Proposed British Jewish History Month

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

A point that I have made on many occasions is that all too often, public understanding of the Jewish community and the issues that matter to us will be limited to antisemitism and the UK’s relationship with Israel, and knowledge of Jewish history will largely be limited to the holocaust. That is not for a second to diminish the importance of those three topics, but to make the case for the fact that Jewish history, Jewish culture and tradition and the Jewish contribution to Britain constitute a much richer tapestry, and we can all benefit from a much deeper understanding of it.

Within the Jewish community in the UK are represented a mixture of different denominations, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, practices, histories and languages—and, of course, two of my favourite features of that Jewish diversity: the food and the old adage of “two Jews, three opinions”. With all this to teach and share, our community, tiny in size relative to the population of the UK and the globe, cannot be expected to undertake our endeavours to bring greater awareness alone.

I thought it might be illustrative for the House if, in demonstrating that every part of British history and culture is also Jewish history and culture, I brought together two seemingly unrelated parts of my parliamentary work to highlight the Jewish contribution. As a British Jew and, of course, a member of the all-party parliamentary groups relevant to our community, I am also a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on wrestling. Thanks to the historian Bradley Craig, I know of “Jewish Flash” Al Lipman from Aldgate, who was an immensely popular lightweight wrestling star in the 1940s. In the wake of the war, there was a major show in Manchester in aid of Jewish charities, in which the “good guy”, who was Jewish, defeated the “bad guy”, who was portraying a Nazi.

More recently, we have seen the Jewish global wrestling star Noam Dar, who hails from Ayr in Scotland, wrestles for World Wrestling Entertainment—performing for millions across the world—and has won the NXT heritage cup. He even once wrestled at a Jewish Lads’ and Girls’ Brigade camp in Essex, an event organised by, among others, Neil Martin and Robert Rams, two Jewish wrestling fans. Dar was followed in the main event of the second ever JLGB wrestling extravaganza by Simon Miller, who hosts the shows of the UK independent promotion Progress, but has also wrestled across the country. Other British wrestlers and former wrestlers with Jewish links include “The Chutzpah” Lior Ben-David, Aviv Maayan and Max “Voltage” Olesker, of the comedy duo Max & Ivan—of course, there are numerous British comedians who are Jewish or have Jewish roots.

British Jews are also proudly involved in other areas of the wrestling world. Examples are WWE’s head of external affairs, TNA’s PR man, All Elite Wrestling’s press lead—although he is in the United States—the global Jewish wrestling superstar MJF, and the ring announcer Justin Roberts. Israel’s best-known wrestling promoter, Gery Roif, came to Britain and visited the House recently. There are others here at home, such as Emily Read, co-founder of the all-women’s promotion Pro-Wrestling: Eve, and Adam Cailler, who writes about wrestling for the Daily Star following his stint at the Jewish Telegraph. There is also the wrestling photographer Oli Sandler, and Danny Stone, the secretariat to both the all-party parliamentary group against antisemitism and the APPG on wrestling, is well known across the House both for his expertise in antisemitism and in wrestling. While small in number, British Jews have certainly made an impact on wrestling here in the UK and overseas.

In the hope that this will be the kind of debate that we will see much more in the future, I will not go through all the APPGs and committees in which I take part through a Jewish lens, although that would demonstrate the number of areas in the Jewish contribution to British life—of which there are so many, beyond those that are established or widely understood—that a Jewish history month could explore. Indeed, what has become a running joke with my friend Jonny Newton—occurring on so many occasions that I worry that we are willing it into reality—is the idea of starting a podcast called “Spicy Talmud”, in which we would explore the volume-collecting centuries of rabbinic discussion on not just every single worthy topic one could possibly conceive of, but the more esoteric questions and the sometimes bizarre stories that are recounted about whistling frogs, weasels bringing chametz from house to house, snakes going where they shouldn’t, and wine-drinking she-dogs.

Thankfully, for everyone’s sake, I think it safe to say that we are both far too busy for the foreseeable future, but perhaps there is another way in which the kind of love that we both have, and our wider community has, for Jewishness, and our pride in being part of the Jewish story, can be brought to as wide an audience as possible so we can all share in it together—and what better way to start than with a dedicated Jewish history month?

Antisemitic Offences

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I thank the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards) for bringing forward this important debate at such a critical time. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who is a member of the same synagogue as me, and with whom I have enjoyed mixing Hanukkah cocktails in the past.

