Safety of the Jewish Community

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2026 Westminster Hall

[Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) on securing this important debate.

I do not speak today as a member of the Jewish community, or as somebody who can fully understand the experience that many British Jews live with every day, but I have seen a small snapshot of it, from my time at the University of Leeds and throughout my continuing engagement with the Jewish community ever since. At university, I saw some of the challenges faced by Jewish students on campus. More recently, I spoke at the Leeds Leads Against Antisemitism demonstration, where I heard directly from members of the community about the challenges that they are now enduring. It has been a particular issue in recent years, but it is a long-standing problem, as many Members know. I will return to the experience of Jewish students later, because what is happening on our campuses tells us something important about the wider problems we face.

The Jewish community in Britain is facing a profound crisis of safety and security. It cannot be said often enough that the first duty of any Government should always be the safety and security of their citizens—we hear it often enough in the Chamber, but it needs to be said again—and that means that the responsibility for protecting the Jewish community cannot rest with the community itself. Nor should Jewish organisations be expected to shoulder the burden alone. The CST is amazing and should of course be well funded, but it cannot fall on the CST to look out for the community every single time. It is the responsibility of us all, and of the Government.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

A few years ago, we had an appalling incident when a reporter of Jewish extraction, from Israel, was in licensed premises in Northern Ireland. He was coolly and calmly asking punters, some of whom were not under the excessive influence of alcohol, what problem they had with Jewish people, and one punter said, live on television: “The only problem with Hitler was that he didn’t kill enough Jews.” I raised with the Public Prosecution Service why that person was not subject to prosecution; I could not get a legitimate answer about a comment made live on television to a Jewish reporter.

[Mark Sewards]

Goodness me! I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is a disgraceful turn of events when people feel confident enough to say something like that on camera, especially if they are not even intoxicated and inebriated, not that that would justify any comments of that nature. That is sickening and it goes to the heart of what we are trying to get to. Because of the way antisemitism has been allowed to flourish, a lot of people now confidently say such things even on camera. It is disgraceful.

We need to think about what it means to belong to a society in which we are repeatedly forced to ask whether it is safe to live openly as a Jewish person. The threat is the threat itself; that is the problem, as is the effect it is having on Jewish people who have to live in anticipation of it. Over the past year, Jewish communities have seen attacks on communal organisations and threats against places of worship and institutions, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet set out, alongside appalling levels of antisemitic incidents.

The significance of that cannot be measured simply by counting the incidents, because it is changing the everyday, ordinary lives of Jewish people in this country. Familiar places and ordinary routines become questions of security. Precautions that might once have seemed extreme, maybe even paranoid, have instead become reasonable considerations that Jewish people have to make as part of their ordinary daily lives. That is why security outside synagogues, schools and community institutions sadly remains all too essential; why Jewish societies at universities do not always publicise where their events will take place; and why celebrating Jewish life in public can require precautions that few other communities in this country ever have to consider.

[Munira Wilson]

In my previous intervention, I mentioned that my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) and I had met children, young people and their parents at Richmond synagogue to talk about their experience in schools, colleges and universities. On the hon. Gentleman’s point about people hiding their identity and partly withdrawing from public life, one of the students from —I will name the university, because I went there—the University of Cambridge said that antisemitism was rife in some colleges and was not dealt with. They hid where the Jewish society would meet. One student said she had done Hebrew teaching as part of her extracurricular activities, but is keeping that off her CV because she is worried she will be discriminated against. Folk in that room said to us, “We’re tired of advocating for ourselves; we need others to advocate for us.” It is incumbent on us all to come together and say that enough is enough.

[Mark Sewards]

I could not agree more. I will come on to universities in the final part of my speech. The experience of students at the University of Leeds reflects what the hon. Lady said.

Security is incredibly important, but our ambition cannot simply be to protect the Jewish people from immediate physical danger. It must also mean being able to live openly and confidently in British society, with a sense of belonging, while being Jewish. That challenge is made even more serious by the actions of hostile states. I welcome the Government’s action on designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps under the newly reformed National Security Act 2023. Designation must be backed up by vigilance and effective enforcement.

