is an economy that works for the few, not for the many.

Inequality is rising … And food bank queues are growing.

We’ve seen an explosion of zero hour contracts … and a race to the bottom on pay, job security and workplace rights.

A gender pay gap that is still wedged at 19 per cent.

Despite George Osborne’s promises of a ‘March of the Makers’ … we have a government that won’t stand up for key strategic industries … like steel.

Instead, they sought to abdicate their responsibilities when it came to the crisis in the steel industry …

And it was only concerted pressure from the trade unions, from Labour MPs and from the steel communities that forced the government … kicking and screaming … into a change in position.

The security of home ownership is moving further and further away for so many people.

We have a government that … despite the growing economic consensus against austerity …. despite the fact the Prime Minister tells us we now have a ‘strong economy’ … is continuing to pursue spending cuts.

A government that is failing to invest in our public services … leading to a crisis in our NHS.

A government that is failing to invest in critical infrastructure.

A government that is failing to invest in the skills that our young people want … and our businesses need.

And let’s be clear. Austerity is a political choice not an economic necessity.

Even Iain Duncan Smith is now parroting our mantra … saying after the Budget that Osborne’s cuts were … “distinctly political rather than in the national economic interest”.

The Chancellor has utterly failed against every single one of its economic targets …

· They have failed to eradicate the deficit

· Failed to meet their target on the debt

· Failed to rebalance the economy

· Failed to address the productivity crisis

This government has consistently made the case for austerity … George Osborne has staked his economic credibility on his austerity economics … and they are failing to deliver.

But worst of all, this government does not seem to understand … that their cuts have consequences

… when you cut adult social care … it means isolation and a loss of dignity for older and disabled people… and it piles pressure onto an NHS that is already being overstretched

… when you saddle young people with more debt … you impede their ability to buy a home or start a family

… when you fail to build housing and tackle sky-high rents … then homelessness increases and the number of families in temporary accommodation increases.

… when you slash the budgets of local authorities … then leisure centres close … libraries close … children’s centres close

… when you close fire stations and cut firefighters … then response times increase and more people die in fires.

These are the very real consequences of the politics of austerity.

Being in opposition can be frustrating … but Labour has proved you can still have influence and make a difference.

We have forced the government to back down in a number of important areas … from tax credits to disability payments … and, most recently, to forced academisation.

Together as a country … we must continue to stand up against the Conservative six year record of mismanagement of the economy …and stand up for the vital services on which we all depend.

But what Labour stands for is far more than stopping the damage being done by this government.

We want to see a break with the failed economic orthodoxy that has gripped policy makers for a generation … And set out a clear vision for a Labour government … that will create an economy that works for all, not just the few.

We must be ambitious and bold to win the next election … and deliver the new economy that Britain needs.

… An economy that tackles the grotesque inequality that is holding people back.

… An economy that ensures every young person has the opportunities to maximise their talents … And that produces the high skilled, high value and secure jobs, they need.

… An economy that delivers new, more democratic forms of ownership.

… A zero-carbon economy that protects our environment.

… A balanced and broad-based economy … supported by investment and a proactive industrial strategy that devolves decision-making to where it needs to be.

We want to see a genuinely mixed economy of public and social enterprise … alongside a private sector with a long-term private business commitment … that will provide the decent pay, jobs, housing, schools, health and social care of the future.

An economy based on a new settlement with the corporate sector that, yes … involves both rights and responsibilities.

Labour will always seek to distribute the rewards of growth more fairly … But, to deliver that growth demands real change in the way the economy is run.

Change that puts the interests of the public, the workforce and the wider economy … ahead of short-term shareholder interest.

Wealth creation is a good thing: we all want greater prosperity.

But let us have a serious debate about how wealth is created … And how that wealth should be shared.

It is a co-operative process between workers, public investment and services, and, yes … often very innovative and creative individuals and businesses.

So if wealth creation is a shared process … then the proceeds must be shared too.

Technology is changing the way we work … Digital technology and robotics are transforming jobs and whole sectors of the economy.

Globalisation means that greater international trade is altering where jobs are based … and where workers are in demand.

Work for many has become insecure … and we want to change that because we believe that a happier, more secure workforce is a more productive workforce.

That’s why I was at Ecotricity in Stroud on Thursday … launching Workplace 2020 alongside our shadow Trade Union minister Ian Lavery … and our shadow Business Secretary Angela Eagle … to kickstart a national conversation about what the world of work should look like in 2020.

