The Threat of Extremism

It was once said that “Freedom of speech means freedom for those who you despise, and freedom to express the most despicable views. It also means that the government cannot pick and choose which expressions to authorise and which to prevent.” I was reminded of this during a recent debate at the District Council on its revised safeguarding policy.

The policy does an excellent job of tackling the increasingly complex and developing landscape in relation to the council’s safeguarding responsibilities towards vulnerable children and adults. The well-publicised failings of councils such as Rotherham have highlighted how easy it has become – especially when government has become so fragmented – for appalling abuses to go undetected. 

But within this draft was a very curious recommendation with no obvious connection to safeguarding. It would oblige local authorities to ensure “publicly-owned premises are not used to disseminate extremist views”. Schools are to be put under a similar obligation.

It’s easy to believe in freedom of speech for those with whom we agree. A mark of a truly liberal society is one that extends those same freedoms to those with whom we would profoundly disagree. To challenge repugnant ideologies, they must be heard and tackled head on with reasoned argument. Those with long memories will remember the Thatcher government’s ban on broadcasting Sinn Fein representatives. It made this country a laughing stock and strengthened worldwide support for the Republican cause.  

We should not take on those guilty of illiberalism using their same tools of oppression. We should not seek to silence those who oppose the right to freedom of speech.  

The proposal is ill thought-out. What is “extremism”? A lazy shortcut to describe those whose views fall outside the “conventional”, but in no way threaten? I have in the past used public premises to call for the renationalisation of the railways – a policy supported by 70% of Britons. Our MP – now a government minister – branded this an “extreme” left-wing proposal. Does that make me an extremist? Am I to be silenced?!

As our government hurtles headlong towards mass surveillance (a policy from which even the US government now resile) and abandoning the Human Rights Act with no clear idea of what is to replace it, we should be careful of so easily giving up hard-won freedoms.

Coalition priorities

I was recently asked a question on my priorities in coalition government ...

In the event of a coalition agreement involving your party which one policy would you personally fight hardest to include and which one policy would you refuse to accept?

The one policy that I would fight hardest to include is a bill to reverse privatization of the NHS and support reinvestment in a publicly funded and publicly accountable NHS. Ten years ago Oliver Letwin told what he thought was a private audience that within five years of a Tory government, the NHS would be privatized. In a televised interview in 2013, Michael Portillo revealed that if the Tories before the last election had told the British people what they intended to do with the NHS, people would not have voted for them. Forced privatization has made the NHS less efficient, taken resources away from frontline care and lead to worse health outcomes. It must be reversed.

The one policy that I would refuse to accept is continued austerity – further cuts to public services, punishing the sick, the old, the young, the disabled, the most vulnerable in our society for the mistakes of the bankers. While those on benefits are stigmatized and shamed, those who caused the economic crisis the casino capitalists who gambled with our money, and when it all went wrong, were bailed out with our money, continue to cash in. Under this government their wealth has doubled. It is time they started to pay their way, and to close the gap between rich and poor, so we can move forward as one nation, with secure jobs, affordable homes, a publicly funded NHS and a transport system run for passengers not profit.

Affordable housing

In response to a question on housing that I received recently, I gave the following response:

How would you cater for the housing needs of all people, regardless of age, income, mental or physical health, citizenship or background?

By abandoning housebuilding to the private sector successive governments have let us down. Local authorities no longer build and so fewer homes are being delivered than at any previous peacetime period since world war one, 109k completed in 2013 compared to around 300k a year in the 50s to 70s. Just 5% of government housing expenditure is spent on building new homes. Developers respond to the market – building houses for those who can afford to pay top prices for them – and are not interested in meeting the urgent need for affordable homes. 

With a shortage of homes, the waiting lists for social housing have never been longer – more than 1.8 million are on the waiting list for a home? The government’s response? To sell off our remaining housing stock in a cynical pre-election bribe.

Some families living in desperate conditions are being forced to wait years for a suitable home. They may have to live for months in temporary accommodation, uncertain where they'll be moved to next, or how much longer they'll have to wait for stability.

The private rented sector offers short-term leases, sometimes poor conditions and high costs –a form of housing is unsuitable for many households, especially the vulnerable and those in need of a stable, secure home.

The Green Party has committed to building 500k socially rented homes by 2020, increasing the social housing budget from £1.5 to £6 billion by 2017. We’ll raise £5 billion by scrapping mortgage interest tax relief on buy to let property. This will also greatly reduce housing benefit costs, too large a proportion of which goes straight to private landlords.

