Foreign Affairs Committee
Debate between Mark Pritchard and Lord Austin of Dudley
Ian Austin
That is as may be, but I am not a member of the Independent Group; I am the independent MP for Dudley, standing up for the people of Dudley, and representing the whole of the House on the Foreign Affairs Committee, which is what members of Select Committees are elected to do.
As the Chair of the Liaison Committee pointed out in an article just this week,
“Select Committees have been strengthened”
since recent reforms
“which allowed their members to be elected by their fellow MPs—and Chairs by the whole House of Commons—rather than appointed by the patronage of party whips. As a result, members are more likely to have relevant experience and genuine interest in the work of their Committees”.
Of no one could that be said more truly than the hon. Member for Ilford South. As far as I am aware, there is no criticism of the way in which he or I have discharged our responsibilities on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He is a distinguished former Chair of the Committee, and before that he was the Labour party’s foreign policy expert. As I have seen in my short time on the Committee, and as Members in all parts of the House would agree, he has a more detailed knowledge of foreign policy issues, and greater contacts around the world, than anybody else in the House of Commons. Booting off the Committee somebody like that, who holds the Government to account, is a ridiculous decision. It flies in the face of how Select Committees are supposed to operate.
As for me, I was one of the people who instigated the Committee’s inquiries on Kurdistan. I was one of the MPs in this House who campaigned for years for the Magnitsky Act.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman and I may disagree on many domestic policy issues, but for years we have worked together on many foreign policy issues, some of which he is touching on. He mentioned that the Leader of the Opposition is behind this move. Is that because the hon. Gentleman is now an independent Member of Parliament, or because of his views on antisemitism and some of the other foreign policy issues that he has just raised?
Ian Austin
I will come on to that, but I will say this: I have been very clear about why I left the Labour party. I left after 35 years because I had become absolutely ashamed of the way in which the leader of the Labour party had allowed a culture of extremism, antisemitism and intolerance to develop—and for no other reason. Members have a choice to make this afternoon. They can choose to stand with someone who has campaigned against racism all their life, or stand with the leader of the Labour party in his vindictive attempt to boot people off a Committee simply because they stood up to racism. Frankly, I think it is outrageous.
I make one more point on my work on the Foreign Affairs Committee. I was one of the MPs who were a driving force behind the Magnitsky Act—legislation to take tough action against people responsible for gross abuses of human rights and large-scale corruption. I was one of the Committee members who instigated its current inquiry on UK sanctions policy.
As I mentioned, this debate is happening because the Labour party has decided that it wants to kick me off the Committee in retaliation for my decision to leave the Labour party. I want to set out the background to that and explain why I took that decision. I want Members to think about this and consider it when deciding how to vote.
The main reason why I decided to join the Labour party, 35 years ago as a teenager in Dudley, was to fight racism. I really cannot believe that after all this time, I have ended up leaving the Labour party because of racism. It was a difficult decision for me to take, but I have to be honest with people, and the truth is that I have become ashamed of the Labour party under its current leadership. I am appalled by the offence and distress that the leader of the Labour party has caused to Jewish people. It is terrible that a culture of extremism, antisemitism and intolerance is driving out not just Members of Parliament, but other members, too—decent people who have dedicated their whole lives to mainstream politics.
It is a matter of great shame that someone such as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) has been bullied out of the Labour party by antisemites. It was wrong of the Labour party to threaten the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and me with disciplinary action when we spoke out on antisemitism. It had to drop that, because we had done nothing wrong. The hard truth is that the Labour party under its current leadership is tougher on the people who complain about racism than on the racists.
The current leader and the people around him have turned what was a mainstream political party into something very different. He has spent his entire career working with, defending and supporting all sorts of extremists, and in some cases antisemites and terrorists. I thought from the very beginning—since before he was elected in 2015—that he would be utterly unfit to lead the Labour party, and he is completely unfit to be our country’s Prime Minister. He has said and done things that are clearly antisemitic, including defending that grotesque racist mural on a wall in east London. We need to ask ourselves what he would be saying if a senior member of the Conservative party had defended a grotesque mural that was racist against any other group of people. He called Jewish people Zionist, and said that they did not understand English irony—as if, somehow, they were different from the rest of us. He also calls Hamas and Hezbollah his friends.
Ian Austin
I completely understand, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have made some of the points that I wanted to make about the Leader of the Opposition and the position that he has taken the Labour party to under his leadership.
I will draw my remarks to a close. I want to stay on the Committee because I want to speak up for freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. I want to carry on campaigning against totalitarian dictatorships such as Venezuela, which are supported by the leader of the Labour party and the people around him at the moment. I want to carry on speaking out against the Kremlin and against Vladimir Putin and his brutal regime of corruption and abuse: he murders people on the streets of Russia and kills them here in Britain, too. I think every Member will recall the appalling response that the Leader of the Opposition gave to the attacks in Salisbury. I will continue to campaign on these issues, which is why I want to stay on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Mark Pritchard
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous, and I am grateful to him for giving way. I will need to decide which way to vote today. Will he also include in that litany of why he should stay on the Committee the potential dismantling of our intelligence agencies, which protect us and our allies, day in, day out—another policy espoused by the Leader of the Opposition?