Face Coverings (Prohibition) Bill

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Friday 28th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

rose—

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hollobone]

I give way to the right hon. Member for Leicester East.

[Mr Hollobone]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention, and I am happy to give way to him as many times as he wants to intervene on me. That applies to anyone else in the Chamber. I also welcome the tone with which we have started this debate. These are important issues and there are strong feelings on both sides. It is an important part of our role as parliamentarians to air the concerns of our constituents, even if they are difficult issues, and what better place to do that than in the Chamber of the House of Commons? I will respond to the point that the right hon. Gentleman has just raised after I have taken an intervention from the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman).

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

The hon. Gentleman was moving on to talk about Muslim women who did not speak English. That is very much widening the scope of his attack and, frankly, makes one question his motivation. Neither of my parents, who were immigrants, could ever read or write English, although they acquired some ability to speak the language. Should they have been excluded or pressed upon? They enabled me to become a Member of Parliament. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that Muslim women who cannot speak English should not have the right to have their children become Members of Parliament?

[Mr Hollobone]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman’s parents would be extremely proud of their son being a distinguished parliamentarian, but I am pretty sure that his mother was not veiled. The purpose of my Bill is to talk about covering one’s face and not about restricting people because they do not speak English. My intentions in putting forward this Bill are 100% honourable, because I am standing up and speaking out for the many hundreds of thousands of people in this country who are concerned about the increasing number of people covering their faces in public and who, frankly, feel that that is alien to the British way of life.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman, making his case in the passionate way in which he does, suggests that I was pulling a funny face at him. May I assure him that that was my normal face?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. We can see that because my right hon. Friend is not wearing a face covering.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

It will come as no surprise to the House that those are not points of order to be dealt with from the Chair, to my great relief, but the House is much the better for the points of information that have come before it in that incorrect way, for which I thank the right hon. Gentlemen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

I am very relaxed after that guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, so thank you.

Another issue concerns police officers. Would it be acceptable for a police officer to wear a full-face veil? I do not think it would. I think it would alarm members of the public. When tackling these issues, I make up my mind by asking myself, “Is it okay for a woman to wear a full-face veil? Is it okay for a man to wear a full-face balaclava?”

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that when some police officers are involved in a terrorist situation and are armed, they will wear balaclavas, which cover their faces completely, just as the face is covered for a Muslim woman? That aspect is covered, just as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) has pointed out that the issue in the law courts is covered by the judges. We do not need a law on it.

[Mr Hollobone]

Yes, but in the cases where those specialist police officers are covering their faces, it is for health and safety reasons. Where they are dealing with a terrorist incident and there is a likelihood that weapons could be deployed or explosives could go off, often a balaclava is required as a protective device for the police officer’s face. Everybody understands that. What would be completely unacceptable would be for ordinary beat officers—ordinary police officers whom the right hon. Gentleman, I and other Members see every day of the week—to wear full-face balaclavas.

This parallel between balaclava-wearing and the wearing of full-face veils first struck me when I took my children to a local park. I was sitting in the children’s playground watching my children playing, and this Muslim woman wearing a full-face veil came across the playground with her children and her husband, I suppose, as well. I thought to myself, here I am, sitting in a children’s playground in the Kettering constituency in the middle of England, and here is a woman who does not want anyone else to look at her. I thought to myself that at a very basic level, this is discourtesy. Why would anyone want to hide their identity from everyone else?

I thought, “Well, maybe it is a religious requirement.” Then I found out that it is not a religious requirement for a woman to cover her face, and I wondered how I would feel if, instead of the woman covering her face, it was her husband next to her who was wearing a full-face balaclava? How would that make me feel? Of course it would make me feel very concerned indeed about why a man was walking across a children’s playground wearing a balaclava. I asked myself what I would do about it? I would tell somebody in the park security department that there was a man wandering about wearing a full-face balaclava in a children’s playground.

