Labour leadership hustings - Webchat with Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Kendall, Tuesday 28 July 2015 at 12pm

[BojanaMumsnet]

Hello

Following on from Friday's webchat with Yvette Cooper, we’re pleased to announced the second of our Labour leadership hustings webchats with Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Kendall, tomorrow at 12 noon.

Jeremy Corbyn has been an MP for North Islington since 1983. In addition to his involvement with local organisations and community groups, he has a keen interest in international affairs and is the chair of the Stop the War coalition, which he helped establish in 2001. Jeremy’s candidacy for the Labour leadership has triggered a flurry of headlines and soundbites.

Liz Kendall was elected as Labour MP for Leicester West in 2010. She is the Shadow Minister for Care and Older People. Her focuses include improving public services and making society fairer, and she has previously been the Director of the Ambulance Service Network and of the Maternity Alliance charity. Liz has recently spoken out against sexism in politics, following a row about remarks made by a supporter of Andy Burnham’s candidacy.

Please join us for the webchat at 12pm tomorrow if you can, or post a question for Jeremy and Liz here in advance if you can’t.

Labour leadership voting is open until Thursday 10 September and the ballot results will be released on Saturday 12 September.

Thanks

MNHQ

@JeremyCorbynMP

[quote amothersplaceisinthewrong] Jeremy

Will you do the decent thing and stand down now.

Thanks. Can I pose a question back to you. What would be decent about removing myself from a process in which many people have put in a huge amount of time and energy to develop a good, decent alternative political strategy for our party?[/quote]

I don't agree that Jeremy should stand down. He's putting forward his views - lets have the debate in an open and honest manner and then it will be for Labour party members to decide.

I don't have a question but I just want to say thank you to Jeremy for actually being the first politician that I feel I can believe in and for saying things that make sense and mean something to me.

I must say it makes me sad that so few questions are about policy and so many are about, broadly 'the campaign' or 'the media'. I think this does a disservice to all the candidates to be honest. :(

"Just a thought, the people who are voting in this election are the people who deliver leaflets, knock on doors and engage voters all year round, who must have a pretty good idea of how people think."

The same people who thought Ed Miliband would be our prime minister!

You've not answered my or similar concerns. In fact, you're coming across as determined to stay wilfully ignorant. You've left me more worried than I was.

Jeremy and Liz
How are you going to make the Labour party attractive to voters in Scotland? Just that.

@stresshead99

Jeremy, if all labour MPS had voted against the welfare cuts instead of abstaining, would the bill have even got through parliament? Save Labour, save the working poor! How can two people earning £15000.00 each a year be classed as high earners and have to pay more for their council home rent. Won't all working people leave the council estates and the estates will become ghettos for the poor, unemployed and immigrant populations. Working families used to aspire to a council house. How will you help people trying to work and raise disabled children who require constant care? Will you protect the NHS? If all of Labour with the SNP stand against this Government, can't you block the Conservative bills? I don't know much about politics but I have voted Labour all my life. I am proud to live in a council house! I have chosen not to buy it! I have worked all my adult life and lived in council housing all my life. Should I feel ashamed of this? Aren't the majority of people just one or two generations away from being proudly council housed. Get the party together please! Stop the destruction of our country and what it stands for.

If all Labour MPs had voted against the bill it would probably still have gone through but would've been close and I believe we should've done because the bill is taking £12bn away from many of the poorest in Britain. The bill also attacks the ordinary working class family who live in council accommodation and are expected to pay higher rent based on their earnings. Council rents are essentially an affordable economic model of housing and if people have high earnings they pay more in tax. We should tax people on the basis of their wealth not where they happen to live. I will obviously do everything I can to protect the NHS and to deal urgently with the housing crisis by a combination of giving the facilities and opportunities for councils to build far more council properties, which is the most efficient and secure form of tenure anywhere, and also to regulate the private rented sector, which is a major source of public expenditure in subsiding high rents. Surely the most important thing for all of us is to ensure every child grows up knowing they're not going to be made homeless in the next six months, do their homework and not develop a feeling that they're a burden on their parents.

Question for both of you

Jeremy you are seen as representing the left of the party, and Liz, you are seen as representing the opposite end. I appreciate that this is an over simplification but how do you think you can build the 'broad church' of the centre and left across the party, and the country that you require to win, without becoming bland?

I really don't like the tone that has developed over the contest, with both of you being subjected to name-calling. I hope the party can unite behind the next leader whoever he or she is.

I think my first preference is decided, but my second is still up for grabs!

deposit why not vote tory instead if they represent your view point better?

Frostox, completely agree with you re benefits. The two-child policy is arbitrary, has no rationale behind it and, as with the benefits cap, is the first time since the 1930s that families will be forced to live below subsistence level as a direct result of government policy. As a Labour party member I am horrified that three of the leadership candidates support it and are thus colluding with a measure that will result in a big increase in child poverty. If we are not there to oppose this kind of injustice, what on earth is the point of the Labour party?

Jeremy, I am also interested in your stance on early years and home education. Will you be supportive of families who take the home ed route, and will you be supportive of those who have summer born children and wish to start reception at CSA? It feels like we start formal education very young in this country, compared to starting at ages 6 or 7 in many others, and that the role of the family is often not seen as important compared to getting children into some kind of school/ nursery environment.

@JenParnham

Given the levels of suffering, ill health and devastation it causes what do you both think government can do to halt and reverse the epidemic of violence against women and children?

The cruelty of the cuts have hit women disproportionately hard, and nowhere has this been quite as stark as the closure of domestic violence shelters and the slashing of support for women and children who have suffered violence and abuse. So the most urgent thing is to reverse this unnecessary austerity agenda. We must ask: how is there enough money to offer inheritance tax cuts for the richest 4% but not keep refuges open?

