GERAINT DAVIES MP
WELSH LABOUR & CO-OPERATIVE MP MAKING A DIFFERENCE FOR SWANSEA WEST O Abertawe ac yn gweithio dros Abertawe
IN SWANSEA & PARLIAMENT O Abertawe dros Abertawe
JULY 2021 REPORT Report Inside
CROSS PARTY GROUP FINDS POLICE BREACH FUNDEMENTAL RIGHTS
Police breached “fundamental rights” at a vigil for Sarah Everard and “Kill the Bi an inquiry chaired by Geraint Davies MP has found.
The Metropolitan Police and the Avon and Somerset force committed “multiple fail two events, according to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democracy and the C
Their report claimed that both forces wrongly applied coronavirus lockdown laws an legal duties in respect of protest”. It also suggested that officers taking action again engaging with them before the event - “may have increased the risk of COVID-1 Everard Vigil in Clapham, southwest London.
The APPGDC inquiry’s chairman, Labour MP Geraint Davies, said the police shoul peaceful protest”. “The police must not become the enforcement agency of the state publicly and collectively call for change - political, economic, social or environmental
“Parliament must protect our freedoms and reject attempts to increase police power a ful protest.”
Remembering the terrible loss of a lovely friend and a great collea so much for others in the time she has to share RIP Jo Cox @Ger
DOUBLING OF WASTE INCINERATION W HEALTH OF POOREST THE MOST
Geraint Davies, Member of Parliament for Swansea West, is campaigning against double waste incineration by 2030.
Speaking in the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, Geraint h incinerators tend to be located in poorer communities to the Environment Ministe to rethink its strategy.
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GERAINT SLAMS TORIES’ ‘ROTTEN’ HEALTH BILL Geraint Davies MP this month slammed the UK Government’s Health & Care Bill, as another step to dismantling and privitising the NHS. Speaking in the House of Commons debate, Swansea West MP said “The NHS was established to provide equal rights to healthcare, free at the point of delivery, irrespective of income or personal health. Yet as we emerge from the pandemic in praise of the NHS, this Bill is yet another step towards dismantling and privatising the system. “The Government should be investing in more capacity now—in the workforce and in beds. They should be reinstating the 12,000 empty beds. Instead, the Government are putting £10 billion into the private sector over four years, with the framework contract, when the private sector has only 8,000 beds in total. Doctors will have to leave NHS hospitals to go to private hospitals, further disrupting NHS services. “Wales has shown that public money is used most effectively in the NHS by public sector delivery, so more people are treated equally, irrespective of income and personal health, true to Aneurin Bevan’s founding principles. “This is a rotten Bill. It is bad for Britain’s health, bad for our wealth and bad for our most treasured achievement —our NHS.”
POLICE, CRIME & SENTENCING BILL REMOVES RIGHT TO PEACEFUL PROTEST Speaking in the debate on the Police, Crime & Sentencing Bill, I said “This Bill removes our fundamental right to peaceful protest. How? By putting power in the hands of the police to stop protests—not, as before, on the grounds of causing serious damage or unlawful behaviour, but instead on the grounds that it may cause “serious unease” or “distress” to bystanders. Those found guilty of even risking causing “serious annoyance” or “inconvenience” can get imprisoned for up to 10 years or face unlimited fines. This amounts to the removal of the right to peaceful protest as enshrined in our Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights. “We saw a taste of what that means in practice at the Clapham vigil and the Bristol protests in March. The parliamentary report into Clapham and Bristol, which was published last week and mentioned by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), found that the Metropolitan police told the Clapham vigil organisers that the vigil was illegal, when it was not, and that they faced thousands of pounds in fines, which they did not. The organisers withdrew and the vigil was disorganised, and then, at 6.30 pm, the police physically intervened to disperse the gathering, thereby increasing the public health risk of covid. In Bristol, yes, proportionate use of force by the police was justified, but batoning and blading protesters with shields on the ground certainly was not. “We have had a glimpse of what poorly drafted law can look like in practice. Instead, we must protect the right to peaceful protest by deleting clauses 55 to 61, which stop it, and introducing my new clause 85: a code that sets out the police’s duty to facilitate the right to peaceful protest, to return them to Robert Peel’s founding principle: “The police are the public and the public are the police.” “This Bill is before us because people want to protest against climate change, as, by 2025, the 1.5°C Paris limit will be breached. Peaceful protesters—whether suffragettes or economic, social or environmental campaigners—enrich and inform our democracy between elections. This is essential to our fundamental values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. “The Bill is an act of political treason. It is bad at its core. It will be seen in China, Russia and elsewhere as a green light to crush democracy and the right to peaceful protest, with unaccountable police power. The good people in this country should not rest until it is overturned and our rights reinstated, so that democracy can live, breathe and thrive again.”