As a proudly Jewish parliamentarian, this is an issue that has significance both to my constituents, of all faiths and none, and to me personally. The devastating attack on 7 October had a far-reaching impact on the Jewish community in the UK, not least because its scale means that most of us are only one degree of separation from someone killed, taken hostage or otherwise impacted, as well as the huge surge in antisemitism that has so shamefully followed the attack. The war in Ukraine has also led to an uptick in the conspiratorial filth I have received and seen online, in part due to the Jewish faith of Volodymyr Zelensky, but also the offensive denazification pretext for invasion by Russia. I had wrongly thought that this sort of conspiratorial nonsense was on the wane after covid and the George Soros and 5G conspiracies, but they have now been replaced by nonsense about Rothschilds, satanists and Putin propaganda.

I pay tribute to CST, which is such an invaluable resource to our community and to me personally, providing practical and moral support when things are at their most difficult. I also pay tribute to Warrington Borough Council, which has always acted speedily in clearing up the incidents of antisemitic graffiti we have reported, including the swastikas recently daubed on local playparks.

The hon. Member for West Bromwich East made specific reference to antisemitism online, which it is vital to mention. Twitter, or X, in particular, has mainstreamed antisemitism. The number of times I have reported objectively antisemitic tweets, with posters and names that specifically reference nazi ideology, only to get an email back saying the tweets have not broken any of the website’s rules since Elon Musk’s takeover is, frankly, staggering. More must be done to hold tech companies accountable for the hate that is peddled on their platforms.

Antisemitism online is bad enough; it not only has an insidious impact on the individuals to whom it is directed, but poisons the overall atmosphere of those sites. However, the online sphere does not stay online. Recently, I was accosted by a man on the street. While he was filming me—he later posted the video online—he made repeated references to me being part of a Jewish and Masonic conspiracy to commit genocide against Catholics and Muslims and shouted at me that I was a murderer. Thankfully, my team intervened and the police were nearby, so things did not escalate to where they so easily could have. Nevertheless, it left me shaken on that day and has led me to feel less safe when out and about, and to take additional measures for my physical safety.

Ultimately, hatred is only defeated by solidarity. We have some incredible local initiatives to build relationships between communities, which are more important now than ever, but constraints on local government finance mean that some of the more targeted support that can make the most difference is under-resourced. I welcome the additional funding for the CST as a result of the latest increases in antisemitic incidents, but there is much more that the Government could do here. There is also more that we can do with schools around education about the Jewish community. With the Jewish community as small as we are, it cannot be left to us to educate others about Jewish life and our common humanity to build that understanding.

I hope and pray that we will see peace in Israel and Gaza speedily, but ensuring that our vibrant and multicultural society is one in which all our constituents can feel safe is something that we must be proactive about. Our interventions and focus as Parliament in this area cannot be led by events overseas.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I know that my hon. Friend shares my concerns about antisemitism on university campuses. I recently spoke to Jewish students at Leeds University, where there have been a number of antisemitic incidents. One of those was when Moazzam Begg, who has diminished the role of Hamas in the 7 October massacre, was invited to speak. Jewish and other students raised concerns, but the student union did not cancel the room booking, citing the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, which my hon. Friend and I both warned would create scenarios that could unleash antisemitism on campus. It appears that we have been proved right, as the horrific events in October and the misguided aim of allowing freedom of speech on campuses have unleashed a wave of antisemitism. Is it not time that we looked at the legislation again, to protect Jewish students on campus?

[Charlotte Nichols]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct that there have been some unintended consequences from that legislation, which were warned about. The very people that it sought to stop from coming on to campus have in fact been protected on campus. That is something we need to look at again.

Hon. and right hon. Members have picked up on a number of points in this debate, which I hope will help us to ensure that, as we tear antisemitism out of our society by its roots, we plant something better and more hopeful in its place. This is a good place to start.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety (Lee Rowley)]

I am genuinely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards) for giving us the opportunity to speak about this hugely important subject, and to almost all hon. Members for their contributions. To the hon. Members who have sought to politicise this, I would just say that there are times and there are places, and this was neither the time nor the place.

It is customary to start debates like this by saying that it is a pleasure to serve—and, of course, it is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz—but in truth, it is not a pleasure to be here today. It is not a pleasure to have listened to some of the absolutely outrageous stories that we have heard over the past half hour. It is not a pleasure to be sat in a debate that should not be needed at all. There is no pleasure to be had in this discussion, and I know that all colleagues here and outside this place share in that.

