Gurkha Veterans

John McDonnell Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) prompted me to start reminiscing about 29 April 2009. I do not want to be patronising, but there is a moral message and lesson here for hon. Members in my party: on that day, there was a majority of 21 in favour of a settlement being given to the Gurkhas, with twenty-seven Labour Members voting in favour of it. We were called rebels for that. Sometimes, though, we have to make a moral judgment and say to the Whips: “I believe this is the right thing to do.”

It was a huge success and a fantastic campaign, with much publicity secured by Joanna Lumley, who ran a terrific campaign. The lawyers behind it were Martin Howe and his team, with Mark Collins and others. Momentum built up behind that campaign because people were outraged about the discrimination that the Gurkhas were suffering—it was as simple as that. I have to say that the points that hon. Members have raised today demonstrate that that discrimination continues today.

On the issue of pensions, the argument always put by Government is that they cannot legislate or operate retrospectively, but they can—successive Governments have done that. We should not allow the discriminatory way that Gurkha pensioners have been treated, with all their service not being taken into account and the mythical date of 1997 being used against them; as a result, there are Gurkhas living in poverty here and Gurkhas living in poverty back in Nepal—despite all their service, which we have congratulated them on today. In addition, there are issues in our own community with Gurkhas suffering homelessness and financial distress.

I would welcome the Government standing back and producing a strategy for the Gurkhas who have served this country, looking comprehensively at their current situation and at the measures that could be used to address that poverty. In my opinion, what that means is a fair pension settlement once and for all, so that we can get this issue resolved.

There are issues with regard to housing, as I have said, but also with regard to health. We have always extolled the Gurkhas for their bravery, and different surveys have demonstrated that they may suffer less post-traumatic stress disorder than other service people, but I think that is a bit of a myth. I think there are issues with regard to their experiences and the impact that has had on them, and that as they get older, because of this myth, they may not be getting the support and treatment that they should rightfully access. So we need a Gurkha strategy—that is what I would like to see coming from this Government.

In my community, 25 or 30 years ago there must have been only about five Gurkha families, but we now have a sizeable community of at least 500 or 600 families. We have set up a local Gurkha association. One thing we have been successful in is that it wanted a part of the local cemetery dedicated to the Gurkhas. It now has part of that cemetery and we have commemoration services there every year. The Gurkhas contribute widely to the community. Just as they served in the military so well, they serve so well within our community. We therefore owe them a debt of honour to resolve some of these issues, particularly on pensions.

As the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) mentioned, yes, we have established the Gurkhas’ right of settlement, but there are issues with regard to visas and other matters that fly in the face of the practice of their family life and cultural life. Those need resolving. I would welcome the Government standing back, looking at whether we can develop a comprehensive strategy and reporting back to the House so that we can have a checklist of actions that we can all support on a cross-party basis to address the concerns of these people we have all admired so much.

Nuclear Test Veterans

John McDonnell Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

The hon. Lady has been a doughty campaigner on behalf of her own party on this issue and I thank her for her work in this House. She is right. The veterans are not asking for special treatment; they are just asking for the truth and for justice. Many of these men, if they are lucky enough to still be alive, are in their 80s. Time is running out for them and they need justice now. That is why it is so important to have the urgent one-year inquiry. I will return to that point later.

I want us to look at the lived reality for those servicemen at Christmas Island. The men fished daily—that is known. They ate that fish, sometimes every day. They drank desalinated water drawn from a marine environment now known to have been contaminated. They worked in extreme heat, increasing their intake of water and food—as we do, when we get hot—and therefore increasing the pathways through which radioactive material could enter their bodies.

This is the critical point: ingested radiation is not the same as background exposure. It does not simply pass by. It lodges deep within the body. It decays slowly. It damages tissue. It alters DNA. Governments over the years have long relied on averages and on comparisons to natural background radiation, sunlight or medical imaging, but those comparisons are fundamentally flawed. You can step out of sunlight if it is too hot. You can leave a room that has radon gas in it. You can decline a medical scan if you are worried about it. But you cannot remove radioactive particles that have been ingested and embedded deep within your body. That distinction matters, but it has been completely ignored over the years.

What is equally troubling is not just the existence of this data, which has been around for decades, but the pattern of its concealment. This information could have been disclosed at multiple points: in the 1950s, during the inquests into early deaths; in the 1980s, when public concern first intensified; in the 1990 and 1993 reports; in proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights; in High Court cases; in pension appeals; and as recently as 2024, when veterans sought access to their medical records. At every stage, the same narrative was maintained. At every stage, the data was absent. The 2014 report itself warned that the information could

“challenge the validity of statements”

made by the Government and could potentially overturn previous judicial decisions. And yet instead of coming clean and that information being published, it was buried.

