Business of the House

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The unique feature of the EU referendum was that Parliament passed an Act that expressly referred the decision to the British people. I certainly felt that we were honour-bound to accept the verdict. As for the state visit by the President of the United States, of course people are free to express their opinions, and it is right that the Petitions Committee has allocated time for the petition to be debated. The Government take the view that a state visit is perfectly appropriate. The relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States of America—including with its elected head of state—matters to the security of our citizens and the geopolitical role of the west, as well as to our commercial and industrial interests. For those reasons, it is right that we should welcome the elected head of the United States of America in the way we have his predecessors.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Yesterday I had the privilege of listening to Susan Pollack, the noted holocaust survivor, when she addressed Belmont synagogue and a large group of year 8 students from across Harrow. She asked, “What do you think of when I say, ‘What does a Jew look like?’” There came no answer, yet we have heard about the publication today of the report from CST about the terrible, dramatic increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents. May we have a debate in Government time on that report, and more importantly, on what action they will take to stamp down on anti-Semitism?

[Mr Lidington]

The best thing I can say is that all of us, within the Government and outside, were appalled by the reported increase in hate crime. There has been progress in tackling that, but even one case is too many. We have published a new cross-Government hate crime action plan to try to tackle all forms of hate crime, but all of us across the House need to make it clear that Jewish people in Britain, like people from all communities, must be able to live their lives free from fear of either verbal or physical attack. In order to tackle anti-Semitism we need to implement effectively our strong legislation against religious discrimination and racially and religiously motivated crime, but there is also a responsibility on us all as individuals and as members of political parties—and people who have leadership positions in our constituencies —to make it clear in public again and again, if necessary, that anti-Semitism has no place whatsoever in this country.