This debate is not a pleasure, but it is most definitely a necessity. It is a necessity, because in this seat of democracy there is an opportunity to call out the appalling acts of a tiny minority in recent months. It is a necessity for us to shine light on unacceptable behaviour, and to speak and articulate what we have sadly seen in recent months from a tiny group of people—that is, pure antisemitism. It might be dressed up as something else: it might be shrouded in a plaintive sense of emotion; it might be a preamble of obfuscation or confusion; it might be an inaccurate reference to fighting for something else; it might be the imposition of a horrifying hierarchy where Jewish deaths, Jewish injuries and Jewish blood appear to be less important than any other; or it might be the extraordinary insertion of context into the deaths of 1,200 people on 7 October. In truth, some are not even that subtle, and are now explicit about it, but whatever it is—whether implicit or explicit—we see it: it is present. If it walks, talks and acts like what it might be, then it probably is. It is antisemitism.

I want to be clear that no one in this room, nor the Government, seek to close down debate. No one here seeks to conflate legitimate criticism of one actor, one country, or one situation with explicit discrimination and prejudice. No one does not acknowledge the horror of war and the inhumanity of conflict—any conflict, anywhere, anytime, in any part of the world. No one is saying that we should not hear hard things; that is the mark of a civilised, educated, compassionate and curious society. But the other mark of a civilised society is calling out when things have gone too far, both implicitly and explicitly.

Part of the answer is law—you cannot incite violence—but another part is personal responsibility. There is a term that I hate; it is massively overused and I never thought I would be saying it. That term is “gaslighting”. But with the “From the river to the sea” chant, there is the most incredible abdication of responsibility for those who have used it casually, willingly, publicly—even, for some, joyfully. It may not be the case that everyone who has said it is antisemitic, but it absolutely is the case that all antisemites would be happy to use it.

There may also be a staggering misapplication of emotion via the trusted, weird logic of post-modernism that has taken root in so many of our universities, which abolishes the agency of the individual, dismantles the principle of the nation state and sees society only through the prism of a power dynamic where everyone either holds no power whatsoever, or holds all the power; and it follows that, as a result, anything that those without power do is virtuous and everyone who may have some semblance of power must be disregarded, ignored and dehumanised.

[Charlotte Nichols]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lee Rowley]

I will not give way. Postmodernism is an insidious, regressive and depressing call to all our worst selves, relying on false binaries and erroneous arguments. Most of the time, it sits in front of us without incident, in weird ideologies and daft PhDs. Yet occasionally it pops to the surface and the utter baselessness of it is revealed. At its heart, it needs to be ripped out of our society. This is not Britain. It is not supposed to be like this. This debate should not have happened; we are supposed to have moved on from this. It is clear that we have not.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

It is an honour to rise today to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, both personally as a proud Jewish parliamentarian, and on behalf of my constituents in Warrington North, many of whom have made Warrington their home after fleeing the horrors of the holocaust and subsequent post-war genocides in Rwanda, Darfur, Cambodia and Bosnia, which we also commemorate today.

This Shabbat, Jews in synagogues around the world will be reading Parashat Bo, a Torah portion described by the former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks of blessed memory, as

“among the most revolutionary in the entire history of ideas”

and

“one of the most counterintuitive passages in all of religious literature.”

In the passage—Exodus 10 to 13:16—Moses is addressing the Israelites before their release from Egypt. But his address is not about the freedom they will soon see, or the society they will have to build, but—repeatedly—about education and the duty of parents to educate their children about what they experienced in Egypt. The passage reads:

“Vayomer Moshe el-ha’am zachor et-hayom hazeh asher yetzatem mi Mitzrayim”.

That is:

“And Moses said to the nation: Remember this day, when you went out from Egypt”.

What does “zachor”—to remember—mean? The Jewish concept of remembering is not passive, but active. We tell the Exodus story to our children. We re-experience it and understand it through the elaborate rituals of the Pesach Seder. We reflect on it in our recitation of the central daily prayer, the Shema, in the laying of tefillin—a physical ritual with which to commemorate liberation from Egypt daily—and in the mezuzah, which we hammer to our doorframes. To truly remember is to act. That is as true for the story of the Exodus as it is for the genocides that we come together to commemorate today.

The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “ordinary people”. We reflect on the fact that its victims were ordinary people, each with their own inherent human dignity, loves, hopes, fears and aspirations—not nameless, faceless statistics, which our inability to fully comprehend the enormity of these atrocities can reduce them to. We reflect that those who committed these genocides were ordinary people, that this capacity for evil is indeed in all of us, and it is a choice, just as courage is a choice. And we reflect on the indifference of ordinary people who stood by while it happened, which was necessary for that kind of industrial-scale murder and the mechanics of genocide to be sustained. There are, of course, stories of bravery, with the kind of heroics that we see commemorated at Yad Vashem by the “righteous among the nations”, but what makes these people extraordinary is the very fact that the vast majority of people—the ordinary people—did not care enough to stop genocide taking place.

