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(3 days, 9 hours ago)
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Safety of the Jewish Community
(3 days, 9 hours ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Catherine West (Hornsey and Friern Barnet) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the safety of the Jewish community.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for letting me hold this debate.
I am honoured to represent one of the most diverse, inclusive and welcoming communities in the world. One hundred and eighty languages are spoken in our schools, and both Haringey and Barnet councils, together with community partners, have been instrumental in ensuring that our community is a place where discrimination and hatred are rejected and diversity is celebrated. I am proud of the excellent Haringey and Barnet multi-faith forums. The Metropolitan police independent advisory group in Barnet and Haringey also does great work. Members of those different groups have joined us today in the Public Gallery.
My job is to work with the community to promote Hornsey and Friern Barnet as a beacon of diversity and integration that shines a light on what can be achieved when the whole community comes together. We have a long and rich history of challenging hate. In 1977, the battle of Wood Green at Ducketts Common saw a rainbow coalition led by Jewish, Irish and black communities unite to drive out the far-right National Front. Former councillor Sheila Peacock, who is now in her 90s, remembers those days well.
In recent years, Hornsey and Friern Barnet has become a safe haven for those fleeing persecution in Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and other conflict zones around the world. Later today, I will host a roundtable with HIAS+JCORE, which has its roots in the Kindertransport movement, to discuss support for newly arrived communities. We have a long and rich history of challenging hatred, and that means we stand against antisemitism.
It has been a frightening and dark six months. On 2 October last year, two Jewish people were killed and three left in a serious condition after a car-ramming and stabbing attack outside the Heaton synagogue in Manchester. In March this year, four ambulances belonging to the Hatzola ambulance service were set on fire in the car park of a synagogue in Golders Green. Hatzola provides a service for all Londoners, responding to thousands of emergencies every year, from minor injuries to life-threatening conditions. It works collaboratively with emergency services such as the London ambulance service, the London fire brigade, the helicopter emergency medical service and the Metropolitan police to co-ordinate and provide professional care.
On 15 April, we saw an attack on the Finchley Reform synagogue. Three days later, the Kenton United synagogue was targeted. On 27 April, an arson attack was carried out at a memorial wall in Golders Green. Later that month, two Jewish men were stabbed in Golders Green. We know how quickly my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Sarah Sackman) acted; the then Prime Minister, the former Member for Holborn and St Pancras, also rushed to the scene to reassure the community.
The Community Safety Trust recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2025, the second highest total ever reported to the CST in a single year. This year, we had the second highest total ever reported to the CST in the first six months of any year. I applied for this debate because the House needs to have a full and frank debate. We need to reassure not only our constituents but ourselves that we are doing all that we possibly can to stamp out the scourge of antisemitism.
I will cover three issues briefly; I am aware that other Members wish to contribute to the debate, and I want to hear from those in all parts of the UK about what their communities are doing to tackle antisemitism. On policing and community cohesion, I welcome the recent Government announcement on investment to protect Jewish communities: more than £250 million across the next three years, including a further £86 million to the Metropolitan police, which will fund about 300 additional officers in London to increase police presence. That is particularly important: as London MPs we understand that any event in central London that needs to be policed means that we lose our local police force.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
My local police force in Elmbridge works very closely with my two synagogues, the North West Surrey synagogue and the Kingston Liberal synagogue, to make them feel supported. They, in turn, cite the work of the Community Security Trust. I have been to its impressive headquarters, where I could see the necessity of what it does. Does the hon. Member agree that we need a commitment to fund the trust at its current level, or with more if necessary?
Catherine West
From the number of people who have written to me since this debate was granted, I am very aware that resourcing is crucial. There are more than 500 additional officers across England and Wales, boosting security around schools, synagogues and community centres. It is deeply upsetting, as their MP, to hear mothers ask, “Why does my daughter say, ‘Mummy, why there are so many police outside my school?’?”
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
I agree with the comment from my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding), although members of the Jewish community say to me that they do not want to build ever-higher walls. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) and I had a harrowing meeting with children and young people who attend Richmond synagogue in my borough. They told us about their terrible experiences of bullying, both physical and verbal, at school and university. They are all having to hide their faith. Does the hon. Member agree that nobody should have to hide their faith? Sir David Bell, who is doing a review for the Government on antisemitism in schools, says that headteachers tell him that, for Jewish faith schools, security comes ahead of education. That cannot be right, can it?
Catherine West
The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. Although we have not yet heard back from the Bell inquiry, I will touch on it in my third and final point and will pick up the hon. Lady’s points then.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s speech, particularly her reference to what happened at Kenton synagogue, which partly serves the people of Harrow. She referred to many of the physical manifestations of antisemitism. May I draw her attention to online antisemitism? We increasingly expect Ofcom to police the very worst of social media. Is it not time that we had some clear measures of success by which we can hold the Online Safety Act 2023 and Ofcom to account, so that if we still see no reduction in antisemitism online we can consider what further steps are necessary to crack down on that source of antisemitism?
Catherine West
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In my second point I will talk about the online world, which is indeed a frightening place for many of us.
Policing and community cohesion are at the heart of ensuring that everyone in the country feels safe. The late John Hume, a Nobel peace prize laureate and former Member of this House, said that our differences make us special and
“should never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies the most fundamental principle of peace—respect for diversity.”
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and local councils up and down the country do excellent work with programmes on tackling division and building bridges between communities, but I think that in some communities we are better at that than in others. There are some places where that day-to-day confidence-building in the communities we serve is absent.
Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
Earlier this year, I met the Suffolk Liberal Jewish Community. Who thought that there would be such an organisation thriving in the genteel countryside of Suffolk? On the point about antisemitism across the country, will the hon. Lady join me in paying tribute to the small organisations that go out of their way to combat antisemitism and support Jewish communities across the UK?
Catherine West
I will indeed, and I wish there were more of them, because that is at the heart of education. It is all very well having teachers teaching, but what we need is a response that it is embedded in communities. I thank the hon. Member for taking an interest in the Suffolk organisation.
Support with resources for local government includes more than £2 million for more than 200 grassroots organisations, through the Common Ground award, bringing people from different backgrounds together to build trust and find common ground. We hear a lot in this House about Pride in Place, the £5.8 billion funding promoting community leadership, making local politics count. That does not just mean local politicians; it means us in this House going to events, promoting community cohesion, standing up when something is wrong and promoting the right way of doing things.
The Mayor of London has also been proactive, investing £17 million in initiatives to tackle hate crime. Since the shared endeavour fund started in 2020, it has supported 138 projects across the capital and has worked with more than 220,000 participants, including projects focused specifically on countering antisemitism. Here I will mention the work of schools in Barnet. They are mainstream schools, but they come together to listen to the stories of headteachers in Jewish schools in order that we can share experiences and cross-pollinate ideas so that all children, across any local authority area, hear about best practice in tackling antisemitism and hatred.
Research from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate shows a repeated pattern whereby real-world attacks on Jewish communities are followed by targeted abuse, calls for further violence and antisemitic conspiracy theories online. I welcome the inclusion in the Online Safety Act of measures to ensure that technology companies remove illegal content such as antisemitic material, but we need to ensure that it is effective. CCDH research into 10 leading AI chatbots found that eight in 10 chatbots would assist users to plan violent attacks, including on places of worship such as synagogues, and nine in 10 failed to reliably discourage them. That is shocking.
Following the Manchester synagogue attack, the CCDH identified 171 hateful or violent online replies targeting 13 prominent British Jewish accounts. All remained live when checked. The 100 most viewed posts falsely alleging that Israel or Jewish people orchestrated the attack received 568,708 views; none displayed a dissenting community note. Following the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green, the CCDH identified 130 hateful online replies directed at 10 prominent British Jewish individuals and organisations; all remained live when checked. The 100 most viewed false flag conspiracy posts received 252,954 views, again without a single dissenting community note.
How do people know what the truth is when they are reading online? CCDH research found that 11 Instagram accounts posting antisemitic and racist material accumulated 1.5 billion views while directing users to shops selling hateful merchandise. All 11 were also promoted through Instagram’s related accounts feature. Are we sure that the existing legal framework is enough to stamp out online antisemitism?
Education on the dangers of extremism is so important, but good education and the outcomes of good education are so difficult to achieve. I welcome the Government’s £7 million to tackle antisemitism in schools, colleges and universities. As the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) mentioned, Sir David Bell’s review will look into the support available to schools and colleges; how well they use their policies to make decisions and handle hate-filled incidents; how they are accountable if they fail to handle an incident well; what they can do to prevent antisemitism, including identifying and tackling issues early; and the role and influence of campaigning organisations external to schools and colleges and how they influence school and college decision making. I look forward to reading the review, but most importantly to implementation of the practical actions to combat antisemitism that stem from the review. Early intervention is key.
To sum up, my requests of the Minister are simple. Every Member of this House and communities and families up and down the country need to be reassured that the Government are leaving no stone unturned to ensure that Jewish communities are safe, that we are doing everything we can to stamp out online hate and that we are tackling antisemitism at its roots through work in schools.
I will leave the House with the positive image of the retired Jewish MP whose daughter from the local synagogue planted an olive tree with our esteemed stand-in deputy lieutenant, Bibi Khan, who leads at the Wightman Road mosque. That was a symbol of our communities together. We dig the garden, we plant the tree, the roots take shape and we watch it grow tall.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing the debate and highlighting this issue.
I rise to speak on a matter that touches the very core of our shared humanity, freedom of religion and democratic values: the safety and security of our Jewish community. As the Member for Strangford, I have never hidden where I stand. I am an unapologetic friend of Israel. Although I may not agree with every move of the Israeli Government at all times, I will always stand up in this House against those who seek to bully or delegitimise the Jewish state. One does not need to share my geopolitical views to recognise that what is happening to Jewish people on our streets is an absolute disgrace. The hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet has underlined that, and I congratulate her on setting the scene incredibly well.
The stats paint an horrific picture. The Community Security Trust recorded nearly 2,000 antisemitic incidents across the United Kingdom in the first six months of 2026 alone, making it the second highest first half of a year for such incidents ever recorded. We are seeing record levels of online hate, alongside physical assaults, threats and the desecration of Jewish property. This is not a temporary surge; it is becoming a terrifying new normal, and that has to be stopped. I look forward very much to the Minister’s response and to hearing what the Government will do to address the issue.
We see the spillover of such poison in Northern Ireland, where global political tensions are being used to justify systematic exclusion. Just a few days ago, in Londonderry, four young Israeli triathletes were forced out of the Europe triathlon cup. The local hosting group, the North West Triathlon Club, openly declared that it could not support the participation of the Israeli athletes, arguing that their presence would “normalise” Israel on the international sporting stage.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
That incident happened in my city at the weekend. Jewish athletes from Israel were forced to withdraw from the triathlon as a result of the hateful bile of these hard-left bigots. They complain about the far right, but we have to be consistent in any criticism and calling out of violent rhetoric, whether on the right or the left. Such antisemitic terrorism has to be called out and hopefully prevented in the future.
Jim Shannon
I saw my hon. Friend on the TV and heard him on the radio over the weekend, speaking out on this issue. There is something wrong with the North West Triathlon Club in declaring that it could not support the participation of the Israeli athletes. Because the local organisers refused to back the NWTC, and with protests looming, the Israeli Triathlon Association was backed into a corner and forced to ask World Triathlon to remove the athletes for their own physical safety. It is an absolute disgrace that an organisation should do that in Londonderry of all places, or anywhere in this United Kingdom.
The ITA is now actively considering legal action over what it rightly describes as discriminatory treatment. When a so-called sporting body allows local political pressure to dictate who can stand on the starting line, the very purpose and integrity of international sport is destroyed. It mirrors the hostility we saw in Belfast city centre, where an Israeli television news crew was physically assaulted. Why? Because they were Israelis—because they were Jewish. A cameraman was injured simply because of his nationality. The extreme terrorism, attacks and potential attacks on Israelis in Northern Ireland worries me greatly.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
When the Labour party went through a terrible time with our own antisemitism crisis, the hon. Gentleman was a staunch friend of the Jewish members of my party, and I know that many of them remember him fondly for that. He is highlighting most starkly that this is not about Jewish people living less Jewish lives; it is about Jewish people living less public lives because of the constant fear of what questions they will be asked about geopolitical issues far outside their own sphere of influence or interest. We therefore have a less rich society, because those who can make contributions do not participate. I am sure the hon. Gentleman agrees that we need religious freedom and a diverse culture, and that if people retreat from public spaces, they are left vacant for those with nefarious intent.
Jim Shannon
The hon. Gentleman describes the issue very well. People of Jewish faith and those of Israeli nationality are unable to lead their normal lives, as he says.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), the DUP leader, who hit the nail on the head when he said that
“strong opinions on Middle Eastern conflicts can never justify hatred, intimidation, or violence against Israeli or Jewish people.”
Having witnessed where identity-based hatred leads in my country, we must reject it completely. My right hon. Friend was right to call out the offensive delays in the removal of hostile slogans such as the graffiti targeting staff at the Royal Victoria hospital.
We have heard those three examples of hatred against Israeli and Jewish people in their work, in their play and in their normal lives. The Belfast Jewish Community is a valued neighbour. As the deputy chair of the Belfast Jewish Community recently warned, these incidents risk branding our region with a reputation for unchecked hostility, so we must uphold the Jewish community’s freedom from persecution and guarantee their safety.
I urge the Minister to ensure robust support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the authorities to protect places of worship, clear our streets of intimidation, ensure that international sport remains open to all without political vetting and keep our communities safe. The Government must acknowledge the problem and seek a solution. Will the Minister liaise with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland and the PSNI—the police force dedicated to the safety of all the people in Northern Ireland—about how Jewish people are under the cosh? It is time that the Government here, the Government back home and the PSNI stepped up and ensured that Israelis and Jewish people have the freedom to live a normal life—the very thing that we want them to have.
Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) on securing this important debate.
I do not speak today as a member of the Jewish community, or as somebody who can fully understand the experience that many British Jews live with every day, but I have seen a small snapshot of it, from my time at the University of Leeds and throughout my continuing engagement with the Jewish community ever since. At university, I saw some of the challenges faced by Jewish students on campus. More recently, I spoke at the Leeds Leads Against Antisemitism demonstration, where I heard directly from members of the community about the challenges that they are now enduring. It has been a particular issue in recent years, but it is a long-standing problem, as many Members know. I will return to the experience of Jewish students later, because what is happening on our campuses tells us something important about the wider problems we face.
The Jewish community in Britain is facing a profound crisis of safety and security. It cannot be said often enough that the first duty of any Government should always be the safety and security of their citizens—we hear it often enough in the Chamber, but it needs to be said again—and that means that the responsibility for protecting the Jewish community cannot rest with the community itself. Nor should Jewish organisations be expected to shoulder the burden alone. The CST is amazing and should of course be well funded, but it cannot fall on the CST to look out for the community every single time. It is the responsibility of us all, and of the Government.
Mr Gregory Campbell
A few years ago, we had an appalling incident when a reporter of Jewish extraction, from Israel, was in licensed premises in Northern Ireland. He was coolly and calmly asking punters, some of whom were not under the excessive influence of alcohol, what problem they had with Jewish people, and one punter said, live on television: “The only problem with Hitler was that he didn’t kill enough Jews.” I raised with the Public Prosecution Service why that person was not subject to prosecution; I could not get a legitimate answer about a comment made live on television to a Jewish reporter.
Mark Sewards
Goodness me! I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is a disgraceful turn of events when people feel confident enough to say something like that on camera, especially if they are not even intoxicated and inebriated, not that that would justify any comments of that nature. That is sickening and it goes to the heart of what we are trying to get to. Because of the way antisemitism has been allowed to flourish, a lot of people now confidently say such things even on camera. It is disgraceful.
We need to think about what it means to belong to a society in which we are repeatedly forced to ask whether it is safe to live openly as a Jewish person. The threat is the threat itself; that is the problem, as is the effect it is having on Jewish people who have to live in anticipation of it. Over the past year, Jewish communities have seen attacks on communal organisations and threats against places of worship and institutions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet set out, alongside appalling levels of antisemitic incidents.
The significance of that cannot be measured simply by counting the incidents, because it is changing the everyday, ordinary lives of Jewish people in this country. Familiar places and ordinary routines become questions of security. Precautions that might once have seemed extreme, maybe even paranoid, have instead become reasonable considerations that Jewish people have to make as part of their ordinary daily lives. That is why security outside synagogues, schools and community institutions sadly remains all too essential; why Jewish societies at universities do not always publicise where their events will take place; and why celebrating Jewish life in public can require precautions that few other communities in this country ever have to consider.
Munira Wilson
In my previous intervention, I mentioned that my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) and I had met children, young people and their parents at Richmond synagogue to talk about their experience in schools, colleges and universities. On the hon. Gentleman’s point about people hiding their identity and partly withdrawing from public life, one of the students from —I will name the university, because I went there—the University of Cambridge said that antisemitism was rife in some colleges and was not dealt with. They hid where the Jewish society would meet. One student said she had done Hebrew teaching as part of her extracurricular activities, but is keeping that off her CV because she is worried she will be discriminated against. Folk in that room said to us, “We’re tired of advocating for ourselves; we need others to advocate for us.” It is incumbent on us all to come together and say that enough is enough.
Mark Sewards
I could not agree more. I will come on to universities in the final part of my speech. The experience of students at the University of Leeds reflects what the hon. Lady said.
Security is incredibly important, but our ambition cannot simply be to protect the Jewish people from immediate physical danger. It must also mean being able to live openly and confidently in British society, with a sense of belonging, while being Jewish. That challenge is made even more serious by the actions of hostile states. I welcome the Government’s action on designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps under the newly reformed National Security Act 2023. Designation must be backed up by vigilance and effective enforcement.
Ministers have acknowledged in previous statements that Jewish people, alongside dissidents and journalists, are among those most targeted by the Iranian state and the IRGC in particular. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out what further steps are being taken to ensure that hostile states and their proxies cannot intimidate or target British Jewish communal institutions or other organisations in Britain. This is not just some distant foreign policy concern; as we know, we have to live with it every day. Iran has demonstrated its willingness to project threats well beyond its own borders. It also views Jewish communities through the prism of the conflict with Israel, which inevitably creates further concerns for Jewish people here in Britain.
Before I come to my point about universities, we have to confront the antisemitism that presents itself as anti-Zionism. Criticism of the Israeli Government is, of course, not inherently antisemitic—of course it is not—but denying Jewish people alone the right to national self-determination, or treating British Jews as responsible for the actions of Israel, is obviously antisemitic. It is anti-Zionist antisemitism and it needs to be called out.
Gareth Snell
I congratulate my hon. Friend on making a wonderful speech. He will know, because he is from Leeds, that one of the people spending most of their time propagating that sort of virulent antisemitism is the deputy leader of the Green party in Leeds, who once posted a list of British people—some Jewish—saying “bought and sold by Israel”, purely because of their politics.
Mark Sewards
I could not agree more. That is exactly the sort of behaviour that we have to call out, and it is exactly the sort of behaviour that the Green party is going to have to confront at some point if the party does not want to become infested with the kinds of people we had to deal with in the Labour party between 2015 and 2020.
It is important to recognise that the threats facing Jewish people do not exist in neat and separate categories. As we know, online abuse is spilling into the real world. Extremist rhetoric can create an atmosphere in which intimidation becomes normalised, and hostile states will seek to exploit those divisions.
The Government’s Protecting What Matters strategy, which was announced back in March, contains important commitments on tackling antisemitism and extremism much more broadly, and obviously I welcome that direction of travel. We now have a new Government and new Ministers in place; it is a test of delivery. I would be grateful if the Minister could provide greater clarity on the timetable for implementing the Protecting What Matters strategy, as there are lots of measures within it, and say how success will be measured.
Finally, let me return to the issue I mentioned at the beginning of my speech: antisemitism on university campuses. That is where I first started to become interested in the issue of Israel and Palestine, and the Jewish community in this country.
Jim Shannon
I met a Jewish student from Queen’s University Belfast at a synagogue a year and a half ago. She informed me that Jewish students there are under particular pressure. When it comes to universities across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, there is nowhere that the enemies of Jewish people are not present. Jewish students at Queen’s University Belfast have had to retreat into a small shell just to get away from the hatred and bile of those who hate them. That is an example of universities going the wrong way.
Mark Sewards
I could not agree more. Unfortunately, I am about to share some statistics that underline that problem even further.
I secured a debate on antisemitism on university campuses in this Chamber back in June, and I shared findings from the Union of Jewish Students’ “Time for Change” report, which underlines the seriousness of the issue. One in five students—20%—would be reluctant to, or would never, share a house with a Jewish student. One in four students—this is from all students—did not care very much, or at all, if Jewish people were forced to hide their identity. The figures shocked me then and still shock me now. What is happening on our campuses is sickening.
This is about so much more than individual incidents. It tells us something about the environment in which Jewish people are having to live their lives in all spheres, including university campuses. Jewish identity should not be something that any student has to explain or justify, and neither should Jewish students be treated as representatives of the Israeli Government simply because they are Jewish. The UJS has put forward practical recommendations in its report, which I urge the Government to consider seriously: they must be implemented. I would be grateful if the Minister set out how the Government might implement those measures, or how they are working across Departments and with universities, the police and Jewish community organisations to ensure a genuinely co-ordinated approach to ensuring that Jewish students are safe on campus.
Whether it is a Jewish student on a university campus, a family at a synagogue or a Jewish organisation facing threats from abroad, the principle is the same: British Jews should not have to organise their lives around antisemitism. The British Jewish community is an integral part of our society and national story. They belong here—they always have and always will—and we will always speak up for them.
Mr Tom Morrison (Cheadle) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher.
There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that our Jewish communities are under threat from a persistent and toxic hatred that has the worst possible outcome. Innocent people have been murdered simply because of who they are and the faith they practise. That cannot continue. Everything possible must be done to ensure that our Jewish communities are no longer threatened. Prejudice and hatred must be tackled at their root, and the casual othering of minority groups such as the Jewish community must be called out and stopped.
