Commons
Debate
13 October 2025
Digital ID
I appreciate the Secretary of State setting out the Government’s ambitions. I have to pick her up on something, though, because she said this policy would be free, but ultimately the taxpayer will have to pay for it. The costings that we have seen are about £1 billion to £2 billion to create the sys…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
13 October 2025
Manchester Terrorism Attack
I join colleagues in expressing my condolences to the families of those who lost a loved one in last week’s attack. I also put on record—I think this whole House will agree—our support for the Community Security Trust, not just for the tireless work it does every week at shul, but for its cross-comm…
Commons
Westminster Hall
15 September 2025
Children with SEND: Assessments and Support
The hon. Lady is making a very powerful case, and we all agree that we want to get the system right. Can we also all agree, because there is not a Reform Member here, that the comments about the system being “hijacked” were completely inappropriate and do not speak for the needs of the children we a…
Commons
Proceedings
10 September 2025
Russian Drones: Violation of Polish Airspace
Our constituents with links to Poland will understandably be terrified by last night’s development, but they will also be reassured that the Polish people, like the Ukrainian people, do not stand alone. NATO’s supreme headquarters confirmed that last night’s mission involved not just Polish air defe…
Commons
Proceedings
10 September 2025
Qatar: Israeli Strike
The Minister is absolutely right to call for a session at the United Nations—nobody can think that attacking the people trying to broker peace is going to lead to a ceasefire—but ahead of that, this country must have made some assessment of the case for the session and the motion. Will the Minister …
Commons
Proceedings
8 September 2025
3 contributions
Palestine Action: Proscription and Protests
(Urgent Question): To ask if the Home Secretary will make a statement on the proscription of Palestine Action and public protest.
Nearly 1,500 people have now been arrested because of concerns about proscription. There is clearly a problem with violence and intimidation in our politics, and we have to get this right because public confidence is falling, too. I am not here as a supporter or defender of Palestine Action and its …
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Ministerial Statement
4 September 2025
Early Education and Childcare
I welcome the Minister’s recognition of the impact of this policy on equality. He will know that this Monday was Mums’ Equal Pay Day. Mums earn 33% less than dads, so from 1 September, mums in this country basically work for free. Affordable childcare is critical to closing that gap. As new organisa…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
1 September 2025
Middle East
I think we all hear the frustration of the Foreign Secretary. He is leading in a way that other nations have not on this challenge, but it is that leadership role that we are looking to as a House. I think we all understand that nations individually have limited impact but that pressure can be broug…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
1 September 2025
Borders and Asylum
It was Orwell who urged us to be proud of our countries and to call out the nationalists trying to demand that we express our pride or be called traitors accordingly. Let us be proud of this country and the work it has done to support people fleeing persecution; let us be proud of what we have done …
Commons
Ministerial Statement
21 July 2025
Middle East
My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) is right; we have been waiting weeks for this statement. The truth is that our constituents do not understand—and neither do we—how we can track our stolen mobile phones to China or Algeria but we cannot track F-35 compo…
Commons
Proceedings
21 July 2025
Asylum Hotels: Migrant Criminal Activity
I think many of us agree with the Minister when she says that it is important that we are able to debate immigration and refugees and how we as a country support them, and that we recognise when allegations of incredibly serious sexual offences are involved that people are rightly concerned. Peacefu…
Commons
Debate
17 July 2025
Global Plastics Treaty
My hon. Friend is giving an incredibly powerful speech. Microplastics are also part of what we are wearing, and microfibres are a key part of the problem with plastics. I wonder if, like me, she is interested in what the French have done to get companies to disclose when microfibres are part of the …
Commons
Ministerial Statement
15 July 2025
Afghanistan
It is a very shocking story that the Secretary of State has told us today, and I pay tribute to him for his commitment to be transparent about it. Sadly, this comes as no surprise to many of us here and to those in our offices who, over that period of time, had to deal with hundreds of desperately d…
Commons
Debate
14 July 2025
UK-France Migration: Co-operation
I am sure that the Home Secretary shares my frustration that we could have been much further along with a returns agreement, because the shadow Home Secretary—the former Immigration Minister—apparently admitted to a Conservative party members meeting in May that, before we left the European Union, h…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
14 July 2025
State of Climate and Nature
Thank God there is somebody in this Chamber trying to actually save the planet! Net zero makes good common sense for lots of our constituents when they recognise that this is not just about climate security—those of us who have faced floods in our constituencies know how expensive that is—but about …
Commons
Debate
9 July 2025
5 contributions
Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill
rose—
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I hope he is not suggesting that the hard-working families who use PIP to be able to get to work are not voices that we should hear in this Chamber.
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Ministerial Statement
7 July 2025
Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life
May I join with many of the others reliving their political youth in welcoming Sure Start and paying tribute to the late, great Tessa Jowell, whose vision for it inspired us all? One of the reasons why Tessa was so passionate about Sure Start is that she knew it would ultimately save us money by inv…
Commons
Debate
7 July 2025
Government Performance against Fiscal Rules
There has been talk about the previous Prime Minister. As the MP for the constituency where the lettuce that lasted longer than the previous Prime Minister was located, I can confirm that we all know from our constituents that she did more damage. It is good to hear Conservative Members finally talk…
Commons
Debate
1 July 2025
Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill
My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful case. None of us should take any lectures from the Conservatives. She and I were here when the bedroom tax was introduced. We can have many moral arguments about welfare reform, but the bedroom tax saved very little in the end, which shows that this wa…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
1 July 2025
Parental Leave Review
I very much welcome the review. I think most people in the Chamber—with some exceptions—recognise that supporting families and children is in our national interest, and I am very pleased to hear the Government recognise that parental leave is just not enough right now, particularly for dads, and to …
Commons
Oral Questions
Treasury
1 July 2025
Topical Questions
The main beneficiaries of Brexit have been printers, because of all the extra paperwork that the previous Government created. The National Audit Office has estimated that their border arrangements have cost us £4.7 billion and rising, and the single trade window will add to the red tape. Does the Ch…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
30 June 2025
Welfare Reform
I do not doubt the Secretary of State’s commitment to getting this right. She will be very aware that, as it stands, the legal advice we have had is that these proposals will breach our obligations under the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. The previous Government did that, …
Commons
Oral Questions
Science, Innovation and Technology
25 June 2025
Topical Questions
T3. It is clear that Europe and the United States of America are diverging on how they will regulate AI. Given that our EU reset commits us to working closely with Europe on AI regulation, what talks has the Minister had about how we protect UK copyright in that context?
Commons
Oral Questions
24 June 2025
2 contributions
Alaa Abd el-Fattah
15. What recent progress he has made on securing the release of Alaa Abd el-Fattah.
I think everybody in this Chamber, including the Foreign Secretary, is desperately worried about the health of Laila Soueif, who has felt that she has no choice but to be on hunger strike since her son Alaa should have been released last September. She is in and out of hospital, desperately ill, “dy…
Commons
Proceedings
23 June 2025
2 contributions
Pride Month
Will the Minister give way?
The hon. Gentleman makes an incredibly powerful and important point. One word we have not yet used in this debate is allyship. One challenge is that too often it falls on to the shoulders of our LGBTQ+ sisters and brothers to fight these fights because those of us who would consider ourselves allies…