But violence against women also needs to be stopped at its roots - we need to tackle the social norms that allow such violence to repeat itself (as Mumsnet is attempting to do with the We Believe You campaign!). This is why PSHE education is vital, and why I have proposed today that PSHE be made mandatory.

@didyouwritethe

Should any Labour peers and MPs guilty of sexually abusing children continue to govern the country; if not, what are you personally going to do about it?

Any public representative who is found guilty of the appalling criminal behaviour of abusing children removes themselves from office anyway, and it's good that at last we have the ongoing Goddard enquiry in place; I did suggest in the House that her enquiry could perhaps we converted into a standing commission looking into the abuse of children in general in addition to the specific enquiries she's currently tasked with undertaking.

@badrenalin

Dear Liz Kendall, what is it you like about Public Enemy I listen to them myself and I think their politics are much more in line with Jeremy Corbyn than yours, we have heard from Jeremy but how will you fight the powers that be, or are you there to support the power?

where to start...?! I love their rhythm (great to run to) but more importantly their powerful sense of injustice, their refusal to accept the status quo, and their anger about some people holding all the power in life while too many have none. Life doesn't have to be the way it is. We can change it. That's why I'm in politics.

@PipAndPosey

Q to both- what are you going to do about crisis in mental health services? Lack of acute beds across all sections of psychiatry and hugely under-resourced community care to boot. Will you commit to ensuring no mentally ill child or adult ever ends up inside a police cell?

I met Luciana Berger last year and was impressed by her coming to my old Mother and Baby Unit and meeting with current and former psychiatric patients there. I hope she plays a part in the next labour govt.

Thanks - absolulety great question. Nobody with a mental health condition should be held in a police station and the police would probably agree with that. The issue is the lack of resources for care in mental health hospitals being insufficient and care in the community being insufficiently well supported. There are many reasons for the MH crisis in Britain, not least levels of stress from housing, work, debt and family, but also a stigma that is often attached to anyone who admits to colleagues that they have MH problems. I work very closely with both voluntary and statutory mental health services in my community and absolutely want to ensure there is proper funding of our MH services and that those that have suffered from a condition are not stigmatised for the rest of their lives, as sometimes happens.

Jeremy: It's refreshing to hear someone saying loudly that the recession was caused by insufficient banking regulation, and challenging the narrative of overspending leading to austerity. However, it feels like large numbers of the British population are under-informed - or mis-informed by the media - about crucial aspects of economic theory. In my mind this often stands in the way of people voting for compassionate policies.

My question is: what practical strategies do you have to raise the consciousness and understanding in a population who have been loudly peddled a lot of nonsense for some time?

Have you written Scotland off then?

@pastaofplenty

Hello both Why is this important to YOU - not the country, the electorate or the Labour Party - YOU as an individual? Thank you

Its important to me because I believe I have a responsibility to others, and to make the best possible contribution that I can to changing the world. I suppose its my way of making sense of life and why I'm here.

I feel that Jeremy is a political I can believe in. That gives a feeling of hope. He is not a career political blinkered by a very particular and unrepresentative lifestyle. Thank you Jeremy. Keep going. Good luck.

@wikiguido

One of your supporters told the Stand Up For Corbyn rally on Sunday that Britain "isn't a country that is worth defending", to wild cheers.

Details here: order-order.com/2015/07/28/corbyn-rally-goes-wild-as-speaker-claims-uk-not-worth-defending/

Do you agree?

It was a fundraising event with a number of comedy slots, and that was one of them! If I didn't think standing up for people and their standards of living and their basic, real securities was worthwhile then I wouldn't be standing for leader of the Labour Party.

Oooh, I am very late, no hope to get an answer but I will try.

Jeremy, I have a 3 year old summer born child. I would like her to start school at compulsory school age, but the Local Authority where I live would not allow her to start in reception, thus denying her a whole year of education. They are supposed to act in the best interest of children, but in reality they are protecting "bureaucratic neatness". Education minister Nick Gibb recently indicated that DfE will be looking again at the situation and possible solutions.

Would you support the families of summer born children, who don't want their barely 4 year olds at school, to have access to full education, just like the rest of the children in England?

@didyouwritethe

Should any Labour peers and MPs guilty of sexually abusing children continue to govern the country; if not, what are you personally going to do about it?

No. Absolutely not. There's no time limit on justice, and we all have a responsibility to make sure the truth comes out and people are held to account.

Actually, this was a question to both Liz and Jeremy...

@derxa

Have you written Scotland off then?

Not in the slightest! I think the Labour problem in Scotland is that it took too much for granted, had too few members and in the last election it's pro-Trident and austerity lite agenda had no resonance with a large proportion of the Scottish electorate. My good friend Neil Findlay MSP wrote a very good article in support of our campaign, pointing out that I am opposed to the privitisation of CalMac Ferries and do also point out the huge levels of health inequality and poverty that exist in many parts of Scotland. Labour should be proud of the huge contribution Scottish Labour has made to our traditions, from Keir Hardie through to Robin Cook.

Yes! PSHE should be mandatory! How would you support the ridiculous challenges facing primary education?

I have always voted Labour and recently become a member because Jeremy is speaking what I believe the core values of the Labour party should be. I feel very insulted by members of the party and the mainstream media, we have been labeled morons, insane, delusional and the rest. Could Jeremy and Liz please stand up for us the voter and ask that our intelligence not be insulted over and over again, I am also concerned that my vote along with so many other will be discounted because I am one of the many new members.