Ministers have acknowledged in previous statements that Jewish people, alongside dissidents and journalists, are among those most targeted by the Iranian state and the IRGC in particular. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out what further steps are being taken to ensure that hostile states and their proxies cannot intimidate or target British Jewish communal institutions or other organisations in Britain. This is not just some distant foreign policy concern; as we know, we have to live with it every day. Iran has demonstrated its willingness to project threats well beyond its own borders. It also views Jewish communities through the prism of the conflict with Israel, which inevitably creates further concerns for Jewish people here in Britain.

Before I come to my point about universities, we have to confront the antisemitism that presents itself as anti-Zionism. Criticism of the Israeli Government is, of course, not inherently antisemitic—of course it is not—but denying Jewish people alone the right to national self-determination, or treating British Jews as responsible for the actions of Israel, is obviously antisemitic. It is anti-Zionist antisemitism and it needs to be called out.

[Gareth Snell]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on making a wonderful speech. He will know, because he is from Leeds, that one of the people spending most of their time propagating that sort of virulent antisemitism is the deputy leader of the Green party in Leeds, who once posted a list of British people—some Jewish—saying “bought and sold by Israel”, purely because of their politics.

[Mark Sewards]

I could not agree more. That is exactly the sort of behaviour that we have to call out, and it is exactly the sort of behaviour that the Green party is going to have to confront at some point if the party does not want to become infested with the kinds of people we had to deal with in the Labour party between 2015 and 2020.

It is important to recognise that the threats facing Jewish people do not exist in neat and separate categories. As we know, online abuse is spilling into the real world. Extremist rhetoric can create an atmosphere in which intimidation becomes normalised, and hostile states will seek to exploit those divisions.

The Government’s Protecting What Matters strategy, which was announced back in March, contains important commitments on tackling antisemitism and extremism much more broadly, and obviously I welcome that direction of travel. We now have a new Government and new Ministers in place; it is a test of delivery. I would be grateful if the Minister could provide greater clarity on the timetable for implementing the Protecting What Matters strategy, as there are lots of measures within it, and say how success will be measured.

Finally, let me return to the issue I mentioned at the beginning of my speech: antisemitism on university campuses. That is where I first started to become interested in the issue of Israel and Palestine, and the Jewish community in this country.

[Jim Shannon]

I met a Jewish student from Queen’s University Belfast at a synagogue a year and a half ago. She informed me that Jewish students there are under particular pressure. When it comes to universities across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, there is nowhere that the enemies of Jewish people are not present. Jewish students at Queen’s University Belfast have had to retreat into a small shell just to get away from the hatred and bile of those who hate them. That is an example of universities going the wrong way.

[Mark Sewards]

I could not agree more. Unfortunately, I am about to share some statistics that underline that problem even further.

I secured a debate on antisemitism on university campuses in this Chamber back in June, and I shared findings from the Union of Jewish Students’ “Time for Change” report, which underlines the seriousness of the issue. One in five students—20%—would be reluctant to, or would never, share a house with a Jewish student. One in four students—this is from all students—did not care very much, or at all, if Jewish people were forced to hide their identity. The figures shocked me then and still shock me now. What is happening on our campuses is sickening.

This is about so much more than individual incidents. It tells us something about the environment in which Jewish people are having to live their lives in all spheres, including university campuses. Jewish identity should not be something that any student has to explain or justify, and neither should Jewish students be treated as representatives of the Israeli Government simply because they are Jewish. The UJS has put forward practical recommendations in its report, which I urge the Government to consider seriously: they must be implemented. I would be grateful if the Minister set out how the Government might implement those measures, or how they are working across Departments and with universities, the police and Jewish community organisations to ensure a genuinely co-ordinated approach to ensuring that Jewish students are safe on campus.

Whether it is a Jewish student on a university campus, a family at a synagogue or a Jewish organisation facing threats from abroad, the principle is the same: British Jews should not have to organise their lives around antisemitism. The British Jewish community is an integral part of our society and national story. They belong here—they always have and always will—and we will always speak up for them.