EU nationals are 4.7 percent of our population. Yet they are five percent of NHS nurses and ten percent of NHS doctors.
If you care about our NHS, don’t just listen me, listen to NHS staff – every NHS workers’ union and royal college is backing Remain.
And now he’s wrapping up.
The risk to the NHS if we vote Leave is the damage to public finances caused by a hit to our economy, and the risk to our NHS by a victory for those who would scrap a universal NHS - free at the point of use.
The NHS is a force for civilisation. If, like us, you care about our health service, then listen to the dedicated staff here today, dedicated to the NHS and dedicated to remaining in Europe.
Please use your vote on 23 June to Remain and protect our NHS.
Corbyn cites the Tory MP Sarah Wollaston to back his case.
It’s not just me or Labour that is saying this, Dr Sarah Wollaston, a Conservative MP and a former GP was until last week supporting the Leave campaign.
This is what she had to say: “I could not have set foot on a battle bus that has at the heart of its campaign a figure that I know to be untrue”. Dr Sarah Woollaston is now voting for Remain, she said she feared what would happen to the NHS if we left what she called the “Brexit penalty”.
Corbyn repeats his call for the NHS to be excluded from TTIP, the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (the proposed EU/US trade deal). As it stands, Labour would veto TTIP, he says.
And he attacks Vote Leave for its claims about leaving the EU freeing up more money for the NHS.
The Vote Leave bus said “we send the EU £350m a week, let’s fund the NHS instead”.
There’s a couple of problems with that, firstly the UK Statistics Authority says that slogan is “misleading” and told them to stop using it.
The UK Statistics Authority is diplomatic when they say “misleading”, they mean dishonest. It’s an outright lie, and they know it.
And they’ve since been forced to re-paint the bus.
Does anyone really believe that those from the hard right of the Tories and Ukip would spend any extra funds on the NHS?
Corbyn says leading Leave figures 'don’t even want there to be an NHS'
Corbyn attacks the government’s record on the NHS.
And he says the NHS would be even worse if the leaders of the Leave side had their way. Many of them do not want an NHS, he says.
That crisis would be even worse if many on the Leave side had their way. People who have argued against the NHS and free healthcare on demand in principle. These same people now have the audacity to portray themselves as the saviours of the NHS. Most of the Leave side – the Tory right and Ukip – don’t even want there to be an NHS.
The millionaire funder of the Leave side, Arron Banks said: “If it were up to me, I’d privatise the NHS.”
Nigel Farage called for an insurance-based system to replace the NHS
Michael Gove is co-author of a book that says the NHS is “no longer relevant in the 21st century”. A book which calls for the NHS to be replaced by a new system of health provision in which people would pay money into individual health acount.
And Boris Johnson, who said: “If people have to pay for NHS services, they will value them more”.
(The Gove claim is based on this Observer about a book primarily written by Daniel Hannan, the Tory MEP, which includes a quote from Gove saying he does not agree with Hannan’s proposal to replace the NHS with an insurance system.)
Corbyn's NHS speech
Jeremy Corbyn is now speaking.
He says before he became an MP he represented NHS staff as a NUPE representative.
And the NHS is under threat if we leave, he says.
We have a big decision on 23 June, I value our NHS and admire the dedication of all its staff. I would not be voting for Remain if I thought there was any risk to our NHS whatsoever, the risk to the NHS is if we leave.
Corbyn says Labour making 'the strongest case we can' for staying in EU
The Labour event was billed by the party in advance as a “Labour In for Britain shadow cabinet event”. The party said there would a photo opportunity and “short remarks” by Jeremy Corbyn (ie, not a speech).
This is what Corbyn said in full.
This is a coming together of the Labour shadow cabinet, the general secretaries and members of the general council of the TUC and many members of our party’s national executive. This is the Labour movement saying we are voting to remain in the European Union next week.
We’re saying that because we want to defend the very many gains made by trade unions across Europe that have brought us better working conditions, longer holidays, less discrimination and maternity and paternity leave.
We believe that a leave vote will put many of those things seriously, immediately at risk. Many in work will be significantly worse off when the bonfire of regulations promised by others take place.
But we also want to extend those rights. We best extend those rights by working with trade unions, Labour parties, socialist parties, all across Europe in the interests of the working people of the whole continent and of course this country.
We’re making the strongest case we can. From Land’s End to John O’Groats, from Norwich to North Wales, we are making the case everywhere that staying in the European Union gives us the opportunity to defend and extend the rights of people in work. It gives us the jobs that we need and the exports that we must fulfil as a country to the rest of Europe. Therefore we are making the strongest case we can, for the good of the ordinary people of this country, to vote to remain, to give us that voice to try and improve rights and justice, in this country and all across Europe.