An end to Tax-Dodging

I was asked a question on tax-dodging at the Christ Church Malvern hustings yesterday. In pledging if elected to support a bill to end tax-dodging, this was my response:

"Given that tax dodging hurts the poorest hardest in both the UK and overseas, would you, if elected, support and promote a new Tax Dodging Bill that would make it harder for big companies to avoid paying taxes in the UK and in developing countries?

Paying tax is the contribution each of us makes to living in a civilized society. It pays for our health service, education, transport infrastructure and much more besides. As we live longer, each of us will spend the majority of our lives dependent on others and on such services: taxation is the contribution we make to those services. None of us lives in isolation. We are all dependent on others.

Without those services industry would not be able to make a profit. When companies and individuals dodge taxes, the rest of us have to pay more or else go without these essential services. Quite simply, tax-dodging is immoral.

If all the tax that was due was collected, this country would be £120bn per year better off – that is twice the deficit, and 30x the amount lost to benefit fraud.

How can this government claim to be serious about collecting tax, when it cuts the staff at HMRC in half, and allows HMRC to make deals with big corporations to pay only a fraction of what is due. Instead government savages the welfare state and penalizes the least well off.

How can we take seriously an MP whose campaign fund has been financed by someone like Lord Fink who has said ‘everyone avoids tax’. I don’t avoid paying tax. I don’t suppose most of the people in this room do.

It is time that those who can step up to the plate and started to pay their way."

Syria and Its Refugees

In 2014 we have been commemorating the outbreak of the First World War, the most terrible conflict in modern history. Not only did millions of young people lose their lives, but large parts of continental Europe were left devastated and hundreds of thousands of men, women and children found themselves displaced by a conflict not of their making.

This year, in 2015 we have the chance of celebrating the centenary of one of the most incredible acts of humanity from the people of Malvern – when, in the midst of their own suffering during the Great War, they opened their doors to give a welcome and a place of refuge and safety to 500 Belgian refugees.

What better way could there be of marking this centenary than to reach out to those innocent victims of today’s terrible conflict in the Middle East and thereby continue this country’s proud tradition, which stretches back centuries, of receiving refugees. What better way of showing how much we cherish our freedoms than by extending those freedoms to those who are subject in their countries of birth to unjust imprisonment and torture.

And, amidst the hysteria in this country about immigration – stoked up by those who refuse to accept any responsibility for our economic calamity, but seek to point the finger of blame at so-called outsiders, a debate I don’t intend to get into tonight, it cannot be stressed enough that asylum seekers – and ultimately refugees – are not economic migrants. 

A migrant is a person who makes a conscious choice to leave their country to seek a better life elsewhere. Before they decide to leave their country, migrants can seek information about their new home, study the language and explore employment opportunities. They can plan their travel, take their belongings with them and say goodbye to the important people in their lives. They are free to return home at any time if things don’t work out as they had hoped, if they get homesick or if they wish to visit family members and friends left behind.

Refugees are forced to leave their country because they are at risk of, or have experienced persecution. The main concern of refugees is for their safety, not economic advantage. They leave behind their homes, most or all of their belongings, family members and friends. Some are forced to flee with no warning and many have experienced significant trauma or been tortured or otherwise ill-treated. The journey to safety is fraught with hazard and many refugees risk their lives in search of protection. They cannot return unless the situation that forced them to leave improves.

And we must remember too how this country has benefitted from accepting refugees. It is estimated, for example, that since 1972 30 thousand jobs have been created in Leicester alone by Ugandan Asian refugees. About 1200 medically qualified refugees are recorded on the British Medical Association’s database. It is estimated that it costs around £25,000 to support a refugee doctor to practise in the UK – training a new doctor is estimated to cost over a quarter of a million. And the Office for Standards in Education reports that children seeking asylum – who may ultimately become refugees – contribute very positively to schools across the country, which in turn enables more successful integration of families into local communities. Refugees want to work, they want to contribute, they want to be part of our communities.

Some will argue that we already have more than our fair share of refugees in the UK? The figures do not bear this out: the UK is home to just 1% of the world’s refugees – out of more than 15 million worldwide. Over 80% of refugees live in developing countries, in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, often in camps with the most basic facilities.

Syria's neighbours are struggling under the weight of this unprecedented crisis – more than three million people have fled the country – and it is time we stopped asking of them what we are not doing ourselves. Ours is a modest proposal, the resettlement of a small number of refugees. Our government has so far agreed to take just 500 Syrian refugees and to date only 100 have arrived in the country for resettlement. That’s 100 out of three million.

In 1915 the people of Malvern showed their humanity when they welcomed the displaced of the First World War and made them part of our community. It is now time that we showed the same generosity of spirit as our predecessors a century ago by offering a place of to those very much less fortunate than ourselves, allowing them the chance to rebuild their lives, free from persecution.