However, to reflect on the holocaust, and on the genocides in Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur and Cambodia, is not in and of itself true remembrance. This week I had the honour of sharing a platform with the holocaust survivor Joan Salter MBE, who has been turning reflection into action through her advocacy for contemporary refugees and her work with Freedom from Torture. We cannot commend historical actions such as the Kindertransport in debates like this and not condemn the inflammatory and hateful rhetoric used in this place and in the media about those fleeing persecution today, or about the LGBT+ and Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities.

I was also honoured, in my capacity as an ambassador for the charity Remembering Srebrenica, to sit with members of the Movement of Mothers of Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves. As they spoke to me about the trauma of their sons, brothers and fathers murdered in the Bosnian genocide, they also told me about their fight for justice. Many of the bodies have still never been recovered. One mother told me that she felt “lucky”, as they had found one bone of their youngest son to bury. Many of the mothers do not even have that, as mass burial pits were excavated and moved to evade detection, which prolonged the agony of those left behind. One mother spoke at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to plead for clemency for the soldier who she knew had murdered her family, for he had recently had a son and she did not want another child growing up without a father.

We cannot remember without justice, and a full and true accounting of all the decisions before, during and after a genocide, to learn, to change, and to ensure that “never again” is not an empty maxim, but a series of actions to which we can all commit ourselves. We know of cases—such as that of the “butcher of Slomin”, Stanislaw Chrzanowski—in which war criminals have evaded justice because of active collusion by the British police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the security services, who protected them and allowed them to live among the rest of us as “ordinary people”. It is time for an inquiry: the Board of Deputies of British Jews has called for one, but the Government have so far ignored its call. How can we have confidence that these things will not happen in future—perhaps with Russian war criminals—if we cannot account for how and why they happened before?

This is why education, and the education of children in particular, is so very important—from Moses and the Israelites in Parashat Bo to our contemporary society. The holocaust is rapidly fading from living memory, and so too, one day, will the genocides that followed it. The testimony of survivors, which the sterling work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust allows so many to access and experience, is an important part of our collective memory, but the survivors cannot be expected to bear this responsibility themselves and to bear this burden alone. While Elie Wiesel was right when he said that if the holocaust was forgotten

“the dead will be killed a second time”,

we remember not for the sake of the past, but for the sake of the future.

The message from today, and from this week’s sedra from Exodus, must be this: through education we can aspire towards liberation, solidarity and community, and build empathy and understanding as we march together with all people on the path out of Egypt and refuse to go back. We observe, we remember, and, inspired by our histories and our faiths, ordinary people across all our communities will act. It is in education that a good society is won or lost.

--- Later in debate ---

[Felicity Buchan]

I thank my right hon. Friend for updating the House on that important work.

[Charlotte Nichols]

I am grateful for some of the actions being taken by His Majesty’s Government that the Minister has outlined, but I want to push her on one more. In 1988 the Conservative Government set up the Hetherington inquiry, which led to the War Crimes Act 1991. That meant that for the first time, Nazi war criminals living in the UK could be prosecuted for war crimes, but those prosecutions have rarely taken place. I gave evidence in my speech of cases where the police, the CPS and British intelligence services covered up Nazi war criminals living in the UK. Could the Minister commit to making representations to His Majesty’s Government for an inquiry into this, as called for by the Board of Deputies, as one of the actions to take away from today, so that we can learn from this and ensure it never happens again?

[Felicity Buchan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. In the interest of giving my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove some time, I suggest that we sit down and talk about that following the debate.

We cannot allow one of the darkest chapters in history to be forgotten. I am reminded of the words of the Spanish philosopher George Santayana, who said in 1905:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Holocaust Memorial Day

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I rise to speak today to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day, which, on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, commemorates the 6 million Jews murdered during the holocaust, alongside the millions killed under Nazi persecution of other groups, including Roma and Sinti people, Slavic people, LGBT and disabled people and political and religious minorities. On this day, we also remember the subsequent genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia, Dafur and Bosnia.

As the holocaust fades from living memory, I want to put on record my gratitude to all of the survivors whose testimonies are at the heart of holocaust education, but which come at huge personal cost. It is impossible to comprehend the abjectness of the horrors that they experienced, the trauma that follows them through their lives, or the sacrifice that bearing witness entails. Marceline Loridan-Ivens said:

“If you only knew, all of you, how the camp remains permanently within us. It remains in all our minds, and will until we die”

Similarly, Shlomo Venezia, said:

“Everything takes me back to the camp. Whatever I do, whatever I see, my mind keeps harking back to the same place. It’s as if the “work” I was forced to do there had never really left my head…Nobody ever really gets out of the Crematorium”.