When institutions fail to act against hatred, prejudice simply becomes policy. History shows us the dark path that follows if that is allowed to happen. Two weeks ago, I was honoured to join the congregation at Heaton Park synagogue for a memorial service commemorating the victims of the terror attack that occurred on Yom Kippur last year. It was heartbreaking to hear the stepdaughter of Melvin Cravitz talk about her experiences of that day and the days and nights that followed. She described with such warmth the man Melvin was and the profound impact that he had on her life and that of her mother. She told us how the community stood together after Melvin’s murder and supported her family through their darkest hours, but she also talked about how she became the target for malicious and vile trolls who would send her antisemitic abuse about the death of her stepdad. Those trolls would claim that Jewish people were to blame for the murders of Adrian Daulby and her stepfather. That is a vile and disturbing distortion. Its purpose is not only to dismiss the horrendous experiences of a grieving daughter, but to paint the Jewish community as somehow deserving of the fate they receive.
Sadly, that sentiment is not uncommon. The latest Home Office statistics show that a higher rate of religious hate crime is targeted towards Jewish people over any other faith group. Both online and in person, British Jews experience a very real threat while living their everyday lives.
The Yeshurun Hebrew congregation sits proudly in my constituency and does so much for the wider community, but I know from speaking to the leaders at the synagogue that keeping the congregation safe is becoming ever more difficult, despite their best efforts. They told me about the lengths to which they must go to protect their community, including increasing wall heights, as it was assessed that someone could get over the existing wall in just 10 seconds; looking at additional CCTV provision to ensure that every single corner is covered; and keeping children from playing outside in the car park in case an attack happens and they cannot get inside. I was told that people often question whether they should attend their synagogue because of the potential for harm. We must be clear: no one should have to consider those things to practise their faith, and it should make us angry that that is the case.
Things need to change. We need solutions, conscious action and resolve. The CST must be properly funded. I was lucky enough to visit its headquarters, so I could see the vital work it is doing to keep people safe and secure, and I thank it for everything it does. We must see an increase in police presence and patrols. Greater Manchester police do an incredible job in working with our Jewish community, but their resources are becoming ever more stretched. They need more capacity to ensure that they can deliver proper neighbourhood policing. The Government must act on their community cohesion strategy without delay. When people feel connected and invested in common values, they are better able to work together to address division and tackle hatred.
We cannot rest until our Jewish friends and neighbours no longer need to build high walls, install more cameras and stop their children playing outside. I urge the Minister to do everything in her power to ensure that the Jewish community is safe, and I urge all Members not to rely merely on the words spoken in this Chamber, but to turn those words into action. Through positive action, challenging antisemitism wherever it appears and standing with our Jewish communities when they need support, we will surely ensure that our country is a safe place for Jews.
Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing a very important debate.
The safety of the Jewish community is not a marginal issue. It goes absolutely to the heart of the kind of country that we want to be. British Jews should be able to go to synagogue, send their children to school, travel, work and live openly as Jews without fear, intimidation or abuse. I pay tribute to the Community Security Trust, the police, synagogue security volunteers and Jewish schools and community organisations for their vital work, but it should trouble every one of us that such work is so necessary.
The scale of the challenge is clear. CST recorded almost 2,000 antisemitic incidents across the UK in the first half of this year, the second highest total ever reported in the first six months of a year. That is not a short-term spike that has simply passed; it is a sustained change in the atmosphere faced by Jewish communities. This is not about asking for special treatment, but about the basic right to live without being held collectively responsible for events that happen around the world.
No child should ever grow up thinking that security guards outside their school are a fact of life, yet for many Jewish children that is exactly what normality looks like right now. The Community Security Trust recorded almost 200 antisemitic incidents affecting schools in the first half of this year, the highest January-to-June total that it has recorded. Jewish children should not have to pass security guards on their way to school as if it were normal. Young people should never have to choose between their safety and being openly Jewish, and Jewish students should not have to change their routes across campus or hide parts of who they are.
The Government must continue to support the security of Jewish communal life. However, as other Members have said, the answer cannot simply be higher fences and more guards. We must deal with the hatred that makes those fences necessary. That requires serious work on online radicalisation, proper enforcement against antisemitism in schools and universities, and a social cohesion strategy that is prepared to confront hard truths. I look forward to the Minister’s response on those issues.
Jewish citizens are asking for what every citizen in the UK should rightly expect: the right to live, worship, study and contribute openly and safely. That is the absolute minimum that a decent society must guarantee for us all.
Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing this important debate.
I want to make it absolutely clear that I stand with Jewish communities right across the United Kingdom. We cannot speak about the safety of Jewish people in Britain without remembering the appalling events of 7 October. The slaughter carried out by Hamas was an act of barbaric terrorism and violent antisemitism. Men, women and children were murdered simply because they were Jewish. I have said before that those who value democracy must stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel in the face of such terrorism, and I make no apology for repeating it today.
I am increasingly concerned not only by what we have seen, but by what we have failed to hear. There have been occasions when some in this House who are vocal on many international issues have struggled to offer the most basic condemnation of the murder of Jewish people or of the hatred that motivated it. That silence matters. It matters because Jewish people in this country should not have to wonder whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them will stand with them when antisemitism becomes uncomfortable or politically inconvenient.
We have seen antisemitism manifest in the streets, at demonstrations on university campuses and, tragically, in attacks on Jewish people and institutions. We saw it over the weekend in Northern Ireland, when athletes were prevented from taking part in a triathlon not because they had committed any offences, had been racist or had provoked hatred; no, it was simply because they were from Israel. People of all faiths and none represent Israel in international sport.
We have seen the consequences of the normalisation of hatred. Indeed, the slogan “From the river to the sea” is used by those in this House. Just consider its meaning: the obliteration of the state of Israel and all who live within it. We must be absolutely clear that antisemitism is not a legitimate political position or acceptable criticism. It is hatred directed at people because they are Jewish, and it must be confronted wherever it appears.
This debate is fundamentally about equality. There are no second-class citizens in the United Kingdom. Every citizen should be able to walk down their street, attend their place of worship, send their children to school and express their faith without fear of intimidation or attack. It is therefore deeply troubling that Jewish people feel that they have to conceal their identity or alter their behaviour simply to feel safe. If a Jewish person is advised not to walk down a particular street, or feels unsafe wearing a kippah openly, we should not simply accept that as the unfortunate reality in modern Britain. We should not settle for that standard. Generations before us fought and made sacrifices so that people in this country could live freely, practise their faith and express their identity without fear. The Jewish community must be entitled to the same freedoms.
We must remember that antisemitism did not begin with 7 October and will not disappear simply because the headlines move on. We have a responsibility to learn the lessons of history and ensure that Jewish people in Britain today do not remember the promise of “never again” as something that belongs only in the past. They must be able to live it, walk our streets freely, wear the symbols of their faith openly, attend synagogues without fear, send their children to school without worrying about whether they will face hatred because they are Jewish, and know that when antisemitism raises its ugly head, this Parliament, this Government and the wider British public will stand with them.
Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) on securing this vital debate. The conversations I have with my Jewish constituents and friends about safety and security are heartbreaking. We must reflect on the fact that in this country, in 2026, Jewish people are talking to their MPs about emigrating for their own safety, about changing their names to avoid discrimination, and about escorting their children to school because they fear what might happen if they do not.
When Jewish people are attacked on our streets and so many people feel unsafe in the place they call home, it is a national emergency and deserves to be treated as such. The prejudice they face is old, but it is never far from the surface. I know from my time as a whistleblower on antisemitism in the Labour party to the Equality and Human Rights Commission that, when our politics tolerates it, hatred and ignorance can rear their ugly heads. That is why I am proud that this Labour party and this Government—under different leadership—have taken important steps through record funding for the safety of the Jewish community, the social cohesion plan, and banning groups such as the IRGC.
Those are actions, not words, but we all know that so much more needs to be done. When I recently met the leaders of the four synagogues in my constituency of Altrincham and Sale West, they made that very clear. That message has been reinforced in my meetings with the Jewish Leadership Council. This is not just about the immediate safety of Jewish residents; it is about creating a society in which we do not need security services guarding synagogues and schools. Crucial to that is education.
That brings me to the issue on which I will press the Government today: antisemitism on campus. The Union of Jewish Students, which I was proud to work with as a student and a student union officer, and which I am proud to have hosted here as a Member of Parliament, has reported a 413% increase in antisemitic incidents since the 7 October massacre. The situation remains completely unacceptable. From being held responsible for the actions of the Israeli Government to hearing fellow students defend Hamas, Jewish students are routinely made to feel unwelcome and scared at a time that should be one of the most enjoyable experiences of their lives.
I welcome the Government’s existing work with universities across the country on adopting best practice guidance put forward by the Union of Jewish Students, but we must urgently go further faster. I therefore urge the Minister to work with colleagues on current regulatory gaps, which mean there is a lack of clarity and accountability on the oversight of students’ unions. These gaps must be filled to ensure that we do not have a postcode lottery on the tolerance of antisemitism on our campuses.
I also join colleagues in asking the Minister to set out a clear timeline for the implementation of the Protecting What Matters strategy, which was a welcome step forward in tackling extremism at universities, but which must be backed up by results. Similarly, following the Macdonald review, there must be an approach that balances respecting academic freedoms and the ability to protest with the absolute right for Jewish students to feel safe on campus. That is a balance that has been lost at times in recent years, but it must now be restored.
When we debate antisemitism and Jewish safety, we are right to point out all that is wrong and the action needed to put it right, but I would like to end by talking briefly about something that should give us all hope: The Rabbi & The Imam project. Through the project, my constituents, Rabbi Dovid Lewis from Bowdon shul and Dr Nasser Kurdy from Altrincham and Hale Muslim Association, go into schools to talk about their faiths and to promote a simple message of humanity and understanding. Programmes like that see off intolerance before it is able to take root. They are essential to the safety of all faiths in this country and to long-term protections for religious freedom and expression. The Rabbi & The Imam project offers a reminder that, although antisemitism and the violence it fosters remain a national emergency, there are amazing projects and amazing people doing incredible work to tackle it. We must match that spirit and commitment to unity in this place if we are to make this country a safer place for Jewish citizens.
Rachel Blake (Cities of London and Westminster) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing this really important debate. We have heard such powerful contributions about the scale of the issue and powerful proposals for how we can challenge it.
I represent some of the most diverse communities in the United Kingdom, including historic Jewish communities. I represent one of the oldest continuously serving synagogues in Europe, Bevis Marks, as well as the Liberal Jewish synagogue, New London synagogue in St John’s Wood, and St John’s Wood synagogue. They all welcome diverse Jewish communities every week.
We cannot underestimate the scale of the challenge we face. Every Jewish Londoner should be able to go to school, attend synagogue, travel to work and take part in public life without fear, yet they cannot; antisemitism remains far too common. The Community Security Trust reports that antisemitic incidents remain at very high levels, and increased during the first half of 2026. We need to be honest with ourselves and recognise that many of us have never experienced such a high level of antisemitism in our lifetime. These are not just statistics; they affect real people, communities, and our friends, neighbours and families.
Last week, at a meeting with my local rabbis and synagogue chairs, whom I meet regularly, I heard at first hand just how my constituents are feeling. Just this weekend, there was an incident in my constituency in which there was profound surveillance of a synagogue, and the response times were completely unacceptable. I will come shortly to our response to this problem.
I want to put on the record my support and thanks for the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Dr Prinsley). We have heard some reflections on the disgusting conflation of geopolitical events with individuals and communities in this country. Such conflation is profoundly antisemitic, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand) said, we absolutely need to be looking at the causes of that and put in place education measures.
Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)
Will the hon. Member give way on that point?
Rachel Blake
I will make some progress.
I welcome the Government’s support for security at Jewish schools, synagogues and community centres, as well as the announcement in July of £250 million for Jewish community safety. However, as we have heard so powerfully today, security funding alone is not enough, and none of us wants to be in a place where we are building higher walls. We need to take stronger action against hate crime.
We have briefly heard about what is happening in London at weekends, when neighbourhood police are drawn into the centre of London to police demonstrations. We need to be honest about the hate crime that takes place at such demonstrations, and we must take the toughest possible action against it. We need stronger action and a closer focus on neighbourhood policing, so that every synagogue understands and knows its neighbourhood police officers and has a relationship with them that gives its members confidence in their local community. We need stronger action on antisemitism online; I pay tribute to the work of the Antisemitism Policy Trust on that specific issue, which I believe needs a greater focus. We need continued Holocaust education and clear leadership in calling out antisemitism, wherever it occurs.
The safety of Jewish Londoners is not just an issue for those Jewish communities. It is an issue for all of us. When those in a community feel unsafe because of who they are, it affects us all and damages all our communities. We must stand firm against antisemitism and ensure that every Jewish Londoner can live openly, proudly and safely.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
It is a privilege to speak in this debate on Jewish safety, and to represent one of Britain’s oldest seaside Jewish communities as the Member of Parliament for Bournemouth East. Jewish families in Bournemouth have built businesses, strengthened our heritage and contributed to civic life, and we have had a number of Jewish mayors, including Louis Barney, Gabriel Jaffe, Michael and Anne Filer, Pamela Harris, Ben Grower, Barry Goldbart and Lawrence Williams.
I was privileged to attend the consecration of the new synagogue for the Bournemouth Hebrew Congregation in East Cliff—my neighbourhood—in the presence of the Chief Rabbi just a few short months ago. It marked a new chapter in the life of the Jewish community in Bournemouth. The new shul has been refurbished, and throughout the building there are colours inspired by Bournemouth’s sand, cliffs, piers and breakwaters. The light-filled main prayer hall has a series of stained-glass images, many of which recreate those from the old Wootton Gardens synagogue. I was pleased to visit that synagogue many times, including for its farewell concert, which showed that a new start means that we must also say farewell.
My Jewish constituents deserve what every citizen deserves: to feel safe. The statistics tell part of the story: Dorset police tell me that they recorded 26 antisemitic crimes across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole in the year to May, and every one of those crimes matters, but statistics alone cannot explain what it feels like when fear enters everyday life. For that, we must listen to the people in Bournemouth, so I encouraged my constituents to get in touch ahead of this debate.
Ann told me that she has removed the Star of David necklace that she wore throughout her life because she no longer feels comfortable openly displaying her Jewish identity. Stefan from East Cliff and Springbourne wrote:
“We are alone, we are afraid.”
At the age of 73, he has never experienced such open antisemitism, and he speaks now of conversations taking place around dinner tables that many had hoped belonged to history. David, a retired rabbi, said that British Jews regard themselves as British citizens first and foremost, and he spoke of generations of Jewish people serving our country in our armed forces, of prayers being said in synagogues each week for the royal family and the Government, and of a public duty throughout our town.
I know some Jewish patients in my constituency are reluctant to identify their faith when admitted to hospital, because they fear how they may be treated. I want them to know that, following Lord Mann’s review, the Government are requiring anti-racism training aimed at tackling antisemitism and other racism in the NHS. Another constituent, who is not Jewish himself, showed solidarity by writing to me about friends who feel unsafe and threatened.
Josephine, who has happily lived in Bournemouth for more than two decades, told me that she never expected to face continual hostility and intimidation. She and her husband recently celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary at the synagogue, but they felt compelled to employ security guards for the event. Adele, who is 82, spoke movingly of her grandparents who found safety, democracy and peace of mind in our country, and she tells me:
“All we ask is to live here in peace and free from fear.”
Derek describes the reality that many Jewish people now live with, following the atrocities of 7 October and the war that followed, which has left many Jewish people spending their time, in his words, “watching our backs”, relying on police protection and the Community Security Trust to guard places of worship and community events.
Several members of the community have been in touch to talk about a particular incident in Bournemouth Square last year. Alongside Jewish residents and Christian supporters, a small protest—
Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)
Order. I am afraid we now have to move on to the wind-ups.
Zöe Franklin (Guildford) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing this important debate. It has been a powerful morning in this Chamber, in terms of both the challenges but also the stories of hope on this difficult issue. I want to start by expressing my solidarity with Jewish communities across the country and with everyone who is experiencing antisemitic abuse, intimidation or violence.
Tom Hayes
On a point of order, Sir Christopher. I was under the impression that there was no time limit. I was not warned in advance of the need to reduce the length of my speech. I have deliberately solicited the views of my constituents, which I want to put on the official parliamentary record, about an issue that affects them very deeply, which is their feeling of insecurity and discontent in our country because of antisemitism. I am concerned that they have been unrepresented on the parliamentary record because you, as Chair, have artificially circumscribed the time limit. I ask that I be given the chance to speak fully and represent my constituents’ views in their entirety.
Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)
I did not impose a time limit, but there is always half an hour at the end for the wind-ups. You have been a Member of this House now for over two years. You must realise that in an hour-and-a-half debate, there is an hour for the speeches and half an hour for the wind-ups.
Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)
You are shaking your head; I am sorry you have not been able to learn on the job, but I am not going to accept criticism for calling the Front Benchers at half-past to enable them all to participate in this debate and, hopefully, give a chance for the person who initiated it to have a few words at the end. I am almost lost for words, because the hon. Gentleman should have realised when we got to half-past that that was the end of the time for Back Benchers and when the Front Benchers start speaking. But anyway, perhaps—
Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)
No, I am not going to accept a further point of order. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will learn from what has happened this morning.
Zöe Franklin
The latest Home Office figures show that there were 106 religious hate crimes targeting Jewish people per 10,000 of the Jewish population—by far the highest rate, sadly, for any religious group. Behind these shocking figures are people who are changing the way they live, as we have heard in this morning’s debate, because they are frightened—frightened of being attacked, abused or intimidated simply for practising their faith.
I see that in my own constituency of Guildford, which has a relatively small but growing Jewish community of around 450 residents, which rises to 600 during university term time. Members of the community have told me clearly that since the horrific attacks of 7 October, the tone has noticeably shifted in the community. Our local rabbi has received death threats and has even been physically assaulted in public. Jewish residents have faced verbal abuse, a swastika has been drawn at a local golf course, and a single Jewish mother had a rotten chicken thrown through her open window while she was with her five-year-old child, and those are not isolated incidents.
What has stayed with me the most, though, is hearing that some local Jewish families have moved their mezuzah from the outside of their front door to the inside because they are frightened of being identified as Jewish. That is an extraordinary thing for anyone to feel they must do in Britain in 2026 to keep their family safe. It is why I believe our response must be about much more than simply reacting when another terrible thing happens. We need to step up, as community leaders and as Parliament. We need to ensure that Jewish communities are protected now, but we also need to tackle the hatred that makes that protection necessary in the first place.
I welcome the Government’s additional £25 million for security following the attacks in Golders Green, bringing the total available to £58 million. I have seen how much that investment matters. The Guildford synagogue has had to spend thousands of pounds upgrading security, and our rabbi has had to spend money improving his own personal security. I refuse to accept that this is simply the way society is turning—that violence and intimidation is now being normalised. Will the Minister explain what long-term certainty the Government will provide for the Community Security Trust and for the security funding relied upon by synagogues, Jewish schools and community organisations? Protecting buildings is necessary, but it is not enough.
We also have to ensure that our police and prosecutors can identify antisemitism and act when the law is broken. I want to be really clear on protest. The right to peaceful protest is fundamental in a liberal democracy, but there is no right to intimidate Jewish people, to glorify terrorism or to use protest as a cover for antisemitic hatred or incitement to violence. It should not be a difficult distinction for us to make as a society.
We Liberal Democrats have called for mandatory antisemitism training for police officers policing demonstrations, as part of a statutory code for the policing of protests. That would also include stronger protections around places of worship, and place responsibilities on protest organisers to take reasonable steps to prevent harassment and intimidation. I really do think that those are practical steps that the Government should take seriously. Will the Minister consider introducing consistent antisemitism training for officers policing protests across the country?
Will the Government also consider again how we protect synagogues and other places of worship from intimidating protests immediately outside them? The same applies when cases reach the justice system. I could go on, and I know that colleagues across this Chamber have raised a number of issues in relation to that point.
I also want to note the gap between the official statistics and what Jewish residents say that they experience. I hear it in my own constituency of Guilford, and I am sure that colleagues hear the same. Many incidents are never reported to the police. Others happen in schools, universities and workplaces and are dealt with internally, which means that they simply disappear from the national picture. If we do not understand the scale of antisemitism, we cannot properly respond to it.
We have talked this morning about the crucial issue of educating people to understand what is and what is not acceptable in our language. We have also heard about Sir David Bell’s review of antisemitism in schools. I have, sadly, heard too many stories in my own constituency and in neighbouring ones of children and young people facing antisemitism within their education setting. I am glad that Sir David Bell’s review is coming. Will the Minister commit to responding quickly to the review and its recommendations when it comes out?
I want to end by sharing something positive, as many colleagues have done at the end of their speeches, too. I want to share the genuinely positive work happening in Guildford. I am glad that Surrey police have developed a stronger liaison relationship with our Jewish community. Guildford and Waverley councils, Surrey police, Jewish residents and local faith leaders have worked together on a hate-crime pledge. We have growing relationships between the Jewish community, the Reform Jewish community in Weybridge, and Woking mosque. Those relationships are crucial. They show that even at times of terrible conflict and division internationally, Jewish and Muslim communities here can continue to talk to one another, support one another and refuse to allow events overseas to divide neighbours at home.
I was proud to stand with local faith leaders and civic leaders with the Guildford declaration of freedom of religion and belief. That work is crucial, and it brings me to the issue of inter-faith initiatives. Sadly, inter-faith funding has largely disappeared. Will the Government consider reinstating the crucial grassroots inter-faith funding, which is at the core of enabling positive cross-faith work?
Ultimately, I do not want the measure of success for how the Jewish community is being protected to be about how many security guards we have funded or how many hate crimes have been recorded. I want Jewish families to feel comfortable putting their mezuzah back outside their front door. I want Jewish children to be able to talk about their faith openly, without worrying how other pupils will react. I want the Jewish community in my constituency of Guildford to be able to light the menorah on the high street without the need for armed police to make that possible. That requires proper security funding now, but it also requires better policing, better education, stronger enforcement online and investment in relationships that prevent hatred from growing in the first place.
I think that everyone in this Chamber agrees that antisemitism has no place in our society. We should not accept Jewish people having to change how visibly Jewish they are in order to feel safe. I hope that the Minister will use this opportunity to set out more on the practical steps that the Government will take to help ensure that that is the reality.
Matt Vickers (Stockton West) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing this debate on an issue important to so many of her constituents.
