Campaign news

Angela Eagle’s voting record

10th July 2016

Angela Eagle’s voting record

From Labour Briefing

In any upcoming leadership contest, Angela Eagle’s supporters will doubtless claim that she represents the working class, the poor and the vulnerable. Eagle, they will claim, is the left-wing candidate who can unite all wings of our Party.

Eagle was elected to Parliament in 1992 and so has an extensive political record. Comrades might wish to consider this record before casting their vote:

• In March 2003, Angela Eagle voted for the invasion of Iraq, which led to the deaths of approximately 500,000 people, according to the latest survey.
• According to the They Work For You website, she has ‘consistently voted against an investigation into the Iraq war’.
• Eagle supports the retention of Trident nuclear weapons.
• In September 2014 she voted in favour of air strikes on Islamic State in Iraq.
• In December 2015 she voted in favour of air strikes on Islamic State in Syria.
• According to the They Work For You website, she has ‘generally voted for a stricter asylum system.’
• According to the same website, in January and March 2004 she ‘voted in favour of university tuition fees increasing from £1125 per year to up to £3000 per year’.
• Eagle supported the introduction of ID cards.
• In 2006 she supported the Blair government’s plan to detain terrorism suspects for up to 90 days without charge.
• In March 2013 she abstained on the vote about the coalition government’s workfare programme, the scheme in which people on Jobseekers Allowance are forced to carry out unpaid work in order to keep receiving their benefits.
• In July 2015, Eagle abstained on the vote for the Welfare Bill, which proposed to cut tax credits, reduce the benefit cap to £20,000 (£23,000 in London) and called for £12bn more cuts. According to the government’s own figures, over 300,000 poor children will be pushed further into poverty, with 40,000 more children sinking below the poverty line, as a result of the benefit cap. Child Poverty - Action Group noted ‘the majority of households affected by the benefit cap are lone-parent households and the main victims are children’.
• She supports the expansion of Heathrow Airport.

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