Holocaust Memorial Day

Debate between Catherine West and Tulip Siddiq

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), who has a long track record of standing up to racism and antisemitism. I add my thanks to my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) and for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols), who both spoke so powerfully about their own family situations.

My constituent John Hajdu MBE brings a teddy bear into local London schools when he speaks as an ambassador for the Holocaust Educational Trust. He will be leading us this Sunday at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium. As an Arsenal supporter, I will have my fingers crossed behind my back when I enter the stadium, but I look forward to a day of contemplation with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and others, led by our mayor, the young Councillor Jogee, and the veteran Jewish Councillor Sheila Peacock, who has worked tirelessly on standing up to antisemitism since she was a schoolteacher in the 1980s.

Sheila has now reached her 90th birthday and is still leading the community in Haringey to talk about the issues raised at this time of the year. She has also commemorated the peace garden outside the Bruce Castle Museum, where local rabbis come to bless and conduct prayers. That is always a moving occasion in Haringey, which is home to a community of 180 languages and, in its diversity, probably represents all the different tragic genocidal incidents that Members have mentioned today.

I also put on the record my heartfelt thanks to the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who described his own experience when in the armed forces of seeing people being murdered in a genocide. We are so lucky to have debates such as this—how serious they are and how the emotion gets to us. What a nice antidote to the week we have had. We play our roles in the Opposition and the Government, but it is so important that, as a Parliament, we have these moments that bring us together around the things that matter.

I want to reach out to the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick). If he needs any support, as somebody who has personally experienced antisemitism, those of us on the Labour Benches here today would want to offer that support, and to remember the Jewish communities still terrified as a result of the recent Beth Israel attack in Texas and the traumatising effect it had not only on Jewish people in the United States, but across my community. That attack happened in a synagogue and I will link that with what we are being encouraged to do tonight: to light a candle to represent hope.

What do we do when we have these terrible situations, such as the one described by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West, who explained why he now has such a small family—so many of them were killed ? What do we do when we hear about attacks on a faith community, such as the casual attack overnight on two of the Haredi community in Stamford Hill? We try to do as the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) said, not shying away from the pain but welcoming it, so that it makes us remember and do things differently.

That reinforces our energy to take on, for example, what the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) talked about: perpetrators who are still living here in the UK and have not been brought to justice. Is there more we could do as a Parliament as a result of today’s debate, not to allow that just to drop in the air it was spoken into, but to pursue it, particularly given that we now see some dangerous trends in the Bosnia and Herzegovina situation, for example? I know my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), who will speak next, has long experience of living in Banja Luka and understanding the community there, and has spoken of it in this House. What can we do as a result of today’s debate to prevent another possible genocide from happening in that region?

The legacy we are talking about happens not only in this House, in our debates and our foreign policy, but in our communities. I know all hon. Members here will know people doing similar work. When we were talking with the Minister for Afghan Resettlement, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who is leading the Afghanistan welcome programme, I was struck that my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West talked about visiting refugees in his locality within weeks of their arrival in the UK. That practical action plays an important role.

A local rabbi in Muswell Hill, David Mason, has joined the Methodist Church, the Quakers and a number of other faith communities to provide a warm welcome for refugees, who are housed in very low-quality accommodation in quite an affluent part of London. We see that inequality, with people who have very little and others who have quite a lot; we walk the same streets, but we have different lives.

Much that is happening at local level is because of the experience that survivors have put into practice. It is the women from the synagogue who prepare meals once a month on a Sunday, bring toys and games for children to play with, have helped children to register at school and assisted refugees to register with a GP, get into college or find a job as a bicycle mechanic—all those basics of the journey one makes in a new community.

I was honoured to go to Auschwitz with a number of schoolchildren, some from Hornsey School for Girls, a number of years ago. I got to see first-hand the dreadful situation there—my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North mentioned it in her speech, so I will not repeat it—but also the importance of experiencing how bleak that place is. At sundown, when the tour is over and we feel the freezing Polish weather and the grey sky, it makes one think of the suffering but also gives one that sense of, “What can we do differently? How do we light the candle? How do we give people hope?”

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way—I wanted to speak in the debate but I was in a Bill Committee, which is why I have come in late. I am a trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, and I want to mention all the work it does in remembering people’s lives, including the visits to Auschwitz that she is talking about. It also works to make sure that these things never happen again and to raise awareness about subsequent genocides, including in Rwanda and Cambodia. Will she join me in paying tribute to the staff, to the trustees, to Laura and Olivia and to everyone else at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust? They do such a fantastic job.

[Catherine West]

Indeed, I will. My hon. Friend has a long record of promoting the values of the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and has done an enormous amount to emphasise their work not just nationally but locally in the Hampstead area, where so many survivors made their home when they first came here following the second world war and where they have made a strong contribution. Indeed, many Jewish members of our communities are active in organisations such as CARIS—Christian Action and Response in Society—in Haringey, which provides food, clothing, education and legal advice to newly arrived communities. We also have the remarkable Haringey Welcome, which promotes dignity and respect for migrants and refugees in our borough.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I know you agree with this being a day when we try to reflect on the words we use in Parliament. Some of my Jewish constituents have written to me when we have had debates about immigration in the House and asked that we always try to have those debates in a respectful way. They have asked that, when we talk about groups such as the Gypsy and Traveller community, we try to understand other perspectives and not just use language that may denigrate groups that are already experiencing a lot of discrimination.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Debate between Catherine West and Tulip Siddiq

Tuesday 16th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq]

What I would say is that in the nearly six years that Richard Ratcliffe and I have been campaigned to get Nazanin home, we have heard every platitude. We have heard about no stones being unturned. We have heard about how this issue is top of the Government’s agenda. We know it is their highest priority, but warm words are not enough any more. After six years, I want to see my constituent come home. I do not want to hear from the Government the same rhetoric over and over again, which is what we are hearing.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way. I want to put on the record my heartfelt feelings on behalf of all the people in Hornsey and Wood Green. I also want to point out how long it has taken to resolve the case of my constituent Aras Amiri, who was a member of the British Council—she was almost a Foreign Office employee. There is a feeling that we all think this is inevitable, but we have to get some energy and some push in order to get Nazanin home.

