Shami Chakrabarti, Labour’s Shadow Attorney General, commenting on the government’s appointment of an international ambassador dedicated to the promotion of human rights, said:

“Any nod in the direction of human rights is welcome and we wish the new Ambassador well.

“But gestures alone are insufficient, and Rita French’s task will be
an uphill struggle in a party that has consistently campaigned to scrap
Human Rights instruments and cosied up to every despot in the pursuit of
trade.

“The race to be next Tory leader has so far involved pretenders
competing to be the most authoritarian. We wait to see if this
announcement sees a reversal of this worrying direction of travel.”

Nia Griffith MP, Labour’s Shadow Defence Secretary, responding to reports that a new defence review will be launched, said:

“The decision to hold a separate defence review cannot simply be an excuse to kick the difficult decisions facing the defence budget into the long grass.

“Just this week we have had serious warnings from the Head of the Army about the threats that this country faces and there has been growing concern that the Government’s deep cuts to our nation’s defences have left us ill-equipped to respond to those threats.

“The true test of any defence review will be whether it delivers real investment in our nation’s defences and the resources that our Armed Forces so badly need. You cannot do security on the cheap and it is high time that the Government recognised this.”

Justin
Madders MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Minister, responding to the latest NHS vacancy data, said:

“Theresa May
has overseen an unprecedented workforce crisis in our NHS, with over 100,000
vacancies across the system. These latest figures reveal in the starkest
fashion how serious shortages have become, with new trainees put off from
joining and existing nurses increasingly retiring early.

“Even in her
own backyard, the situation is desperate. Thames Valley managed to hire just
five nurses for 1,957 advertised posts – just one in 400. On the day her own
Foreign Secretary has called for emergency funding, Theresa May must get an
urgent grip of this escalating chaos in our NHS.”

Ends

Barbara
Keeley MP, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health, commenting on the rise in Mental
Health Act detentions, said:

“There is no
doubt that severe Tory cuts to the community services that intervene before
people’s mental health reaches crisis point, alongside cuts to other local
treatments have contributed massively to the rise in detentions.

“The Tories
have undone improvements seen under the last Labour Government in reducing
detentions, achieved by building teams to intervene early in cases of psychosis
and by providing crisis and home resolution treatment.

“It’s time
the Tories faced up to the damage they have done to mental health services and
immediately invest in and ring-fence mental health budgets, as Labour has
pledged.”

Ends

Peter Dowd MP, Labour’s Shadow
Chief Secretary to the Treasury, responding to today’s public
sector finance figures from the ONS, said: 

“Three years after the Tories
promised they would close the deficit, the Government is still on track to
borrow around £50 billion this year. And the national debt continues to increase,
up by £62.3 billion on December 2016. 

“The failures of austerity are
laid bare not just in the crisis in the NHS and across our public services, but
in the failure to achieve its stated aim of eliminating government
borrowing. 

“Only yesterday we saw the
IMF’s forecast for global growth next year revised up yet the growth forecast
for the UK revised down, which on top of our fiscal position says all you need
to know about the failure of this Government’s economic policy.

“The next Labour Government will
have a fully-costed plan to eliminate the deficit over five years and reduce
government debt as a share of GDP over a Parliament, while investing for the
long-term to build an economy for the many, not the few.”