Only an economy that is run for all wealth creators … the technicians, entrepreneurs, designers, shopfloor workers, and the self-employed … and that puts them in the driving seat … is going to deliver prosperity for all.

John McDonnell talked this morning about rewriting the rules of the economy … Because the old rules have failed.

The old rules – Tory rules – have led to a lack of investment in our economy, which is failing our communities.

They’ve led to a government that has failed to tackle our unbalanced economy … They are failing to support key strategic industries … like our steel industry.

They have failed to invest in the infrastructure that communities across the country desperately need.

They have failed to invest in housing … The government says it aspires to build a million new homes … The reality however is that housebuilding has sunk to its lowest level since the 1920s.

They have failed to invest in developing the skills our young people deserve and our businesses need.

The old rules mean failing to invest in Britain’s future.

A Labour government will make different choices.

If we want to create the economy of the future … then government has a vital role to play in making the long-term, patient investments … that are the foundations of long-term prosperity.

We want to see the reindustrialisation of Britain for the digital age … That means putting public investment front and centre stage …. driven by a National Investment Bank as a motor of economic modernization … based on investment in infrastructure, transport, housing and the technologies of the future.

John also talked this morning about the need for greater democratisation and decentralisation.

This includes the contribution that co-operatives can make to our economy … to empower people to come together to take control of their own lives

This is the complete opposite of the Conservative devolution plans … passing responsibility without the support and resources to enable people to take control.

John has rightly talked about establishing a “right to own” for workers … to stop jobs and companies being treated like possessions on a Monopoly board … and to give workers the first refusal on taking over a company when it changes hands.

The New Economics is also about economic justice.

People expect companies that trade in this country … and people who live in this country … to pay their tax in this country … It funds our public services.

Aggressive tax avoidance and tax evasion are an attack on the NHS, on schools our care for elderly and disabled people and the social security system that prevents poverty, homelessness and destitution

So I’m very grateful to Professor Prem Sikka who is reviewing HMRC for us to ensure it has the resources it needs to tackle this endemic problem … and to our Labour MEPs who are leading the tax justice fight in Brussels.

I’m equally grateful to Danny Blanchflower for the work he’s doing to review the Monetary Policy Committee … and to Lord Kerslake who is reviewing the Treasury

The machinery of government overseeing the economy must be fit for the reality of today’s economy.

We believe that economic justice and economic credibility must go hand-in-hand … Which is why all our plans are underpinned by Labour’s Fiscal Credibility Rule … agreed following discussions with the world-leading economists on our Economic Advisory Council.

Our rule makes clear that we will ensure solid public finances … while rejecting the politically motivated austerity that is strangling investment … and choking prosperity.

We need a Labour government that will put investment, productivity and sustainable growth first … alongside a 21st century industrial policy.

That is how we will provide the economic security that the Tories are failing to deliver.

… Security and investment in jobs and skills.

… Security and investment in housing.

… Security and investment in our NHS and our schools.

… And, yes, security and investment in our public finances too.

We have the opportunity to build a fairer, more equal, more prosperous economy.

But we must be bold and ambitious in our approach.

It was the radical Labour government of 1945 that delivered so many of the social achievements of which we Labour members are so proud … the National Health Service, the welfare state, council housing, comprehensive education … institutions that were about the collective improvement of all.

And we must harness that radical spirit to build an economy for the 21st century.

This morning John laid out the framework developed over the last eight months … by which Labour can win the next election.

It is a bold and ambitious programme.

I don’t underestimate the scale of the task in front of us.

There is no point being in politics if you are not ambitious not for yourself but to make your community your country and our world a better and more just place.

And it’s a programme that we will continue to refine … With your help.

As I said at the start … we need to involve more people in decision-making … and consult far more widely outside politics.

It is essential that we continue a rich and diverse debate on these fundamental issues … To continue to build the New Economics from the ground up.

So I hope you will all continue to engage in these important discussions and to contribute to this debate … to continue building a platform for economic and social justice.

Thank you for your contributions today … and in the future.

Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Opposition, in the House of Commons on 18 May 2016.

I am pleased that we have dispensed with the Outlawries Bill, which will ensure that we have civility and freedom of speech in this Chamber. I intend to adhere to the civility part of it; it is up to others to decide on the freedom of speech.

