So Laura, is it true that you want to
imprison Tory MPs in gulags
and force them only to survive
on eating Karl Marx's Das Kapital?
Honestly? No.
No! Oh good, that's a denial! I'll make a note of that.
Ha ha ha.
Let's set the record straight, Owen.
There will be not be compulsory Marx for any Tories.
It would be helpful if they did read a bit of Marx.
I meant eat it. That's what they've got to survive on.
Oh, no.
Little pages scrunched up ...
No, no, no. Come on. Come on.
No, they won't. I think what happened with Torygate was ...
Hashtag.
Hashtag Torygate was that, you know,
just classic spiralling conflation of issues,
people commenting about comments
and it all got out of hand.
I was essentially saying: "Our energy is precious,
"we have very little time on this world
"and I don't want to spend my time
"drinking with Tory MPs in this place,"
and that's quite a professional stance.
Because it's not all a joke, you mean?
Because is that the argument?
Politics sometimes ends up like it's all a bit of a joke,
where you see people in your surgeries
who are suffering as a consequence of policies
by Tory MPs and then you're supposed to go:
"Do you know what, do you want a cheeky little pint?"
Is that what it was?
I know and actually I see my time here in Westminster
as just, you know, Monday to Thursday, head down,
look for any opportunity to represent your constituents.
The idea of going and getting really drunk with Tory MPs
and separating out those two issues
is fundamentally flawed for me.
Because I can't have people breaking down in my surgeries
every single weekend, suicidal,
you know with some of the unbelievable welfare reforms.
I can't have people suffering incredibly
and not connect that to national decisions
of Tory MPs.
I am sure there are good people
on the government benches but they are shielded
by their own privilege and I genuinely think
if they walked a few days in the life
of some of my constituents then they would have
a very different view
or if they had grown up in those communities
they would have a very different view
of how this country should be run.
So you talked about the benefit cuts,
which your constituents have suffered and so on ...
Tell me about the impact.
What ... Because the government, they'll say:
"Well, you know, we've just got to cut back on money
"and we've got to make ... We're making work pay,"
and all this dogwhistle stuff about scroungers
and skivers an you see in the British press.
What's the reality on the ground?
What do you see in your surgeries?
People that are suicidal.
Without a doubt. I represent an area that has
the highest number of suicides.
As my colleague, Dan Carden, said in the chamber,
sometimes people will cry first and then tell you
their story later because they're just trying to ...
It's just like a relief to speak to somebody about it.
I think, right, there is a ... It's like a low-level –
and I don't say that to devalue anyone's experience –
but there is, what is permeating our societies
at the moment is a collective experience of,
like terror might be maybe a bit dramatic
but certainly fear. A lot of fear.
To some people it is terror that
their house is going to be taken off them,
that they're not going to have enough money to eat.
The Department for Work and Pensions
is a national disgrace.
The way it treats people, the facelessness.
You know, people come in and say:
"I feel like a criminal, please look at this letter."
So there's fear, there's terror, there is anxiety and ...
What sort of benefit cuts are we talking about?
What are the worst kind of specific ones?
Well, you know, you've heard of this
but I don't think we can repeat it enough
but the Work Capability Assessments
are particularly degrading.
Similarly, with the Personal Independence Payments
are extremely degrading.
This is for disabled people.
That's right, so it replaces Disability Living Allowance.
They're not carried out by medical experts
but a so called "medical professional".
You know, they don't have expertise
and what this is doing, and the whole system, I think,
and I'm particularly interested in what an ethical
security system would look like,
it's built on the presumption that people are liars.
And I think it has to be built on the presumption
that people are telling the truth.
And yes, of course, we will root out those people
that will be fraudulent. You know, but they're so
few in number it's barely worth talking about,
as you know. There is a systemic failure
to understand the nature of poverty in the DWP
and the nature of unemployment
because, you know, and this is back to ideology ...
Because it is a system designed,
specifically the Universal Credit,
by people that haven't been
in prolonged periods of unemployment.