Despite having been in this role for only a couple of years, I have too often stood opposite Ministers to condemn violence against and, on solemn occasions, mourn the loss of life in the Jewish community—people targeted for no reason other than being Jewish. When those tragedies happen, we seem to find ourselves in the same post-tragedy discourse, with public figures stating that antisemitism has no place in our society, rightly acknowledging that it is an evil that must be vanquished. Yet how hollow must those words ring when British Jews know that another incident could merely be round the corner?
When the Golders Green attack occurred, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was right to state clearly:
“This is a national emergency”.
As with any emergency, there is no single solution. It requires multiple measures, but underpinning those must be a willingness to tackle the underlying ideologies that allow this hatred to fester. Today the facts are stark. Having visited the Community Security Trust’s headquarters, I join hon. Members in recognising the organisation’s incredible professionalism. The CST data released in August showed that between January and June, antisemitic incidents reached the second highest total ever reported to the trust in the first six months of any year. That is a disgrace.
Prior to October 2023, the CST had only ever recorded monthly incident totals exceeding 200 on five occasions. In the first half of 2026, the organisation logged more than 200 incidents of anti-Jewish hate in every single month, and more than 300 a month from March to June. Those incidents ranged from threats to life, assaults and arson to damage and desecration of Jewish property and abusive behaviour.
But there is another statistic that should stop every Member of this House in their tracks. The latest Home Office figures show that in England and Wales, there were 106 police recorded religious hate crimes targeting Jewish people for every 10,000 Jewish people. Across the population as a whole, the equivalent rate was 1.7 recorded religious hate crimes per 10,000 people. If we put those figures alongside one another, the disparity is extraordinary and horrifying. On that population-adjusted measure, the rate of recorded religious hate crime targeting Jewish people was more than 60 times the rate in the overall population—I repeat, more than 60 times the rate. Religious hate crime is concentrated against Britain’s Jewish community, and on an extraordinary and horrifying scale.
In modern Britain, that fact should shock every one of us: it is a stinging indictment of where we are and why this debate is so necessary. It also illustrates why the Government were right, in the summer, to allocate further police resources to tackling the issue. Ultimately, across matters of enforcement, we need to increase police presence, see urgent prosecutions, put a moratorium on hate marches, implement maximum sentencing and deterrence, conduct a comprehensive audit of counter-terrorism cases involving antisemitic motivation, deport foreigners who express antisemitic views supporting violence or terrorism, and better use existing powers to ensure that hatred cannot be targeted at Jewish communities.
The question I have is this: is enforcement enough, when the ideas that fester continue to be popular? Many of us across this House were fortunate enough to go to university; yet, as has been said, polling conducted for the Union of Jewish Students earlier this year paints a horrendous picture. How can someone feel safe when one fifth of the university campus would not share a house with them and one in four have seen behaviour targeting Jewish students? Can the Minister confirm when the Government will publish the Bell review into antisemitism in schools, and whether they will accept its recommendations in full?
There is nothing intellectual about prejudice, there is nothing progressive about excluding Jews and there is nothing enlightened about recycling vile conspiracy theories that are centuries old. The same polling found that 16% thought it was not antisemitic to claim that Jews control the media or government. We need to tackle the ideologies creating this mindset, because antisemitism does not begin with an attack on a synagogue. It begins with ideas and conspiracy theories. It begins when Jews are treated as a sinister collective and ancient prejudices are allowed to spread under new guises. The need to tackle this across communities is unfortunately clear.
Polling by Policy Exchange this year found that more than two in five British Muslims believed that Jews had too much power over the media, weapons manufacturing and the banking system. We should be capable of saying two things at once: the overwhelming majority of British Muslims are not responsible for antisemitism and should never be treated as though they are, but when antisemitic attitudes exist within any communities, we do that community and British Jews no favours by being frightened to confront them.
Siân Berry
At a recent event hosted by my wonderful local progressive synagogue, lots of issues were raised with me. This is a synagogue—it is not a representative of the Israeli Government. We cannot have anyone conflating Jewish faith with that. This is a synagogue that prays for Palestinians every week, but in that place, in my progressive city of Brighton and Hove, security and safety were still the absolute backdrop to everything raised; they have real fear. Would the hon. Member agree that it is so important for us to build solidarity and cohesion in communities, and make sure we do not drive further wedges between people in tackling this issue?
Matt Vickers
I agree that opening doors is part of the solution, but I also agree that we have to tackle antisemitism wherever it might be, and it is most prominent.
The same applies to antisemitism on the far right. Hatred does not become acceptable because of the politics of the person expressing it. These views go to the heart of the problem. It is not enough merely to have resources to protect the Jewish community. We must combat the intellectual idiocy that upholds and spreads antisemitic views. The test of a liberal democracy is not whether the majority feel safe; it is whether minorities can live openly as themselves, without fear.
I have taken a sombre tone because it is impossible to look at the current situation with rose-tinted glasses. However, for the vast majority of people, antisemitic hatred remains abhorrent. The university polling showed that many recognise this hatred when they see it, with 82% deeming calls to “globalise the intifada” to be antisemitic. That majority matters, but a tolerant majority cannot afford to become a silent majority.
My request to the Government today is twofold: first, to use the powers of the state unapologetically to protect Jewish people, and secondly, to go further upstream, work with the Jewish community, listen to Jewish students, challenge institutions that allow antisemitism to flourish, confront extremist ideology regardless of where it originates and, when making decisions in response to events in the middle east, remember that British Jews must never be treated as proxies for the actions of an Israeli Government. Whatever our political disagreements, that principle should be utterly uncontroversial.
I know that Members across the House want to see the Jewish community safe, but wanting is no longer enough. When the population-adjusted rate of recorded hate crime targeting Jews stands at more than 60 times the overall population rate, when Jewish students are questioning whether they belong on their own campuses and when Jewish families require security simply to practise their faith, we have to recognise the scale of the emergency before us. That is not simply a problem for the British Jewish community; it is a test for Britain, this Government, this House and our country, and it is one we cannot afford to fail.
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
It is a pleasure to close this debate, which I think has been very useful and moving. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) on initiating it.
Before I respond to Members’ questions and to the debate itself, I have two reflections. One is to reiterate the commitment from this Government that we recognise we are on a journey to tackle antisemitism. Although I appreciate that many Members welcomed the funding that we have put in place and the changes that we are making, this will not be the end of the journey. We are on that journey to tackle antisemitism and we will do whatever is necessary for it. We have taken measures that many Members have talked about today, but that will not be the sum of everything we intend to do. We certainly do not intend to shy away from the huge challenge that we all face.
My second reflection, from listening to the MPs in this place who made such powerful speeches, is that as Members of Parliament we are all leaders of this country, and we should all ensure that we are well educated, trained and equipped to answer the call to tackle antisemitism. Whether that means going on the training days provided to Members of Parliament by the Antisemitism Policy Trust, or reading, or talking to and listening to our Jewish friends in our communities, it is incumbent on every single one of us to play a role in this debate and to be the leaders that people elect us to be. I was very struck by what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) said about how people are retreating from the public space because of their fear.
David Pinto-Duschinsky (Hendon) (Lab)
As we heard, we face perhaps the worst antisemitism crisis certainly of my lifetime on the streets, in people’s daily lives and online. I am Jewish, and when I go to synagogue at the end of this week to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, I will walk past security guards. That should never have to happen, but it is utterly normal for the Jewish community.
We have seen a normalisation of hostility that has left many of my constituents wondering about their future in this country. Does the Minister agree that, exactly as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) said so clearly, it is not just a matter of building higher walls? We must be able to build a situation where Jewish people can live proud and open Jewish lives, free from fear. Does the Minister also agree that this is an all-of-society problem that requires an all-of-society response?
Sarah Jones
I completely agree that the solution is not just to build higher walls. If our Jewish friends and colleagues are retreating from the public space for fear of their own safety, we have to loudly make sure that that public space is full enough with the call against antisemitism, so that we can rebuild a society where people feel comfortable speaking openly about their religion and their faith, proud of being Jews in Britain and being able to exercise their religious rights freely.
I will respond to the points made as fully as I can. Many Members talked about the Protecting What Matters commitments. We are keen for the work to expand and be done as quickly as possible, and a whole cohort of work under that banner is being done as we speak. The disruptions team, which horizon scans for extremist influence and events, is being expanded with additional resources. Efforts to stop hate preachers and extremists entering the UK are increasing as part of an expanded global visa taskforce, which is important.
Work is going on to ensure that we report back to Parliament on our work. An annual “State of extremism” report is being developed, and the first iteration of that will be published this year. Embedding the 2024 definition of extremism and the engagement principles across Government means clearer guidance and improved training. Updating and embedding the 2024 engagement principles helps public bodies not to confer legitimacy, funding—crucially—or influence on extremist groups. A whole body of work is therefore being undertaken, and the annual “State of extremism” report will be published.
Several Members talked about universities, which are incredibly important, and referred to a powerful report that I have also read. Members quoted some absolutely shocking statistics. I was privileged to be at a roundtable with members of various universities, the Office for Students, Lord Mann and several representatives from the Jewish community talking about antisemitism in our universities. I know that there is a big programme of work under way to look at training, to make sure that there is funding to support new guidance from the Office for Students, to invest in the University Jewish Chaplaincy services and to make sure we work across different Departments, which was also mentioned, to tackle this issue.
From a policing point of view, my engagement on this issue is largely on some of the smaller unplanned protests that happen in Jewish spaces and trying to work with local police in those situations as to being clear who is responsible and how those issues are going to be tackled.
Catherine West
On that point, may I commend the police in Barnet in the run-up to the local elections, which is always a tense time? I want to put on record how outstanding the communication, reassurance and work with our local leaders—both Conservative and Labour—on Barnet council was.
Sarah Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for that praise. I am sure that it will be well appreciated and I absolutely endorse what she has said.
Members asked about the IRGC and the extra work being done beyond its sanctioning. We have sanctioned the IRGC in its entirety, as well as 550 Iranian individuals. Iran has been placed on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme, and we are going after the criminal networks, proxies, enablers and illicit finance networks used by the IRGC, including with sanctions against criminal proxies. A lot of work is being done.
Members also asked when the David Bell report will be published. That will be this autumn, and it is important work about tackling antisemitism in schools.
I should touch on the funding that we have put in place following the awful attacks that we have seen in recent times and an absolutely dismal story of antisemitism and violence to which we as a Government have had to respond. Last April we provided an additional £25 million, initially to fund increased officer patrols and disruption deployments. We spent time just before the summer recess having a series of meetings with Jewish community colleagues, Jewish leaders and others, including a summit in Downing Street, talking about what extra was required. Just before the summer, we announced over £250 million of additional funding for the police to tackle antisemitism over the next three years.
That includes training for police officers, which the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin), asked about. Antisemitism training will be rolled out across policing as part of that work. That work is being largely done in our big cities where our Jewish communities mostly live and £85.8 million will be allocated to the Metropolitan Police Service. It will deliver 300 dedicated personnel to support the work that the Metropolitan police have already been doing. Other areas—Hertfordshire, Essex, Northumbria, Sussex, Thames Valley, West Midlands and West Yorkshire—will also be funded.
I am aware that I have not even really begun my speech, but that I now need to end it. I will do so where I started: by thanking all Members for their contributions. This is a journey, and we are absolutely committed to ensuring that our Jewish communities feel safe where they live and proud of their religion. We will do whatever we need to do to make sure that that can be delivered.
Catherine West
We have had an excellent debate. It is always a good debate when we want to say more but cannot fit it in. I thank everybody, across all the parties, for contributing to it.
The problem of tackling antisemitism will take the whole of our polity. That means all of us: local, national, school governors, public sector workers, the private sector and trade union colleagues. It will take everybody to look this in the eye and sort it.
We have had a good debate and, as the Minister says, it is a journey. I am very pleased that the Prime Minister is so intimately aware of the Manchester picture. I know that he is also engaged with London Board of Deputies colleagues as well. We look forward to a brighter future and to working together to tackle the scourge of antisemitism in our communities.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the safety of the Jewish community.
World Suicide Prevention Day
(3 days, 9 hours ago)
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Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab) [R]
I beg to move,
That this House has considered World Suicide Prevention Day.
I am grateful for having secured this debate, Sir Christopher, and it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair for it. This Thursday is World Suicide Prevention Day, an event marked through the World Health Organisation. Each year, 10 September provides a moment for individuals, communities and Governments around the globe to unite behind one clear, unambiguous message: that suicides are preventable.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate on World Suicide Prevention Day. The Farm Safety Foundation has surveyed some 450 farmers under the age of 40, of whom 92% identified poor mental health as one of the leading hidden problems facing farmers today. Those challenges can be further compounded by stigma and reluctance to seek help, which are particularly prevalent in rural communities. Is the hon. Lady aware of the challenges people in rural farming communities face when trying to access mental health support? Does she agree that more must be done for that sector, who seem overwhelmingly to suffer isolation?
Liz Twist
I am indeed aware of that work and of the difficulties faced by the farming community, and it is important that we address those. This year, as in the last two years, the theme for World Suicide Prevention Day is “Changing the Narrative on Suicide”, accompanied by a direct call to action to start the conversation.
Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for the amazing work that she continues to do day in, day out on this subject. I filmed a documentary last week called “Walking Men”—it will be out later this year—about how we support local groups to get men talking on a regular basis. Will she join me in saying thank you to all the people out there who do that? Does she agree that the Government need to get behind local groups, who know their area and their people and can make a massive difference?
Liz Twist
I am pleased to hear about that work, and I certainly agree that it is vital that we support all those who are making efforts locally to address the issue of suicide.
Changing the narrative means a conscious, collective shift away from the culture of silence, stigma and misunderstanding that has plagued this subject for generations. It requires us to move towards openness, empathy and genuine support, to create an environment where people feel able to speak openly about their distress without fear of judgment. We must reach a point at which talking about suicidal thoughts is met with compassion rather than fear and where seeking help is viewed as a sign of strength.
Kim Johnson (Liverpool Riverside) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for this timely and important debate. The point about changing the narrative is very important. Will she support me in congratulating Alfie’s Squad, who are here today for World Suicide Prevention Day, and all the football clubs, including Everton and Liverpool, for the work they do in engaging with people with suicidal thoughts?
Liz Twist
I look forward to meeting Alfie’s Squad later today; they are doing a great job on suicide prevention in my hon. Friend’s area. I will come on to the Premier League shortly.
I turn to the global statistics. The World Health Organisation calls suicide a “major public health challenge” and estimates that it claims the lives of more than 720,000 people every year. In the UK, the latest Office for National Statistics figures show that in 2024 there were 7,147 deaths registered where the cause was recorded as suicide. We know from the data that men account for three in four of those deaths, and that suicide is the biggest single cause of death for men under the age of 50.
Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate and for her dedication and hard work in this space. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for tradespeople, and having previously served on the all-party parliamentary group on male suicide and mental health, I am concerned that the construction industry faces a suicide risk 3.7 times higher than the national average. Will she join me in ensuring that the men’s health strategy moves from paper to practical action in workplaces, particularly in the construction industry? When we talk about workers coming home safely, that must mean both physically and mentally.
Liz Twist
Having done some work with the construction sector, I know exactly what my hon. Friend is talking about and how much attention must be paid to that issue.
Sadly, my region, the north-east, has the highest number of deaths by suicide. That is not a league table that we want to top. The latest figures put the north-east’s rate at 15.1 deaths per 100,000 people. For men who have been referred to secondary mental health services, it climbs to 157.8 per 100,000. That harsh reality demands urgent, targeted intervention.
Whenever we see such statistics in Parliament, we must immediately remind ourselves that there are real people behind the numbers. Each one of those individuals whose life was cut short leaves behind a devastating legacy of grief. The ripple effect of a single suicide spreads relentlessly through families, circles of friends and workplaces, and inflicts severe social and emotional consequences on entire communities.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Like everyone else, I acknowledge the tremendous work that my hon. Friend does on this issue; it is inspirational. Since she mentions families, I want to take the opportunity to thank my constituent Emma Webb, who tragically lost her daughter, Brodie, aged just 16. My hon. Friend is aware of Emma, who has spent years tirelessly fundraising for and raising awareness of suicide prevention. Alongside the bands doing a benefit for the Samaritans in the pub, there is a lot of work going on locally that we should acknowledge.
Liz Twist
I know that campaign, and I met my hon. Friend’s constituent as she pulled her pony along to raise money. She is doing tremendous work in that area.
Alongside the immeasurable human cost of suicide, there is a stark economic reality. Extensive statistical work conducted by the Samaritans and provided by Mind calculates the economic cost of a single suicide as roughly £1.46 million. No one in this Chamber would ever wish to reduce a human life to an entry on the Treasury balance sheet, but that figure demonstrates that proper investment in suicide prevention is an economic necessity as well as a clear moral imperative.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
Like everybody else, I thank the hon. Lady for her incredibly important work in this field. Alongside my constituent Philip Pirie, I have been calling on the Government to launch a public health campaign to tackle the stigma around suicide. Former Health Secretaries have actively supported the call, alongside the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the hon. Lady herself. Does she agree that the Prime Minister needs to prioritise breaking down the barriers and the stigma, and work in a cross-party way with Members of this House to support my campaign?
Liz Twist
I will mention the hon. Lady’s constituent later; I am aware of the great work that he has done after the loss of his son by suicide. I agree that we all need to get behind that campaign, and I have no doubt that the Prime Minister will be keen to do that too.
The statistics paint a bleak picture, but I want to focus on the positive work being done across the UK on and around World Suicide Prevention Day to prevent suicide and change the narrative. There are so many organisations and individuals working to build hope and fighting to reverse these trends, offering real, practical help and support to people who are struggling.
When we look at our statutory services, we must recognise the vital role played by our national health service. I pay tribute to the extraordinary dedication of NHS mental health staff, who work under immense pressure every single day to provide compassionate, lifesaving care to those in crisis. But NHS talking therapies and other work can support only those who are successfully referred, and a significant gap remains among those accessing that care. For instance, despite having acute mental health needs, men account for only 36% of referrals to NHS talking therapies. That mismatch shows that, even with the outstanding commitment of frontline clinicians, statutory services cannot carry the weight of suicide prevention alone. They rely on close partnerships with community and voluntary organisations to reach people before they reach crisis.
Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)
I commend my hon. Friend for her courageous work on this issue, and for introducing the debate today. Will she join me in thanking those organisations in my constituency, including Scott Grover’s work with his Men Walking and Talking group and the fantastic work of Steve and Talk Club? Talk Club has a lovely approach where they sit, talk and listen. They will not just ask whether people are okay; they will say, “On a scale of one to 10, how are you feeling today?”, and that opens up conversations about mental health and suicide in such a powerful way. Will my hon. Friend join me in thanking all my fantastic local groups for their efforts?
Liz Twist
I most certainly join my hon. Friend in thanking her local groups for that work. It is good to hear about so much attention being given to Men Walking and Talking in local groups where they can access help. I suppose we should mention Andy’s Man Club as well, which does amazing work across the country to get men talking.
Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for all her work on this issue. I struggled with my own mental health after the traumatic birth of my son, as I think she knows. It was friends and family, including my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume), who helped me, but in York we also have fantastic local groups like Menfulness, founded by Dr Jack Woodhams. Will she praise them and thank them for getting men to talk, whether through sport, football or walking?
Liz Twist
I thank my hon. Friend for sharing the struggles that he has had; by talking, we can learn more about them and tackle the issue. I certainly join him in thanking Menfulness. People are doing amazing work.
I want to talk about Samaritans. Samaritans began in 1953 in the city of London, founded by Chad Varah and arising from his experience of seeing lives lost to suicide—people who had no one to speak to. He advertised a telephone number that those contemplating suicide could call to speak to someone about how they were feeling. That work continues today, and is built on by the many outreach activities and the policy work led by Samaritans. I thank the many Samaritans volunteers who continue to listen and reach out in their local area to prevent suicides, including those in my local Tyneside Samaritans branch.
Tomorrow evening, Samaritans will mark World Suicide Prevention Day with a reception in Speaker’s House, held alongside the Premier League. The Premier League is doing excellent work in using the vast reach of football to support men, encouraging open conversations among groups who traditionally do not seek help. The charity Mind has a similar commitment, and it will be marking World Suicide Prevention Day in this House on Thursday morning. I am incredibly proud to sponsor its parliamentary reception this week, which will bring together campaigners, partners and clinicians to champion Mind’s vital work in our communities and to ensure that suicide prevention remains at the very top of our legislative agenda.
Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Autistic people are three times as likely as non-autistic people to die by suicide or attempt suicide. The 2023 suicide prevention strategy for England was the first to recognise autistic people as being at a higher risk of suicide. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need an update on progress for autistic people under the strategy, and on how the Government intend to incorporate autism into future suicide prevention strategies?
Liz Twist
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend’s concerns about the need for action on autism. She may be pleased to hear that the all-party groups on suicide and self-harm prevention and on autism will be doing joint work on the matter in the near future. I thank her for her intervention and am sure that the Minister has heard her request for an update.
I will now unashamedly name-check several organisations in the north-east, although I do so with some trepidation because there are so many other groups that I will not be able to mention. We benefit immensely from the presence of the James’ Place charity in Newcastle, which provides specialist, rapid clinical interventions for men in suicidal crisis. The way it operates in our region is saving lives.
I highlight the incredible work of If U Care Share, which is based in County Durham. Its roots are embedded in the local community, offering emotional support and postvention care. It was formed from personal experience, following the death by suicide of one of the family, a young man, which I know still affects the family and a much wider group of people, and is still a real impetus for their work and fundraising.
I also recognise the charity SoBS, Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide, which provides peer-led support to families who are navigating an uniquely complex and isolating form of grief.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
The hon. Lady is reading out a list of very good charities; I congratulate her on securing this debate. May I draw her attention to Ripple and Alice Hendy, to whom we at the Centre for Social Justice gave an award? Her “brown shield” technical device means that every time someone searches for a harmful site, something pops up to tell them where they can go for help and support. That has had a huge effect and needs to be rolled out further into schools and so on. I know that the hon. Lady knows that charity.
Liz Twist
The right hon. Gentleman touches on another angle, namely the world of the internet, which provides such a challenge. The work of Ripple is important in preventing that harm, but there is so much more to do. I congratulate Ripple on its award.
Jami UK is a Jewish mental health organisation with which I have done a good deal of work; given the subject of our previous debate today, it seems particularly appropriate to mention it. It does fantastic work in London and beyond, and is a regular contributor to the APPG.