July will mark the centenary of the battle of the Somme, an episode of needless carnage and horror. This week marked the centenary of the Sykes-Picot agreement, in which Britain and France divided up the Ottoman empire into spheres of influence, arbitrarily establishing borders that have been the cause of many conflicts ever since. Those two events should remind us in this House of two things: first, the decisions that we take have consequences, and secondly, it is our armed forces that face the consequences of failed foreign and military policy. Our duty to our armed forces is to avoid the political mistakes that lead to their being sent unnecessarily into harm’s way. As the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) pointed out, the effects of war go on for the whole lifetime of those who take part in it.

By tradition, at the beginning of each parliamentary Session, we commemorate the Members of the House we have lost in the last year. In October, we lost Michael Meacher. He was, as all who met him knew, a decent, hard-working, passionate and profound man. He represented his constituency with diligence and distinction for 45 years. He was a brilliant Environment Minister, a lifelong campaigner against injustice and poverty, and a brilliant champion of the rights of this House and of Parliament. We remember Michael for all those things.

Harry Harpham sadly had only a few months to serve this House. He represented his constituency and the concerns of the steel industry in Sheffield with incredible diligence. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), who now represents the constituency, told me at his passing:

“We have admired the bravery and courage he showed in his life, which was formed during the miners’ strike and carried him forward for the rest of his life.”

Harry and Michael were incredibly decent and honourable men who were absolutely dedicated to serving their communities and standing up for strong socialist principles. We commemorate them both.

I congratulate the mover and seconder of the Queen’s Speech motion. It is a job I have never had to do myself—it is one of those powers of patronage. First, I congratulate the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) on her excellent speech, which I attribute to the excellent training she received early in her career. It is possible that many members of her own party are unaware that sister Spelman, or comrade Spelman, was, like me, a full-time union official before entering Parliament. While industrial strife raged across the country during the early 1980s—I was part of it—[Hon. Members: “Was?”] They are just too fast, Mr Speaker. While that was happening, the right hon. Lady was travelling the whole country defending sugar beet workers from disreputable and exploitative bosses. At least, that is what I think the National Farmers Union was doing at that time. Alas, time changes things, and she and I now sing from a slightly different hymn sheet.

Talking of which, I understand that the right hon. Lady has been a stalwart of the parliamentary choir for many years. Perhaps she will find time to give me some singing lessons. Given her background, perhaps together we could sing “The Red Flag” as a duet. [An Hon. Member: “Or the national anthem.”] We will sing from the widest hymn sheet, don’t you worry.

The right hon. Lady has an excellent reputation for her outstanding work in international development, both in opposition and then in government. She steered her party—some might ungraciously say kicking and screaming—into delivering the pledge that 0.7% of our GDP would be spent on international aid. I pay a huge tribute to her for the way in which she championed the rights of women and young girls in the developing world. She stood up for their needs and their rights and ensured that our aid budget, correctly, went disproportionately to help them, and I thank her for that.

I think that underneath it all, the right hon. Lady is a bit of a closet radical, actually—so we will talk later. After some research, I can exclusively reveal to the House the roots of her radicalism. Her constituency includes the town of Dorridge, and the waters of Dorridge are very important. In the early 18th century—long before she was elected, I should add—her constituency was a nest of rebellion and sedition, led by a local landowner, George Frederick Muntz. A refugee, Muntz was one of the founders of the Birmingham Political Union, an organisation that was pivotal in the introduction of the 1832 Reform Act. The union later became part of the Chartist movement, to which we trace the origins of socialism in this country and the Labour party. Naturally, I hugely admire the Birmingham Political Union for what it did.

A member of the parliamentary choir, the right hon. Member for Meriden was in fine voice today, and I am sure the whole House will join me in thanking her for her speech.

I turn to the seconder of the Loyal Address, the hon. Member for Bracknell. Before joining the House, he worked as a doctor. Today, he has lanced the myth that doctors are bad communicators. In his maiden speech, he said:

“I am often asked why I…moved away from being a doctor to being a Member of Parliament. To my mind, people who come in here should want to make this country a better place.”—[Official Report, 16 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 913.]

The hon. Gentleman and I come from absolutely opposite sides of the political spectrum, but we are both sincere in sharing the same goal: to make our country a better place for those who live here.

Researching the hon. Gentleman’s career, I thought I had uncovered yet more evidence of the deep fractures that exist within the Government today. I was informed that he was a leading member of an organisation known as the Grumblers. However, we have been into this in some detail, and further research indicated that this was not another group of malcontents on the Government Back Benches—that is already full—but a cricket club of which he would have us believe he is a leading light. I did not want to leave any of that research undone, so I approached the club to get a sense of the hon. Gentleman’s character before making today’s speech. [Laughter.] Yes, it’s definitely coming.

