Tag Archives: Labour

Diane Abbott MP, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, responding to the Home Office consultation on tackling acid attacks, said:

“Unless there are sufficient officers to enforce the law, new legislation will have a limited effect.

“The truth is that offenders feel enabled to commit these types of crime because they don’t fear being caught. If the Tories were serious about cracking down on these horrendous crimes they’d match Labour’s pledge to put 10,000 extra officers on our streets to protect communities.”

“The nuclear deal agreed with Iran in 2015 was one of the crowning diplomatic achievements of this century to date; a crucial step in stopping Iran from becoming a nuclear power and creating a North Korea-style crisis in the heart of the Middle East. As the IAEA has repeatedly demonstrated, and as the US State Department accepts, Iran has fully complied with every dot and comma of that deal.

“So it is an act of wanton vandalism for Donald Trump to jeopardise the future of that deal today, and to move the goalposts by linking it to important but utterly extraneous issues around Iran’s wider activities in the region. It is also totally disingenuous to suggest that the deal just needs to be fixed, when the only evidence that it is any way broken is inside Donald Trump’s head.

“Yet sadly, this kind of reckless and thoughtless behaviour is what we have come to expect from this President. From the Paris climate change deal to US membership of Unesco, he has demonstrated a flagrant disregard for the institutions and agreements that bind the international community together in the shared pursuit of a better future. That is not what we expect from the President of the United States, and it is high time for the British government to tell him so.

“Because yet again, this shows that the strategy of kow-towing and hand-holding operated by the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary has utterly failed, and they have once more allowed our so-called closest ally to treat them like fools. When he fooled Theresa May and Boris Johnson on climate change, we can say shame on him, but now the same pair have been fooled on Iran as well, we can only say shame on them.”

Peter Dowd MP, Labour’s Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, responding to Philip Hammond’s remarks calling the EU “the enemy”, said:

“These are foolish remarks by Philip Hammond, and reveal that he is clearly feeling the pressure from Tory MPs calling for him to be sacked. The tone of this rhetoric will obviously not unblock negotiations or help protect our economic interests.

“The Chancellor should be putting the country before the infighting in his own party when he is representing us overseas, and refrain from acting like Basil Fawlty on holiday. It is vital that these negotiations do not lead to a situation where Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal, risking jobs and living standards.

“This weak government has squandered the past months of the Brexit negotiations, squabbling with each other rather than trying to get the best deal for Britain. If they are not up to the job then they should step aside and let Labour take over.”

Barbara Keeley MP, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Minister for Social Care, commenting on new figures for delayed transfers of care due to a lack of social care, said:

“It is worrying that the number of days that patients are stuck in hospital due to a lack of social care has increased by more than a quarter since last year.“

“Delayed days caused by patients waiting for care packages at home and in care homes and nursing homes have also increased this month, yet we still see no action from the Tory Government to deal with the social care crisis.

“A Labour Government would provide the urgent additional funding needed to deal with the crisis in social care.”

Rebecca Long-Bailey MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, commenting on the Government’s energy price cap announcement, said:

“The price cap legislation introduced today is wholly inadequate and proof that the Tories have broken their promise to help consumers.

“It has no detail on the cap, what level it will be at, how it is to be calculated or whether consumers will receive the £100 savings they were promised. It passes the buck yet again to Ofgem.

“It does not even guarantee when the cap will be introduced. And there is no reform of the market just an overall review which will be drawn out.

“Labour would introduce an immediate emergency price cap to ensure that the average dual-fuel household energy bill remains below £1,000 per year, while we transition to a fairer system for bill payers.”