Those who survived the camps were greeted with

“incredulity, indifference, and even hostility”

upon their return to their communities. Although the allies won the war against Nazism in Europe, antisemitism has never been defeated, and fascism grew rapidly in the UK in the post-war years, contrary to the narrative of triumph over Hitler.

Jewish soldiers such as Morris Beckman and Jules Kanopinski returned to London to find fascists staging outdoor rallies in the east end,

“shouting out the same antagonism and the same filth as before the war, and now even worse—they were saying the gas chambers weren’t enough”.

The anti-fascist 43 Group that they and their comrades established, and the later 62 Group, would be breaking up, on average, 15 fascist meetings a week and engaging in regular physical confrontation with fascists, including in the battle for Ridley Road, which was memorialised this year in a BBC drama. The irony is not lost on me that, in the very week that Ridley Road was released, my synagogue in Manchester, where much of it was filmed, had our Friday night service gate-crashed by the far right. It may be a historical drama, but the hatred in it is very much contemporary.

I have sat in synagogue while fellow Jews have been slaughtered elsewhere in the world for practising their faith, as I am, and so to proclaim our faith proudly, to stand as proud Jews, is itself an act of defiance. As the partisan vow declares, “Mir veln zey iberlebn”, which means, we will outlive them. From generation to generation, the Jewish spirit endures.

In Kveller, Rachel Stomel writes:

“In the context of Jewish law, remembrance is not a reflexive, passive process directed inwards. Our sages teach us that the way we fulfil the Torah’s commandment to remember the Sabbath—'Zachor et Yom HaShabbat le’kodsho’ (remember the sabbath day to keep it holy)—is by active declaration in the performance of the kiddush, the Shabbat blessing over wine. We are commanded to remember the Amelikites brutal massacre of our people—'Zachor et Asher asah lecha Amalek’ (remember what the Amalek did to you)—through intentional, public, verbal affirmation, and by ridding the world of the evil that they represent. Neither of these Torah commandments can be fulfilled by quiet contemplation, memorialisation must manifest through specific action.”

The theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “One Day,” both as a call to action for that one day when we have eradicated the hatred that leads to genocide and because one day, as a snapshot of what happened, can be helpful in seeking to understand and process the enormity of the holocaust. The brutality and the hopelessness of the concentration camps and the lengths to which the Nazis went to extinguish any faint glimmers of hope are summed up in this quote from the survivor Shlomo Venezia, who was forced to work in the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz, emptying the gas chambers of bodies, including those of family members, processing their hair and teeth, and loading them into the ovens for cremation. He said:

“One day, while I was presenting my testimony at a school, a young girl asked me if anyone had ever emerged from the gas chamber alive. Her schoolmates laughed at her, as if she hadn’t understood a thing. How could anyone survive in those conditions, when the deadly gas used had been carefully developed to kill everyone? It’s impossible. In spite of everything, however absurd her question may seem, it was quite relevant, since it did indeed happen.

Few people ever saw and can relate this episode, and yet it is true. One day when everyone had started working normally after the arrival of a transport, one of the men involved in removing the bodies from the gas chamber heard a strange noise. It wasn’t so unusual to hear strange noises, since sometimes the victims’ bodies continued to emit gas. But this time he claimed the noise was different. We stopped and pricked up our ears, but nobody could hear anything. We told ourselves that he’d surely been hearing voices. A few minutes later, he again stopped and told us that this time he was certain he’d heard a death rattle. And when we listened closely, we, too, could hear the same noise. It was a sort of wailing. To begin with, the sounds were spaced out, then they came more frequently until they became a continuous crying that we all identified as the crying of a newborn baby. The man who had heard it first went to see where exactly the noise was coming from. Stepping over the bodies, he found the source of those little wailings. It was a baby girl, barely two months old, still clinging to her mother’s breast and vainly trying to suckle. She was crying because she could feel that the milk had stopped flowing. He took the baby and brought it out of the gas chamber. We knew it would be impossible to keep her with us. Impossible to hide her or get her accepted by the Germans. And indeed, as soon as the guard saw the baby, he didn’t seem at all displeased at having a little baby to kill. He fired a shot and that little girl who had miraculously survived the gas was dead. Nobody could survive. Everybody had to die, including us: it was just a matter of time.”