Individuals have also transformed personal tragedy into relentless campaigning. We have already heard about Philip Pirie, who has worked on an assessment of suicide risk and is now pushing for training on it to be mandatory for NHS staff. The 3 Dads Walking campaign has captured the attention of the entire country. After losing their daughters Sophie, Beth and Emily to suicide, they marched together across the UK to demand that suicide prevention be taught in schools.
Amanda Martin
It is amazing that my hon. Friend is highlighting the fact that, so very often, out of tragedy come amazing families campaigning. I want to raise the case of Chloe Holland and Skye Nicholls. Their families have been campaigning because their family members took their own life following coercive control. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must recognise the devastating link between suicide and coercive control, and ensure not only justice, but proper recognition and response?
Liz Twist
My hon. Friend makes a really important point. I congratulate those families—“congratulate” does not seem the right word, but they are doing such amazing work in her community and it is really important to mention. My hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that part of the work plan for the APPG relates to the link between suicide and domestic abuse in its various forms. I look forward to working with her on that issue.
I mentioned 3 Dads Walking, who do absolutely fantastic work. Changes are being made to the relationships, sex and health education curriculum this year to pick up on that work and ensure that children are able to discuss suicide in a safe and age-appropriate way.
Most working adults spend a large part of their day at work, so employers clearly have a role to play. Last year, the British Standards Institution published BS 30480, the first formal standard for workplace suicide prevention. I was pleased to work on it with the BSI alongside employers, trade unions and suicide prevention experts. That guidance has now been downloaded over 13,500 times.
However, despite the immense amount of work being done by charities, campaigners and so many others, we have not yet managed to change the narrative completely. I know that I risk sounding like a broken record in this House on the issue, but while the overall figures stubbornly refuse to come down, I will continue to be a broken record. We need to bring the numbers down. As the World Health Organisation says, changing the narrative needs systemic change. As the Mental Health Foundation has argued for years, we need early intervention so that people receive support before their situation becomes acute.
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
I join other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on her lifetime of support for this cause. She makes such a valid point about changing the narrative and the stigma around suicide. This Government have made an incredible announcement of £343 million for walk-in mental health services. We are asking people to talk about how they are feeling and about how bad their mental health is, but they need those walk-in centres so that they can get treatment at the point that they feel suicidal. Will my hon. Friend join me in calling on my local integrated care board to ensure that Redditch, which has the highest rate of poor mental health in Worcestershire, gets the mental health walk-in centre that it so deserves?
Liz Twist
I am not sure I know enough about my hon. Friend’s local area to tell his local ICB what to do, but I am sure he does, and I am sure he is making the case to his local ICB for walk-in centres in his area.
The new mental health hubs and emergency centres that were announced over the summer will be a vital step forward, as my hon. Friend says, in providing community-based support through capital funding. I hope that that will be followed by the revenue funding to provide the staff and resources to deliver consistent care, and I hope that the Minister can provide a bit more detail on the revenue question; I welcome her to her new post and am glad that she is here to answer the debate. The national suicide prevention strategy has just passed its halfway point, which makes this the ideal moment to assess what is working and where we need to do more. A great many actions have arisen from the strategy, which I commend, but sadly the numbers have not shifted.
For men, who make up 75% of those who die by suicide, how can we address their specific concerns? Can the Minister say what actions will be taken to revise the strategy so that it can achieve its goal of reducing suicides? Can she also say what she will do to ensure that mental health has parity of esteem with physical health, which was the subject of another Westminster Hall debate that I secured not long ago? Will she join me and other Members in thanking all the third sector organisations and individuals who do so much to change the narrative, and recognise their importance in preventing suicide? I hope that she will continue to work closely with me and the APPG to ensure that these strategies deliver the systemic change that we desperately need.
On World Suicide Prevention Day, we reflect on what we must do to make a real difference. We can achieve that by ending the silence, funding the services and treating mental health with the urgency that it demands. That is how we will finally change the narrative, and that is how we will save lives.
The Minister for Social Care (Alison McGovern)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Christopher. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett (Liz Twist), whose leadership on the issue since she joined the House has been second to none. We are all extremely grateful to her.
As colleagues will understand, this debate must conclude at 11.30 am. I will do my best to make some remarks today on behalf of the Government, but I assure hon. Members that I have taken a note of all their contributions today and will relay them to the teams working on the mental health strategy. I hope that colleagues know that my door is always open to those who want to influence the forthcoming mental health strategy, particularly on this issue. I look forward to working with them all.
Every life lost to suicide is one life too many. That is why ensuring that fewer lives are lost to suicide is a priority, as my hon. Friend says. As we come together to discuss World Suicide Prevention Day, I reaffirm the Government’s commitment to delivering the suicide prevention strategy for England. We have already made important progress, from improving our ability to detect emerging trends through near real-time surveillance to strengthening suicide prevention practice across services and investing in targeted support for those groups that are most at risk, which several hon. Members have mentioned and which is clearly very important.
The theme of World Suicide Prevention Day is changing the narrative. That provides us with the opportunity to reflect on how to approach suicide prevention, and it challenges us to do more to prevent suicide. We want a society in which people feel able and safe to discuss their mental health, as hon. Members have done—particularly my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Mr Charters), who made an important contribution about his own mental health. We want people to be supported to express their experience of suicidal thoughts and to seek help. Mental health support has a vital role to play in that.
The 10-year health plan set out a bold ambition—to reform the NHS and to change the way mental health support is provided, investing £343 million in capital funding to make that change—but we need to go further. That is why we are developing a cross-Government mental health strategy for England. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and Consett mentioned, I am relatively new to this role. It is good to be the Minister of State for mental health; although I am new to the Department of Health and Social Care, hon. Members will know that I am not new to this issue, and particularly not to the impact of mental health on getting people into work and moving on, so I am looking forward to hitting the ground running with colleagues.
The strategy will aim to transform mental health care into a system that responds earlier and helps people to stay active and participating, which we know is so important preventively and for good mental health. Like the suicide prevention strategy, it will look beyond the NHS and will consider the role of schools, workplaces and the voluntary sector, for all the reasons that colleagues have mentioned. We need to meet people where they are.
Suicide is complicated. There are a range of factors outside the mental health system that we also need to address. The suicide prevention strategy identifies evidence-based factors, including financial difficulty, substance misuse, harmful gambling—a topic that I personally feel very passionate about—domestic abuse, physical illness, social isolation and loneliness. Many of those risk factors are closely linked to wider health inequalities. This is a complicated subject.
Opportunities to prevent suicide do not exist solely within mental health services. Three quarters of people who die by suicide are not in contact with NHS mental health services, but are in contact with other services and other support systems. We must make the most of those opportunities. Earlier this year, for example, my ministerial colleague Baroness Merron, alongside the brilliant charity Money and Mental Health, convened senior stakeholders from financial services to discuss the role that they can play in supporting people—both customers and employees—who are at risk of suicide. That is the kind of approach that we need to model. We will identify and maximise opportunities to make sure that every person who requires support can readily get help in their community, as colleagues have asked, as a principle that should underpin our approach.
Colleagues have mentioned the impact on men. It is so important that we recognise that, particularly with middle-aged men at risk of suicide, who might need support from multiple services; colleagues will be aware of the men’s health strategy that we announced recently.
I will end by briefly mentioning the work of the Premier League. I know only too well that football gets men talking. I am so proud that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson) mentioned, we have taken the opportunity to make the national game a place that helps people to open up and talk. I say: more of that!
Question put and agreed to.
Conflict in Sudan
(3 days, 9 hours ago)
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Naushabah Khan (Gillingham and Rainham) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the conflict in Sudan.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I am pleased to have secured this debate, because it comes at a critical moment. The war in Sudan is now entering its fourth year. It has been labelled the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, yet for some reason it still barely registers in political discourse. Last week, a humanitarian convoy delivering lifesaving aid to Kadugli, where communities are at risk of famine, was attacked. A UN report has found that sexual violence is widespread and is being used as a weapon of war in Sudan, and that at least 13 victims have died, mostly after brutal gang rapes, with the youngest victim only nine years old.
For millions of Sudanese people, the war is a daily struggle for survival. I suspect that many people in this country could not explain why a paramilitary force operating in Sudan stands accused of genocide. The gap between the scale of what is happening and the attention that it receives is part of the reason why it has been allowed to go on for so long. Just now, I was listening to the Foreign Secretary’s statement on the banning of Israeli goods that come from illegal settlements. The main Chamber was packed, and rightly so, but I would argue that the crisis in Sudan requires the same attention.
The United Nations puts the number of people in Sudan who need humanitarian assistance this year at 33.7 million, which is more than in any other country on earth. There are 90 million people displaced inside Sudan, and more than 4 million have left it entirely, which is equivalent to the population of Greater Manchester. More areas are in or at risk of famine than anywhere else in the world. However, the UN’s own response plan for Sudan is funded at only 40% of what is needed this year. That shortfall already has a body count: hospitals in Darfur have closed for want of money to keep them running, cutting off tens of thousands of displaced people from anything resembling care.
During the summer recess, I took part in a parliamentary delegation to Egypt, where I saw at first hand the impact of Sudan’s conflict on the region. My visit brought it home to me that this is a regional crisis—one that cannot be contained within Sudan’s borders.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. She is absolutely right that it is a timely moment. The quintet is to make a good-offices visit to Khartoum from tomorrow. Does she agree, first, that the UK Government have to continue supporting the diplomatic work of the quintet and, secondly, that the Government will continue to make a difference by sanctioning those individuals involved in facilitating this dreadful civil war?
Naushabah Khan
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I urge the Government to listen to his comments and to continue to place that pressure.
Egypt is the single largest host of people fleeing the conflict, with about 1.5 million refugees, which places significant pressure on communities and services already stretched thin. At a UNHCR registration centre, I heard directly from Sudanese refugees, including elderly women and young children, some of whom had travelled roughly 1,400 km from the Sudanese border just to register—the same distance as from London to Rome. Their journeys underscore the human reality of displacement. They are not just another statistic; they are families who walked away from everything they owned, because staying had become more dangerous than leaving.
Egypt has played a prominent role in stabilising the region, but its ability to manage the crisis alone is reaching breaking point. The question for Britain is not just how much we spend on humanitarian assistance, but whether our support reaches people where they are and where the need is greatest. The registration centre I visited is facing immense pressure: some 4,000 refugees a day against capacity built for 4,000 a month. UNHCR’s Egypt operation has a funding requirement of $133.5 million for 2026, but was only a quarter funded by the end of April, leaving a gap of more than $99 million. That operation is currently receiving no UK funding at all, despite the UK’s own record showing what effective support can achieve. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office-funded North Africa migrant and development project, delivered through the International Organisation for Migration, has reached more than 22,000 migrants and host community members in Egypt since 2024.
Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)
I was pleased and privileged to join my hon. Friend on the delegation to Egypt. At the event at which we met Sudanese refugees, what most struck me was the scale of medical need. Almost every participant at the roundtable was in need of a doctor or medical support, or had family similarly in need. Does my hon. Friend agree that the aid we are providing to the conflict is not just about what is happening in Sudan, but about the people who leave Sudan for Egypt and elsewhere, and the medical need that they have in those countries?
Naushabah Khan
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The medical challenge that people were facing came across strongly in our conversations. We must ensure that aid reaches the right people in the right place in the right way. That point cut through; I hope others will listen to it.
Alongside our humanitarian duty, this matters to Britain because the consequences of Sudan’s war are already being felt across the region and beyond. With little prospect of peace or self-reliance in Sudan or the countries hosting its refugees, more people are being forced into dangerous onward journeys towards Europe. Between 2024 and 2025, the number of Sudanese refugees arriving in Europe rose by 232%. In 2025, Sudanese nationals made up 11% of small boat arrivals to the United Kingdom. Funding refugee protection, registration and support for host communities is the right thing to do. It is also how we prevent further displacement and exploitation and stop people being forced to make these journeys later.
But funding is only part of the answer. Aid can mitigate the consequences of the conflict, but it cannot end it. However well the registration centre I visited with colleagues is funded, it will still be processing the consequences of decisions made by armed men many hundreds of miles away. Only a political solution can resolve that.
The war did not begin as, and has never really been, a contest between two equally matched armies with equally clean records. The Rapid Support Forces are the direct descendants of the Janjaweed militia responsible for the Darfur genocide of the early 2000s, absorbed into the Sudanese state rather than disbanded. When fighting broke out between the force and the regular army in April 2023, it inherited the old militia’s methods along with its personnel. The United Nations fact-finding mission concluded in February this year that the killing of civilians in El Fasher after the city fell to the Rapid Support Forces last October met the legal definition of genocide. Tonight, in a city called El Obeid, the same force is massing outside the walls in very much the configuration that it used in El Fasher. The United States Department of State has already warned that mass atrocities may follow if El Obeid falls too.
I want to be clear that the responsibility is not one-sided. Sudan’s regular army has bombed populated areas indiscriminately, and militias fighting alongside it have carried out abuses of their own territory that they have retaken, but there is a difference between that record and what happened at El Fasher. That difference is exactly why the two sides cannot simply be told to agree a ceasefire and be trusted to keep it
I raise that history because it explains why calls for a ceasefire keep failing. It is not a dispute that ends with both sides simply agreeing to stop. It also explains why the international effort to end this war has gone almost nowhere. The Quad—the United States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates—published a peace road map almost a year ago. It has achieved almost nothing, because Saudi Arabia and Egypt want the Sudanese army preserved as the backbone of the state, while the UAE wants its political role dismantled. Those positions were never reconciled, only written around, and Sudan’s own Government formally rejected the road map at the Security Council in February. That rejection barely registered here.
Nor is the damage confined to Sudan and Egypt. Chad has closed its borders, after cross-border drone attacks killed its own soldiers. Fighting has spread into Ethiopian territory around the Blue Nile. While the world’s attention is elsewhere, Russia has been negotiating a 25-year naval facility at Port Sudan in exchange for weapons—a foothold on one of the most consequential trade corridors on earth, secured while the country hosting it burns.
A war that we are content to fund our way around rather than to resolve is a war that keeps generating problems that Britain will eventually have to deal with on someone else’s terms. As the penholder for Sudan at the UN Security Council, the UK has significant diplomatic leverage. The Government must use it, maintaining pressure for humanitarian troops, for civilian protection, for unimpeded humanitarian access and for a civilian-led political process, including through the Berlin principles agreed earlier this year.
That leverage will carry more weight if we are not undercut by our own arms licensing decisions. Evidence from United Nations experts and from Amnesty International has repeatedly linked the United Arab Emirates to weapons reaching the Rapid Support Forces. Hundreds of millions of pounds of UK arms licences to the UAE have been approved during this war. I would welcome the Minister’s assurance that those licences are being tested properly against the risk that British-made equipment will end up fuelling, however indirectly, the same conflict that we are asking the Security Council to end.
I also urge the Government to reaffirm the commitment they made earlier this year to the UK’s £146 million of humanitarian funding for Sudan, while extending meaningful funding to organisations on the ground, including for the UNHCR’s work with refugees in neighbouring countries, rather than focusing solely on Sudan itself. Britain has both the means and the diplomatic standing to act. We can help to ensure that people displaced by this war receive the protection and support that they need, while using our influence to address the conflict that forced them from their homes in the first place. Many of them want to return to their home: I heard that loud and clear.
I think of the women I met at the registration centre who had walked 1,400 km simply to queue in the baking heat, just to be counted. The least this House can do is make sure that they are not forgotten, and the least that our Government can do is recognise the scale and impact of this humanitarian crisis.
Several hon. Members rose—
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)
Order. I remind hon. Members that they should bob if they wish to be called. If Members can stick to five minutes each, it will be much appreciated: that will enable everyone to speak.
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan), not just for her thoughtful contribution but for securing this debate.
It is so important that we take every opportunity we can to shine a light on this conflict. The International Development Committee, of which I am a member, has relentlessly sought to bring forward evidence to enable discussion of the issue, but we have failed to get the widespread coverage and attention that it most certainly deserves. I recognise the focus that the former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), brought to the conflict during her time in office; the same applies to the former development Minister, the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds). I am sure that the new Minister, whom I welcome to her post, will do likewise. Nevertheless, as I said, Sudan remains chronically under-reported.
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on nutrition for development, I want to focus most of my remarks on the appalling reality of hunger and acute malnutrition, which represent some of the most brutal consequences of the ongoing conflict. Famine conditions are no longer a distant warning; they are an already present reality. Acute malnutrition among children under five and breastfeeding mothers is projected to surge from 3.7 million last year to nearly 4.2 million in 2026. Furthermore, Save the Children estimates that cases of severe acute malnutrition will rise by a further 4% to a devastating 800,000.
We saw the horrific realities of the crisis just two weeks ago with the totally unacceptable attack on a World Food Programme convoy in Kordofan. Civilian personnel were injured and lifesaving aid was destroyed. Aid has become a weapon in this conflict, so I urge the Minister to continue to exert every possible diplomatic lever to ensure that El Obeid does not suffer the same fate as El Fasher, where starvation was used as a weapon of war, with local food supply chains systematically targeted in preparation for the siege and eventual massacre.
I recognise that the Minister and her colleagues in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office must navigate delicate regional dynamics, but the Government must not shy away from forcefully challenging the covert actions of some of our Gulf allies in Sudan, both publicly and in private diplomacy. That would be totally consistent with the statement earlier in the House of Commons about elsewhere in the middle east.
Crucially, as I understand it, the UN arms embargo is due to expire, so the UK must act. The United States has rightly called for its expansion and extension. As UN Security Council penholder, the UK has a distinct moral and diplomatic duty to lead these negotiations at the upcoming UN General Assembly and press relentlessly for a humanitarian truce, a permanent ceasefire, robust civilian protection, civic engagement and unhindered aid access.
This war has created the largest forced displacement crisis on the planet. Egypt alone is currently hosting some 1.5 million refugees fleeing from the violence. Compounding that, severe El Niño weather events now threaten fragile food supply chains across east Africa, with UNICEF warning of intensifying drought, extreme heat and flooding that will further afflict vulnerable children. Our humanitarian response must be prioritised to mitigate that environmental pressure and include renewed efforts to secure a stable, civilian-led peace in accordance with the Berlin principles.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the need for a humanitarian response. Does he agree that that can have an impact only if it is internationally co-ordinated? The scale of the catastrophe in Sudan is such that anything less that will be a piecemeal gesture.
David Mundell
I absolutely agree. I—and the Minister, I am sure—would like the Quad that was established to be more effective in relation to the involvement of the United States and neighbouring countries, with those neighbouring countries playing a positive role rather than supporting the protagonists in the conflict. As the right hon. Member for Oxford East has previously said, the greater involvement of the African Union would be most welcome, but that has not really developed.
We are deluding ourselves if we believe that the consequences of the conflict can be contained in Sudan and neighbouring countries. Displacement will not stop at Egypt, particularly given that the camps are under pressure. Failing to properly support host countries and to address the conflict will ensure that the pressures are delivered closer to home, so it is totally in our interests to resolve the conflict. We must do everything we can to achieve that.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Dr Allin-Khan. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan) for securing this debate, and to all hon. Members here for doing exactly what my hon. Friend said was needed: shine a light on the human catastrophe affecting Sudan and its people, in the midst of a war on civilians, human rights, children and women.
We have already heard some really disturbing statistics. Look at the number of people—8.6 million; I added it up this morning—who have been displaced throughout Sudan. It is the same as the populations of Scotland, Manchester and Bristol put together. Those people have been forced from their homes because of appalling violence and have to attempt to scrape a life together elsewhere. Of course, up to 4 million people who have had to flee Sudan are based in other countries. It is good to hear that colleagues met some of those refugees in Egypt; I met some of them in Chad. Their horrific stories will never leave me.
I want to focus my remarks on some concerning recent developments as it is important to put them on the record. I will then ask some questions of the new Minister, whom I welcome to her place; I am pleased to see her. First, as has been said, it is concerning to see that the conflict is certainly not abating. El Obeid is being encircled, as previous speakers have eloquently pointed out. There is renewed fighting in Blue Nile province and acute insecurity in the Nuba mountains. In many parts of Sudan, there is also cholera and dengue. In many ways, the humanitarian situation is getting worse.
Secondly, since we last discussed the issue in the House, there has been an even greater use of drones in Sudan, including double-tap attacks in which, following one attack, those trying to rescue the injured are killed too. That is being done by not just one belligerent but all of them. One example took place on 20 March, when there was a big drone attack on El-Daein teaching hospital in east Darfur, a Rapid Support Forces-controlled area. On the same day in Al Dabbah in Northern state, there was an attack in an area controlled by the Sudanese armed forces, which affected electricity infrastructure. Both attacks killed civilians and affected critical infrastructure.
Thirdly, it is concerning that restrictions on aid are becoming normalised in Sudan. We have already had a bit of a discussion about the involvement of the international community. It is important to underline that what both the SAF and the RSF are doing—forcing non-governmental organisations to register with them and saying, effectively, that they are not allowed to provide lifesaving support to the other side—is obviously using aid as a weapon of war. That is appalling, and it effectively requires NGOs to choose which group of starving people they want to serve.
Finally, there has been really poor rainfall so far this year, and it looks like that will make the food insecurity situation even worse. As has been mentioned, the crisis can feel far away, but it does not feel like that when we speak to people in our constituencies with families suffering in Sudan. Furthermore, we are seeing the consequences on our shores, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham.
Let me put the issue into perspective. The Sudanese now make up the largest category of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children trying to come into our country. They are also the second most numerous nationality, after Eritreans, in small boat arrivals. An enormous population movement is clearly happening because of the war on civilians in Sudan.
I have several questions for the Minister. First, recent attempts by the US to achieve an arms embargo on all of Sudan—not just the one already in place in Darfur—have been blocked by Russia, which claims that the conflict is completely one-sided. Will the Minister let us know what the UK is doing to support the US in that important call, and particularly in highlighting the appallingly destructive impact of cheap and readily available drones on civilians? Secondly, I welcome the UK’s sanctions on those exploiting gold and using it to support the belligerents in Sudan, but what more can be done? Does the Minister have a date yet for the illicit finance summit that is meant to happen later this year? Will it cover Sudanese gold? It would be useful to hear about that. Thirdly, will the UK push for a credible investigation of the allegations of chemical weapons use that we have heard in relation to Sudan? Finally, has the issue of the involvement of neighbouring countries been raised by the Foreign Secretary with the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other countries engaged in the conflict?