The right hon. Member for Leicester East is definitely pulling a quizzical face at me, and that is fine. He is entitled to do that, and I can see him doing it because he is not wearing a veil, but perhaps he does not understand that it raises real concerns that individuals can go around covering their faces.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), with whom I worked closely in the all-party parliamentary group on Palestine, talked about the traditional British way of life. I do not know what the traditional British way of life is. This country has been conquered and inhabited by waves of immigrants ever since the Romans came here. Manchester is called Manchester because the Romans went there and they had a camp, which was castra, which became the suffix chester. We have had the Danes and the Norwegians. Of my constituents, 40% originate from Ireland. They are as loyal and as British as anybody else. They worship in a Catholic church. I have a large number of Muslims in my constituency. I do not have so many Jews, but I am a Jew myself. I was brought up in Jewish surroundings with kosher food, going to Hebrew school and the synagogue on Friday evening and Saturday morning. Is that the traditional British way of life? It is part of the way of life. The way in which Muslims live in this country is another part of the British way of life. It is not for us to tell them how they should live.

I was mugged here in London by two muggers with balaclavas over their faces. There was no breach of the law in their wearing the balaclavas as distinct from the fact that they stole a great many things from me. The hon. Gentleman talks about identification when one is voting, but people are not identified when they go to the polling station on the basis of their faces. We do not have photo ID in this country. They are identified by their names and addresses. Muslim women wearing the veil vote in exactly the same way as everybody else.

The hon. Gentleman is an honourable gentleman, and while he says that he is doing this without pressure from constituents, there is a possibility that if he had 7,000 Muslim constituents he might have thought up another subject for his private Member’s Bill. It is not a question of us being here to obey our constituents whatever they say, and to reflect their views whatever their views may be. If constituents tell me that they are in favour of capital punishment, as no doubt a number are, I will not vote for capital punishment because some constituents want it. If constituents of mine are in favour of fox hunting and hunting with dogs, I will not listen to them just because they are constituents who may or may not vote for me.

This is a variegated country with variegated religions. When the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill went through the House, we had a deliberate provision with regard to stop and search that Sikh men should not be required to remove their turbans by the police. If one is going to say that people change or conceal their appearance, ultra-Orthodox Jewish women are required to wear wigs. They are not allowed to show their own hair. People live in different ways because this is a marvellous democracy with freedom of choice. Not many of the Muslim women in my constituency wear the veil, but I will stand up for their right to do so, because that is their choice. We do not live in a country in which the law tells people how to dress.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is making a passionate speech that draws on his wide experience. Has he received any representations from any groups in his constituency supporting what the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) wants to do, because I have not?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

I have not received any representations whatsoever in favour of the Bill, but I have received many that oppose it. However, even if I had not received a single such representation, I would still oppose it, out of principle. I would oppose it because we do not live in a democracy in which people can be restricted in the way they conduct their lives.

A little while ago the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) introduced a ten-minute rule Bill that would have required the labelling of halal and kosher food. I opposed it and had it chucked out, and I did so because small minorities have a particular right to be recognised and regarded. In this country we are ruled by majorities, which is absolutely right, but that does not mean that the minority must be overruled by the majority. I have received no indication whatsoever that people will be lining the streets to cheer the hon. Member for Kettering.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way when he is so short of time. I recently asked a woman who was wearing a veil why she felt the need to cover her face, and she replied that it made her feel closer to God. Is that not her choice?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

Every one of us, from our constituencies and from our daily lives, has the ability to contribute validly and constructively to the debate, as my hon. Friend has just done.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I applaud what my right hon. Friend has said. Does he not think that the Bill, were it to become law, would be the start of a very slippery slope and that we would be insisting on a kind of secularist conformity that would be damaging to the diversity of our communities, particularly constituencies of the sort that he and I have the honour to represent?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend.

Over the years we have had too many restrictions on our civil liberties for all kinds of reasons. I might as well tell the House that when I was a junior Minister in the Labour Government I nearly resigned when, after the Birmingham bombings, Roy Jenkins introduced what I regarded to be oppressive legislation relating to the containment of terrorism. He did that for constituency reasons—he was a Birmingham MP. We are all subject to pressures, but the main reason I am proud to be British is that this is a country of tolerance. Indeed, tolerance is the wrong word. I do not believe that we have the right to “tolerate” women who wear the veil or to make a judgment on them, because it is their choice. I have all kinds of choices about the way I live my life, and people have the right to have opinions about them.

[Rushanara Ali]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concerns about the dangers of such legislation leading to more Islamophobic and racist attacks against women, which have been growing for a long time against the British Muslim community? Does he agree that if the Bill is supported, although I completely oppose it—