Oral Answers to Questions

Sajid Javid Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The thoughts of everyone in the House will of course be with the families affected by what is happening in Israel and in Gaza, and I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance: we are doing everything in our power to ensure the safety of British nationals who are caught up in all this. That includes my calls with leaders across the region, particularly the conversations about opening the Rafah border crossing—which is why I made talking to President Sisi a priority last week—and we continue to engage in dialogue with both the Israelis and the Egyptians about the crossing.

[Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

Q4. I am proud to live in the most successful multi-racial democracy in the world, but it saddens me, and I think it shames the whole House, that British Jews have been subjected to such vile abuse and hatred in recent days. Antisemitism and all hate crimes fly in the face of British values, and we should not allow events abroad, no matter how horrific they are, to be used to sow seeds of division in our own country. While I welcome all the actions that my right hon. Friend is taking to fight hate crime and to bring people together, may I ask him to consider urgently an immediate and specific policy of revoking the visas of any foreign national who commits an act of antisemitism or any other hate crime?

[The Prime Minister]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend, who has himself done so much over the years to fight antisemitism. The increase in the number of such incidents that we have seen over the past week is utterly sickening, and this Government will do whatever it takes to keep our Jewish community safe. We have provided an additional £3 million to support the Community Security Trust, we are working with the police to ensure that hate crime and the glorification of terror are met by the full force of the law, and under our existing immigration rules we have the power to cancel a person’s presence in the UK if it is not conducive to the public good. We will not tolerate this hatred—not in this country, not in this century.