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan) for setting the scene incredibly well. She was right to recognise the importance of the debate. Its importance is equal—I say this with great respect—to that of the Foreign Secretary’s statement, which is currently being debated in the main Chamber. The impact of the conflict in Sudan is even greater, given the number of people affected. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak specifically about the conflict’s devastating impact on freedom of religion and belief.
I always try to start with a verse of scripture, because for me that underlines the moral weight of what we are discussing. Proverbs 31:8 instructs us:
“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.”
In this Chamber, we are a voice for the voiceless. That is precisely what this debate asks us to do: to be the spokespeople in this Chamber for the Sudanese people.
Let us be clear from the outset: the situation in Sudan is not simply a conventional campaign of religious persecution. Since fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces erupted in April 2023, state authority has fragmented catastrophically. Armed groups operate with widespread immunity. Religious minorities have become acutely and disproportionately vulnerable in the chaos that has followed. It would be misleading, of course, to characterise the situation solely as one side persecuting Christians because both armed factions have attacked places of worship and terrorised communities of faith. The stats illustrate the scale of that. The Open Doors 2026 world watch list ranked Sudan fourth in the world for Christian persecution, with a score of 92 out of 100—the highest ever recorded for Sudan. That tells you what is happening in Sudan.
I am going to speak about the persecution. Approximately 2.2 million Christians, around 4.3% of the population, remain in Sudan. Some 23 Christians have been killed for faith-related reasons and around 100 churches or Christian buildings have been attacked or closed. In December 2024, RSF soldiers attacked a Church of Christ congregation during a Christmas prayer service in Al-Hasaheisa, forcing out some 177 worshippers, assaulting at least 14 people and looting the building. That is not collateral damage; it is targeted religious terror—that is how it must be categorised.
As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, I must reiterate that freedom of religion or belief must mean freedom for all. Muslims, too, are victims. In September 2025, an RSF attack on a mosque in El Fasher during dawn prayers killed more than 80 worshippers. Mosques have been damaged and destroyed alongside churches. Baha’is, Shi’a Muslims and other small communities are equally exposed when institutional protection collapses entirely. That is what has happened in Sudan: protection is not there for anybody at this moment in time.
What makes its deterioration particularly grievous is that at one time Sudan was moving in a better direction. Following Omar al-Bashir’s removal in 2019, Sudan abolished the death penalty for apostasy and began to remove sharia law as a constitutional basis for legislation. Those were genuinely encouraging developments; in 2019 things did seem brighter, if only for a short time. The October 2021 coup halted that progress and the 2023 civil war has now swept away most of what remained of institutional religious protection—it has all gone away in some seven years.
We must encourage the Secretary of State to address three specific points. First, what representations is His Majesty’s Government making to ensure that FORB protections are explicitly incorporated into any future constitutional settlement in Sudan, preserving and building on the reforms of 2019 to 2020?
Secondly, what steps are being taken to document the attacks on religious infrastructure by both armed factions and raise them with international partners? I congratulate the Minister on her performance in the Chamber today; it was certainly strong, and I look forward to a similar response to the questions that we put forward here. I would like there to be accountability for those who have carried out terrible atrocities in Sudan. Is a process taking place to ensure that those who carried out heinous crimes—the hon. Lady for Gillingham and Rainham referred to a nine-year-old child being abused and raped by these monsters—have accountability?
Thirdly, will the Government commit to ensuring that humanitarian assistance reaches displaced religious minority communities who face discrimination even in accessing aid? There is no fairness in how aid is processed.
In conclusion, any influence that we have can and must be used to help the people for whom persecution has become a fact of life. That is a fact that we can never accept.
Nesil Caliskan (Barking) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan) for securing this important debate, and I welcome the Minister to her place.
Sudan is now in its fourth year of conflict—four years of violence, displacement and starvation. Up to 400,000 people have been killed in a war that has displaced more than 14 million people and left 34 million—two thirds of the population—in need of humanitarian support. Behind those numbers are people’s lives, stories and unimaginable trauma and grief—a family forced to flee their generational home, a child suffering from malnutrition, a woman, girl or baby who has survived sexual violence or who has died because of sexual violence.
Those are some of the stories that my Barking constituents have shared with me. I have spoken to constituents with family links to Sudan, who fear for their loved ones. Others are horrified by the events and the international complacency. Sudan needs an immediate ceasefire and aid. That is why I support the Government’s efforts to keep the Sudan conflict high on the international agenda. I commend the former Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), for all her efforts, and in particular for chairing a special session at the UN Security Council in February that focused entirely on Sudan. She placed the importance of women’s rights at the top of the agenda. In Sudan, it is women and children who have been disproportionately impacted.
Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)
Sudan is the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis and, like my hon. Friend, I have constituents who are deeply concerned, including Sandra in Queen’s Park, Gemma in East Cliff and Springbourne and Colleen in Muscliff and Strouden Park. I have heard constituents’ concern about a report in The Guardian on 7 September about women and girls fleeing from the brutal civil war to Egypt, where they thought they would find safety, but they have fallen prey to sexual abuse and exploitation. Does she agree that women and girls are suffering in Sudan, but they are also suffering in places where they should be finding safety?
Nesil Caliskan
My hon. Friend makes an important point and underlines the vulnerability that women and girls face across the world. Indeed, a staggering one in four Sudanese people are at risk of sexual violence, and women and girls are disproportionately impacted. In the UN report into the siege of El Fasher, one woman described being raped
“in front of the bodies of my mother, my father and my slaughtered brother.”
I cannot imagine the fear that Sudanese women feel every day. Will the Minister confirm that the £20 million programme to support victims of rape will continue?
In an unstable world where there is humanitarian suffering beyond comprehension, we too often feel forced to consider which crisis we care about the most. The truth is that humanity and compassion have no boundaries; they are not diluted by proximity, ethnicity or religion. There is no hierarchy of humanitarian suffering that we should be outraged about. Indeed, my constituents frequently express to me their deep frustration that the media and Government do not shine a brighter light on what is going on in Sudan.
More than just talking about the appalling situation in Sudan, we need the UK Government to take action. Will the Minister confirm that the UK will continue its arms embargo and sanctions regime until there is a ceasefire in Sudan? In July, sanctions were introduced against a further 11 individuals and organisations. The individuals and organisations on that list reveal a glimmer of the web of dark money and corporate interests that are exploiting this conflict for their own greed. Commercial brokers, real estate management companies, capital holding corporations, mining companies—the list goes on. All those organisations and individuals have blood on their hands.
Sanctioning individuals is not enough while the arms keep flowing. The UN independent international fact-finding mission for Sudan found reasonable grounds to believe that there is a transnational network running through companies and intermediaries in the UAE. Will the Minister say what the UK is doing, and what more it can do bilaterally and through the UN Security Council, specifically to press the UAE regarding these credible and mounting allegations? In the light of the allegations, will the Government review UK arms licensing arrangements with the UAE? I appreciate that she cannot go into detail about any further sanctions that the Government might be considering, but can she reassure us that that work is under way?
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham again for securing this important debate, and I thank all Members who have participated for their powerful speeches. Finally, I ask the Government to take more action to stop the genocide in Sudan, to support a ceasefire and to help the Sudanese people to find their future.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
It is a pleasure, Dr Allin-Khan, to serve with you in the Chair for this vital debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan) on securing it.
It is a sad fact of life in Parliament that we have not debated this issue enough, including on the Floor of the House of Commons, because the death toll in Sudan dwarfs anything else that is going on around the world at the moment, despite the amount of time that we spend discussing issues other than this one. I absolutely agree with the figures that the hon. Lady cited about the terrible death toll in Sudan, which is something in the order of 400,000, yet I suspect that even that is an underestimate. If it is, perhaps between 1 million and 1.5 million people in Sudan have been killed or wounded just in the direct conflict. Then, of course, there are all the people who have been displaced; she also gave those figures and I absolutely agree with them, too.
Today, I will focus on following the money, because it seems to me that if we were to stop the money, we would stop the war. In particular, I will focus on the role of the UAE in all of this, which I think is an abomination. Frankly, the UAE’s Administration is a disgraceful one anyway, and I will go on to say why.
It is now absolutely clear, from the work of the prominent human rights organisations and many media outlets that have conducted investigations into RSF fighters, that those fighters are using weapons supplied by the UAE. If not manufactured in the UAE, the weapons are certainly re-exported to them on a regular basis and in vast numbers, along with ammunition.
Furthermore, Colombian mercenaries have arrived in Sudan, who were no doubt recruited from an organisation that is very close to the leadership of the UAE. In September 2025, the Government of Sudan estimated that the number of Colombian mercenaries in Sudan was getting on for 500, but other estimates suggest that the real number is between 1,500 and 2,000, and growing.
We believe that that is the direct result of what has been happening in the UAE. The Global Security Services Group is the organisation contracted to hire those people, and it is also involved in the supply of weapons. The GSSG is owned by an Emirati businessman, Mohamed Hamdan Alzaabi, who has business interests in security firms jointly with Ahmed Mohamed Al Hameeri, the secretary-general of the UAE’s Presidential Court. The links to what is going on in Sudan have been very clearly established. GSSG continues to be closely tied to the Government of the UAE. Its website states that it is the preferred security provider for the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Presidential Affairs, and there is evidence that two military bases in Abu Dhabi were used as training facilities for mercenaries—the list goes on.
My question to the UK Government is this: why in heaven’s name are we not sanctioning key operatives in the UAE now? I am the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Magnitsky sanctions and reparation, and I say that it is high time that we imposed sanctions on those key UAE operatives.
We can also look at the links back to Sheikh Mansour, who has well-documented ties with the leader of the RSF, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, and has even been described as Hamdan Dagalo’s closest ally in the UAE. In March 2023, Premier League clubs, apparently unanimously, that they would not allow individuals involved in human rights abuses to own clubs, yet Mansour is still in charge of Manchester City. The question is, why, and why are the Government so determined not to pursue these individuals? I suspect that the reason involves a lot of money in investments and the ownership of football teams, but that should not stop the Government from pursuing these people, because the UAE would be very suspect in that.
Even if that were not enough, the UAE is involved in the most appalling abuse. British citizen Ryan Cornelius has spent 18 years incarcerated, even though the UN has claimed that that is completely wrong and unjudicial and that he should be released. The Abu Dhabi bank has continued to pursue him, and he has not seen his family for close on 19 years now. He is a British citizen, but how often have representatives of successive Governments, when they have visited the UAE, named him or said anything about him? The answer is “Very rarely.” All they do is tokenistically raise the issue and move on, as they pursue more money.
We know that Mohammed Ibrahim al-Shaibani, who is the chair of the Dubai Islamic bank and head of the Dubai Ruler’s Court, is responsible for Ryan’s detention for 18 years and is very close to the leadership of UAE. It is time that we cracked down on this organisation and showed it to be the pariah that it is. It is behind all that is going on in Sudan and the abuses of British citizens who should be released. Unless the Government are prepared to step up, sanction key individuals, and prevent them from owning football teams, investing in the United Kingdom and enjoying their shopping trips here, we will not be the nation that we should be.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan) on securing such an important debate.
As we think about the displacement and destitution, the hunger, the rape and the violence in everyday stories of this forgotten war in Sudan, which is destroying a nation, ripping it apart and fuelling the greatest humanitarian disaster on our planet, we know we have to step up our focus and our action in this place. Although I welcome all the contributions of hon. Members to this debate, the amount of attention that the House gives to this disaster is still insufficient.
When we think about the fact that 33.7 million of the Sudanese population are in need of humanitarian assistance, 13 million have been displaced, 19.5 million are at levels of food insecurity and need urgent attention, and there are 8 million children who are not in the safety of school every day, getting their education, which will fuel challenges for the future too, it is so urgent that we find a path to move beyond these atrocities. Yet it feels like actors cannot see beyond the desire to gain ground, destroy lives and property, and kill any hope.
The Sudan war is a proxy for external actors, and that is what demands our urgent attention. We must use all the leverage we have to stop fuelling the conflict, not least by addressing the behaviours of countries such as the UAE and, at times, Egypt too. The conflict is moving beyond traditional warfare; we are now seeing extensive drone use, mercenaries being brought from Colombia, and the exchange of money too. We also know that Russia has its own interests in weapons and gold.
We must look at the minimal interest in Sudan and the developments in Port Sudan at this time. In fighting this proxy war, we need to ensure there is proper global accountability, which seems so lacking from our systems. In our tinderbox of geopolitical fragility, where domestic politics sucks our attention, we need to find the capacity in Government to provide the leadership that is necessary and the resolutions that are so urgent. We must match those with commitments to provide aid at scale and to use the political capital that we can bring.
In recent years, we have witnessed new approaches. In the assault on El Fasher in particular, we saw the systematic raping of women, the burning of people and places, and the escalation in the next chapter of the civil war that has raged since April 2023.
Last year in London, and this year in Berlin, the UK and other actors brought people together to break the deadlock, yet the fruit of those efforts has been so small. We need to look more widely at our infrastructure for addressing conflict. I welcome steps taken by the former Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), to address the issue of women in conflict, and particularly the investment for those who have experienced sexual harm as a result of the conflict. Will the Minister tell us what progress has been made in that area, how that money has been spent and its impact to date?
As we see increasing brutalisation in war, we have to focus even more on how we use international law to hold actors to account, and on the pace of that process, because it takes forever and a day to bring people to account. We also need a different vision for how we build diplomacy, whether that is a focus on the post-conflict opportunity of trade, on reciprocity in co-operation, on security and stability, or on where we can use pragmatism and protection to build rules and rights. We must take the seeds of London and the shoots of Berlin so that they grow into a settlement that works for people on the ground in Sudan.
Will the Minister also look at the role of civil society? Up to 2023, civil society played a major role in maintaining stability in Sudan. Being able to work with local leaders is crucial to increasing their opportunity to build the bridges that are necessary to de-escalate the risks we see. How are we not only investing but inspiring community organisations and actors to use their accountability and creative diplomacy, and how are we providing the necessary support that they need to build for the future?
Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan) for securing the debate.
Sudan now faces the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, largest hunger crisis and biggest internal displacement crisis. History has taught us that war always drains resources into armed conflict, instead of directing them towards manufacturing, development and raising people’s living standards. The war is a counter-revolutionary conflict between two military factions that has left Sudan’s infrastructure largely destroyed. Sudan’s agriculture, industry and domestic and foreign trade have all been severely disrupted, with approximately 13 million people displaced, 19.5 million people facing acute food insecurity and hundreds of thousands of people living in famine conditions.
As well as the war, there have been years of failed politics, a lack of development, a weakening of production and widespread corruption. This has all led to the collapse of state institutions, mass unemployment and intense poverty. According to the latest estimates from Sudan’s Central Bureau of Statistics, 82.8% of the population now live below the poverty line. The war has created an economy in which military interests, commercial networks and smuggling converge, for which both sides bear responsibility. Both sides are using gold, once a national resource, for financing. The revenues are used to purchase weapons, ammunition, drones and other military supplies. Sudan’s gold production reached 70.15 tonnes in 2025, while officially recorded exports amounted only to approximately 14 tonnes, so 56 tonnes of gold did not enter official channels through the Bank of Sudan.
The war is being used to pass highly questionable agreements on projects with international capital, and with countries that have appalling human rights records. That has far-reaching economic investment and strategic consequences. For example, the Sudanese-Saudi co-ordination council operates away from the gaze of public scrutiny and grants long-term economic investment and strategic concessions involving land, agriculture, ports and other natural resources. Only last year, the Sudanese Foreign Minister confirmed that a final understanding had been reached that would see a Russian naval base on the Red sea, with up to 300 Russian personnel and four warships.
Collectively, the international community must try to bring this war to an end, guarantee humanitarian access, press all parties for safe, unhindered aid delivery to every part of Sudan through all available channels, and back efforts to prevent famine. The arms pipeline should be cut off, with the UK actively monitoring and using every available measure to end foreign military support to the warring factions, including the UAE’s support to the RSF, and UN Security Council resolution 1556 should be enforced.
There must be accountability, not impunity. The UK should support independent monitoring, documentation and prosecution in respect of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law by all perpetrators. There should be a democratic, Sudanese-led civilian transition, with the UK backing a genuinely inclusive process that excludes the warring parties and the former regime, with no return to power sharing with the military, and the introduction of a single national army under civilian oversight.
The decisive factor here is internal. The resistance committees, the trade unions and the displaced people’s committees should help to shape Sudan’s future, with the UK and wider international community supporting democratic forces on the ground and backing bottom-up participation and leadership that leads to sovereignty and the reconstruction of a peaceful, democratic and prosperous Sudan.
Monica Harding (Esher and Walton) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan) for raising the subject, which we should be talking about much more, and welcome the Minister to her place. I declare my interest as vice-chair of the APPG for Sudan and South Sudan, and I refer to a trip undertaken with Action Against Hunger to the Chad-Sudan border to witness the impact of the conflict.
I can rehearse the lines I have said over and over again during my time in the House to a range of Ministers: the world has failed Sudan, and the UK must do much more to bring about an end to the conflict and to the largest humanitarian crisis in the world today. In June, with the leader of my party, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), I wrote to the former Prime Minister urging him to use his last hours in office to act to end the escalating crisis in El Obeid, which is at real risk of levels of violence against civilians similar to the El Fasher massacre in 2025. I did not receive a response.
Over the summer, El Obeid has seen thousands of people arriving in search of shelter. Foreign Ministers, including here in the UK, have made welcome statements calling for de-escalation and for the warring parties to uphold international humanitarian law, but the situation there continues to worsen. It is emblematic of the situation in Sudan today.
In May, colleagues and I visited Chad’s border with Sudan. We found a humanitarian response operating under extraordinary pressure. The town of Adré, which once had a population of 40,000, now hosts an estimated 240,000 people. Chad now hosts more than 1.5 million refugees, the majority of them from Sudan. Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world and is sharing scarce water, land and services with a vast refugee population. But as the humanitarian actors we met on our trip told us continually, the needs far outweigh the resources they have to respond.
Anneliese Dodds
Like the hon. Lady, I went on that trip—I declare an interest exactly as she expressed it. She talks about the hard work of humanitarian organisations; does she agree that those who received support were very grateful for it, as they kept saying to us, but were really concerned about what would happen in the future, and had already seen a reduction in that support?
Monica Harding
The right hon. Member is absolutely right. The overall funding to Chad for the humanitarian response had fallen to 27%. That meant that in the refugee camps we visited, food was being rationed—it may have been every other week or every other month that they were missing food parcels—and the refugees were extremely worried about what would happen.
We Liberal Democrats welcomed the Government’s announcement of £146 million of new funds for frontline aid workers to support Sudan, but the Government’s aid cuts have diminished our ability to respond to humanitarian crises and honour our international commitments. I remind the Minister that the 0.7% aid budget was a commitment that the House legislated for, and that we continue to wait for a timetable to return to 0.7%.
Meanwhile, the atrocities continue. I recently met representatives of the independent UN fact-finding mission for Sudan. Their latest report was just released and makes for tough reading, concluding that external support is sustaining and expanding the military capabilities of the SAF and RSF, particularly their drone capability; that transnational networks are supplying the RSF with
“weapons, logistics, training and foreign personnel”;
and that the SAF is using foreign-supplied drones that harm civilians.
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Lady for her speech. The hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) referred to the influence of Russia. The Wagner Group in particular seems to be in the background, training and exploiting the reserves, gold and minerals in Sudan at the same time as being involved in atrocities against women, children and all the people in Sudan. Does the hon. Lady agree that when it comes to looking for culprits, Russia is at the top of the list?
Monica Harding
Absolutely. China, Russia and so many other countries are involved in the crisis.
I welcome yesterday’s statement by the UK on behalf of the coalition for atrocity prevention and justice in Sudan, which called for a stop to the continued illegal flow of weapons, but when will the UK call out the countries doing it? I have pressed and pressed successive Ministers and Foreign Secretaries, and they continually refuse to call out the UAE in particular for its widely reported bloody role in the conflict. When will they do so, and when will they take consequential action for their hand in it? Will arms licences to the named countries be reviewed and halted in the light of the reports?
With the current arms embargo on the Darfur region up for renewal at the end of this week, will the UK push for a Sudan-wide arms embargo, something that even the USA is now calling for? Will the Government use the UK’s role as UN Security Council penholder on Sudan to advance efforts to secure a ceasefire? The current road map is unrealistic; how will the Government propose a realistic de-escalation? What about the sanctions on those at the heart of the conflict? Will the Government widen the scope of their sanctions regime to ensure that those driving the conflict face further restrictions?
In Chad, I met women so traumatised by what they had experienced that their eyes were dead. Some could not speak. Those who did told us harrowing tales of rape and murder on their way across Sudan to Chad. One lady had witnessed nine male members of her family being murdered. One lady had just arrived at the border into the care of the UN with two children, aged five and seven. She had taken five months to get there, by herself, from El Fasher. Those roads are dangerous. How will the Government work to secure the safety of civilians?
What about accountability? In the absence of reprisals, belligerents and their state backers are acting with impunity. Belligerents are using rape, starvation as a weapon of war, arbitrary detention, torture and retaliation against civilian populations. International NGOs are being silenced with the threat of their access being removed if they speak out, and the UNHCR does not even have the money to spend time with victims of unbelievable violence and diagnose what has occurred. We cannot seek accountability if we cannot fund the capacity to establish it, so will the Government review their financial commitment to Sudan and encourage other nations also to fill the void?
Will the Government commit to seeking to extend the mandate of the fact-finding mission? What conversations are being had about a peacekeeping force in Sudan, perhaps with the African Union, if only to state that the world is waking up to this conflict and that the belligerents are no longer able to act with impunity, thumbing their nose at international humanitarian law and the values of humanity itself?
The UK has a unique role to play in this conflict. I have just hotfooted it from the Foreign Secretary’s statement on Palestine, which I welcome. I applaud his assertion that
“It is also the case that if we fail to stand up for the values that this country has long held and fought for, we lose credibility and influence in the world.”
He talked about
“a Britain that upholds its values at home and around the world, a Britain that fights against oppression and suffering wherever they occur, and a Britain that stands up for what is right.”
Does that apply to Sudan too?
Will the Government use every lever at their disposal to up the urgency and convince the international community to act to stop the bloodshed? For every child trapped in this terrible conflict, terrified right now, for every mother trying to protect her son, for every civilian caught up in the violence, for the humanitarian worker facing unbelievable risks, and for humanity’s sake, do more.
Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan) on securing this important debate.
I am grateful to Members from across the House for their contributions—not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), who stressed the importance of keeping this topic on the agenda and under discussion in this place, and of sanctions. As ever, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) brought huge knowledge and expertise to the debate, particularly about nutrition, and no debate is complete without the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I also welcome the new Minister to her place; I think this is the first time that we have met as Front Benchers in Westminster Hall.
The conflict in Sudan may not always receive the same attention in this country as other international crises, but the scale of human suffering is truly appalling. For more than three years, fighting between the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces has devastated communities across the country. At least 150,000 people are estimated to have been killed, about 14 million people have been displaced, including 9 million within Sudan itself, and more than half the population is now acutely food insecure. Famine has been confirmed in multiple areas.
Behind each of those statistics are individuals and families whose lives have been torn apart. We have seen horrifying reports of attacks against civilians, widespread sexual violence, the destruction of essential infrastructure and the deliberate obstruction of humanitarian assistance. Those responsible for atrocities must ultimately be held to account.
I want to use this opportunity to recognise the extraordinary work of humanitarian and Sudanese civil society organisations, which often operate in extremely dangerous circumstances to deliver assistance to those who desperately need it. The recent attack on a World Food Programme humanitarian convoy was another disturbing reminder of the risks faced by those who are simply trying to deliver lifesaving assistance. There is no justification for attacks on humanitarian workers or the deliberate obstruction of aid. The Government were therefore right to condemn the attack, but condemnation must be accompanied by consequences. Will the Minister tell us what assessment the Government have made of responsibility for the attacks on humanitarian operations? What action are they prepared to take against those responsible?
The regional consequences of this conflict also demand our attention. As we have heard, 4.5 million Sudanese people have fled to neighbouring countries. Chad and Egypt are carrying a particularly significant burden. Egypt alone hosts about 1.5 million Sudanese refugees. Without adequate protection, basic services and opportunities in neighbouring countries, vulnerable people face exploitation and are increasingly driven towards dangerous onward journeys.
The number of Sudanese refugees arriving in Europe rose sharply between 2024 and 2025, and Sudanese nationals accounted for 11% of small boat arrivals to the UK last year. This is therefore not just a humanitarian crisis. Continued instability in Sudan has serious consequences for regional stability and, ultimately, for our national security. We cannot afford to see a vast, ungoverned space emerge between the Sahel and the Red sea, in which hostile states, terrorist organisations and criminal networks are able to expand their influence.
There are already deeply concerning reports of external actors fuelling this war through weapons, financing and political support. Russia has sought influence with both sides while pursuing its own strategic interests, including access to Port Sudan and the Red sea. There are also long-standing and serious allegations about the supply of weapons to the RSF through regional networks. The Government must therefore be clear that those who finance, arm and prolong this conflict cannot expect to do so without consequences. We welcome the sanctions announced in July against individuals and entities linked to illicit gold networks and the financing and procurement structures supporting both the RSF and the SAF. Ministers, however, need to demonstrate that those measures are disrupting the networks sustaining the war rather than just identifying them.
The previous Conservative Government began sanctions against SAF and RSF-linked individuals and entities. We secured UN Security Council resolution 2736 demanding that the RSF halt its siege of El Fasher, and created the position of special envoy for the Red sea and horn of Africa. We repeatedly raised concerns about the role of illicit Sudanese gold and reports of external arms supplies.
I have a few questions for the Minister. What further sanctions are now being considered against those funding or arming the warring parties? What steps are being taken with international partners to disrupt the illicit gold networks that continue to finance the conflict? What conversations are Ministers having with regional partners about allegations that weapons continue to reach the parties through neighbouring states?
Ultimately, sanctions and humanitarian assistance can address some of the consequences of the war, but they cannot substitute for the political settlement that Sudan so desperately needs. There is no military solution to the conflict. The UK has an important responsibility as the UN Security Council penholder on Sudan. We need to use that position assertively. We welcome the Berlin principles agreed earlier this year, including the commitment to an immediate humanitarian truce, a sustained ceasefire and, ultimately, a civilian-led political transition.
Principles on paper must now translate into progress on the ground. The Government have spoken about their efforts with international partners to broker a humanitarian truce; I hope that the Minister will update the House on precisely where those discussions now stand. What are the principal obstacles to securing that truce? What diplomatic engagement is taking place with external actors who possess influence over the parties? What is the Government’s assessment of the prospects for moving from a humanitarian truce to a permanent ceasefire and a credible, civilian-led political process? The voices of Sudanese civilians themselves must be central to that process, including the women, who have suffered so disproportionately during the conflict. The Berlin principles rightly recognise the importance of their meaningful participation.
Accountability must also remain at the heart of our approach. The evidence of atrocities committed during the conflict, including widespread sexual violence, is horrifying. The Government should set out what practical assistance Britain is providing for the collection and preservation of evidence, and how we are supporting the international mechanisms necessary to turn that evidence into prosecutions. I hope that the Minister will address specifically what support is being provided, including through Sudanese-led organisations operating on the ground, to women and girls who have survived sexual violence.
Britain has a long history of engagement in Sudan, and we retain diplomatic influence that should be used. The Government will have the support of the Opposition where they take effective action towards those objectives. However, after more than three years of war, Sudan needs more than statements of concern. It needs sustained diplomatic leadership, consequences for those prolonging the conflict, accountability for those responsible for atrocities and a credible pathway towards peace. I look forward to listening to the Minister demonstrate just how the UK intends to deliver exactly that.
The Minister for International Development (Kirsty McNeill)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan) for securing this important debate, and for her recent visit to Egypt, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Gordon McKee). As they will have both heard, the conflict in Sudan is one of the most devastating and—I would argue—defining conflicts of the 21st century.
For the millions of people living through it, the word “crisis” just does not do it justice. That is why I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham and others in the Chamber today for continuing to shine a light on this conflict, and I ask them to please pass on my sincere gratitude to all their constituents who have been in touch on this issue. It is incredibly inspiring to see their solidarity with people who they may never meet. I also want to pay tribute to my predecessors, my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds) and Baroness Chapman of Darlington, and the former Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), for their tireless efforts to strengthen the world’s response.
My message today is simple: the UK stands with the people of Sudan, and this Government, the Foreign Secretary and I stand with them too. We have heard powerfully from all the speakers today about the current situation, not least from the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton). I will not rehearse all the statistics, but I would like to add two of my own: Sudan is now the deadliest place on earth to be a health worker, and it is the second deadliest place on earth to be an aid worker. There can be no justification, in any circumstance, for attacks on those who simply seek to serve humanity. When faced with suffering on this scale, our compassion is not enough, and our outrage is not enough. I know that Members want to hear about our action, so let me go through the points that have been raised in turn.
This year, the UK has committed £146 million in support for Sudan, which will reach over 1.8 million people. Having been asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Nesil Caliskan), I am pleased to confirm that, as part of that work, we have launched a £20 million programme to support survivors of sexual and gender-based violence with medical and psychological care. To ensure that those closest to the crisis can deliver aid to the hardest-to-reach areas, we have more than doubled our support to local Sudanese responders, including to local emergency response rooms. I am proud of what we are doing on aid, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham pointed out, aid alone is not enough, which is why she sought reassurance on arms sales.
Jim Shannon
I very much welcome the Minister’s response; I never doubted for a second that it would be positive. My contribution was specifically about Christians, who do not seem to be seeing any of that aid coming through. What can be done to ensure the equal dispersal of aid to all ethnic groups, particularly the Christians who just do not seem to be getting it?
Kirsty McNeill
I apologise for not addressing that in my remarks. Equality of access to aid is obviously incredibly important. I would be delighted to write to the hon. Member after the debate on particular questions about freedom of religion or belief and equitable distribution to all communities in Sudan.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham asked for reassurance about our position on arms sales, and I want to confirm that the UK has one of the most robust and transparent export control regimes in the world. Every single licence is assessed for risk of diversion and kept under careful and continual review. We have so far reviewed over 3,000 export licences for destinations where there have been allegations of diversion or transit to Sudan, and we have thus far found no evidence of UK weapons or ammunition being used in Sudan. We will keep that under continual review.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East also asked whether the UK supports expanding the arms embargo to the whole of Sudan. I am pleased to confirm that, as she will know, negotiations on the renewal of the UN embargo are currently under way, but the UK is full-throatedly supporting efforts to extend its scope. Last year, we worked closely with the United States and other UN SC members to secure its renewal, and the UK has a long-standing bilateral arms embargo in place for the whole of Sudan, sitting alongside a separate UN arms embargo on Darfur.
Several hon. Members asked about the diplomatic priority of the conflict in Sudan in the new Foreign Office team. I want to be absolutely clear that it is central to everything that the Foreign Secretary and I are trying to achieve. We are committed to doing all we can to secure a ceasefire. In April, the UK hosted the international Sudan conference in Berlin to marshal the efforts of the 55 states present to press for a ceasefire. As the UN Security Council penholder for Sudan, we have secured eight resolutions and 12 press statements, galvanising global action towards a ceasefire. We regularly speak to members of the Quad, and others with influence, to co-ordinate efforts towards the US-led push for a truce to protect civilians and ensure that critical humanitarian aid can reach those who are most in need. Our special representative to Sudan also regularly engages with the warring parties, advocating for a ceasefire and a civilian-led transition.
I have been asked today about the nature of the conversations that we have been having. I am pleased to confirm that I was recently in Addis Ababa and was able to raise the situation directly with the chairperson of the African Union. I can also confirm that FCDO Ministers including the Foreign Secretary have raised the situation in Sudan with Emirati counterparts and other members of the Quad.
The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding), spoke powerfully today, particularly about the need for atrocity prevention in El Obeid. I want to reflect for a moment on what we are doing there. The UK has lobbied at every level, including with the warring parties and those with influence over them. As the UN Security Council penholder, we have been advocating to highlight the risk of atrocities and push for an immediate ceasefire. On 3 July, we convened an urgent debate at the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in El Obeid, calling for urgent de-escalation, humanitarian access and safe passage for civilians. On 6 July, a UK-penned resolution urging the warring parties to agree an immediate ceasefire and comply with international law was adopted by consensus. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson also asked whether we would be extending the fact-finding mission’s mandate; I can confirm that we are indeed pushing for that, as we led for the mandate in the past.
My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) asked about our engagement with the Sudanese civil society and diaspora. Officials engage frequently with members of the Sudanese diaspora and civil society, including through a quarterly diaspora engagement forum that co-ordinates engagement across the UK and, indeed, in the region.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East asked about the recent reports of chemical weapons use. As hon. Members might imagine, we are hugely concerned. All such allegations must be taken seriously and investigated, because any use of chemical weapons, by anyone anywhere, is utterly unacceptable. As Members will know, Sudan is a state party to the chemical weapons convention, and we expect all those in Sudan to abide by its obligations.
The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) brought to our attention the issue of Colombian mercenaries. I want to confirm that we have already sanctioned Colombian mercenaries suspected of involvement in atrocities in Sudan, as well as those suspected of supplying weapons to the RSF. We have recently targeted actors suspected of using the gold trade to bankroll Sudan’s brutal war from beyond its borders.
I will say a little more about gold, because it was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds). In July, we announced a fresh package of sanctions against illicit gold networks. That followed four rounds of designations targeting senior SAF and RSF commanders and those suspected of being complicit in the heinous atrocities committed during the assault on El Fasher last year.
I have been asked to reflect on future sanctions. As Members will appreciate, we generally do not do that, because it limits their effectiveness, but I can assure them that their representations have been heard.
We have also focused on this situation through our work in August on the UK-convened coalition for atrocity prevention and justice in Sudan, with a two-day conference in London at which we discussed innovative civilian-protection measures and heard directly from the independent fact-finding mission ahead of its vital report, which we have just been discussing.
I am pleased to confirm that at the UN General Assembly later this month, the Foreign Secretary and I will continue to make the case that Sudan cannot, must not and will not be forgotten. As we all know so well, every single day that this conflict continues, the human cost grows, but so too does the need for dialogue, justice and peace.
David Mundell
Will the Minister commit—the previous Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper) certainly indicated this—to being proactive in bringing statements to the House of Commons in relation to the situation in Sudan? Many of the previous statements have had to come as a result of urgent questions. Proactivity from her Department would be welcomed across the House and would be helpful in shining a light on the issue.
Kirsty McNeill
I am delighted to confirm that I will be very proactive, yes. I am so moved by and appreciative of all Members who have come to speak today, their constituents and the work of the APPGs in which they are all involved. I happily confirm that, both to those Members with specialist knowledge and to those raising issues on behalf of constituents.
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister for being generous in taking our questions. The most evil, wicked and bestial crimes have been carried out, including the murder or rape of women from ages eight to 80, the destruction of property and the infliction of injuries, with people’s arms and limbs being taken off. The House would be keen to understand whether there has been any attempt whatever to collate all those atrocities and the people involved in them, so that they can be held accountable.
Kirsty McNeill
Yes, the UK is supporting documentation attempts so that there can be accountability.
I am conscious of time, so I will draw to a close. We cannot and will not allow Sudan to slip down the agenda, globally or in this House, because Sudan matters: its people matter, their dignity matters and their future matters. The United Kingdom will continue to stand alongside them in their pursuit of peace, justice and a better future.
Naushabah Khan
I thank all colleagues for their approach and for contributing so powerfully to this debate. They have drawn to our attention some matters of detail to address in the crisis that we face, from the impact of gender-based violence to the role played by other actors in the region. It has been an important discussion and I thank everyone for their contributions.
I welcome the Minister to her place. I thank her warmly for her response, and particularly for her commitments to addressing gender-based violence in the region and for her assurances around arms licences and the embargo. I also thank her for her commitment to proactively bringing the issue to the Floor of the House; it is incredibly important that we have space to do that. Notwithstanding the fact that colleagues in this room have done a lot of work on the issue, we need to keep up the political pressure and ensure that this humanitarian crisis is given the attention it needs.
Despite the clear assurances from the Minister, there is clear consensus in this Chamber that we still need to do more. Our place on the world stage means that it is incumbent on us as a nation to go further, not just for the stability of the region but for the people of Sudan, who are at the heart of this humanitarian crisis. They are looking to the international community to facilitate an end to the suffering. I hope that we can continue to work in a constructive manner, directly with the Minister and more widely, to bring an end to this situation.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)
I thank everyone for their contributions. I cannot help noticing that powerfully standing up for women in Sudan have been the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan), who secured the debate, and three Front-Bench women.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the conflict in Sudan.
Vehicle Theft
(3 days, 9 hours ago)
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Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)
I will call Liz Jarvis to move the motion; I will then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and from the Minister. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
Liz Jarvis (Eastleigh) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of vehicle theft.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. Data commissioned by the Liberal Democrats shows that since the start of 2025 115,448 instances of vehicle theft have been recorded across England and Wales. Home Office data shows that vehicle theft has risen by 75% in the past decade. Even accounting for the increased number of cars on our roads, theft rates have risen from 2.71 to 4.42 cases per 1,000 privately owned cars. To put those figures into perspective, that is one vehicle stolen in England and Wales every four minutes. According to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, 357,000 cars and vans have been stolen in the last five years alone.
In 2025-26, Hampshire and Isle of Wight constabulary recorded 2,408 cases of vehicle theft. Although that represents a slight decrease from the year before, when 2,455 cases were recorded, it remains far too many. Local police have told me that vehicle theft is increasing in my constituency. Car theft is not a victimless crime: behind every statistic is a person whose life has been disrupted.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Lady for bringing forward the debate. In 2025, 154 aggravated vehicle-taking offences were recorded across Northern Ireland. Stolen vehicles are often driven dangerously, which places the public and emergency services at risk. In June 2026, a man was charged with attempted murder in Downpatrick after a stolen police car was driven at an officer, leaving him with serious injuries. Does the hon. Lady agree that we must do more to deter individuals from engaging in aggravated vehicle theft, including by having harsher penalties, which are necessary to reduce these offences, thereby protecting the public?
Liz Jarvis
The hon. Member makes a good point.
This is also about the human impact of these crimes. I have heard from constituents, including NHS workers who have not been able to get to work or do the school run because their car vanished overnight. In one case, a couple told me that they saw a van pull up outside their property, and then someone get out and simply drive their car away. In April this year two constituents woke up to find that their brand-new car had been stolen while they slept. The insurance payout did not cover the real cost of a like-for-like replacement. The feeling of intrusion was significant for my constituents, whose sense of personal safety and security have been violated by the thoughtless crime that took place just metres from where they slept. The emotional toll was difficult for them both, and being without a car for several weeks was very disruptive: they had to cancel hospital appointments and other commitments, including collecting their grandchildren from school.
For tradespeople, the impact can be even more direct. A van is stolen every 52 minutes in this country, taking with it the tools of someone’s trade and their ability to earn a living. For many of my constituents, there is not always a bus to fall back on. With the 61 bus service cut in late 2025, there is one less option for residents who no longer have a car to rely on. Losing a car to theft leaves people feeling exposed and unsafe in their own homes. Their sense of security, once lost, is hard to win back.
To understand why this crisis is accelerating, we need to look at how these thefts are being carried out. The methods being used today bear little resemblance to the car thefts of a decade ago. The most common method now is relay theft, where criminals used a signal amplifier to capture a key fob signal from inside the owner’s home and then relay it to a device held next to the car. That tricks the vehicle into unlocking and starting without the key being present. Another method is controller area network bus injection, which involves physically accessing the vehicle’s onboard computer through an exposed entry point, using plug-in devices disguised as harmless electronics.
What should concern us most is how accessible this technology has become. These are not improvised tools: devices targeting high-end vehicles can sell for more than £20,000, so there is a serious criminal market built around vehicle theft.
Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
Vehicle theft across the west midlands has fallen by 13.6% since its peak in 2022-23, which is welcome news for my constituency of Wolverhampton North East, but little consolation for a person whose vehicle has been stolen—it is a devastating experience. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Minister and all of us must continue to work with the police and manufacturers to ensure that vehicles are harder to steal?
Liz Jarvis
I absolutely agree. Working with manufacturers is key.
As this technology has advanced, prices have fallen, with cheaper devices including low-cost models from China now appearing in the UK, and yet videos demonstrating exactly how to use those devices remain available online. I urge the Government to press platforms to remove that content. As things stand, we are allowing criminals to access step-by-step instructions on how to steal a car. The scale of the shift is reflected clearly in the data: in 2019 signal manipulation accounted for just 14% of vehicle theft methods, but by 2024 the figure had risen to 58%.
Manufacturers have made real strides in vehicle security. The introduction of electronic engine immobilisers meant that the unauthorised starting of an engine became far more difficult, requiring a key to transmit a unique cryptographic code to the vehicle. However, in 2013 the long-term decline in vehicle theft reversed—a shift that coincided with the introduction of keyless and remote-start vehicles, which introduced a new vulnerability into what had largely been a successful security system.
That is the core of the problem: manufacturers can defend only against threats that they already know about. They are investing to keep up, but criminals are innovating faster than the manufacturers can build. The numbers make this vulnerability hard to ignore. Vehicles between five and 10 years old are the most likely to be stolen, as their fixed security systems cannot be updated to keep pace with current threats, leaving owners exposed to threats their vehicles were never built to withstand.
Some 73% of vehicles stolen between 2024 and 2025 were taken straight from their owner’s driveway or street, so a steering wheel lock or wheel clamp adds a visible physical barrier that can be enough to deter a thief, even if a vehicle’s electronic security has been compromised. Something as simple as parking in a well-lit area can make a difference, given that 80% of vehicle thefts take place between 6 pm and 6 am, with thieves relying on speed and the cover of darkness.
I welcome the provisions in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 to tackle the current technological nature of vehicle theft. For years, criminals have exploited gaps in the law, using signal jammers and relay devices to bypass security systems that drivers, understandably, assumed were protecting their vehicles. By legislating to criminalise the possession, manufacture, sale and supply of these devices, the Act closes that gap. Anyone caught with one now must prove they have a legitimate reason or face up to five years in prison and an unlimited fine.
Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)
I thank the hon. Member for securing the debate. In Northern Ireland in 2023-24, there were 2,393 vehicle thefts, with a population of 1.9 million, which equates to 126 car thefts for every 100,000 people. Does the hon. Member agree that tackling the problem requires a layered approach to vehicle security, with us making vehicles harder to steal, easier to trace and recover, and less attractive to target in the first place?
Liz Jarvis
I absolutely agree.
Although the Crime and Policing Act closes one gap, the right to repair allows another to remain wide open. Right to repair legislation exists to stop manufacturers overcharging drivers for repairs, which is a necessary principle designed to protect consumers. However, the practice of providing car owners with detailed insights into how a car’s security systems work is being exploited by criminal gangs, who are using that information to build new theft devices. While the Act starves thieves of one tool, right to repair is handing them the blueprint for the next. Will the Minister commit today to reviewing the connection between right to repair legislation and vehicle security to help combat vehicle theft?
Despite the Crime and Policing Act, the odds remain stacked in the thieves’ favour, with just a 6.7% chance of being caught, and fewer than one in four thefts even investigated. There is a widely held view that vehicle theft has effectively been decriminalised, with the perception that law enforcement has neither the will nor the resources to respond. In fact, Liberal Democrat research has found that police did not even attend the scene in over 70% of car theft cases, reinforcing the sense among many victims that no one is coming.
We are no longer dealing with opportunistic criminals. Organised operations are laundering stolen parts through online marketplaces and are adapting faster than our current systems can respond. This is a sophisticated, technological criminal industry and it requires a response to match. This is not just a regional concern: at a national level, intelligence collection on vehicle theft rests with a single Opal analyst. Does the Minister believe that one analyst is sufficient to build a national picture of an organised, cross-border crime? If not, what is being done to help resource these things properly?
Intense pressure on police force funding has resulted in forces scaling back their vehicle theft investigative units, causing not only a decline in manpower but a loss of officers’ expertise and skillsets, which are not being replaced. The Liberal Democrats have long called for a return to proper community policing to ensure we have a trusted presence in all neighbourhoods, focused on preventing and solving crimes.
In December 2024 the Government announced their neighbourhood policing guarantee, pledging 13,000 more officers in neighbourhood policing roles. However, since that announcement the number of officers has actually fallen. By March this year we had 4,000 fewer frontline officers protecting our streets than the year before. If the Government are serious about this crisis, they need deliver, not promise, more officers on our streets.