We have got to ask ourselves, why? Why was a report that raised “reasonable doubt” not disclosed to the very people whose lives depended on its findings? Why were veterans denied access to information that could have supported their claims for justice and compensation? Why were the courts allowed to rely on evidence that we now know to be fundamentally flawed? These are not abstract questions—they go right to the heart of trust between the state and those who serve it. The men and women in uniform sent to carry out dangerous duties do so on the understanding that their Government will act with honesty, transparency and integrity. That trust has been broken, and we now have a duty—not just a moral duty, but a political and legal duty—to put this right.

Let me be clear about what the Government must do next. First, there must be a full, independent public inquiry into the handling of radiation data from the nuclear testing programme—not a limited review or an internal investigation, but a full inquiry with the power to compel evidence and testimony. Secondly, all relevant documents must be declassified and placed in the public domain—no more partial disclosures and work in progress justifications; the public interest in transparency far outweighs any institutional discomfort. Thirdly, there must be a comprehensive review of all past legal cases and pension decisions that relied on the 1990 and 1993 reports. Where decisions were made on the basis of incomplete or inaccurate evidence, they must be revisited. Fourthly, and most importantly, there must be a fair and just compensation scheme for nuclear testing veterans and their families.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I am intervening, first, to send my love to my hon. Friend’s mum.

Secondly, in our debates over the years, we have always emphasised urgency because of the age of the victims. However, we also need to recognise and ensure that any inquiry recognises that this has gone down two generations now. We have met the families—the sons and daughters, the grandchildren—who have suffered extreme conditions as a result. It is just as my hon. Friend said; this has penetrated into the DNA of whole families. There is a sense of urgency, of course, but there must also be a recognition of the significance of this having affected three generations, as we have witnessed.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

My mum will be very excited that my right hon. Friend has sent her his love—there will be pandemonium on ward 47 at the moment, I can tell you.

My right hon. Friend is right: there are certainly urgent issues that the Government must consider today, but beyond today, and beyond issuing an urgent and fast compensation scheme, a one-year inquiry and the other points I have referenced, there must also be a wider research project into the impact of the radiation on the descendants and the support they have needed from Governments over the years, because they have been completely neglected so far. We know from our constituency surgeries about the effects that have been felt right within families; it is quite upsetting and harrowing sometimes to hear those stories and to hear that they have received very little Government recognition for what they have suffered.

Middle East

John McDonnell Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I cannot give the right hon. Gentleman a timescale. What I can say to him is that we are bending all our efforts in defence and more widely to contribute to the development of all options, and those must involve allies and they have to be multinational. In the end, as he suggested to the House, the test will be the decisions of commercial shipowners, crews and insurers about the safety that they can have about resuming their commercial trade through the strait of Hormuz.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

What Donald Trump said at the weekend was that unless the strait was opened, he would obliterate Iran’s power plants. I agree that attacking a nuclear plant could be extremely catastrophic. As we have made clear to Putin, however, attacking power plants that supply power to civilians is against international law and is clearly a move from defence to aggression. On that basis, while I join the Secretary of State in hoping that the next five days secure peace, may I ask him to confirm that UK bases will not be used to attack power plants? If there is to be such a change of policy, will he ask the Prime Minister for a debate and a vote in this House, because I want my constituents to know that I am not willing to support such escalation?

[John Healey]

The permissions for the use of UK bases by the US are defensive. They do not include the striking of Iranian power plants, which is the clarification that my right hon. Friend asks of me. As I and the Prime Minister have said, those principles of defensive actions and decisions with a sound legal basis, and actions in co-ordination with allies to ensure a collective self-defence in the region, will continue to inform the decisions and choices that this Government make.

Ministry of Defence: Palantir Contracts

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s focus on that particular contract. As a Defence Minister, I do not know about Home Office policing contracts that were secured by individual forces, but I can direct him to my colleagues in the Home Office, who might be able to help more.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I have been trying to follow the Secretary of State’s responses regarding relationships with political parties and others. There are issues with regard to some companies. For example, the Quadrature hedge fund has massive investments in Palantir and donates to political parties in this country, including the Labour party, to which it made a £4 million donation in 2024. Will he take away the question of what influence that had on the decision-making processes for the award of contracts?