The House will be eternally grateful for the words of Mr Anton Joiner, the chairman of the Old Grumblers cricket club, for his insightful and helpful response to my request. If I may quote from Mr Joiner’s letter, the House will be all the better informed. He wrote:

“Dear Sir,

We are glad you have established contact with our team, as we are desperately seeking recovery of several seasons’ overdue match fees by our hon. Friend. Please communicate our willingness to waive penalty interest in return for prompt payment.”

The letter goes on:

“In an undistinguished and tragically all too long career as a top order batsman, the good doctor managed an average of just 11.2 runs with the bat. His efforts with the ball yielded a solitary wicket—that of a French farmer’s wife during a tour match in Brittany in 2008.”

The hon. Gentleman’s generosity knew no bounds:

“As a Doctor, Mr Lee advised on numerous sporting injuries to club players. The misdiagnosis of many led to a string of unnecessary early retirements and an acute player availability crisis, from which the team has only recently recovered.

As Captain of the Old Grumblers Cricket Club, I rarely had to handle as obstinate and disruptive a character as the Doctor, who stubbornly refused to stand in any conventional field placement and very openly demonstrated a disdain for team sport, command structures… Presumably this led him to the logical career choice of Tory backbencher.”

The letter concludes:

“Please pass on my regards…and the attached invoice.”

I very much hope that the hon. Gentleman is a good sport as I understand that he is an equally distinguished rugby player, but those stories were beyond my research capabilities and must be saved for another occasion. I thank him for his more acceptable exploits in the House today.

The Opposition will judge the Government’s legislative programme against three tests. Will it deliver a more equal society, an economy that works for everyone and a society in which there is opportunity for all? Sadly, it appears that many proposals in the Queen’s Speech militate against those aims, as have the proposals in previous years. Still this Government do not seem to understand that cuts have consequences. When they cut adult social care, it has an impact on national health service accident and emergency departments. When they saddle young people with more debt, it impedes their ability to buy a home or start a family. When they fail to build housing and cap housing benefit, homelessness and the number of families in temporary accommodation increase. When they slash local authorities’ budgets, leisure centres, libraries and children’s centres close. When they close fire stations and cut firefighters’ jobs, response times increase and more people are in danger of dying in fires.

This austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity. It is a wrong choice for our country, made by a Government with the wrong priorities. Women have been hit hardest by the cuts. More than 80% of cuts fall disproportionately on women. As the Women’s Budget Group has pointed out, all the cuts mean that opportunities for women are systematically reduced and diminished in our society. The Government are failing to deliver an economy that meets the needs and aspirations of the people who sent us here—a Government who are consistently failing to meet their own economic targets. They have failed on the deficit, failed on the debt, failed on productivity and failed to rebalance the economy.

Once again, the northern powerhouse was announced—if only the rhetoric matched the reality. In March we discovered that the northern powerhouse has 97% of its senior staff based in London—a northern powerhouse outsourced to the capital. For all the Chancellor’s rhetoric, there has been systematic under-investment in the north, and only 1% of projects in the Government’s infrastructure pipeline are currently in construction in the north-east.

Much could be said in a similar vein about housing. The Government claim to aspire to build 1 million new homes, but housebuilding has sunk to its lowest level since the 1920s. So out of touch are those on the Government Benches that they think that £450,000 is what people can afford for a starter home. The announcement again today about Britain’s digital infrastructure is welcome. Perhaps this time it will become a reality—I hope it does. Perhaps the Chancellor—sadly, he is not here today—is a convert to our fiscal rule. It is a rational rule, backed by leading economists, which allows for borrowing on capital spending.

I point out to the Prime Minister that whether on the northern powerhouse, building homes or investing in digital infrastructure, simply saying things does not make them happen. It takes commitment to fund them. This Government are failing to deliver even on their own proposals, although often that is for the better. The Prime Minister said two weeks ago:

“We are going to have academies for all, and it will be in the Queen’s Speech”.—[Official Report, 27 April 2016; Vol. 608, c. 1423.]

Just a fortnight later, there is no sign of that. Parents, governors, pupils, teachers and headteachers will be relieved to get final confirmation today that the wrong-headed proposals to impose forced academisation have finally been dumped.