Elie Wiesel speaks of watching Jewish babies thrown alive into the vast ditches where bodies were burned, confirmed by Telford Taylor at the Nuremberg trials. Lily Ebert testifies of witnessing babies torn from their mothers’ arms and dashed against walls. I have seen the piles of teeth, hair and shoes that represent a tiny fraction of those who passed through Auschwitz-Birkenau, and how small those chambers were, with up to 1,200 people piled into a tiny space so that no poison gas would be wasted. This was not, as we might imagine, a quick process, with it taking up to 12 minutes to be poisoned to death, crushed in among hundreds of panicking people, desperately trying to cling to life, trying to break or claw their way out. Seven hundred Jews were murdered in the gas chambers on the very day before they were set to be liberated and many more died by disease or by suicide in the months following liberation. There are some things that a human just cannot endure.

These survivors witnessed day in, day out what no human being should ever be condemned to see: the very depths of man’s cruelty and inhumanity towards his fellow man laid bare. The Hasidic mystic, the Baal Shem Tov, said:

“If a man has beheld evil, he may know that it was shown to him in order that he learn his own guilt and repent; for what is shown to him is also within him.”

If man can sink to these depths once, to industrialise the brutalisation and murder of their fellow humans, they can and will do so again. Indeed, “never again” rings hollow with the genocides that have taken place since the holocaust, and our failure as a nation to learn the lessons of the past as this Government turn away refugees from other parts of the world knowing full well the fate of the refugees from the holocaust denied safe passage to Britain and the US, and returned to their deaths.

We allow a minority in public life to degrade and debase the memory of the holocaust—to make inappropriate comparisons with modern day events as though there can be any parallel drawn, rhetorical or otherwise, between, for example, those who choose not to be vaccinated, or a particularly poor performance in the football, and the experience of the victims of Nazi persecution. We still see the cancer of antisemitism in our communities, with the threat of hate crime in person and online a daily reality that we should not have to live alongside.

Today we honour the victims, the survivors, the heroes and the martyrs of the holocaust. We cannot change the past, but by bearing witness we can change the course of the future. Ira Goldfarb said of his father, the survivor Aron Goldfarb, that

“throughout my father’s life, survival adopted a new meaning. Survival to my father was carrying the nightmares of his childhood and choosing to find joy, humor, and compassion in life every single day. Survival was seeing the worst of humanity and still offering his last piece of bread to someone who needed it more, still building lifelong friendships, and being a devoted husband and father.”

It is hard not to be moved by photos of a beaming Lily Ebert celebrating her 98th birthday in lockdown with thousands of cards sent by well-wishers, or welcoming the birth of her 35th great-grandchild. I can think of few people more deserving of happiness. May we draw strength from their strength, and courage from their courage, as we build a more decent, respectful and inclusive society where all of us can live in peace, harmony and security.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The whole House appreciates the hon. Lady’s courage in delivering such a powerful and moving speech, which I hope will be taken note of widely.

Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to be able to speak in this debate today, not just because there are local issues that I wish to raise, but because planning policy reveals so much about who really has a say in deciding the face and quality of our towns and country in the years and decades to come.

There are natural tensions between residents, conservationists, people seeking new homes and the developers who stand to benefit. A fair planning system gives them all an opportunity to present their cases and to be heard equally so that provision can be made without exploiting or spoiling our landscape and heritage. If this developer’s charter becomes law, there would be no way for local people to object to bad or inappropriate proposals, such as those to build over Peel Hall in Warrington despite the valiant campaigning efforts over the past three decades by residents against proposals from Satnam. This vital green lung in our communities is beloved by residents and is a vital part of our area’s biodiversity.

Working with Warrington’s Labour council, I am looking at ways to make nature more accessible to residents, including bringing together the green spaces and nature reserves that ring the town through connecting cycleways and pathways to create a Warrington orbital park, and working with volunteers to clean up these spaces. I am also working with our vibrant creative sector to bring sculptures and other artworks to the parks to celebrate our local culture and heritage. All of this is now under threat.

The Government’s White Paper has not only nothing on the natural environment, but almost nothing on affordable rent or on net zero. It does not address wider infrastructure such as transport, retail or leisure, and simply puts developers in the driving seat of their cranes and diggers and gives them a green light to do what they like. I am not opposed to house building. Indeed, probably the largest volume of casework that I deal with relates to the lack of appropriate housing, especially affordable housing for large families and for constituents of my age looking to get on to the housing ladder.

[Valerie Vaz]

It is not just about houses, though, is it? It is about decent quality houses and homes.

[Charlotte Nichols]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right. We need more three and four-bedroom family properties in Warrington where people can have a good standard of living, but what developers want is to convert or build endless one-bedroom flats where they benefit from their highest profit margins while delivering the least for families and our community.

