Water Supply Disruption

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I would be happy to hear a bit more detail from the hon. Gentleman on his local situation. I know that Severn Trent has been working throughout the night over the past few days to fix the issues. Part of the review will look into that, and I have already outlined how we want to do more to help our vulnerable customers.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Over the past four days, thousands of Balham and Tooting residents have been without water. The response from the local community in coming together has been superb, and I have been communicating with more than 1,000 residents each night on Twitter. Not every resident is on social media such as Twitter or Facebook, however, so does the Minister agree that a drastic rethink is needed of how Thames Water communicates in a time of crisis?

[Dr Coffey]

Social media can be a useful way to communicate, but I recognise that it is not the only way. Part of Ofwat’s review will look at communications, and that might be a role for Ofwat or other media sources, such as broadcast. We recently introduced the 105 number for electricity disruptions, and I have asked officials and Water UK whether we could perhaps do the same for water disruptions so that reporting leaks or getting help are less complicated. We need to make sure that help comes more quickly than perhaps the hon. Lady’s residents have experienced in the last few days.

EU Referendum: Energy and Environment

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for graciously allowing me to make my maiden speech in this really important debate.

I am deeply honoured to be standing in this Chamber as the new Member of Parliament for Tooting. When I think about this Chamber’s long and proud history, and about the women and men who have sat here before me, and all they have achieved, I feel humbled. They include Clement Attlee, Nye Bevan and, very recently, Jo Cox, to name but a few. I am also reminded of the vast responsibilities that we in this Chamber are entrusted with over the coming years and the magnitude of what we must achieve for our country. I would like to talk a little about that task and about the mindset with which we should approach it.

First, however, I would like to talk about where I come from—Tooting. It is hard for me to adequately express my gratitude to the people of Tooting for putting their trust in me. During my campaign, I said I would be a passionate, energetic and tireless representative for absolutely everyone in my constituency, and it is with that promise that I intend to serve.

Just two months ago, I was working day and night on our NHS frontline in A&E as an emergency doctor. Now I find myself wandering the corridors of Westminster, grappling with vast piles of dry booklets and mistaking Members’ offices for lady Members’ rooms—it has happened.

It was a piece of good news that set me on the journey that brings me here today: the election of our new Mayor of London, my good friend Sadiq Khan, with the largest personal mandate in British political history. From the first time I met Sadiq, it was clear that he was destined for greatness. When I became a councillor, he took the time to offer me support and guidance, as he remembered well what it was like for someone to suddenly find themselves holding the responsibilities of elected office. Sadiq spent 11 years working tirelessly for the people of Tooting. His commitment to equality, justice and inclusivity is inspirational. Whether he is celebrating International Women’s Day year after year, breaking bread with every religious community, or talking to children about how they can achieve no matter what their background, Sadiq’s interactions are always warm and welcoming. He truly believes in the power of people and communities, as he has shown throughout his time representing Tooting—and now the great city of London. He has made improving the environment a top priority in City Hall, and has already started tackling the important issue of air quality in London. This debate gives us an opportunity again to see what a difference we can make in the House when we get legislation right—legislation like the Clean Air Act 1956, which was passed 60 years ago following the London smogs of the 1950s.

I will endeavour to build upon Sadiq’s fine legacy, standing tall for all of Tooting. Sadiq’s shoes are big to fill, but then I have the benefit of much higher heels to help! We share a lot in our histories and our characters: our surname; a love of football; and a keen interest in boxing. Perhaps most importantly, Sadiq and I are children of Tooting who are now choosing to raise our families in the very streets where we grew up. We have one important difference, though: my dad was not a bus driver—[Laughter.] However, my mum did work in the local petrol station, so—who knows?—perhaps Sadiq’s father filled up his bus there.

As a Tooting girl through and through, I never like it when people say, “Tooting is becoming a fantastic place to live.” Anyone who has lived there for as long as I have knows that it has always been great, with the wonderful green open spaces of Tooting and Wandsworth commons, the iconic Tooting market, and the lido, which has been open for residents of Tooting to swim outdoors for 110 years. There has always been a rich tapestry of communities living harmoniously alongside one another. That unity should be celebrated, and I will defend it with every fibre of my being. That unity is woven into me—it is an essential part of who I am. When people ask me where I am from, I say: “I’m half Polish, half Pakistani; raised in England; married a Welshman; and I am 100% Tooting.”