The Government have been forced to back down on a number of issues in recent months: on tax credits, the Saudi prison deal, police cuts, cuts to personal independence payments for disabled people, the solar tax, the tampon tax, freedom of information, Sunday trading, and aspects of the Trade Union Bill and the Housing and Planning Act 2016. To call that “disarray” would be generous, and that is without discussing the resultant black hole in the Government’s finances.

Perhaps the most worrying proposal of all is the decision to try to redefine poverty and deprivation. Apparently, it is all about instability, addiction and debt—all things that can be blamed on individuals about whom Governments like to moralise. Well, no! It is about 1 million people in our country using food banks, record levels of in-work poverty and the fact that absolute child poverty, after housing costs, is up by half a million. Poverty is up in disabled households on the same basis. Homelessness has gone up every year since the Prime Minister took office, and 100,000 children spent last Christmas in temporary, insecure accommodation. The causes of that are cuts to welfare benefits, cuts to employment and support allowance, the bedroom tax, the benefit cap, wages being too low, insecure jobs, and housing—whether to rent or to buy—being too expensive. We will not tackle poverty by moving the goalposts. Poverty and inequality are collective failures of our society as a whole, not individual failures.

On current form, much of what Her Majesty announced today will not require her signature. I very much hope that the Government’s proposals announced today to consign into ever deeper debt those seeking to learn will be rejected.

I hope there will be a cross-party consensus on one element of the Government’s proposals—[Interruption.] The hon. Member of all people should understand what I am about to say. I am talking about the proposal to repeal the Human Rights Act, which was introduced at the very start of the Labour Government. It brought the European convention on human rights into British law, thus empowering British citizens and giving rights to everybody in our society. We will defend our Human Rights Act as we defend the human rights of everyone in this country, and indeed all those who benefit from the European convention on human rights.

I understand—this is quite bizarre—that the Home Secretary is the driving force behind tearing up the Human Rights Act and leaving the convention, which is strange because she has very strong European credentials. What it shows is this: whether we are in or out of the EU, the main obstacle holding back the people of this country is not the EU, but the Conservative Government—a Conservative Government who are displaying a very worrying authoritarian streak.

The primacy of the House of Commons is not in doubt. We are committed to replacing the House of Lords with a democratic Chamber, but we will scrutinise sceptically any proposals that seek to weaken the ability to hold the Government to account, as the other place rightly does. Democracy requires accountability for the decisions that are made.

The national health service is in record deficit, yet there is no legislation in the Queen’s Speech to improve it. Perhaps the Prime Minister can belatedly adopt the central medical principle of first doing no harm. Unfortunately, pending legislation will affect the NHS—the decision last year to cut nurses’ bursaries. Will the Prime Minister confirm that that decision will be put to the House and voted on in this Chamber? It is opposed by all the unions involved in the NHS and the royal colleges representing nurses and midwives.

The move to dissuade people from taking up nursing is all the more bizarre coming as it does at a time when the Government are planning to train nurses to take on more responsibilities from doctors.

We welcome the Government’s proposals to support driverless cars in our society, but can they address a Secretary of State for Health who appears to be asleep at the wheel in control of the NHS?

With regard to the sugar tax, we have made it clear previously that we will look favourably on proposals to tackle childhood obesity.

We welcome the Government’s U-turn on forced academisation.

Several hon. Members rose—

Jeremy Corbyn

I will continue my speech, if I may, Mr Speaker.

As with schools, we would like to see all Ministers being good or even outstanding, but they need the freedom to listen to the public and the people who understand services best, so we look forward to scrutinising the surviving proposals in the Government’s education Bill to ensure that they are better thought through. Just as we have opposed the increase in unqualified teachers in our classrooms, we hope that the Government will get to grips with the £800 million being spent annually on supply teachers because of the recruitment and retention crisis in schools. With school budgets scheduled—[Interruption.] We just agreed to behave with civility in this Chamber. Some Government Members have very short memories. [Interruption.]

Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)

On a point of order, Mr Speaker, am I not right in thinking that it is a customary courtesy in this House for people, though they do not have to, to give way in speeches that last over 20 minutes?

Mr Speaker

The essence of the hon. Gentleman’s point was encapsulated in that first sentence: customary, but it is not required. There is no obligation. Members may want the right hon. Gentleman to give way, but he is not obliged to do so. I gently say to the hon. Members for Winchester (Steve Brine) and for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) that they can have a go, but if the right hon. Gentleman does not want to give way they will not advance their cause by shouting. That, in itself, is uncivil, of which the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) is never guilty.