Crime reporting is processed primarily through helpline reporting. That has diminished the relationship between local police forces and the communities they serve. We call for a police front desk to be set up in every community to allow people to report crimes and to share information with the police face to face in accessible locations. I am proud to have helped to secure a police station for Eastleigh. More personal contact means that more crimes are properly investigated and more criminals are caught.
Vehicle theft has become an epidemic in this country. It is organised and evolving, and it is being met with a system that has neither the resources nor the co-ordination to keep pace. We have seen through the Crime and Policing Act what good legislation can achieve, but a single loophole is enough to undo that progress. We have seen manufacturers innovate, only to be outpaced by criminals who innovate faster still, and we have seen police forces stretched so thin that catching a car thief has become the exception not the rule. My constituents in Eastleigh deserve better than a 6.7% chance of justice. I hope the Minister will use this debate not simply to acknowledge this crisis but to act on it.
The Minister for Policing and Crime (Sarah Jones)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) for securing the debate.
I start by thanking the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead in this area, Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Grahame, and her colleague Oli Fisher, who lead the work nationally on our response to vehicle crime. Vehicle crime soared in the 1970s and 1980s, but there was then a big fall as new technology designed out vehicle theft and vehicle crime. As the hon. Member suggested, it then increased over about the last 10 years, although it has dropped over the last two. That is partly because of some of the disruption the police have been able to do. Ridiculously, issues such as the strait of Hormuz also make a difference, because vehicles are often shipped abroad when they are stolen. Just as global trade is interrupted, global criminals are interrupted when there are big global shifts such as those in Iran. There are multiple reasons, but numbers have gone down over the past two years.
At the moment, several bodies are looking at how to solve the problem. There are local police forces; the hon. Member pointed to numbers of police officers, and we are committed to putting 13,000 more police in our neighbourhoods. In her area, there are 88 more full-time neighbourhood officers than when we came to power, on the streets and policing our neighbourhoods in the way she would expect. Large criminal gangs are driving the changing nature of vehicle crime. Cars are stolen, using the technology in the way she explained, and then shipped abroad and sold on. Neighbourhood policing is an important part of the picture, but we need to address large criminal gangs nationally.
Some bodies are doing really good work in this area. The National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service, which is financed by the private sector, does some of the work opening containers at ports, and there is more we can do in that space if cars are stolen and taken abroad. The hon. Member referred to Opal, which is the NPCC intelligence unit, and the National Vehicle Crime Reduction Partnership has been in place for about two years. We in the Home Office give it £1 million, but is funded by the private sector.
The fundamental problem with serious organised crime that is not drugs, guns or very high-harm crime is that quite often a car will be stolen in one place and taken somewhere else. It might go to a port or pass through three or four different forces, but because of the nature of the 43 police forces, the system is not joined up. Our reform programme will help with those kinds of serious, specialist crime. When we have a national police service responsible for serious organised crime, which brings together the different national agencies and oversees a more regional structure of policing, with local policing units that are responsible to their local communities at the bottom, that will enable the forces to flex those specialisms more where they need to be.
Our organised crime strategy needs to look at drugs and guns and at very high-harm crimes such as people-smuggling, but while car theft is less high harm it has a huge cost. This is a very lucrative business for the criminals, and an expensive business for us. Assistant Chief Constable Sarah Grahame will be able to tell us the annual cost, but it is something in the order of £1.7 billion. We need to look at this centrally, and the reform programme will help to tackle that challenge.
At an Interpol conference last year or earlier this year—forgive me, I cannot recall—lots of countries came together to talk about this challenge. Lots of countries have the same problem: Canada, the Netherlands and Japan are net exporters of stolen vehicles. Those vehicles are taken to certain ports in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or the United Arab Emirates, for example, and then sold on to other parts of the world. There are lots of problems with that network. For example, if a car enters Russia there are no checks on who owns it and whether it is stolen or not, so basically as soon as that car gets to Russia, off it goes. Some vehicles are sent into warzones, such as Ukraine, via nearby countries, and the more high-end vehicles are sold on to be used in other countries in the normal way.
There is a pattern that we are increasingly understanding, but the question is how we disrupt it. Part of the answer is through the legislation we have introduced, which is a good first step. Some of the kit that criminals use, such as a device that logs into a vehicle, can cost £30,000 to £50,000; these are obviously serious organised criminals who have the money to buy such kit. We now have the legislation, although it has not been enacted yet; we have passed the law, but it has not commenced. Nevertheless, it will make a difference.
I noted the hon. Lady’s point about online platforms and the videos on them, and I will take that away. It was not something that I was well aware of, but I will definitely take it away as something to raise with the tech companies, alongside the very long list that we are raising with them of other dangerous things online that should be taken down.
How do we work with manufacturers to design out vehicle crime and how do we ensure that the legislation is in place to disrupt vehicle crime as much as possible? In addition, there is a question about ports and how easy it is to get vehicles out of the country, which we need to look at. There is also the international picture and ensuring that we share information with police forces around the world, where we can. There is the central capability that I think we need as part of the national police service to ensure that we treat this crime with the seriousness it deserves.
The hon. Lady talked about the impact that vehicle theft has on individuals and communities, and she is right. There are some similarities with the theft of mobile phones and how the police respond to that, which is evolving. For an extended period, more and more people had their phones stolen, with each theft being dealt with by a local police force individually as an individual crime. The Metropolitan police in particular put some of this information together and realised that organised criminal networks were taking these phones, wrapping them in silver foil, putting them on a plane, sending them to China and selling them on from there. We understood the criminal network involved, and the police are now targeting and trying to disrupt them in various ways. There is a similar picture with vehicle theft, and we need to respond to it in a similar way. As I have said, I think the reform programme will help with that.
Of course we need to keep looking at new technology, new legislation and other things that we can do. I am very grateful to the police, who are already tackling this challenge, and I am particularly grateful to ACC Sarah Grahame, who is leading this work and pushing us in the Home Office to go further and do more.
With the reform programme, we in the Home Office are trying to design a structure that not only enables the police to do their job but enables us to step back and not have to provide small bits of funding for each individual crime type, and instead give the police the resources in the right place to tackle the problem. There is some evidence—not lots, but some—that the criminals stealing cars and sending them abroad also take part in other organised criminality of a more dangerous kind, involving guns and drugs. We need to gather more intelligence on that, but it is often the case that criminals do not stick to one type of crime; they do lots of things all at the same time. There is probably a network of organised criminals we should target who are not only stealing cars and moving them abroad but doing other things that are more high harm.
This debate has been a timely conversation on an issue that we in the Home Office are very alive to. We want to enable the police to respond to it. It is part of the changing nature of crime. People see a spate of car thefts in one area because the cars are stolen to order by serious and organised criminals who know what they are doing. They come into an area, they steal the cars there and they move on somewhere else, in part because they know that different police forces will not be joining up with each other, in the way that I described.
I thank the hon. Member for Eastleigh again for securing this debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Sureena Brackenridge) for raising the issues that her constituents are facing. Hopefully, what I have said today will reassure the hon. Lady that we are taking this issue very seriously, and I appreciate all suggestions and ideas as to what more we can do.
Question put and agreed to.
Media Green Paper
(3 days, 9 hours ago)
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Sir John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Media Green Paper.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I am grateful for this opportunity to debate the media Green Paper, a hugely consequential document that has profound implications for all our broadcasters, news publishers and technology companies. I welcome a lot that is contained within it. Nevertheless, it contains some extremely controversial proposals, and I regret that Parliament has not really had an opportunity to debate them since its publication. The consultation period has now come to an end, so I hope that the Minister will still take account of my contribution and those of other Members when considering the way forward. It is also regrettable that we have only an hour. I will try to keep my speech brief, because quite a few Members have made the effort to attend.
I will focus on two issues that are perhaps the most controversial in the Green Paper. On the first—the suggestion that in 2034 we should move towards wholly internet protocol TV and discontinue digital terrestrial transition—I am generally supportive of the Government. There are clear benefits to doing so. It will represent a considerable cost saving to the broadcasters, as outlined in the Green Paper. Secondly, it will free up spectrum, for which there could be any number of alternative uses, and that will undoubtedly provide additional value to consumers. The third reason I welcome it is that it opens up an option on the other big issue, which is the subject of a different Green Paper and is perhaps the elephant in the room: the future of the BBC. The biggest argument against moving towards an element of subscription, at least, in the BBC is that that cannot be done while the BBC is subject to digital terrestrial transmission.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)
I just want to pick up something, because I have not studied the proposal to turn off the digital Freeview signal in enough detail. Every house would need an internet supply, so would that supply be provided free or would people have to subscribe to get it in?
Sir John Whittingdale
My right hon. Friend asks a perfectly valid question, and I want to acknowledge that there are concerns. We had a debate in Westminster Hall not that long ago, and a number of my colleagues—particularly from Scotland—turned up to express concern about the fact that the quality of reception via broadband in their constituencies is very poor and that the consequence of switching off DTT might be to prevent them from receiving television at all. That is clearly unacceptable. The proposal can go ahead only if we reach the position to which the Labour and Conservative Governments have aspired: universal access to high-speed broadband of sufficient quality to allow IPTV to be received.
Chris Kane (Stirling and Strathallan) (Lab)
I am concerned about the impact of the switch-off on commercial radio. The BBC may be able to absorb some of the consequences of the DTT switch-off, given the savings that it will make from its television distribution, but commercial broadcasters do not have the same offsetting saving. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should therefore consider how to ensure that commercial radio is not the unintended loser in a reform designed principally around television?
Sir John Whittingdale
I strongly agree, and that is the point that I was coming to next. A lot of the towers in the transmission network, which broadcasts digital terrestrial transmission, are owned by Arqiva, and they also carry the transmitters for commercial radio. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that if we turn off the television transmission, all the costs get loaded on to the remaining broadcasters—that is, the commercial radio stations. I therefore hope that the Minister will at least address that too, because the estimate that I saw is that it will potentially result in an increase in costs of more than 50% a year for commercial radio stations.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
One aspect of the media Green Paper for us in Northern Ireland is similar to the position in the rest of the United Kingdom, in that it will directly threaten not only our local broadcasting sector but the connectivity of our rural and most vulnerable communities. The 2034 switch-off of digital terrestrial TV is focused almost entirely on what appears on our television screens, but the real casualty is commercial and local radio. The right hon. Gentleman is right to underline the issue. The economic modelling shows that transmission costs will surge by almost 50% per year for commercial radio. Does he agree that that will be the death of commercial radio?
Sir John Whittingdale
The hon. Member is completely right that this issue must be addressed before we proceed. There is also the question of cost, raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke). There are people who probably do have access to broadband, if they choose to pay for it, but they cannot afford to do so. They, too, would be severely affected if they were suddenly unable to receive television by that means. I support the ambition to reach a point in 2034 when we will be able to switch off DTT, but serious questions need to be addressed before we reach that point.
I will turn to the other major issue of twofold concern, because the Government are advancing two parallel policies on the question of prominence. I was the Minister responsible for the passage of the Media Act 2024, during the previous Parliament. It is a great delight to see some familiar faces with whom I have worked with in the past on the officials’ Bench. The Media Act was all about ensuring that our public service broadcasters were still highly visible in a world where people are getting smart, connected TVs. It simply maintained the prominence requirements, which was important, as all the broadcasters agreed.
It is now suggested that the same prominence should be extended to video-sharing platforms. I recognise and agree with the Government’s concern about the prominence of disinformation. I sit on the Foreign Affairs Committee, which did a big inquiry into disinformation. The best counter to disinformation is accurate, sourced, objective journalistic content, of the kind that public service broadcasters provide. Nevertheless, YouTube, the main video-sharing platform under discussion, was never intended as the vehicle for the big broadcasters. It is all about user-generated content. There is real concern that if the main broadcasters are pushed into greater prominence, some people will get less prominence. Those are the creators, start-ups and user-generated content. That undermines one of the original purposes of YouTube.
Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)
I want to come in on the matter of trust. One of the most trusted media or news sources is local media, with 42 million readers a week. I never miss an opportunity to say that the News Shopper is great. Does my right hon. Friend think that this is an opportunity for the BBC, which has done some great work with the local democracy reporting service, to enhance its effective work with local media so that we do not lose that trusted local news source?
Sir John Whittingdale
As one of the originators of the local democracy reporting service, of course I agree with my hon. Friend. It is incredibly important to have a thriving local media sector, and the BBC plays an important role in maintaining that. Anything that promotes BBC content would, I hope, equally promote local content, which has not had the same degree of attention that it deserves.
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
I am interested in the right hon. Gentleman’s views about prominence. How does he see his view sitting alongside reducing the voting age to 16 by the end of this Parliament, almost certainly in time for the next general election? Young people do not get much of their information from linear broadcast channels. They get a lot of it from places such as YouTube. How does he reconcile his views on prominence? In my opinion, it is a necessary but not sufficient way to get good, trusted media to young people to equip them to vote.
Sir John Whittingdale
That is perhaps even more relevant to the second prong of the Government’s proposals, which is about social media. I will come to that point, but before I finish talking about local media, I want to mention that another of the Government’s flagship policies is devolution. If we are to have more power given to local authorities, mayors and unitary authorities, people need to know what they are doing, and the absence of local media is a real problem in that respect. It will become ever more important to promote local media.
Lastly, I want to come to the second prong, which is about the prominence or promotion of trusted news providers on social media. I have to say that this policy gives me some considerable concern. There are lots of problems around definition. First, what is news? Secondly, what does “prominence” mean for a social media platform on which people access a personalised feed based on their previous content choices? There are practical difficulties with that.
I know the Government have already put in place the concept of recognised news publishers under the Online Safety Act 2023, but that had a very different purpose. The problem I have is with the idea that a Government agency of some kind will be saying, “This is a trusted news provider, and therefore this is not,” and deciding, or at least seeking to influence, where those providers appear in people’s feeds. I take the point from the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) that young people are turning more and more to social media, but I do not think that this policy is the answer, because it looks to me like a very dangerous extension of Government interference in the freedom of the press and the right to free speech. I would like the Minister’s assurance that there is no linkage intended to any form of regulation. The idea that perhaps news providers might be given prominence if they accept a regulatory structure that the Government want would be equally dangerous.
In some ways, I think that this problem is better addressed by the measures that we have already put in place. We have the digital markets competition regime, which is only just coming into effect. The Competition and Markets Authority could be doing much more to require the platforms to make public the algorithms they use to promote content. Before we go down that road, which carries real jeopardy, I hope that we will look instead to use some other measures that have already been put in place to ensure that reputable news providers get the position that they deserve in search terms and search, and also the rewards attached to them.
Cat Eccles (Stourbridge) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Allin-Khan. As we consider the future of terrestrial television, we must ensure that technological change does not leave people behind, because for millions—especially older people and lower-income households—Freeview remains a vital source of television and an excellent service, which I use. Any transition from terrestrial broadcasting must be gradual and inclusive, as many people still lack reliable broadband or easy access to digital services. Public service broadcasting must remain universally accessible, and as Ministers consider the future of television distribution, I urge them to ensure that no household is excluded from trusted news, information and entertainment simply because of where they live or what they can afford.
There are very few pieces of national infrastructure that prove their value more clearly than terrestrial television during an emergency. We do not have to imagine what a national resilience crisis looks like; we just lived through one last month in my constituency when the devastating Stourbridge wildfires ripped through neighbourhoods, destroying 19 homes and tearing down power infrastructure. Entire streets were instantly cut off, rail lines were stopped, power grids buckled, and families were forced to watch their own neighbourhoods burn on television from the evacuation centre.
In those critical hours, when broadband and mobile networks faced severe pressure and outages, traditional terrestrial broadcast was not a relic of the past; it was a lifeline. Unlike internet-based networks, Broadcast 2040+ does not rely on broadband infrastructure; it remains a universal and resilient means of communication when other systems may fail.
A short-sighted, internet-only switch-off by 2034 ignores the reality of the climate and infrastructure risks. I believe that we must formally integrate terrestrial broadcasting into our national risk assessments and secure its future into the 2040s and beyond. True national resilience means ensuring that, when disaster does strike, every single household remains connected to vital, lifesaving information. Can the Minister assure the House that as television evolves, the public broadcasting service will remain free and universally accessible to all, and that the transmission network will be protected to ensure that, if the lights do go out, broadcasting can stay on?
Nigel Huddleston (Droitwich and Evesham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) on securing today’s debate. As always, we agree on virtually everything, so I will not repeat many of the things he said. I am also in broad agreement with the Government’s goals and much of the Green Paper but, like my right hon. Friend, I have two areas of concern.
First, I am concerned about the dynamics and practicalities of the future of television distribution after the switch-off of digital terrestrial television, provided most frequently through Freeview. That will take place in either 2034 or 2044, and it could have a profound impact on remote and rural communities in particular, such as parts of my Droitwich and Evesham constituency. Secondly, I am concerned about the thorny issue of prominence. It is a noble ambition to counter misinformation and to ensure that trustworthy news is more accessible and discoverable, but it raises important questions. What exactly do we mean by trusted? Who decides what qualifies? How will such a system be enforced?
The Government have made it clear that a DTT switch-off is coming, so the question is not simply whether the transition will happen, but how it will protect vulnerable users and those at risk of being digitally excluded, notwithstanding all the positive reasons for the change, which my right hon. Friend outlined some moments ago and which I will not repeat. As the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) highlighted, in recent times of trouble, including storms and fires, we have seen how vital these services are, particularly when other forms of media, such as broadband and mobiles, may be switched off, and we must consider that security aspect to the debate.
The prominent media trade body Radiocentre has highlighted the potential impact of DTT switch-off on radio transmission costs. Without appropriate financial mitigation, it could put services, local coverage and listener choice at risk. Commercial radio shares much of the same transmission infrastructure as DTT; if there were a switch-off, the costs that are currently shared between television and radio could instead be transferred to radio broadcasters, creating a significant new cost burden from 2035 onwards and potentially increasing transmission costs by more than 50%. That is deeply concerning, particularly in rural communities.
Many rural households still face unreliable broadband infrastructure, while others—particularly elderly households and those on lower incomes—may struggle to afford the internet contracts required to replace free-to-air television. We must not a create a situation where people who have relied on television for decades find themselves unable to access news, entertainment and, importantly, essential public information. The Government must adopt a general rural-proofing approach to this transition, so that no community and no generation is left behind.
On a related point, the effects of that wider shift are already being felt in and around my constituency. The iconic Droitwich transmitting station in Wychbold closed its long-wave services in June this year, and I was disappointed that Historic England could not list the station. Furthermore, there are security aspects to retaining long-wave capacity. It is very difficult to block analogue radio signals—at least, it is much more difficult than blocking their internet equivalent—and long-wave transmissions have shown their usefulness in times of crisis. In a future wartime scenario, the UK might be thankful to have retained the infrastructure required to broadcast to the nation and beyond over distances of hundreds of miles.
We then come to the issue of prominence. The Green Paper proposes new approaches to make trusted news easier to find on social media and to make public service media content more prominent on third-party platforms. The policy objectives are clear and noble but, as always, the devil is in the detail. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon said, there are concerns about how that will be executed and about the vital protection of things that we hold dear, such as freedom of speech, the freedom of the press and its ability to hold us to account as politicians. We have to strike the right balance between ensuring that people can access reliable information and protecting the fundamental freedoms that underpin our democracy. We must be very careful not to drift towards a society in which free speech is constrained, open and honest debate stifled, and the exchange of new ideas discouraged.
The Government must therefore ensure that their definition of “trusted” content does not become a proxy for Government-approved content. There have been, and still are, authoritarian regimes around the world that have adopted such an approach to media regulation. I do not admire such regimes or such strategies. Therefore, although I recognise that a consultation is ongoing, I would appreciate the Minister’s responses on those issues in his reply.
Several hon. Members rose—
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (in the Chair)
Order. Please note that, to get everybody in, I need to impose a five-minute time limit.
Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) for his pertinent opening comments. He said a lot of the things that I was going to say, so I will keep my comments as brief as possible.
I very much welcome the Government’s intention to tackle misinformation, but a crucial question that follows is who will decide what is trustworthy. It cannot be Ministers, and it certainly cannot be the tech giants. First off, then, I ask this Minister to consider an independent accreditation scheme based on the Press Council of Ireland model, with an independent chair and representation from journalists, the industry and civil society—protected by legislation but, crucially, independent of Government.
To be clear, trustworthy news has to mean more than public service broadcasting. That is a central pillar, of course, but it must include other outlets, independent publications and freelance journalists who meet recognised standards. The Government should support prominence for trustworthy news online, but that prominence must not become de-ranking by another name for journalists who challenge those in power. Alongside regulation, education is critical, so will the Minister commit to a nationwide, properly funded media literacy programme and restore the strategic priorities grant for journalism education, as urged by the National Council for the Training of Journalists?
We must have stronger duties on the platforms themselves, as we have heard from colleagues today. One option, supported by the National Union of Journalists—I am a chair of its parliamentary group—is the Cairncross review’s proposed news quality obligation. Will the Minister consider introducing stronger obligations on those technology companies that are amplifying harmful and misleading content, and will he ensure that Ofcom’s standards apply to online content, including video on demand?
We know that social media is dangerously fragmenting our information environment, so it is clear that public service broadcasting matters now more than ever. The BBC and other public service broadcasters provide journalism, investigation, culture and local coverage on crucial issues in the public interest, which commercial operators often do not consider profitable. Yet sadly, at the moment, the BBC is cutting hundreds of jobs and programmes. How can we honestly claim to be strengthening our information environment while we are allowing the capacity to produce trusted journalism to be cut away?
I have some key questions on which I am pretty sure the Minister is already working. Will the Government use the charter renewal process to secure sustainable funding for the BBC? Will he intervene to protect the jobs and programmes now under threat? If the Government believe, as I do, that over-75s should receive free TV licences, will they fund those licences directly, rather than making the BBC pay? Crucially, at a time when disinformation crosses borders in seconds, will the Government restore full funding to the BBC World Service? We must also address media ownership. Will the Government strengthen ownership rules and invest in local public service journalism, as proposed in the NUJ’s news recovery plan?