WE MUST PROTECT BRITISH STEEL INDUSTRY WITH CARBON BORDER TAX
Speaking in the House of Commons, I said “We cannot allow cheap carbon-intensive steel from China to destroy our steel industry and our planet. Over half the steel in the world is now produced by China—the amount has doubled in the last 20 years— and we face a climate catastrophe. British steel uses 50% less carbon, and we have a situation in which, since Kyoto, global emissions have gone up 60% since 1990. The Paris limit of 1.5° C will be breached by 2025, and 8,500 tonnes of ice is melting every second of this debate in Greenland. China is emitting 28% of global emissions, which is more than the US and the EU combined: 7 tonnes of carbon per person, compared with 5.8 tonnes in Britain. On a consumption basis we do 8 tonnes, because we have subcontracted our coal-fired power stations and manufacturing to China. China now has over half the capacity for coal-fired power stations—1,037 coal-fired power stations—and it plans another 300. Its emissions will not peak until 2030, and we do not know what that peak will be. It will only be carbon neutral by 2060, and that is not even net zero. “We must act. We need to have the same tariff safeguards as the EU and the US against the dirty steel the Chinese are dumping. We need to switch to the border adjustment carbon tax being considered by the EU, which factors the carbon price into those taxes, for COP26. We have talked a lot today about the balance between strategic industrial interests and consumer prices, but those consumer prices need to factor in the environmental cost of carbon. It must be in the guidelines for the TRA to make these recommendations, which it is not. Buying more carbon-intensive products—whether steel, manufacturing or agriculture—is destroying our planet. Let us build backgreener, reward lower carbon, tax higher carbon in COP26 and remember that, as the US says, we want to make trade a force for good that encourages a race to the top—not just for workers’ rights, but for our environment. Let us build back British steel, let us have a safer planet and let us protect jobs in Wales, in England and beyond.” Geraint Davies MP speaking in the Protecting Steel Industry debate.
NO ECONOMIC OR MORAL JUSTIFICATION FOR CUTTING OVERSEAS AID This month, the UK Government sought to defend the indefensible on overseas aid cut. I took part in a debate to seek to reverse this decision stating: “There is no economic or moral justification for cutting overseas aid from the richest to the poorest at this most desperate time in the eye of the pandemic storm, which spreads death, disease and hunger like a wildfire through developing nations. Let us imagine looking at our children starving in front of us, huddled in a tent in the blistering heat of Afghanistan, Yemen or Syria, as we think about the cars, houses, fridges and Netflix that people have in the west. Let us imagine looking at our daughters who could help create a better world with an education but will not get one, or our parents who have just died from covid. We can help alleviate such poverty, ignorance and disease by reinstating the aid budget. As host of the G7 and COP26, we should take moral leadership. “Let us be clear: we can afford to help those in greatest need more, not less because the cost of UK borrowing is down, not up, since the pandemic. Why? Global interest rates are down, so our borrowing costs are down—from £37 billion in 2019-20 to £23 billion in 2020-21. That is a saving of £14 billion in spending on debt interest for the UK, but aid spending is still being cut by £4.4 billion. The Prime Minister has just said that every pound we spend on aid has to be borrowed. We can afford more aid now because our borrowing and debt interest costs are massively down. Now is the time to invest and to build back better out of the pandemic in the developing world, and to invest in climate change adaptation, with new green industries that will help all our environments. “In a low interest world, now is the time to borrow and invest. A cut of £1 million in aid could be reinstated and service a debt of £100 million in investment. Only the G7 can borrow at such low interest rates; developing nations cannot. It is no use saying that we cannot afford it this year due to the pandemic and that maybe we will reinstate money in future years. We can afford it this year, and now is when the money is needed most. If Toggle showing location of Column 199savings were needed—and they are not—they should be made after the pandemic, when the poorest are back on their feet, not in their darkest hour of need. “We know the politics of popular nationalism. We know that 7.6 million people in the UK are in hunger, so of course people are saying that charity begins at home. But that hunger is unnecessary too and we should not give other G7 nations an
excuse to cut their aid. We need more aid, not less. Britain is better than this. Let us make the world better. Let us reinstate our aid budget now.”
