Commons
Debate
5 January 2026
Middle East and North Africa
I must press the Minister on the further 19 settlements announced over the Christmas period in the west bank. Minister Smotrich has been explicit that that is deliberately about making it impossible to establish the Palestinian state. That brings the total in the last three years alone to 69 new set…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
5 January 2026
Venezuela
The truth is, the warning signs that the rules-based order is at risk have been there for some time. In evidence to Congress during the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, the former White House adviser on Russia and Europe, Fiona Hill, claimed that an informal offer was made by Russia to with…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
17 December 2025
UK-EU Common Understanding Negotiations
I congratulate the Minister on doing what many of us have felt has been needed in the relationship between the European Union and the UK: what therapists call “active listening”. He is actually listening to our neighbours, finding out what they are interested in and where we can do a deal, and recog…
Commons
Westminster Hall
16 December 2025
Transgender People: Provision of Healthcare
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I think I speak for everyone in this Chamber when I say that it is a privilege to be in the room with my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire and Bedworth (Rachel Taylor), and to hear her passion for this subject and her honesty …
Commons
Debate
15 December 2025
Violence against Women and Girls Strategy
I do not think that anyone in the Chamber can doubt the Minister’s passion and commitment on this topic, and she will recognise the shared sense of urgency across the House. We know that one in six teenage girls experience domestic abuse in a relationship, which means that an equivalent number of ou…
Commons
Debate
15 December 2025
NHS: Winter Preparedness
The Secretary of State is rightly proud of the work that has been done to vaccinate people, and he will be acutely aware that we are heading into the super-spreader festive season. There are parents across the country who want to protect their own parents by getting their children vaccinated, but ri…
Commons
Debate
8 December 2025
Child Poverty Strategy
I recognise that we should not take any lessons from Opposition Members, because they do not seem to understand that lots of families in work are affected by the two-child cap. Their priorities seem to need a rethink, because they are arguing against lifting the two-child cap before subsidising priv…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
2 December 2025
Angiolini Inquiry
I think all our hearts will have been broken by the words of Sarah Everard’s family. The honest truth is that what this report covers did not happen in a vacuum. This weekend women in Walthamstow will hold a vigil to reclaim Hollow Ponds, which is a lovely open space, but there have been repeated co…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
2 December 2025
Criminal Court Reform
Any of us who has supported a constituent in a rape trial will take no lectures from the Conservatives about how they managed our courts. There is clearly a challenge here. The worry for many of us is whether the Justice Secretary’s prescription is the solution; as he points out, juries are involved…
Commons
Proceedings
1 December 2025
2 contributions
Budget Resolutions
The shadow Secretary of State wants to talk about fairness. One of the practical consequences of retaining the two-child cap was that in order to be exempted from it, 3,000 women had to declare to a Department for Work and Pensions official that they had been raped. [ Interruption. ] An Opposition M…
My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful point about going further on our relationship with Europe. Does he recognise that the OBR says that Brexit, as negotiated by the previous Government, is one of the “structural challenges” facing our manufacturing industry, so perhaps again being part o…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
25 November 2025
COP30
I was not at COP, unlike some of my colleagues, but I am so glad that others were there and saw, in particular, the enduring leadership of the Secretary of State on this issue. I am glad that my right hon. Friend is not listening to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), who said …
Commons
Ministerial Statement
25 November 2025
G20 and Ukraine
I think we all understand that this is a breaking situation. In such an uncertain world, we know that allyship is integral to our security. The post-war generation created the NHS and NATO because they understood the power of collective solidarity. I am pleased to hear the Prime Minister talk about …
Commons
Debate
20 November 2025
International Men’s Day
It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher) and to be in the Chamber with my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), who made a truly extraordinary speech.
I want to reassure you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I will not be making a dad joke, no…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
20 November 2025
Migration: Settlement Pathway
I agree with the Home Secretary that our immigration system needs reform and that people are concerned about it. I think we should also be very clear in this House that we recognise the benefits of immigration to our country—the talents, the jobs and the entrepreneurship it brings—and that nobody wo…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
18 November 2025
Gaza and Sudan
I thank the Foreign Secretary for her strong and principled leadership about conflict resolution. Can she update us on the international stabilisation force? She will be aware of the heavy rains and flooding in Gaza. She is absolutely right about the importance of getting food in, but there are repo…
Commons
Debate
17 November 2025
Asylum Policy
The Home Secretary is arguing that what will heal this divided nation is to get somebody who we have agreed is a refugee, with a well-founded fear of persecution, to feel a permanent sense of limbo because they will never be able to plan for the long term for them or their family, because their stat…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
13 November 2025
Police Reform
I welcome the work that the Minister is doing on reforming how the police can engage with our local communities, because all of us want to see a closer relationship in that regard. May I press her on what lessons she is learning for my part of the world? In London, the challenge is at a borough-wide…
Commons
Debate
11 November 2025
BBC Leadership
I think we can all hear the Secretary of State’s frustration that we are in this position. She is absolutely right that there must be a period of introspection at the BBC about how this has come to pass, because it is true that trust in our national institutions is declining. However, I must take is…
Commons
Proceedings
5 November 2025
Conflict in Sudan
I welcome the aid that the Minister has outlined for this horrific crisis. He is right that we must be precise about what military involvement, if any, the UK may have via arms sales. He will have also heard the concern about the UAE and what is happening. Amnesty International has described it as a…
Commons
Westminster Hall
5 November 2025
2 contributions
Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) for securing this important debate.
George Orwell said:
“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad…
My apologies, but I will not.
The Court also recognises the jurisdiction of nations. I reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) that if he has problems with how the ECHR is interpreted, we can pass domestic laws to address that. I know that some in this room want the Court to b…
Commons
Oral Questions
4 November 2025
Topical Questions
T10. British businesses face a toxic storm of crushing tariffs from America and mountains of paperwork from Europe. I welcome the Prime Minister’s recognition that we need to do something about the latter because in my constituency, because of Brexit, businesses now have to deal with 27 different VA…
Commons
Proceedings
29 October 2025
Gaza and Hamas
It is now 19 days since 10 October, and there are still hostage families who cannot grieve for a loved one, and still people starving in Gaza because there is not enough aid, and now we are seeing the west bank deteriorate. In the last 24 hours, Vice-President Vance has argued that “skirmishes” are …
Commons
Debate
27 October 2025
North Sea Oil and Gas Industry
I am reassured that it is this Minister who is looking at the issue and fighting for those jobs in Aberdeen. I am acutely aware that the previous Government did not take full account of the impact of this situation. We now know that using Rosebank, which the shadow Minister raised, would create 50 t…
Commons
Westminster Hall
27 October 2025
2 contributions
Statutory Maternity and Paternity Pay
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank Grace and my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier).
I want to make a speech on behalf of every parent who is right now checking their bank balance, sitting in the back of a dingy soft-play centre, wee…
I agree that there is complexity that we must deal with. Will the Minister update us on his Department’s view of the Women and Equalities Committee inquiry, which specifically took evidence about parental leave and six weeks at 90% of pay. Nobody is suggesting we can do everything overnight, but the…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
14 October 2025
Middle East
I suspect that one reason our optimism is cautious is that many of us are acutely aware that the damage that has been done will last a generation—on all sides of the conflict. For some, the damage can never be repaired. I thought yesterday of my constituent Sharone Lifschitz, whose father, Oded, was…