Hilary Benn Quotes

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Hilary Benn

Profession : Politician

Birth : November 26, 1953

Countries with higher incomes on average achieve better human development. I do not believe that growth alone will 'cure' poverty. But I do believe that growth is necessary.

Hilary Benn

I spent 20 years working for the trade union movement before becoming a Labour MP. I'm proud to have done both jobs.

Hilary Benn

I agree on the need for environmental sustainability. It is no good raising gross national income while at the same time destroying natural assets.

Hilary Benn

We are looking at how you change the relationship between central and local government and how to use public resources to the best effect at the local level.

Hilary Benn

The problem is that the global arms trade is entirely free of international regulation. In a world in which the flow of consumer goods is governed by a plethora of international conventions and regulations, deadly weapons have an uncanny knack of slipping through the net.

Hilary Benn

We need to throw away less, recycle a lot more and turn much of the rest into energy.

Hilary Benn

After all, does it make sense to be chucking things like glass, paper, cardboard, wood, metals, plastics, and food waste into holes in the ground? No, it doesn't; especially when someone will pay you good money to take them off your hands or, in the case of wood and food waste, when you can turn them into renewable energy.

Hilary Benn

Do I have political heroes? Probably not wise to.

Hilary Benn

In the 70s and 80s, Dad was 'the most hated politician in Britain'. When I started at Holland Park school, the papers turned up and there was a photograph of me published - skinny me in white shorts lining up with lots of other kids for PE. And I was 10.

Hilary Benn

A politician can go out and speak for him or herself, but actually for the family it's difficult - although it does bind you.

Hilary Benn

I was interested in public service, and looking back at my father, my grandfather and two great-grandfathers, well, yeah, that's what they did, too. And I think public service, like journalism, done right is a really honourable, really important profession.

Hilary Benn

Trade deal negotiations are highly complicated and take a long time.

Hilary Benn

The EU has made it very clear that for frictionless trade and no tariffs on goods there is a mechanism for achieving that, but there are consequences. There are trade-offs that will have to happen.

Hilary Benn

I'm really keen to see a Labour government because there are many things to be done, not least pursuing a sensible Brexit and not one that damages our economy and jobs.

Hilary Benn

I grew up in a household where we talked about the state of the world over breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Hilary Benn

When your father loses his job you're not sure what the future is going to be. I was conscious that people were interested in what was happening to my father.

Hilary Benn

The thing that worries me more than anything else is losing faith in the capacity of politics to change things. I don't mean scepticism, criticism, querying, but I do mean cynicism.

Hilary Benn

People are yearning for a politics that tells it straight: that being in government is difficult, that there are tough decisions that we have to make sometimes.

Hilary Benn

Politics is a process, and there has to be a continual conversation between those who govern and those who give their consent to be governed.

Hilary Benn

The truth is that it was local councils who asked for the power and the freedom to try different ways of encouraging residents to reduce the amount they throw way away, and it was Labour that gave them these powers.

Hilary Benn