It’s the Labour position, it’s the trade union position, to vote to remain. That’s why we’ve come together here today to share our values, to share our determination, to share our strength, and we urge all of our supporters to think very carefully about this and to vote to remain next Thursday on 23rd.
In his final sentence there was a curious echo of what the Queen said ahead of the Scottish referendum. Doubtless it was unintentional.
Corbyn says this represents a coming together of the Labour party.
They are making the case for the EU all over the country, he says. They are making the strongest case they can.
They want to remain so they can improve rights and help workers.
He says he urges all Labour supporters to think carefully about this and to vote to remain.
Labour's In for Britain event
Jeremy Corbyn is now speaking at the Labour In for Britain event.
He has just been posing for a photograph with members of the shadow cabinet and union leaders.
Vote Leave has now released the full text of its open letter promising to maintain funding to people and institutions who currently received EU money (ie, farmers, scientists etc). Priti Patel was on the Today programme earlier talking about this. (See 8.53am.)
The letter, signed by 13 ministers and senior Tories, also claimed that leaving the EU could theoretically save the UK up to £43bn because it would allow the government to pass legislation saying the UK would no longer be bound by European court of justice rulings forcing HM Revenue and Customs to pay tax refunds. It says:
There are also many other costs, direct and indirect, of EU membership on top of our official contributions to the EU’s budget.
For example, the UK is set to pay out between £7 billion and £43 billion by 2021 in tax refunds to big businesses which have successfully used the European Court and EU law to escape taxes lawfully imposed on them in Britain. If we stay, these bills will be paid for by British taxpayers on P.A.Y.E. instead of that money going to public services. If we Vote Leave, the Government will pass legislation to prevent these payments being made so that taxpayers are not given these huge bills.
These figures are taken from government and HMRCACCOUNTS setting out HMRC’s contingent liabilities, the amount it might have to pay if it loses legal cases in the future.
A separate Vote Leave briefing note gives more details. Here’s an extra ct.
Rulings of the European court have exposed the taxpayer to massive liabilities for tax refunds to big businesses. The OBR now forecasts that HMRC will pay out £7.3bn from 2016-2017 to 2020-2021, an average of £270.43 per household (OBR, March 2016; ONS, 5 November 2015). If HMRC also loses every case currently pending (a further £35.6bn), the UK will be forced to pay out £42.9bn, the equivalent of £1,589 per household (HMRC, 16 July 2015; ONS, 5 November 2015).
The UK has tried to block these payouts before but its tax legislation has been overruled by the European court (Test Claimants in the Franked Investment Income Group Litigation v Commissioners of Inland Revenue, Case C-362/12; Commission v United Kingdom, Case C-640/13). If we vote remain, the European court will continue to take control over our tax system and require multibillion payouts to the multinational businesses.
Here is Iain Duncan Smith, the former work and pensions secretary, commenting on today’s European court of justice ruling backing Britain’s right to refuse to pay family welfare benefits to unemployed EU migrants who have been in Britain for less than five years. In a statement put out by Vote Leave he said:
It’s absurd that we have to to run every nut and bolt of domestic policy past Luxembourg, and then engage in lengthy and expensive court battles if they decide they don’t like what our democratically elected government is doing.
As well as the cost to taxpayers of fighting these lengthy drawn out cases, it’s clearly an illegitimate challenge to our sovereignty. Although David Cameron didn’t want to admit it, this case and others like it are proof positive that the unelected European court of justice is now supreme above our elected parliament. They decide the rules and the only way to prevent this kind of intervention in future is to Vote Leave on 23 June.
With Labour’s shadow cabinet EU event due to start in about half an hour, here is an extract from Rachel Sylvester’s column in the Times (paywall) today on the party and the EU referendum.
It is Labour voters who will determine the outcome next week. According to a senior source at the Stronger In campaign, Tory voters are likely toACCOUNT for a Remain vote of about 19 per cent, Lib Dems and Greens another 10 per cent and the SNP about 2 per cent, making a total of 31 per cent. That means that the prime minister is dependent on Labour voters to get over the required 50 per cent. Strategists have calculated that they need at least two-thirds of Labour supporters to vote Remain to be sure of victory. But — despite the vast majority of Labour MPs wanting to stay in — almost half of its voters do not know the party’s position ...
Another MP says that Labour voters in his area are breaking 55-45 for Out. “It’s terrible. The proverbial metropolitan elite has not been recognising the impact that rapid population change has had on the public services. And Labour is ducking this issue.”
The truth is that the referendum is exposing Labour’s breach with its traditional voters in a way that has profound implications for the country as well as the party. In Birmingham, campaigners were told to take all mentions of immigration out of their literature. Although the local MPs begged to be allowed to tackle local concerns head on, they were banned from doing so by party staff following instructions from the leader’s office. As one former minister says: “It gives the impression that we are completely out of touch with the way people live their lives.”
No comments:
Post a Comment