Finally—this case has been made articulately by hon. Members in this debate—we must protect access to television. We know that Freeview reaches 99% of the population and that a premature switch to internet protocol television risks excluding older people, disabled people and rural communities with poor connectivity. Will the Minister reject any Freeview switch-off timetable until free-to-air public service broadcasting is universally accessible and free at the point of distribution?
I welcome this debate and hope that the Government can address the issues raised. Getting this right means truly creating an information environment that serves our communities and democracy, not a wild west that serves whoever has the biggest algorithm, the deepest pockets or the loudest voice.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke (Wetherby and Easingwold) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. Universal accessibility is vital in this debate. I agree with much of what has been said so far, but I am concerned about the switch-off of free-to-air as it stands.
In the year I was elected, 2010, there were strong proposals to switch off the FM and AM signals. We are now 16 years down the line, and long-wave has just been switched off; the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) about losing the ability to do a long-wave broadcast are important to bear in mind. We keep talking about the technology moving along and about being able to access broadcasts on cables and the internet, but that will never be true for people who live on canal boats, for example. With digital television, these days someone can just stick up a Squarial, point it in roughly the right direction and get their television channels—my wife and I have taken holidays in a canal boat and in a camper van, and we have been able to do that. A camper van is slightly different, because it is probably used more for leisure purposes, but there are people who live on canal boats. How are they going to get an internet connection?
Technology may move on, but it worries me that we say, “In order to solve this problem and that problem, you are going to have to buy or rent something, or in some way or another enter into a contract to receive something that you currently get free.” The BBC is one of the most valuable institutions this country has, because it is able to be a public service broadcaster. It loses its way at times, when chasing ratings and saying that it has to be in competition, on some things that only a public service broadcaster can deliver.
If we say that people will have to pay something or other to be able to get television, surely that completely destroys a licence fee. People will be not only taxed to watch television, but charged again to actually be able to use the thing that they are paying a tax on. The BBC has to maintain a free-to-air service, however that is delivered. I am not sure that that technology is there yet but, once it is, it will be vital that people are not charged for it.
The way forward is having tried and tested technology. A lot of us went out and bought DAB radios when they came out. Most of those DAB radios are now in the bin, because DAB+ was brought out and Classic FM stopped broadcasting on DAB; my previous car did not have DAB+, so I had to go back to FM to listen. I am sure we all have certain digital radio sets that now do not pick up many channels at all. The industry changing what a person can receive on, after they have already invested in new equipment, is also something that must be looked at.
My constituency has a lot of people who live on canal boats; I am sure many other constituencies do too. We must give careful consideration to those areas: where there is not a solid land point of contact permanently, how are we going to make sure that people receive the things that they currently get and pay a licence fee for? The licence fee is not a television licence fee; it is a licence fee, because it covers the radio broadcast as well. If it slowly gets to the point where people say, “I am already paying for this, so I am not going to pay for that,” it will remove a whole host of radio, and I think that radio is the most important thing that the BBC does.
I very rarely watch television news now, because it is just a second-by-second diatribe as the broadcasters try to fill in a gap all day long, whereas anyone who listens to radio news will actually get the news in half an hour. There is probably more news in the 6 o’clock news on Radio 4 than in two hours on one of the other broadcasters. There are some very sensible programmes; it is a great pity that “The World Tonight” is coming to an end, although replacing it with “Newshour” from the World Service could be very useful.
However, there could be some unforeseen circumstances if we are asking people to pay twice. Given the reputation of the television licence, they may stop paying it. Fundamentally, I want to make sure that we do not take away the ability even to receive television, and that we keep considering whether people may be land-based and whether they can get that connection.
Ann Davies (Caerfyrddin) (PC)
Diolch yn fawr, Gadeirydd; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) on securing this debate.
Most people are turning to on-demand and streaming services to watch television and digest media content in Wales, but the shift is not universal: 22% of households in Wales still rely on digital terrestrial television to watch their TV. That reality of hybrid media consumption must therefore be reflected in the UK Government’s policy choices or we risk exclusion. We cannot forget that in Wales, a fifth of our population are older and therefore more affected by the barriers to home internet access. Those of us living in rural Wales know that a good and fast internet service is not always available, especially in Caerfyrddin, where the average download speeds are 40% slower than the UK average.
Ofcom reports that more hard-to-reach households are turning to satellite connectivity; however, increased costs and limited availability means that this is not an option for everyone. Recent polling found that over half of Welsh adults are not confident that their area’s internet connection is good enough to get rid of Freeview. Improving digital inclusion and access should be a UK Government priority before decisions are made to switch off digital terrestrial television.
Noting those issues does not mean ignoring the challenges facing our broadcasters. Those challenges are already playing out, with £9 million of cuts to BBC Cymru. The BBC, ITV and S4C are public service broadcasters. How can they continue to be a PSB while facing such enormous cuts? I therefore urge the Minister to consider S4C’s call for more medium-term funding through a multi-year funding settlement that allows for inflation and protection from outside cuts. The PSTN—public switched telephone network—switchover is a lesson in how people can be left behind when a process is rushed. I believe that the timeline for an eventual switch-off of digital TV should be context led and based on a workable plan.
However, if the UK Government will only consider one of two dates as part of their media Green Paper, I urge Ministers to decide on the latter switch-off date of 2044, for the reasons that I have noted, and to support our broadcasters in the interim through long-term sustainable funding, so that the media content in Wales remains accessible and reflects our communities.
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) for securing this debate.
It is clear that the media landscape is changing, and changing rapidly. For many young people today, the first time they encounter a major news story is not by opening a newspaper or even turning on the TV; it is when a video appears on their social media feed, selected by an algorithm that is designed to keep them watching. Ofcom’s data tells us that three quarters of 16 to 24-year-olds now get their news mainly from social media. That represents a huge shift in how young people are understanding the world around them and comes with real dangers.
Algorithms are not necessarily designed to inform us; they are designed with engagement in mind. That means that, for social media platforms, attention rather than accuracy is the priority. As politicians, we know that this comes with real implications for our democracy. I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) said about the importance of young and new voters having access to reliable news sources.
We welcome the Green Paper, which recognises the change in our media landscape. However, the transformation is creating another challenge for our traditional broadcasters. Public service broadcasters have a vital and unique role in the UK’s media landscape. They provide trusted news, educational programming and content that brings communities together, but as audiences and advertising move online, the financial pressures on these broadcasters are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
Just look at the BBC. From finding out who is voted off at the roundtable on “The Traitors” to listening to the shipping forecast, and from tuning in to 24/7 news coverage to watching educational content, the BBC is a quintessentially British service, loved and relied on by millions across the country. That vital public service, however, is under significant financial pressure, as made clear by the recent cuts to the BBC workforce and many of its much-loved programmes.
As a former Reuters journalist, I firmly believe in the mission of public service broadcasters such as the BBC. It should be celebrated and protected. It is welcome that the Green Paper recognises the importance of prominence for these unique services, but what is missing is a clear commitment to protecting the BBC itself—its independence, universal availability and ability to remain a properly resourced public service broadcaster. The Liberal Democrats have long called for a permanent BBC charter to enshrine the BBC’s core mission and mandate for generations to come. Do the Government agree that the core principles of the BBC must be protected in a permanent charter?
Another key matter for us in the Green Paper is the Government’s proposed transition from digital terrestrial television. The Green Paper sets out two possible deadlines—2034 or 2044—for switching off Freeview, with digital terrestrial television guaranteed only until the end of 2034. On that, we Liberal Democrats completely disagree with the right hon. Member for Maldon. I represent a very rural constituency, and I can tell the House that it is the most reliable and, importantly, free way in which people in my constituency and across the UK watch television. Today, 12.9 million homes use terrestrial television, including around 2.6 million that rely on it exclusively. In fact, more than a quarter of all television viewing in the United Kingdom last year was through Freeview digital terrestrial television. It is the single most popular way for viewers to access programming. It disproportionately serves older people, people on lower incomes and people in rural areas—precisely the groups least likely to have reliable broadband.
The right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) focused on people who live in canal boats, but there are hundreds of thousands of homes across the country, thousands of them in my constituency, that still do not have a reliable wi-fi connection today, and 6% of adults in the UK lack any home internet access at all. The hon. Member for Stourbridge (Cat Eccles) made an extremely valuable point about the need for terrestrial TV when communities are navigating any kind of storms, floods or other natural disasters.
Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
In my constituency, more than a quarter of households failed to receive speeds of more than 30 megabits per second, and 11 of our 15 local areas rank among the worst-performing 10% nationally. Does the hon. Lady agree that a delay to the switch-off would afford remote coastal households enough time to adapt?
Caroline Voaden
I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. I am deeply concerned about what it means for some of us in the rural south-west, as there are villages that will never get fast broadband. Setting a switch-off date without first closing this gap risks cutting off the communities that the Green Paper says it wants to protect.
We are also concerned by the cost implications for commercial radio. If it is lost, we will reduce the plurality in our media landscape. If we move to an internet-only model before universal broadband is genuinely in place, we do not just inconvenience households; we risk isolating them from local democracy, local information and local culture altogether. For my constituents, that is the difference between staying connected to what is happening in their community and being cut off from it entirely. We cannot ask people to give up a service that works today in exchange for a promise of connectivity that has not yet arrived.
We have already seen the Government water down their commitment on superfast broadband. It was initially promised that there would be next-generation gigabit broadband for every home by 2030, but at the spending review in June last year, the Government changed their target to 99% of premises having access to a gigabit-capable connection by 2032, so it is getting slower already. Contracts delivering superfast broadband have been scaled back in the past, after only those areas that were easiest to reach were connected. The Minister will therefore have to forgive me for being less than confident that we will have universal broadband by the sooner deadline of 2034. Can the Minister confirm that the Government will refrain from any Freeview switch-off until every household, including in hard-to-reach rural constituencies like mine, has reliable wi-fi in place? Can he give my constituents that promise today?
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) for securing this debate and setting out the issues in his usual, informed way, based on his expertise. I also thank all other colleagues who have contributed. The way we consume broadcast media is moving away from the traditional channels towards the huge amount of content available on demand and on video streaming platforms.
I was struck by the Minister’s introduction to the Green Paper, in which he referred to watching “Noel’s House Party” on a Saturday with his family. I did the same, but that experience would be totally alien to many young people today—as reflected in the data, which shows that YouTube was the most watched service in the country last year. It was seen by more people every month than all BBC channels combined. Furthermore, video streaming services account for three quarters of all video time for audiences aged 16 to 24. The Green Paper is therefore right to grapple with some of the questions and implications.
Let me begin with an area that has not been mentioned where there is common cause, namely the proposals on listed events and adding on-demand rights to the free-to-air listed sports regime, which we strongly support. However, one of the most controversial areas that has been covered in the debate is the plan to impose new regulations to make trustworthy news providers more easily discoverable on social media platforms. That may be well intentioned, but it is also deeply problematic and could undermine freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the free society that we enjoy.
Are the Government really saying that the state will be the arbiter of what is trustworthy? Where would that leave channels such as GB News, which Ministers and right hon. and hon. Members have criticised and refused to appear on? Media organisations would benefit from the prominence regime only if they received approval from the state. That effectively means that a state body would decide what journalism people see.
That would also have the effect of reducing visibility for independent content creators, community journalists and new media voices, thus undermining a free press. How would trustworthy news be defined? The paper suggests building on the recognised news publisher definition. That potentially covers thousands of titles and is so broad as to be meaningless. Many think this is simply an attempt to impose press regulation by the back door. The press regulation panel is explicit that only news publishers approved by a regulator should benefit. That would be completely unacceptable.
Sir Alec Shelbrooke
On that note, does my hon. Friend also make that link to the licence fee? The reason we have a licence fee, rather than paying through general taxation, is so that the BBC does not fear decisions that Ministers may make. The Government say they want to renew the licence fee, but at the same time are putting in place something that would take away the very reason for a licence fee instead of taxation.
James Wild
My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point about the licence fee and the independence that it provides.
Ministers need to focus on consumers and citizens. Platforms are built around personalisation, with individuals determining the sources of content they trust and want to access. User controls and labelling already exist. The Green Paper refers to misinformation and disinformation around the horrific Southport killings, in part to justify these proposals.
However, we should note that the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation said that the information released by authorities after those appalling attacks was inadequate and led to those who wanted to spread disinformation being able to do so. Police forces now share more information as a result. Furthermore, where there are major incidents, people tend to turn to more traditional news outlets, whether that is local papers, radio stations or public service media.
More broadly, Ofcom found that more than three quarters of people think it important to check different sources if they are unsure whether a news story is true. That provides some reassurance.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I am quite concerned about the increasing use of AI-generated summaries online, which rely on what we call trusted sources. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s points about what defines a trusted source, and I am sure the Minister will answer all his important questions, but I am concerned that in future, if people become more reliant on AI summaries rather than on primary sources, those trusted sources might no longer exist. Does he recognise the importance of people not relying on AI summaries to get their news?
James Wild
Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman illustrates the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon. We should be having more and much longer debates about precisely these issues. I hope the Minister will at least rule out any notion that to qualify for prominence, if such a scheme is put in place, a publisher would need to sign up to a state-approved regulator.
On the proposals for the digital switch-off from either 2034 or 2044, latest Barb data shows that 2.6 million households rely on terrestrial TV because they do not have broadband or internet-connected TV. However, usage is also declining; we have heard about the pressure that that puts on broadcasters using those channels to get to a declining level of households. For many of my constituents, including older people, people in low-income households, and those in rural and remote areas, Freeview remains essential. By 2034, according to the impact assessment in the Green Paper, 1.5 million households could still be reliant on traditional broadcast platforms.
There are serious challenges to be addressed, not least in respect of proper broadband access. The Government must therefore have answers and must have what the Secretary of State referred to as “watertight” plans. Any switch-off date should be treated as conditional, setting out the tests that need to be met and the support for all those who may otherwise be left behind. I call on the Minister to provide clarity on the timeline for the decision on switch-off, and a commitment that vulnerable and rural communities will not be left behind.
On the broader issue of the prominence of public service media content on video platforms, chapter 4 of the Green Paper states that the Government’s preference is that that be subject to “industry-led, voluntary agreements”. That must be the right approach. YouTube is already talking to public service providers on that basis, but there is no attempt in the Green Paper to qualify any legislative costs or impact should the Government go down that route. It is clear that transferring the concept from linear broadcast and prominence to that approach without imposing excessive costs will be challenging. In conclusion, the Green Paper focuses on a changing landscape and poses a series of fundamental questions that we need to spend more time considering.
The Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Ian Murray)
It is great to see you in the Chair, Dr Allin-Khan; I think this is the first time I have responded to a debate with you in the Chair, so congratulations. I congratulate the new shadow Minister on what I understand is his first visit to Westminster Hall since his appointment. It has been a good visit.
It is great to be having this debate, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) on securing it. He is right to say that an hour is not enough for it, but I am sure we will come back to these issues on a number of occasions. As he knows, we have a Green Paper process to consider the principles behind these big issues, and we then work out the detail by asking people what they think is the best way to deliver things. I know that he is very knowledgeable about these issues and will continue to bring that knowledge and experience to the Chamber.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the Green Paper has some controversial proposals, but I am not sure that they are necessarily controversial. There are big questions that we have to answer in a changing media environment, and they sit alongside a number of other big issues that the Government currently have timetabled, including the BBC charter, which I will come to in a few moments. BBC charter renewal, the Green Paper and other issues of online safety are all coming together in this new environment, with the blurring between what is television and other issues.
Let me set the scene for why we are doing this. When they are functioning effectively, we would all agree that our media provide the foundation for a cohesive country and a healthy democracy. They can establish shared understanding, shared facts and shared experiences. That is crucial for helping people to trust and understand one another, and for communities to be held together.
However, the media are facing huge challenges. As we set out in the Green Paper, television is undergoing a profound transformation, having moved from the system of limited broadcast channels we had when we were growing up, as the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) suggests, to an environment of having content everywhere for everyone, where the largest players are the global streaming services, video-sharing platforms and social media companies. Our domestic broadcasters, which are the best in the world, including our public service media providers, are battling to be seen in an increasingly competitive and fragmented market in which audiences are seeking their entertainment and news.
As we know, people—particularly the young—increasingly access news online, rather than through more regulated spaces such as their TV sets, so there is a disparity: if someone is sitting in front of a piece of content on television, it is regulated, whereas if they watch the same or similar content online, it is not regulated. That is the kind of big issue that the Green Paper is trying to draw out. That weakens the ability of trustworthy news providers to reach audiences and shape and inform public debate. The Government believe that we need to do more to adequately equip younger generations with access to high-quality media. That is why we are acting.
In the light of those challenges, for the “Watch this space” Green Paper we consulted on a variety of proposals to ensure that media, and television in particular, can continue to play a vital role in our society and our democracy by making high-quality UK content and trustworthy news accessible and sustainable for the next generation and beyond. I welcome this debate and the many thousands of responses to the consultation that we received—many tens of thousands, I believe—which help us scrutinise every measure properly to ensure it is as robust and forward-looking as possible.
Let me come to some of the issues that Members raised. First, the right hon. Member for Maldon raised prominence. Public service media content needs to be easy to find on the platforms on which people watch TV or TV-like content. The Green Paper therefore examines the need for increased discoverability on third-party platforms such as video-sharing platforms. The Government have been very clear that our strong preference remains an industry-led voluntary agreement to achieve that in a sustainable and robust way that satisfies all parties. I pay particular tribute to YouTube for the way in which it has engaged with us. However, should those partnerships not go far enough in delivering our objectives, we will need to consider legislation.
The hon. Member for North West Norfolk said that content on YouTube is delivered by the user or by user preference. It is not, really; it is delivered by the algorithm. What is delivered to users is fed to them by whatever the algorithm suggests. If it were purely user-driven, that would deal with prominence, because people would be looking for the stuff that they want to see.
Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)
The Minister is making an important point, and I completely agree. My question is quite simple. Every nation around the world is grappling with this problem, although we have the BBC, which is a phenomenal and unique achievement. Has he looked at other jurisdictions and countries to gather international best practice? Every nation is dealing with the fact that all of our media now takes place on platforms that are mostly owned by big American tech firms.
Ian Murray
Absolutely. The international comparisons are not there, because nobody in other regimes has done this before for prominence. If we look at the entire online world, we see that Australia has been the cheerleader for an under-16s social media ban and for functionality changes to social media, but nobody has really looked at the algorithms, how people digest their entertainment and where it comes from, so we would be the first movers. One of the key issues that we have to unpick is that we want a UK solution for UK audiences and users, but west coast American companies dominate the marketplace. That is one of the key things that we are trying to work through with this Green Paper and the big issues that have been raised.
I will not go into the various ways of improving discoverability today, but they will be looked at in the coming weeks and months as a result of the Green Paper consultation. We want a thriving public service media sector, which would have massive spill-over effects for the entirety of the rest of the economy. If we crack prominence and get it right on a voluntary basis, we will not need legislation.
The right hon. Member for Maldon said that YouTube is all user-generated and not mainstream, so we should not give public service media prominence in it. I am sure he shares that very strong view with others. YouTube may once have been the home of cat videos and other things, but it is changing. In December 2025, YouTube had higher monthly viewing figures than the BBC for the very first time, so people are digesting that content, and I am not quite sure whether those users are aware of the differences between it and television. I know that if I sit my six-year-old daughter down in front of the television, she can watch something that is heavily regulated and safe. I would never sit her down in front of YouTube and just let her watch stuff, for the simple reason that she should probably not be doing that at six—and it is unregulated.
I want to talk briefly about the BBC, because it sits alongside the issues of public service media and prominence. My hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) raised a number of issues about the BBC. We will have a permanent charter. The hon. Member for North West Norfolk raised that issue as well, but the Secretary of State has been very clear that we will have a permanent charter. That is a great outcome for the charter renewal period, I think. On under-75s, we have no plans to change the position. It is now the preserve of the BBC to make those decisions, and it has done so. Under-75s on pension credit do receive a free television licence.
I say to the hon. Member for Caerfyrddin (Ann Davies) that the charter review has a very clear commitment to supporting minority language broadcasting, including Welsh and indeed Gaelic, as Members can tell from my accent. We are actively exploring ways to ensure that S4C in particular and minority-language broadcasting continue to be sustainably funded. Of course, one of the key questions for the BBC in relation to renewal is about the issue of sustainable funding, which the White Paper will address.
Perran Moon
Unfortunately, although the Green Paper highlights the importance of Welsh-language broadcasting, it is largely silent on Cornish-language content, despite Kernewek’s recognition in the Media Act 2024. Will the Minister ensure that these ambitions are translated into practical opportunities for Cornish-language content so that our national minority status is properly reflected?
Ian Murray
In the interests of time, I will take that as a lobby and will add it to the consultation responses.
I want to deal very briefly with two big issues that have been raised a lot. The first is about what trustworthy news is; that is what the Green Paper is trying to address, and we will come back with proposals relatively shortly. I welcome the debate across the Chamber.
The second issue is the future of television distribution. I think we all agree that we have dealt with the “if”—we will move from DTT to internet-only television at some point—but we have to deal with the “when”. Is it 2034? Is it 2044? I accept the big arguments around payments and around connectivity, the quality of connectivity and digital inclusion, but none of those should be a reason not to go forward in 2034 if that is what we decide. It should be the beacon that we aim for to deliver on digital inclusion and high-quality broadband in every part of the country and make sure that people are included.
As a Government, as a Parliament and as constituency Members of Parliament, we should not just accept that broadband might not be good enough and that therefore we should not make these decisions. We should use it as a key driver to make sure that we can deliver on connecting everyone and on the benefits not just of television, but of everything that comes with being digitally included and digitally connected. We have not made a decision on 2034 or 2044, which is why both dates are in the Green Paper.
Other issues have been raised, but in the interests of time I will conclude. No doubt we will come back to this debate. We have the Green Paper and the consultation closed on 31 August, so the next steps are to go through the process of analysing all the responses that many Members and their constituents have inputted. I thank the right hon. Member for Maldon for bringing forward this debate; I look forward to his securing further debates on the Green Paper as the process works through.
Sir John Whittingdale
I thank all hon. Members who have participated in the debate. The number of Members present indicates that this is a subject that deserved more than an hour; I welcome the Minister’s recognition of that point and his suggestion that there may be further opportunities to come.
I am grateful to have had the opportunity to put on the record some points about which I have concerns. I look forward to the Government’s coming forward with further proposals once the consultation has been considered.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Media Green Paper.