[Tulip Siddiq]

That was a tragic case, and I know my hon. Friend fought very hard for her constituent.

Before I get to a series of questions that I want to ask the Minister, I would like to give the opportunity for anyone else to intervene.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Catherine West and Tulip Siddiq

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

When a Conservative former Attorney General looks at a Bill and describes it as an “astonishing monstrosity”, it is clear that somewhere something has gone wrong. When a Conservative former Chancellor of the Exchequer says that we are facing the prospect of frittering away parliamentary democracy, something is not as it seems. When hundreds of thousands of people, whether it is June Barnes in Kilburn or Peter Singer in Hampstead, feel compelled to email their MP saying that they are in shock at the Government’s tactics, it is clear that the ministerial power grab at the heart of this Bill is unacceptable and brazen.

I am told that the Prime Minister campaigned to remain in the EU, and that has made her transformation into Brexiteer-in-chief even more difficult to stomach. The hard Brexiteers back-slapped and sneered their way through the referendum campaign saying that they would “take back control”, but the irony is that what the Government are asking for in this Bill actually takes control away. It proposes taking away control of the law from Parliament, taking away control of governance from all our regions, and taking away hard-won rights from those who live and work here. Not only will this Bill be dangerous to our country’s integrity; it also poses a serious challenge to hard-fought-for rights of my constituents and many across the country.

Let me be clear that my opposition to the Government’s intended mass deployment of secondary legislation is due not to a prosaic attachment to the purest form of primary legislation but to the very real consequences it could have for my constituents’ lives. The decision to withdraw from the EU charter of fundamental rights is, at best, problematic and, at worst, actively contemptuous of the rights that protect all aspects of citizens’ lives. The EU charter of fundamental rights covers a broad set of protections that guarantee individual freedoms and rights, from the prohibition of torture and the right to life to holiday entitlement and working conditions. Without it, for example, workers in London, whose air quality is already at an illegal level, would lose layers of protection.

I would like to know which rights in particular the Government object to; perhaps the Minister can tell me. Is it the right to life, or the prohibition of torture and degrading treatment and punishment? Perhaps the Government take issue with the charter’s codification of equality rights, or perhaps the Secretary of State has a new-found disregard for privacy laws. Paying lip service to human rights is no guarantee of human rights, and introducing legislation that cannot be properly scrutinised is no way to govern people’s lives. The explicit disregarding of the charter risks the rights of working people.

The Government may ask why the British people should not simply trust them to replicate any protections and rights in forthcoming legislation. Well, when certain Conservative Members believe that rape victims should not have access to abortion, I do not blame the public for being sceptical of the Government and their ability to rule.

The Bill not only poses challenges to parliamentary scrutiny and people’s rights, but sends a stark message about the trajectory of devolution in this country, if one examines clause 11. The Government could have used the Bill as a real opportunity to address the governance of our regions. If there was ever a time to empower the newly elected representatives, it is now. As with the rights of the EU charter, it seems as though the Government are asking devolved nations to take their promises in good faith, and asking individual nations and regions to accept Whitehall control again. Curbing the scope of devolution and the ability of devolved bodies to act, particularly at this time, sends out a troubling message.

I am a London MP, and there is no doubt that Brexit will have a disproportionate impact on London, with 1 million EU nationals living in the city and making up 15% of the employment force.

[Catherine West]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way on the point about the London economy and EU nationals. Does she agree that an increasing number of EU nationals are very concerned, not just about the cost of their citizenship but about the constant changing of the goalposts by the increasingly incompetent Home Office?

[Tulip Siddiq]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s point. There are 17,000 EU nationals who live in my constituency, and they constantly come to my surgery because they are worried about the half-baked practice papers that are being put in front of them. In terms of the London economy, which my hon. Friend also mentioned, by 2020 a quarter of the GDP of the entire country will come from London alone. We have 800,000 private sector businesses. The Bill gives Ministers the power to modify retained EU law, and clause 11 stipulates that such powers should not be handed to the devolved authorities.

With the EU charter a thing of the past, London’s EU nationals will, as my hon. Friend suggests, have the right to question what their future holds and what rights will be guaranteed. An honest conversation is urgently needed on post-Brexit immigration arrangements and migrant protections for the huge population of non-EU citizens in London, and the Bill does not provide that. A lukewarm commitment to seek consent from devolved bodies will not do. Serious steps must be taken to mitigate the disproportionate impact that Brexit will have on the city where my constituency is based.

I will proudly vote against the Bill today with my Labour colleagues. The display put on by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) last Thursday revealed this Bill to be everything that campaigners warned it would be. It is a shoddy power grab that disrespects the democratic traditions of our country and throws hard-fought rights into total jeopardy, and the Government should be ashamed of themselves for introducing it.