Communities should have more say on planning and development. They know what is needed locally, and systems work better where people are working together rather than being shut out. So why have the Government put forward such obviously terrible proposals, angering their Back Benchers and even their own voters, as we saw in the by-election last week? Could it be connected to the fact that developer donations to the Tory party have risen 400% since the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) became leader of his party? Scarcely a week goes by without stories emerging of the Communities Secretary weighing in on behalf of developers who have made big donations to him or the Conservatives.

We can see the threat to our green and pleasant land from these greedy, present plans. I suspect that the Government would like to drop these proposals, but that is difficult when they have been bought. If Ministers press ahead with this developers’ charter, they must know that it will be resisted in the country, even in areas they have taken for granted. I call on them to listen to their constituents, not their paymasters, and to drop the proposals.

Employment Rights

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It would be helpful if we could go a little faster, because the House has a lot of business before it over the rest of the day.

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab) [V]]

Polling for the GMB union found that 76% of the public want fire and rehire to be banned, including 71% of Conservative voters. If only unscrupulous employers use fire-and-rehire tactics, as the Minister said in a previous answer, a non-legislative solution will do absolutely nothing. How much more consensus is needed before the Minister acts to ban fire and rehire, rather than warm words that do nothing to protect workers in his constituency or mine?

[Paul Scully]

I have noticed that I can shrink my long list of responsibilities in the ministerial portfolio down to Minister for unintended consequences. I do not want to have a series of legislation, which is a blunt instrument, as if it is tackling a binary tool. That would have unintended consequences for people’s jobs and livelihoods. We want to have a flexible economy so that we get both right.

Antisemitic Attacks

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Antisemitic crimes, like all those with regard to racism, are serious crimes, and we expect police forces investigating these issues to do so rigorously, robustly and swiftly, and for action to be taken against the individuals if they are found to require prosecution. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is working with the Metropolitan police, and has received assurances from them that they will be doing everything they can to bring these individuals to justice.

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab) [V]]

Last night, Jewish communities across the country began our celebrations for the festival of Shavuot, and I wish all of those marking it a chag sameach. The scenes of antisemitic and misogynistic abuse yesterday have been incredibly disturbing and have caused significant alarm and distress, coming off the back of a rise in hate crime incidents both online and in physical attacks on and desecrations of our places of worship. I have been heartened by unequivocal condemnations from across society, including by the Muslim Council of Britain and the Palestinian ambassador in the UK, as they recognise that all forms of racism and oppression reinforce one another, that they cannot be fought in isolation from each other and that we all have more in common than that which divides us. What support, therefore, will the Secretary of State provide to interfaith initiatives such as the Warrington Ethnic Communities Association and the Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester to help us build solidarity and co-operation across our communities, where a minority of extremists seek to divide us?

Carbon Monoxide: Safety, Testing and Awareness

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stephanie Peacock]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I will come on to make that point. We need to see an increase in carbon monoxide detectors.

I would like to share with the House the sad case, in 2003, of Paul Overton, who lost his beloved stepdaughter Katie, aged 11. Paul and his wife lived in rented accommodation with Katie and their two younger daughters. Katie was cremated, but her death was treated as suspicious by the police. Ten days after Katie’s death, the whole family nearly died from carbon monoxide poisoning. It was then that Paul suspected and called a pathologist to investigate further. Thankfully, some of her blood had been kept, which after testing was found to contain CO. This was later judged to be the cause of Katie’s death. Paul’s landlord was convicted of failure to undertake a gas safety check. It was also found that the boiler required a service after which it emitted almost no CO—it had not been serviced for years. Yet the law governing the landlord gas safety check does not make boiler service or flue gas tests mandatory. It is staggering that that straightforward change in the law has yet to be made. In 2011, Baroness Finlay, then co-chair of all-party parliamentary carbon monoxide group, recommended that all deceased bodies should be tested for CO poisoning, but no action followed.

Carbon monoxide alarms are essential for the detection of CO gases. According to the 2015 regulations, private landlords are required by law to ensure that a CO alarm is installed in any room containing a solid fuel-burning appliance, such as a coal fire or a wood-burning stove, and they must be checked at the start of each new tenancy. For homeowners, that responsibility falls to them. That is why is it essential that we highlight and raise awareness of this serious issue.

Many campaigns, such as CO-Gas Safety, led by its hard-working president, Stephanie Trotter, and the all-party parliamentary carbon monoxide group, and many survivors and victims’ families have lobbied the Government for decades to raise awareness and change the law, with very limited success. It is important to note that although current law requires carbon monoxide alarms to be fitted in rooms containing a solid fuel-burning appliance, the Government’s website states that

“as gas appliances can emit carbon monoxide, we would expect and encourage reputable landlords to ensure that working carbon monoxide alarms are installed in rooms with these.”