There is a serious point in this, though: what binds us together. In Tooting and across the country, it is a sense of common purpose. The selflessness that drives community groups and charities binds us together. Tooting’s many local businesses, traditional and modern, not only fuel our thriving economy, but bind us together. St George’s hospital and our NHS, where everyone is treated with equal concern, based not on their race or religion but on their need, bind us together. In these fragile times, we should never forget that these charities, businesses and proud national institutions are important not only because they provide us a service or grow our economy, but because they bind us together as local residents, as citizens, and as human beings, too.

So why am I here now? Well, life was not easy growing up, but I always had the bedrock that was the love and support of my mum, Maria, even in the face of adversity. She was on her own, a single mum, but like a small army, showering my brother and me with praise and providing a palpable sense of possibility. She gave me hope. She showed my brother and me that even people from our background can achieve anything with hard work and determination. She instilled in me a deep-rooted determination to help others who have seen hardship and who fight for social justice. But I am also here because of Labour. My dream of becoming a doctor became a reality not only through my own hard work and support from my family, but because a Labour Government made it financially possible for me to access a world-class medical school at Cambridge. That is one reason why my ambition will always be for Labour to win power, not just to sit on these Opposition Benches.

I have served in an ice cream shop, I have fried eggs at a hotel, and I have aided patients, but my proudest job is being a wife and a mother. My heart bursts with the love I have for my husband, Tudor, and my two young daughters, Anaiyah, aged three, and Layla, aged just one. They are an immense source of strength to me, and will continue to be so over the coming years.

We must now all look to those coming years. They will be turbulent and challenging, and in them history will be made. This House will be responsible for shaping Britain’s future in the 21st century by guiding, overseeing, and providing accountability for the most important negotiations our country will have seen for decades. In that period, important and defining questions will be asked about who we are as a nation and who we want to be, about the legacy we will leave the next generation and the generations after that, and about the relationships we want to have with our friends and allies across the whole world.

Britain has always been an outward-looking country—one that does not shy away from the challenges that face us all. My experience as a doctor, and internationally all over the world, has taught me a lot about those challenges. I have lived and worked in squalid refugee camps, pulled dead bodies out of floodwater and watched children suffer as victims of war. I have witnessed aching, aching suffering. My commitment is to be a voice for those who have none, to find hope for those who have lost it, and to build strength for those who are weak, regardless of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. We all bleed, we all breathe, and we all feel pain. The sound of a parent losing a child is an international language. It is, tragically, a sound that is increasingly common in our unstable world.

We live in a time of insecurity and change without parallel in recent history. Europe is in flux. The middle east is in crisis. The axis of global power is shifting. The old certainties no longer seem so certain. It is all too easy to write off calls for international social justice as irrelevant when we ourselves live in such difficult and uncertain times— “We have so much to do to sort out our own country; why should we be thinking about responsibilities overseas?” That is to misunderstand what social justice is about. It is not simply a goal to be ranked and prioritised in relation to other goals; it is about how we think and who we are. It applies to everything we do, whether protecting our NHS in the UK, protecting workers’ rights in our negotiations with the EU, or working to seek peace in Syria and Yemen. Everywhere I look, there is work to do.

Here at home, I pledge to bring my years of experience in, and deep commitment to, our NHS in order to stand up for it. I could not be prouder of my NHS colleagues at St George’s hospital and elsewhere who work day and night, with little thanks for the work they do. Anyone who has worked in the NHS—indeed, anyone who has worked in any of our vital emergency services—knows well the feeling of leaving behind the comfort of home and family, day after day, night after night, selflessly to work gruelling hours in difficult circumstances, and serving the communities we love without complaint. I will work to protect them from the attacks they are under. Our NHS staff see work as a vocation, not as a job. This is why they have been so damaged by the recent mishandling of the junior doctors contract, and it is why nurses are so distraught when they see their bursaries axed. It is morally reprehensible that student nurses are forced to seek food banks, or that women in medicine are penalised for having children.

I have already asked two questions in my short time in this House, and I am afraid I shall not stop asking questions until I get satisfactory answers. In these times, who knows how long I may be sitting here? What I do know, and what I can tell Members, is that I am going to make every single minute, every single day, count for the people of Tooting, and of Great Britain and the United Kingdom.