Jeremy Corbyn

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

School budgets are scheduled to receive their biggest real-terms cut since the 1970s. Education is actually quite important in our society. The Government can therefore ill afford to be spending so much on supply teachers. We have to move away from agency Britain. We will look at the proposals for a national funding formula that would encourage the Government to look, for example, at the school meals and breakfast policies that have been introduced in Labour Wales, which help young people in Wales.

We welcome moves to speed up adoption. That is in the interests of both children and those families committed to adoption, but the priority has to always be the welfare and safety of the child. But at a time when social services and children’s services are being slashed, we have to ask whether the funding will match that desire. We should also put on record—I am sure all of us can agree on this—our thanks to all those families who foster, adopt and give children the very best lives they possibly can. They are heroes in our society.

Students today are in more debt than ever. I make it clear to the Prime Minister that he will not get any support from the Labour Benches on raising tuition fees. The Government are penalising students, announcing the abolition of maintenance grants last year and now announcing that fees will be raised even further. This is a tax on learning—as the Chancellor of the Exchequer called it in 2003—from a Government that cut taxes on capital gains. What message does that send about the economy they want to create? It is that wealth generates more wealth with minimal tax—that and effort and hard work land you in a lifetime of debt, with no support while you make that effort. What an insult to the aspirations of young people wanting an education. We are deeply concerned too about the implications of a free market, free-for-all in higher education.

The Government have committed to more apprenticeships. We welcome that if it means more high quality apprenticeships and if it inspires young women to become engineers and young men to become carers. Apprenticeships give opportunities to every young person in our society. But they should not be seen by any employer as a means of circumventing paying a decent wage, while offering little training. We all hear too many cases of that.

We will scrutinise carefully proposals to give prison governors more freedom. It seems the policies of this Government have been to give greater freedoms to prisoners. That is the consequence of overcrowding prisons and cutting one third of dedicated prison officer positions. We welcome proposals to give greater time for education and reform and to reduce reoffending rates. When I was a member of the Justice Committee, I visited young offender institutions in Denmark and Norway. Their approach works. [Interruption.] The prison crisis is one that does not require laughter to solve its problems. The approach adopted in those two Scandinavian countries requires more funding and more staff, but it has a very good effect on reoffending rates.

There is, equally, an urgent need to invest in the care of prisoners suffering from mental health conditions. The alarming rise in the number of prison suicides in recent years means that two prisoners every week are taking their own lives, which is a truly horrifying statistic but only part of the disarray in our prisons. Last year, emergency services were called out 26,600 times, or every 20 minutes on average, to incidents in UK prisons. The tide of violent attacks in prisons is rising and has to be addressed. That is the House’s responsibility.

Many more of our public services are under threat. The Land Registry is threatened with privatisation—a move considered and then rejected in the last two Parliaments. Those Governments listened to the concerns of public and expert opinion. I hope and trust that this Government will consult and come to the same conclusion and that, rather than selling off the family silver, they will retain the Land Registry in public ownership and administration.
We are very clear that the BBC is a valued national institution, but its success is anathema to this ideological Government. Labour will continue to stand up for the licence fee payer and will fight any further Government attacks on the BBC and its independence. Whether it is the NHS, good and outstanding schools, the east coast main line in public operation or the BBC, the Government just cannot stand the threat of a good example of popular, successful public services. We will stand up for them against the Government.

The Opposition have long highlighted the injustice of the unequal funding allocations to local authorities. I hope that a local government finance Bill will provide an opportunity to address the disgraceful situation in which the poorest areas, mainly in the inner cities of this country, suffer by far the greatest cuts to expenditure. The cuts imposed on local authorities have had a devastating impact on services for both young and old. Just this week, despite the protestations of some local residents, Oxfordshire Council, the Prime Minister’s favourite county council, announced that it was closing half of its children’s centres. In the past five years, £4.5 billion has been cut from the adult social care budget, which has taken away dignity from elderly and disabled people. Again, the effects of those massive cuts in the adult social care budget fall disproportionately on women in our society.

We will scrutinise very carefully the devolution of business rates, which, if not handled correctly, has the potential to exacerbate inequalities between areas of this country. We have a deeply unbalanced economy, and we will oppose plans that widen regional inequalities, rather than narrow them.

