Children’s Funeral Fund

Debate between Carolyn Harris and Jim Cunningham

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Carolyn Harris]

Thank you.

On the wall of my office, there are invites for meetings, receptions and dinners—mostly to remind me where I need to be, and when. Among all that sits a letter, which has probably been pinned up longer than anything else. That letter is on Downing Street headed notepaper, signed by the Prime Minister and dated 10 April 2018. In that letter, the Prime Minister promises that she will introduce a children’s funeral fund. It hurts me greatly that more than a year after I received the letter, it still hangs on my wall as unfinished business.

I do not need to tell Members my story, because they have all heard it many times before.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has been a sturdy campaigner for this cause for a long time. I am glad the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) recognises what a great champion she has been for such a great cause. I wish her every success in future.

[Carolyn Harris]

Thank you.

What I will tell the House is that nothing prepares you for the loss of a child. The devastation is unimaginable for anyone who has not experienced it. It almost destroyed me, and if it were not for the fact that Martin’s brother, Stuart, who is now a strapping 34-year-old, still needed his mam to look after him, who knows where my life would have ended. It is almost certain that my passion, my determination and my absolute desire to help those in vulnerable positions have somehow been born out of my grief.

It was not easy standing in the Chamber and sharing my own heartbreak, but it was something that I knew I had to do. Thirteen months ago, the Prime Minister finally announced that she would be introducing a children’s funeral fund in memory of Martin, and I felt like my pain would at least benefit other people, so it saddens me to stand here today, more than a year after that announcement, to ask again for this fund to be put in place.

There are others in the Chamber who will understand the pain that I speak about; in particular, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) will be able to relate to what I have said. I know that, regardless of political loyalty, he sees the children’s funeral fund as a desperately needed emergency provision.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Debate between Carolyn Harris and Jim Cunningham

Thursday 24th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) on securing this debate. It is important that we mark this day so that we and future generations remember the atrocities that happened during the second world war and that have occurred in genocides since. I note that this year marks the 25th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda and the 40th anniversary of the end of the genocide in Cambodia. I have always had an interest in the holocaust, having written my dissertation on the subject, and I am constantly shocked and saddened as I continue to read about the events that happened during that terrible time. I spent Christmas reading Primo Levi.

As many other hon. Members have shared, the theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is Torn from Home, exploring what it means to be taken from a place of safety and the trauma of the loss. It is important to reflect on the personal and emotive feelings that are generated when we try to imagine what it must be like no longer to have a place of safety or security to call home, and to live with the constant threat of violence and fear of the unknown. One of the most famous accounts of being torn from home during the holocaust is Anne Frank’s diary, which shares her family’s story of finding an alternative home. This is an extract from her diary, from 11 July 1942:

“I don’t think I’ll ever feel at home in this house, but that doesn’t mean I hate it. It’s more like being on holiday in some strange pension. Kind of an odd way to look at life in hiding, but that’s how things are.”

The diary abruptly ends on 1 August 1944, three days before her family were discovered in their secret annexe and torn from their place of safety. As Members will all be aware, Anne Frank was only a child and tragically lost her life at just 15 years old. In her diary, she describes how she felt as a child in hiding, saying:

“It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death.”

I find it particularly difficult to comprehend the fate of children in the holocaust. Many Members will be aware that I have spent a lot of my time campaigning in Parliament for the rights of children, and when I read about the experiences of children in concentration camps, it truly breaks my heart. I understand that around 1.5 million children died in the holocaust—a number too great even to comprehend.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Like a number of Members, I visited the Auschwitz concentration camp many years ago. Most people who have done so will tell you that it is a horrendous thing to see and to remember. More importantly, does my hon. Friend agree that we should be keeping our eye on Europe at the moment, because the rise of the right shows that certain parts of Europe have not learned the lessons of the holocaust?

[Carolyn Harris]

I most certainly do agree with my hon. Friend. I would love to visit Auschwitz, but my own personal tragedy—my son would have been 38 today —has prevented me from doing so. I intend to rectify that, however, and I hope to go there this year.

Young children were particularly vulnerable and were often sent immediately to the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. One of the reasons for this was that, along with the elderly, children were unable to participate in forced labour in the camps. That was why so many lost their lives. As well as more than 1 million Jewish children being killed, tens of thousands of Romany children, German children with physical and mental disabilities living in institutions and Polish children lost their lives.