[Luke Pollard]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question, and for the inadvertent promotion he has given me. He is right to talk about the necessity of ensuring that political donations are transparent and in order. That is an area in which the Government have already set out some changes, and I want our politics to learn lessons from the experiences of the past to make sure that donations are clear and transparent, which was not always the case under the last Government. However, I take seriously the issue that he has raised, and if he writes to me with the detail of that particular donation, I would be happy to look into it.

Ukraine

John McDonnell Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her place on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench. I agree with her that it is important that, as we hopefully move towards a peace deal that is brokered by our American allies, the Ukrainian voice is heard loud and strong, and that a deal signals not a pause in hostilities but the end of hostilities. In order for that to happen, the Ukrainians must have their voice heard in the negotiations and be able to maintain a viable defence of their own nation in the future. The UK stands ready to support them through the coalition of the willing, the Multinational Force Ukraine and further actions.

I hope the hon. Lady will recognise that the actions we have taken on the Russian oil price cap have made a difference. My colleagues in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and in the Treasury continue to look at more methods that we can use. Indeed, a key part of our sanctions activity involves doing so alongside our allies, and we continue to build international support for those actions. That includes making sure that we can maintain our NATO commitments and our NATO unity when it comes to not only Euro-Atlantic security, but the support we offer Ukraine.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

May I return to the issue of the Russian assets? I talked to members of the Ukrainian community last night, and their anxiety is that if a deal is not done quickly—[Interruption.] Sorry, did the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) want to intervene?

[Mr Francois]

indicated dissent.

[John McDonnell]

I talked to members of the Ukrainian community last night, and they were extremely worried about the situation. They are concerned that unless a deal is done quickly, there will be further threats not just to Ukraine but to Poland, because the Russians are amassing on the Belarusian borders. The fear is that if Trump somehow tries to impose a peace deal that eventually becomes temporary, the frozen Russian assets will be used for the next invasion of Ukraine. That is why it is so important to seal the deal now.

With regard to Abramovich, I welcome the measures taken by the Government, but there was a long period in which the City of London was used as the Russian laundromat for tax avoidance. It would be worth while the Government looking again at the Russian tax avoidance that located itself within the UK, to see whether some of those assets could be used to rebuild Ukraine.

[Luke Pollard]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments. I agree that it is important that we make progress on the seized Russian assets. Those negotiations and discussions are continuing today, and I hope that we will be able to report positive news in due course. He is right about the threat not just to Ukraine, but to our NATO allies along the eastern flank. It is for that reason that the UK has deployed forces and Typhoon jets in support of our allies. We are supporting our Estonian allies through Op Cabrit and the presence of the British Army’s forward land forces, and we will continue to do so.

I recognise what my right hon. Friend said about the importance of making sure that we can be proud of the measures that we are taking as a country to stand up against money laundering and illicit finances. We have made good progress, but my colleagues in the Treasury will continue to look at new avenues to clamp down on illicit finance. We hope that peace comes soon to Ukraine, but the threat from Russia will not end when peace comes.

Situation in the Red Sea

John McDonnell Excerpts

Monday 5th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

My right hon. Friend makes the excellent point that Iran is behind all this. Iran is behind Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the IRGC-aligned militia that we have seen attack not just American troops—I often hear it is American personnel have been attacked 160 separate times in Syria and Iraq, but in fact about a third of those occasions involved British troops as well. On every occasion, Iran is behind all of this. I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend and we are working hard to pressurise Iran into realising that its current approach can do no good at all and will destabilise the region, which it claims it does not want to do.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Let me first make the point that a direct attack on Iran would be insanity; the region would be provoked and others would be dragged into it. I understand why the Government are saying that it is wise “to not over-link” Houthis strikes with Gaza, but the reality is that the middle east region is on the edge of conflagration as a result of the war that is going on and the attacks on Gaza. The priority must therefore be to secure peace in Gaza. We have a limited role in that, but we know that Netanyahu would secure peace if pressurised to do so by the American Government, because realistically they are the only power that can influence him and Israeli strategy. What further talks have taken place with the Biden Government to ensure that they exercise the maximum pressure on Netanyahu to get to that peace negotiating table?

