It has always been the case that people on out-of-work benefits have to apply for more or less any job they can reasonably be expected to take. But the operative word there is 'reasonable,' because a job that's appropriate for a single, able bodied 22-year-old man may very well not be appropriate for a single mum who can't afford childcare.
— Emily Thornberry
The destructive impact of employment tribunal fees, which were introduced in 2013, is by now well known.
The most prominent - and by far the most controversial - part of 'Help to Work' essentially forces people to take unpaid work placements as a condition of receiving their benefits.
The financial elite do not need special laws for themselves. This is one nation and there is one criminal law.
A scam is a scam. A fraud is a fraud. Different rules don't apply in the City than they do for you and me.
First-past-the-post builds a direct relationship between a community and their MP. Residents come together to decide who most people want as their national representative. No one has more than one vote and it has to be cast responsibly.
The 'Welfare Reform and Work' Bill does nothing to address low wages, or underemployment, and I haven't even got started on how it undermines the provision of affordable housing.
Why the Tories are happy to subsidise home ownership for middle class graduates and affluent social tenants, but not for widows on low incomes, is simply beyond me.
When the Tories came to power in 2010, the ground-breaking Equality Act had just become law. But the newly appointed Equalities Minister wasted no time in systematically undermining both the Act itself and the Commission responsible for enforcing it.
I certainly think sometimes when it comes to sexism, some Sky presenters need to look at themselves.
There was a time when a certain type of Tory could have been relied on to swing from the chandeliers in defence of the rights of freeborn Britons. I suppose a lot of those Tories would have been what you might call 'one-nation Tories.' That tradition has died in the Conservative party.
I was 10 when the Equal Pay Act was passed. It was pretty inspiring stuff.
It took LGBT activists 15 years to defeat section 28, but this is not a movement that's afraid of the long struggle. They know all progress is hard-fought, that discrimination against any individual anywhere is discrimination against all, and that the campaign for true, global equality must therefore be won one issue, case and country at a time.
My awakening to the fight for women's votes came when I was 13, and the BBC screened a drama called 'Shoulder to Shoulder' about the suffragettes, with the great Sian Phillips as Emmeline Pankhurst. It made a huge impression on me - not just the history, but because of the debates it triggered at home.
Carving out our own role, distinct from America's, might not be easy. But we must ask ourselves: what alternative is there? Unthinking, uncritical loyalty to the U.S. under Donald Trump is a far less appealing idea.
Prosperity need not come at the expense of this country's proudest traditions as a beacon of justice.
Low pay is a serious problem, and its victims need a genuine solution.
In passing the National Minimum Wage Act in 1998, the then-Labour Government did more than just establish the legal right to a minimum wage, significant as that was. More importantly, the Act made non-compliance a criminal offence.
Help to Work' always felt like a singularly inappropriate name for a scheme which had the express intention of 'stepping up the pressure' on the long-term unemployed, rather than actually helping them into work.
What a nightmare it would be if we individually had to criminalise every single abuse of every single commodity, market or financial product. There are thousands of these and new ones being invented every day. Such an approach would have disastrous implications for regulation and policy-making. Any slide towards it must be resisted.
AV does not bring you greater proportionality - and there is a tendency for parties to gang up on one of the major ones to run an 'anyone but' campaign.
The Alternative Vote is sectarian and self-serving and it will not improve people's lives.
By repealing the Child Poverty Act, which forced governments to take real action to tackle child poverty, this government brings a proud chapter of British history to an undignified end. In future the government will measure child poverty not by looking at whether they have any money, but by looking at their so-called 'life chances.'
The welfare state, which grew out of post-war solidarity, has for decades been based on the principle that those who pay into the system are entitled to expect that the safety net will be there for them when they fall on hard times.
Even though I've had the odd terse word to say about Donald Trump, I still get invited to events at the U.S. embassy. I always attend, because as long as they're prepared to hear the opposite viewpoint, then I'll never miss that chance when I can.
Equal constituencies' sound fair. So why is Labour so against the constituencies bill and why do we call it gerrymandering? Because, like so much Tory rhetoric, it sounds good, but if we look beyond the soundbites it becomes clear that it covers policies that promote narrow sectional interests.
We should waive fees for those taking equal pay claims; they are our whistleblowers and should be encouraged.
Unesco can rightly be claimed as one of Britain's greatest contributions to that global architecture of peace, and for Penny Mordaunt to be willing to destroy that legacy by withdrawing Britain's membership is nothing but historical and cultural vandalism.
When I was starting out as a barrister in the 1980s, Lord Denning was the most famous judge in the land, and the supposed role model for every lawyer. But not for me.
We need to build on our diplomatic networks, and the unrivalled expertise of our Foreign Office, to project a positive image for Britain as a force for good in the world.
One of the fundamental pillars of international humanitarian law is that proper distinction should be made between military targets and civilians. That is why indiscriminate bombing, let alone the deliberate targeting of residential areas or agricultural infrastructure, is considered a war crime.
It is my view that our response to the Brexit vote should not have been to turn in on ourselves. At a time of grave constitutional and economic challenge for our country, it was incumbent on us to rise to this threat and ensure that the Labour party should defend the interests of our communities and not allow the Tories a free hand.
Laws protecting this right - whatever the level of the minimum wage, and whatever the Government chooses to call it - are only as strong as the threat of enforcement is both real and feared.
So how helpful has 'Help to Work' actually been? Not very.
We need to have a system whereby, when a victim walks into a police station, she can be confident that she will be believed and that every effort will be made find evidence to support her in court.
There are some very plain, very simple offences in the Fraud Act 2006 that can be applied to price manipulation. For example, there's fraud by false representation. This is aimed at people who say something misleading to line their pockets or cause financial harm to someone else.
When one party is really unpopular, like the Conservatives in 1997, AV can really skew the result disproportionately against them.
The social safety net was created by a united society in the aftermath of the Second World War. It came out of a British sense of fairness.
Taxpayers' and 'people on benefits' are not two separate and distinct groups of people.
We need a foreign policy which responds to challenges like forced marriage, and which speaks to the particular needs of women and girls at risk of being sold into slavery.
The notion of women being written out of history is as old as the Bible, but it always seems more galling when it is the history of progressive movements - such as the abolitionist campaign in Britain or the fight for African-American civil rights - in which the role of women has been diminished.
It is up to Labour to keep alive the belief that government should be for the whole nation and that no section of society should place itself beyond scrutiny and above the law.
The principle behind the Equal Pay Act is that if an individual woman finds a man doing similar work and being paid more she can take her employer to a tribunal and get paid equally and compensated. Sounds simple enough. But in reality this law has been hamstrung by a series of stupid loopholes that have developed over the years.
We must apply the same standards to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt that we apply to Iran, Russia and Syria.
The Tories have long since abdicated any pretension of principled global leadership.
We need to put human rights, a belief in multilateralism and respect for international law back at the heart of foreign policy.
By creating a perception that the U.K. places a higher premium on striking commercial deals than it does on promoting and protecting human rights, our reputation in the world suffers.
When I first started campaigning to become an MP in 2004, we were suffering as a party because our hierarchy and leadership were totally detached from the party's membership.