On a positive note, we wholeheartedly welcome moves to devolve powers to re-regulate bus services, and we will look to expand those provisions more widely. Whole areas of the country, particularly in rural Britain, have no bus services at all, and they should be provided with them, particularly where people do not have access to their own cars.

We are very sceptical about competition in the water industry, which actually goes against the trend in much of the rest of Europe, which is of re-municipalising water and giving it back to communities—a Government committed to devolution might consider that, but this Government want competition. Perhaps we can have competition in reservoirs, pumping stations and mains pipes. We could even have three standpipes on every corner. Imagine the vision of Tory Britain: one for Evian, one for Perrier and one for Malvern water.

Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Jeremy Corbyn

No, I will not give way. We have no objection—

Several hon. Members rose—

Mr Speaker

Order. I am well aware that there are Members who want to intervene, and it is perfectly reasonable of them to want to intervene. Equally, there is no obligation on the Leader of the Opposition to give way. [Interruption.] Order. Somebody mutters from a sedentary position, “Too long.” The hon. Gentleman is entitled to his opinion; I am telling the House what the factual position is, however uncomfortable, which is that the right hon. Gentleman is in order. What is not in order is for Members to shout and barrack, in total violation of what has been set out at the start of our proceedings. I urge Members who may be irritated to behave with dignity.

Jeremy Corbyn

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Jeremy Corbyn

No, I am not going to give way.

We have no objection to reviewing the franchise with regard to overseas citizens, but I hope the Government will take this point seriously and will be minded not only to look at those who have lived abroad for several decades, but to look at 16 and 17-year-olds in this country—old enough to marry, old enough to work, old enough to join the Army and rightly allowed to vote in the Scottish referendum, but not able to vote in our elections. There is something perverse in a Government enfranchising thousands of people who have not lived in Britain for years when they are disfranchising hundreds of thousands of British residents through their individual voter registration plan. That is why, as part of the EU referendum campaign, many of us are spending a lot of time encouraging young people to ensure that they are registered to vote. It is their future that is at stake.

Everyone in this House understands the risks posed by terrorism. This city, London, has experienced it before, as have other cities here and around the world. We will of course support strong measures to give the police and security services the resources they need, but we will also support checks and balances to ensure that powers are used appropriately. We would welcome any proposals from the Government to reform the Prevent strategy and instead to emphasise the value of community-led work to prevent young people from being drawn into extremism in any form.

In foreign policy, we must put our promotion of human rights at the centre. We cannot continue to turn a blind eye and, worse, sell arms to those countries that abuse human rights either within or beyond their borders. I welcome the forthcoming visit of President Santos of Colombia and I look forward to meeting him to discuss human rights in what is hopefully on its way to becoming a post-conflict society.

The Government’s legislative programme spoke of “humanitarian challenges”. We are grateful to Lord Dubs for taking on the challenge of making the Government more humanitarian. Just a few weeks previously, this Prime Minister was referring to refugees fleeing persecution as “a bunch of migrants” and “a swarm”. I have to say this: those words were wrong. I hope the Prime Minister will think again about them and recognise, as everyone should, that refugees are simply human beings, just like any of us in this Chamber, who are trying to survive in a very dangerous and very cruel world. We need to solve their problems with humanity, not with that kind of language.

All parts of the House will have been heartened by the increased turnout in the elections for police and crime commissioners—particularly welcome in Cheshire, Gwent, Humberside and Leicestershire—and we welcome any moves that will give them the powers to improve accountability for their communities. Our police forces mostly do an excellent job, but the recent Hillsborough inquest and the results of it showed that they must never be above scrutiny, to ensure that they do their jobs properly.

We Opposition Members know that decent public services are necessary for a good society, but also that they depend on tax revenues. We welcome any measures designed properly to tackle tax avoidance and evasion, but this Government’s record on this subject is one of continuous failure. Just a month ago, the Prime Minister welcomed here EU proposals on country-by-country tax transparency, but on 26 April Conservative MEPs yet again voted against these same proposals. Did they not get the memo from the Prime Minister? That same Prime Minister continues to allow UK tax havens not to issue public registers of beneficial ownership and he opposes wholesale the introduction of beneficial ownership registers for offshore trusts. People expect companies that trade in this country and people who live in this country to pay their tax in this country—it funds our public services. Aggressive tax avoidance and tax evasion are an attack on our NHS, on our schools, on care for elderly and disabled people and on our social security system that prevents poverty, homelessness and destitution.