[Grant Shapps]

The right hon. Gentleman will be aware, I hope, that the UK and the US work very closely on this. I was in the States last week. I met Blinken, Lloyd Austin and others to discuss exactly the points that the right hon. Gentleman raises about how we bring together a solution that not only provides, ultimately, the Palestinian state for the Palestinian people, but security guarantees for Israel. It is also important to realise that we are working closely in a number of different spheres, including on the Lebanese border, where we are working hard to try to prevent a further conflict there. We should remember that 125,000 Israelis have had to move from that border because of the activity of Lebanese Hezbollah. We are working with the Lebanese Government. I saw the Yemeni Defence Minister yesterday, and we discussed how to prevent that conflict from becoming part of this, too. The Government are pulling every single possible diplomatic lever in what is clearly a very complex position.

Middle East: UK Military Deployments

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

Yes.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) mentioned future arrangements. Can the Secretary of State give the House an assurance that there will be no deployment of British troops on the ground in Gaza, Israel or the west bank without the approval of this House?

[Grant Shapps]

There simply is not going to be a deployment, so that will not be required.

War in Ukraine

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I know it is difficult to get exact numbers, but the calculations so far of wounded Ukrainian troops are anything between 100,000 and 120,000, as well as about 18,000 civilians. What support is being provided to Ukraine’s health services to help them cope with the wounded and injured? What support is being given with regard to specialist service link-ups between the UK and Ukraine, also to provide the best support that we can?

[James Heappey]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that there are significant casualties on the Ukrainian side, though it is important to note that they are less than those suffered on the Russian side. Those are both military and civilian. On the military side, there is a coalition of nations, just as there is with all other types of capability to provide military aid. There are UK medics based in Lviv as part of that. When I was Rzeszów in Poland just two weeks ago, my plane pulled up alongside a Swedish air force plane that was about to evacuate Ukrainian troops back to Sweden. In addition, the UK is rehabilitating some troops injured on the Ukrainian side to our rehabilitation facilities here. In addition to that, as part of the wider support that the UK Government provide to Ukraine, we are of course always looking for opportunities to support the wider humanitarian and civilian medical services, too.

Counter-ISIL Coalition Strategy

John McDonnell Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I and the Foreign Secretary have regular discussions with leaders in the middle east. I recently met the King of Jordan, I speak to other leaders on the phone, and I shall be visiting the middle east in a couple of weeks. They are very aware that the effort to defeat ISIL has to be led from within the region, as well as by using the international coalition to support it from outside the region. They are grateful for our assistance and they would certainly welcome any additional support that we can give the Government of Iraq. As we can do more, so too can they.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

As part of his campaign to tackle extremism, the Prime Minister is quite rightly promoting the values of democracy, in particular parliamentary democracy. Does the Secretary of State agree that essential to the operation of parliamentary democracy is respect for the decisions of Parliament and honesty by Ministers?

[Michael Fallon]

Of course that must be right, but since the debate we had two years ago we have seen the rise of ISIL. The debate in August 2013 was on a motion that would have authorised the Government to take action against the Assad regime and its potential use of chemical weapons. It was not a debate about ISIL. It is since August 2013 that we have seen the rise of ISIL and its capture of a huge swathe of Syrian and Iraqi territory. We have seen terrorist outrages, promoted by ISIL, in western Europe and on our own streets. We have now had 30 of our citizens murdered in an attack inspired by ISIL. All those things have happened since that debate on a different issue—chemical weapons in Syria—in the previous Parliament.

Defence Procurement

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend—someone who, again, knows something about this from his long service in the Department. The key distinction is between a model that puts the private sector in day-to-day leadership of the organisation—working on an incentivised fee that places it at risk—and a model where the private sector provides specific skill sets to civil service decision makers. That is the distinction. What we envisage in the DE&S plus model is probably three separate contracts; one to provide us with programme management support, a spine for the organisation; one to provide us with HR support, an area of particular weakness in DE&S; and a task-and-finish project to install some additional financial control systems within the organisation.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I said on Third Reading of the Defence Reform Bill that having one bidder stretched the concept of competition to absurdity, so I welcome today’s decision. However, there are 16,000 workers whose futures are still vulnerable following the Secretary of State’s statement. May I suggest that it is not just about bringing in expertise; it is about retaining expertise and skills as well? I would welcome the Secretary of State personally meeting the unions to assure them that, under his new proposals, there will be no detriment to their conditions of service.

[Mr Hammond]

I have personally met the unions and I am aware of their concerns. I have also explained to them the opportunities that this model will create for employees in DE&S. The core DE&S—that is to say the part of the organisation that is responsible for procurement —has about 9,500 people. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that one of the big challenges at the moment is retaining the highly skilled people. We are losing people to the private sector; worse, we are losing people to other parts of the public sector that have greater freedom to hire. That is why we must address this issue in the way I have outlined today.