That is where the law is incredibly weak. We know that gas appliances can and sometimes do emit deadly carbon monoxide gases, but the Government choose just to “expect and encourage” landlords to install carbon monoxide alarms, instead of making that law. Such a law could save lives simply by ensuring that all rented properties are fitted with relatively inexpensive detectors and mandating that they are maintained regularly, instead of at the start of each tenancy, regardless of its length.

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an important speech. I note what she said about the Government already expecting reputable landlords to do what she outlines, so does she agree that mandating and requiring them to do it through the change in the law that she suggests would not be onerous?

[Stephanie Peacock]

I completely agree. I hope that the Minister has heard that important point. I know that there was a Government consultation on this issue, which closed in January, but no follow-up or findings have yet been announced.

I commend the all-party parliamentary carbon monoxide group, which has worked for many years on this issue. In November 2017, it published a report on carbon monoxide alarms. After a thorough analysis, it made three recommendations. First, it recommended that the Government should update the existing Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015 so that landlords are legally obliged to provide CO alarms in rooms of private rented properties that contain any fuel-burning appliance, not just solid fuel appliances. The second recommendation was that landlords should be given adequate notice of and provided with clear guidance on future changes to the regulations. The third recommendation was that in subsequent reviews and amendments of building regulations, the Government should widen the requirement to fit CO alarms to all properties, including public and social rented sector properties and owner-occupied properties.

Those asks are well within the power of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to fix. This is a safety issue and the Minister can direct Ofgem to make it mandatory for the gas emergency service to test appliances for CO and ensure that, by law, all residences are fitted with a CO alarm. Those are reasonable and simple asks, so will the Minister outline the Government’s position on them?

Covid-19: Hospitality Industry

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Wednesday 24th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I have now spoken in a number of debates as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on pubs to highlight the existential threat to the trade from the events of the past year and to ask for clearer support for the sector. It is a shame that here I am again, repeating calls that have so far gone unanswered. For those of us who do not want to hear the last orders’ bell tolling for pubs in every single one of our constituencies, the Government must recognise what more needs to be done to sustain them until custom can properly return.

I welcomed the grants made available, including in the Budget, but many in the sector have been saying that they are insufficient. The British Institute of Innkeeping stated that

“these grants will not even cover the furlough contributions that will be needed to safeguard their teams until May, let alone June.”

The business rates holiday and VAT cut extension were also welcome, but do not make up for the losses that have accrued and will continue to accrue until pubs are able to open fully. Wet-led pubs, in particular, will continue to suffer. I am glad that they no longer need to comply with the farce of the Scotch egg test—may I say that its removal shows that it was a hollow necessity all along?—but they will not benefit from the VAT cut, which is restricted to food, soft drinks and accommodation. These problems are made even worse for pubs without beer gardens or outside space, which will still be on severely restricted capacity until at least 21 June.

Alongside our pubs, the brewers that supply them need support too. About 80% of the beer made by small producers, including the Coach House Brewing Company and Twisted Wheel Brew Company in Warrington North, and the 4Ts Brewery just over the Mersey from us, is sold in pubs. The devastating loss of trade, with pubs closed, 200 million fewer pints of craft beer brewed in comparison with 2019, and 6 million pints of beer poured down the drain this year, represents 10 years of lost growth for the sector. They desperately need compensation and support to recover.

Pubs and their suppliers deserve the support they need until they can reopen properly—a day to which we are all looking forward very much. I know that I am not alone in longing for the days of a pint or five in my local with friends and making new friends in the smoking area. As our freedom to enjoy those days comes back, we need to ensure that the sector is there in which to be able to enjoy that freedom.

Rough Sleeping

Charlotte Nichols Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Charlotte Nichols (Warrington North) (Lab) [V]]

Official statistics estimate that 4,266 people were sleeping rough at the start of the pandemic, but the Government claim to have helped 33,000 rough sleepers into emergency accommodation. How does the Secretary of State square that circle, and will he commit to provide a richer and more frequent picture of homelessness and rough sleeping across the country to ensure that everyone’s basic human rights with regard to shelter can be met both as we come through the pandemic and in the longer term?

[Robert Jenrick]

The numbers that we publish today are a snapshot of a single night in November. Those are the most robust data sources that we have. They are the ones that we are able to measure ourselves on because they have been in place for more than 10 years now. I think that that is the right way forward.

The Everyone In programme did not help just those individuals who were actually sleeping rough on the streets. It also helped many people who were sofa surfing or in other forms of precarious accommodation who were at risk of ending up on the streets. So the success of the programme has been not just to get people off the streets but to help many thousands of other people who were otherwise in difficult circumstances to begin to move forward with their lives.