Commons
Debate
16 October 2025
3 contributions
Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill
It has been almost 19 years since I first met Professor Alex Rogers at a two-day conference at Somerville College, Oxford, convened by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment. The subject was international law on the high seas. The young postdoctoral fellow inspired us about t…
Will the right hon. Member give way?
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Proceedings
16 October 2025
Business of the House
The long-awaited report by the Joint Intelligence Committee on the link between biodiversity, sustainability and national security is still not with us. Lord Dannatt and other senior military figures have increasingly expressed concerns about the threat the collapse of global biodiversity poses to o…
Commons
Proceedings
16 October 2025
Official Secrets Act Case: Witness Statements
May I take the Minister back to the wording of the Act? It says that it is an offence to pass information that would be
“directly or indirectly useful to an enemy”.
It does not say that it is an offence to directly or indirectly pass to an enemy information that would be useful. The difference is …
Commons
Westminster Hall
14 October 2025
4 contributions
COP30: Food System Transformation
Systems rely on diversity. Imagine a piano with 88 keys all tuned to middle C: Mozart would not have got very far. Yet what is happening to our global food system is a destruction of the very diversity on which our survival depends. Since 1900, the world’s crops have lost 75% of their genetic divers…
The hon. Lady will recollect that, of that £11.6 billion, £3 billion was ringfenced for conservation. Does she agree that it is important that we do not lose that element of ICF?
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Ministerial Statement
13 October 2025
Manchester Terrorism Attack
After the vile attack in Manchester, many of us in this House will have spent time with Jewish friends last week celebrating the festival of Sukkot. It was particularly emotional for me to do that with friends and to realise that for the sukkah—that temporary shelter where we eat that meal—you have …
Commons
Ministerial Statement
2 September 2025
Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for what has been a lifetime of work protecting women and girls. I welcome what she has said about updating the ethnicity data, which will enable the public debate to take place on the basis of data and fact rather than the prejudice and scaremongering of which she ha…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
1 September 2025
Borders and Asylum
It has come to my attention that in government, the job of Home Secretary does not always attract the greatest thanks, so I want to thank my right hon. Friend for the response that she and her Department have given to the letter from 100 colleagues about the Gaza students, and for what she said this…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
14 July 2025
State of Climate and Nature
I thank my right hon. Friend for this statement; I have waited 14 years for it, and I look forward to such a statement being given to the House in each of the next 14 years. One of the key drivers of climate change is deforestation. One of the key drivers of deforestation is cattle ranching and soy …
Commons
Debate
11 July 2025
Rare Cancers Bill
Like everyone else, I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) for bringing this important Bill before the House. I had not intended to speak in this debate; I was simply going to intervene on my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonag…
Commons
Debate
10 July 2025
Electricity Market Review
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on this package of measures, which will reduce energy costs. The system left by the Conservatives needed to tackle three things: transmission charges, constraint payments and marginal cost pricing, by which the price of gas drives the cost of the whole system. I t…
Commons
Proceedings
10 July 2025
UK-France Nuclear Partnership
Is the Minister as surprised as I was to find that the shadow Secretary of State only half quoted that sentence from the report in Navy Lookout , about making it clearer that “no extreme threat” to European security would go unanswered by both countries, but failed to look at the real purpose here—t…
Commons
Debate
1 July 2025
2 contributions
Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that she has put into the changes that have been made to the Bill. She spoke of cost shunting—the way that cuts in one area have forced people to claim in other areas, and those costs have risen. Does she not therefore think that it is important that the …
I think that Members on the Government Benches appreciate the concessions that the Minister has already made. When he is talking about whether measures will be put in primary legislation, he must understand that Members will not be able to amend things if they are not in primary legislation. That is…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
23 June 2025
Middle East
As the Member of Parliament for the largest Jewish school in Europe, may I thank the Foreign Secretary for his earlier assurances on safeguarding the community in this country? May I also commend the way in which he has diligently pursued a negotiated outcome to this destabilised situation? He knows…
Commons
Debate
16 June 2025
Air India Plane Crash
The Minister will be aware that as we speak, the Indian High Commission in London is holding a commemoration service for those who have been lost. He also knows that my constituency of Brent West, which includes Wembley, is the epicentre for the Gujarati community—more than 30% of my constituents ar…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
16 June 2025
Iran-Israel Conflict
The failure to get transparent information from the United Nations Special Commission and the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission caused untold damage 22 years ago. What discussions has my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary had with Director General Grossi at the I…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
5 June 2025
Governing the Marine Environment
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for how he has conducted this inquiry and presented the report to the House. I also thank the Clerks and officials who prepared the report under considerable stress—we are very grateful for their work.
I ask my hon. Friend to reflect further on the situatio…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
5 June 2025
Criminal Cases Review Commission: Leadership
I welcome the statement from the Chair of the Select Committee and the appointment of Dame Vera Baird as the interim chair. Does my hon. Friend share a certain incredulity that the Ministry of Justice took three years to resolve the fee that would be paid to commissioners, and that the recruitment e…
Commons
Proceedings
5 June 2025
Business of the House
Paragraph 7.36 of “Erskine May” states the process for setting out the ratification of international treaties. The Government’s treaty tracker says the global oceans treaty that the Leader of the House referred to earlier has not been ratified, and yet the BBNJ treaty—the global oceans treaty—was la…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
20 May 2025
Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Food is the means of life, and it must not be used as a weapon of war. The Foreign Secretary has rightly condemned its use as morally wrong, but it is also a breach of international humanitarian law. He has condemned as unjustifiable and disproportionate Minister Smotrich’s proposals to cleanse Gaza…
Commons
Proceedings
8 May 2025
Environmental Audit Committee
I am delighted to speak in support of the Committee’s report, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee on the way in which he has led the Committee and on how he took up the remnant of this report from the last Parliament as the first report for our Committee in the new Pa…
Commons
Proceedings
8 May 2025
Business of the House
Yesterday I spoke with colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about the progress of the treaty on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction—sometimes known as the global ocean treaty. I was assured that, as far as the Department is concerned, the matter had been dealt w…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
6 May 2025
Trade Negotiations
Last week I had the pleasure of meeting representatives of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry when they came here with my old friend Piyush Goyal. I congratulate the Minister and his officials, as well as FICCI and the India Global Forum—under the leadership of Manoj Ladwa—an…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
6 May 2025
Counter Terrorism Policing: Arrests
The Minister will be aware that a number of Iranian citizens in this country still have relatives in Iran, and it is not beyond the wit of the Iranian Government to use that pressure on them. In requiring the citizens of Iran in this country to report to our Government if they are in any way connect…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
30 April 2025
Energy Grid Resilience
Energy resilience comes from a secure supply of clean and cheap energy. The major cause of the financial crises that the world has experienced over the last 40 years is the insecurity of supply of the fossil fuel markets, with Ukraine being just the latest case. As for cheap, the last Government in …
Commons
Westminster Hall
30 April 2025
4 contributions
Global Deforestation
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government policies to limit global deforestation.
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair for this debate, Mr Vickers. I know how important these matters are to your constituents in Brigg and Immingham, as they are to mine in Brent West.
It may seem…
No, it is not the Plate. It is not the River Nile, and it is not the Amazon, but if anyone thought it was the Amazon, they are getting close. The river I am speaking of is actually, for the most part, invisible and airborne. Every day, 20 billion cubic metres of water—that is 20 billion metric tonne…
+2 more contributions in this session