Mr Speaker, if you want to deliver a more equal society, an economy that works for everyone and a society in which there is opportunity for all, it takes an active Government, not the driverless car heading in the wrong direction that we have with the present Government.

Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn, the Prime Minister, in the House of Commons on 21 April 2016.

It is a pleasure to second the Humble Address. Many people across the country today will be wishing Her Majesty a very happy 90th birthday, and we on the Labour Benches send our warmest greetings to add to them. May I say, as a relatively young whippersnapper, that I am fully in favour of our country having leaders of a finer vintage?

Today, we are talking about a highly respected individual who is 90. Whatever differing views people across this country have about the institution, the vast majority share an opinion that Her Majesty has served this country, and has overwhelming support in doing so, with a clear sense of public service and public duty, as the Prime Minister has indicated.

Her Majesty has carried out that duty with great warmth. My dear friend Mildred Gordon, the former Member for Bow and Poplar, who recently died aged 92 and whose funeral is tomorrow, met the Queen at the opening of the docklands light railway. The Queen asked Mildred how she was getting on as a newly elected MP, and Mildred replied, with the devastating honesty with which she replied to everything, by saying that she felt she had very little power to help her constituents. The Queen took her on one side and said, with her customary wit:

“Once they find out you lot can’t help them, they all write to me”.

Her Majesty was born less than a month before the general strike. A first daughter, who would later unexpectedly become heir to the throne, she was born two years before all women in Britain got the vote, as the Prime Minister pointed out. Her childhood was during the mass poverty of the long slump of the 1930s and she had her teenage years during the brutal carnage of the second world war. At war’s end, she experienced people’s joy first hand, as the young princess walked through the streets of London; I am pleased that this morning Radio 4 replayed that very moving oral history of our time and lives—indeed, of before the time of most of us in the House.

Her Majesty became Queen at just 25, following the death of her father, and has reigned for nearly 64 years. She is the longest reigning monarch in our history. In that time, our country has become a better and more civilised place. We have enacted equality legislation, ended colonialism and created the national health service, the welfare state and the Open University. As Head of the Commonwealth, she has been a defender of that incredible multicultural global institution. We are all very grateful for the way in which she has stood up for the Commonwealth; she has visited every Commonwealth country, I think. The Prime Minister was quite right to draw attention to her historic visit to Ireland in 2011, and her speaking in the Irish language at the reception held for her in Dublin during that visit.

Today I am welcoming two nonagenarians from my constituency to Parliament. Both have a link with the celebrations that we are conducting today. They are Iris Monaghan and George Durack. Iris was born in what is now the Republic of Ireland, but was then part of Britain. She came to London in 1951, before the coronation, and was a Crown civil servant in the Inland Revenue. She has helped to collect taxes since 1951, keeping us all in the state to which we are accustomed.

George fought in the second world war, serving in the 1st Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, attached to the 7th Armoured Division. He had a daily close affinity with Her Majesty throughout his working life, as he worked for the Royal Mail, delivering Her Majesty’s head through letterboxes all over north London.

Yesterday, I was present at the graduation of a 91-year-old constituent who has just completed her third degree—a master’s no less—at Birkbeck, University of London. That proves that it is never too late to take up a new career and learn something else.

It is their generation—that of the Queen and of my parents—that defeated the horrors of fascism in Europe, endured the privations of the post-war era and built a more civilised and equal Britain. We have much to be grateful to them for.

On the day of her coronation in 1953, Her Majesty was driven through Upper Street in my borough. But her crowning achievement in Islington was to come some years later—you will enjoy this, Mr Speaker. In 2006, she was due to open the new Emirates Stadium in my constituency, but had to pull out due to an injury. Unfortunately, that is a fate that has afflicted far too many of Arsenal’s squad in subsequent years, so we must congratulate her on her prescience. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) was then leader of Islington Council. As the Queen could not attend the opening, the whole squad was invited to Buckingham Palace to meet her, and my hon. Friend accompanied them. We know that the Queen is absolutely above politics. She may be above football, too, but many locals harbour a quiet, secret view that she is actually privately a gooner.

In her reign, the Queen has seen off 12 Prime Ministers. I recently attended my first state dinner; she has received over 100 state visits, and, as the Prime Minister indicated, visited well over 100 countries on our behalf. I admire her energy and wish her well in her continuing and outstanding commitment to public life. I wish her a very happy 90th birthday.