TTIP and the betrayal of UK consumers

It has been said that “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Into this category falls the Government’s lie that savage cuts to essential public services are an austerity-driven imperative to reduce national debt. It is nothing of the sort: the debt rises to record levels, while big business cherry picks services that have been built over many years with public money and expertise. While their shareholders, wherever they may be, will reap the short-term benefit, the euphemistically named ‘third sector’ – charities and voluntary groups – will be left to pick up the pieces. Government has no interest in public service.

Some lies, though, are so big that they can’t even be spoken aloud – except in terms of baffling acronyms designed to send us into stupor before we’ve understood their consequences. No doubt it is for this reason that the media (dominated by the multinationals who stand to benefit) have told us nothing about TTIP and why there is no public debate about ISDS – though it is no exaggeration to say that these represent the biggest challenges to democratic governance in a generation.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a trade treaty that has been negotiated between the EU and the US for some years – almost entirely behind closed doors and the details of which the EU and our government appear shy about disclosing. Its purpose, apparently, is to remove the barriers to trade between the continental blocs. Who could possibly argue with that?! Except the current trade barriers between the EU and US are already very low. In fact, the treaty’s purpose is to remove those pesky profit-blocking rules – the ones that stop consumers being poisoned or killed, or that prevent pollution. 

It is argued that this consumer-protecting legislation (derided by government as “bureaucratic red tape”) needs to be “harmonised”. Again, difficult to argue with that (though US regulation is far less stringent – eg 70% of US processed food contains genetically modified ingredients). But that is where the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) – a part of the TTIP – comes into play. ISDS will allow big multinationals, using their armies of corporate lawyers, to sue national governments in offshore “arbitration tribunals” – beyond the UK courts – for doing anything that harms their profits. Fanciful? Not at all. Philip Morris, the US tobacco conglomerate, has already used similar trade treaties to sue the Uruguayan and Australian governments for trying to implement greater control on cigarette advertising. And a Swedish energy company has sued Germany for phasing out nuclear power. So should a future UK government try to enact a law that, for example, restricted the ability of a private-sector US medical services giant poaching great swathes of the NHS, it would find itself being sued for billions. 

By means of TTIP – supported by the three main parties and UKIP – our government is stripping UK citizens of the last vestiges of protection from rapacious big business. Speak out before it’s too late.

A Brand New Politics

Russell Brand does have a point. Though at times he seems to confuse a thesaurus with political eloquence (‘autodidact’ looms large in every Brand sermon), he has nevertheless highlighted the real disconnect between most ordinary people and our politicians. With a couple of notable exceptions, political party membership is lower than it has been for a century. And when people do get the opportunity to have their say – casting their vote at an election – increasingly they show their disengagement by abstaining. Our forefathers fought and died for the right to vote that today is so readily surrendered. But it is the politicians who are to blame.

There are many causes of this malaise. Our first-past-the-post system means most elections are decided in a handful of seats by a few voters; those of us unlucky enough to live elsewhere have the distinct impression we don’t matter and that the politicians have stopped listening. The main parties are all trying to occupy the same ‘middle ground’, to such an extent they have become entirely indistinct from one another. There’s actually a broad spectrum of opinion in this country – but when I hear the leaders of the main parties speak I am reminded of Marx (Groucho that is) who said ‘These are my principles. And if you don’t like them I have others.’ Additionally we must look for causes in the types of people we elect to Parliament. Just a generation ago, the Commons was filled with teachers, miners, dockers, health professionals – those who had in fact done a ‘proper’ job – not career politicians with little experience of real life beyond an apprenticeship in media or on a City trading floor so alien to most of us.

While Brand has highlighted the problem, he is somewhat hazier on the solutions. One positive to take from people’s disengagement from formal political dialogue is that they have found other ways of ‘making a difference’ in their communities – by working directly or indirectly with local groups on issues that affect their daily lives. Some of these will be overtly political – campaigning on specific issues. Many however will not be – but still they make a difference. Politicians need to start listening, and social media should increasingly play its part. People are beginning to rely on social media for their news and everyday discourse; and they rightly expect to be engaged by politicians via this medium. More importantly, though, social media is an open parliament, where its users, not politicians, set the agenda.

And politicians, media-trained to reveal nothing of their personalities or beliefs, need to start having a dialogue directly with the people they serve. For this reason I fully applaud the efforts of the Lansdowne Church, supported by the town council and others, to launch a series of debates on topical issues. Last Saturday it was food banks, a debate that was lively, informative and revealing of the grotesque inequalities of 21st century Britain, with local people showing they were better informed than our representatives in Westminster.