PARLIAMENT SHOULD LEAD WAY ON HYBRID WORKING Despite risk of a vaccine-resistant Covid variant and 100,000 delta variant infections a day, the UK Government plans to remove protection of online participation in Parliament in July. I tackled the Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg, on the issue saying “We all want to move safely out of lockdown, but we may now see the emergence of a new vaccine-resistant variant in people who have had one jab who are infected and, indeed, the level of infection from the delta variant may rise to 100,000 cases a day. Will the Government ensure that in the event that Parliament is recalled in the summer, hybrid online facilities for MP participation will continue so that all voters can be safely represented?” Throughout the pandemic, I have held companies and organisations, such as BT and the DVLA, to account on their remote/hybrid working plans. Parliament should lead the way on this matter, by showing that there are benefits both to the worker and environment by utilising remote working practices.
Geraint meets with @Tamils4Labour to discuss unethical trade and human rights in Sri Lanka
WALES LEADS THE UK ON CLIMATE CHANGE AS COP26 APPROACHES My Westminster Hall speech on action on climate change in Wales: “I will just remind us of the scale of the problem that we face. Global temperatures are now 1.2° C higher than the 1850 base rate and are rising at 0.1° C a year, so by 2025 the world will breach the Paris limit of 1.5° C. In fact, the temperature is already plus 2° C over Europe and plus 3° C over the Artic, because of differential impacts. That means that for every second of this debate, 8,500 cubic metres or 8,500 tonnes of ice will melt from Greenland. “In particular, we have seen a massive escalation in the Chinese production of carbon. China now produces more carbon than Europe and the US combined—7 tonnes a person, compared with 5.8 tonnes in the UK. However, on a consumption basis, the UK produces 8 tonnes a person. The reason I mention this is that the Environment (Wales) Act 2016 committed to measuring our consumption as well, because we cannot simply subcontract out all our manufacturing and reduce our carbon footprint but then import it all. “That is particularly the case for steel, because Welsh steel has 50% less carbon than Chinese steel. What is needed is a carbon border tax. It is being initiated by the EU, it will be agreed at COP26 and is certainly supported by Wales, so that we have fair trading and do not have a situation where the Chinese are allowed to continue producing more and more carbon. China’s carbon production will not peak until 2030; it already has 1,037 coal-fired power stations and is planning another 300. Closing our coal-fired power station in Wales, at Aberthaw, accounts for 55% of the Welsh reduction in carbon. We need to think very globally about this issue, as well as taking our own initiatives. I am proud that the Welsh Assembly Government are the only Government, not only in Britain but across the world generally, to have sustainable development as part of the country’s constitution and the Assembly’s founding principles.” Full speech sent to members seperately. CONTACT ME / CYSYLLTU A MI 32 Walter Road, Swansea, SA1 5NW (01792) 4759432
info@geraintdavies.org.uk @GeraintDaviesMP