Black History Month

Siân Berry Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

I am grateful to be called to speak in this debate. Like others, I thank the Minister for her commitment to further action on redress for the Windrush scandal. I also commend the Commonwealth nations, which are making sure that there is a conversation internationally about redress and action on reparations for the transatlantic trade in trafficked and enslaved Africans. I applaud the hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) for her powerful arguments on that point earlier.

I will take the opportunity to talk a little about Brighton today, particularly the Brighton & Hove Black History group. It was formally launched in 2002 and is now a thriving team of local volunteers from very diverse cultural backgrounds. It owes its existence to the passion and dedication of Bert Williams MBE, who has spent so much of his retired life researching and presenting the multicultural history of our city. The Brighton & Hove Black History website is an amazing resource for finding out about the impact that black residents have had on the city throughout its whole history, and it is full of beautifully presented photographs. Everyone should visit it.

Today, there is a lot to celebrate about Brighton and how it looks at its history, including its black history. Afrori Books in North Road has been running since 2021 and was founded by Carolynn Bain as a safe space for black people and their allies. Carolynn was inspired to open the shops because

“I was tired of going to bookstores and having to search for ages to find the tiny BAME section that had been allocated to Black authors. Surely, they deserved more than that?”.

Afrori delivers anti-racism training to adults. It runs anti-racist clubs in schools across Sussex. It has hair workshops, author events, women of colour yoga sessions, writers’ workshops, music events, a book festival and so much more.

In Brighton we are also very lucky to have the brilliant Black & Minority Ethnic Community Partnership centre, a sustainable resource centre that champions the black minority ethnic community in Brighton and Hove, owns its own building—such a big thing for groups like that —and supports BME communities and their families in so many ways. I have met young refugees there, and long-retired Caribbean nurses, all playing their part in our brilliant community.

I cannot omit to mention some of our incredible local artists. We have AFLO. the poet, an amazing spoken-word artist who uses poetry as a vehicle to address racism and mental health issues. We have Fox Fisher, an incredible non-binary artist, author, film-maker and educator who is cherished in our LGBTQ community. We have Jordan Stephens and Harley Alexander-Sule, better known as Rizzle Kicks, and QM Records, a Brighton-based label and events company founded and run by Ned and Nicholson from the well-known local band Normanton Street. I could go on, because those are only a few of the amazing, creative people who are leading the way in Brighton.

Now in its third year, led by its directors Carolynn Bain of Afrori Books, Althea Wolfe and John Mayford, Brighton book festival is a grassroots festival with equity at its heart. The directors’ aim was to create another space in Brighton where writers from under-represented backgrounds would be the main focus, and where diverse audiences could see themselves reflected.

In August, for reasons that should not have been required, I became just one of thousands of people who joined in powerful collective action in response to far-right riots and threatened racist action against members of our community. As always, Brighton and Hove came together to say loud and clear that those who spread hatred, fear, fascism and racism have no place in our city. As has happened earlier in our history, thousands of Brightonians defended the values for which our city is well known. This is an important part of building a better history for our future, and confronting and defeating the racism in our communities.

Brighton faces challenges, as all places do—we have heard Members say that powerfully. We have seen the rise in hate crimes nationally, with hundreds of racist hate incidents and crimes every year. The safety of black people in Sussex is not helped by the fact that, according to the most recent statistics, they are more than eight times as likely to be stopped and searched by police as white people. According to Home Office data on rates of stop and search by race found that the equivalent of nearly 30 black people in every 1,000 living in our area were stopped in a 12-month period. That is not proportionate, and it does not help to keep people safe.

Strip-searching children is also one of the most racialised tactics used by the police, who are six times more likely to strip-search black children, and I am glad that the Children’s Commissioner for England has taken up this countrywide children’s rights issue. Every police service needs to take action to prevent this traumatic practice from causing further harm. I recently met representatives of StopWatch, which does fantastic work on strip-searching, as well as on institutionalised racism in the justice system more broadly. The Runnymede Trust has conducted excellent analysis, adopting an evidence-based approach to tackling the causes of the racist riots during the summer. We must continue to pay attention, and do much more to ensure that all the ways in which overt and systemic racism affects black people in our city and our country are brought into the open and confronted honestly.

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

Let me first thank all Members for their contributions to the debate. This week, when asked about reparations for slavery, the Prime Minister replied that he was facing forward. Does the hon. Member agree that in order to face forward we must know our past, and does she think that it should become compulsory in our education system to learn about race, empire, colonialism and slavery?

[Siân Berry]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member about education. As for his point about reparations, the echoes of this injustice will not simply fade away; we need to talk about it and take action.

Let me end by talking about one more injustice. Jay Abatan was murdered in Brighton outside a nightclub in January 1999. No one has ever been convicted for his killing, and his brother Michael, who was there on the night Jay was attacked, has spent 25 years campaigning for justice. I have met him several times over the past year at community events, and at a vigil on the anniversary of Jay’s death. Sussex police have apologised to the family for how the case was handled, but I know that Members supported my predecessor’s early-day motion expressing concern about the fact that Jay’s murderers have still not been brought to justice. I hope I can rely on the same support from Members here for any action that I take on the Abatans’ behalf, for the echoes of this injustice, too, will never fade until we take such action.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I now call a fellow Brummie, Paulette Hamilton.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase 2 Report

Siân Berry Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that very real issue. One of the things we need to do is look at what further powers may be necessary. We cannot suggest for a minute that the existing legislation, guidance and policy is sufficient. We need more powers, and we will look at that and bring proposals back to the House. There will be a general debate, of course, because I know that many Members will want to discuss particular issues facing constituents who are fearful of the conditions in which they live.

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his very serious and compassionate statement. The events of June 2017 feel like yesterday. Although I cannot imagine how the people directly affected are feeling right now, we must act in every way we can, and we must act together as much as possible.

However, I note that the inquiry’s report does not make new proposals on transparency and accountability for social housing tenants and leaseholders, particularly on access to fire risk assessments and related information, which are still very hard for residents to access—I saw that for myself in London, and I am still seeing it in Brighton. The previous Government did not act on the calls for housing associations to be subject to freedom of information requirements, despite them including calls made by the Information Commissioner as long ago as August 2017. Will the Prime Minister act now to fix these gaps in resident empowerment and access to information? That would be very simple, but it is not covered by today’s report.

[The Prime Minister]

We will obviously look at all the recommendations and report back to the House, but we need to look at the wider issues too. Access to risk assessments is an important issue that we are considering. There should not be gaps. One of the benefits of a general debate is that it will be an opportunity to raise these and further points, which we will take away and consider.

Debate on the Address

Siân Berry Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me. I congratulate the hon. Members for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter), for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle), for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) and for Southport (Patrick Hurley) on making excellent maiden speeches today.

I am so honoured to be here in this historic Chamber today as part of a brand-new group of Green colleagues, who I must now call my honourable Friends. We are very pleased today to hear a wide range of new Bills being proposed. We welcome some measures. Some we will seek to improve and some we will seek to change or add to.

Listening to people in my constituency during the election, it was hard not to be affected by the strength of public feeling and distress about the climate emergency and the degradation of our natural environment, and by the huge desire to defend social justice and public services. This Parliament must seek to deliver for them.

This is my maiden speech; I stand here thanks to the votes and values of the fantastic people of Brighton Pavilion. They have put their trust in me and the Green party, and for that I extend my heartfelt thanks and appreciation. Brighton has always been a truly special place, from its origins as a fishing village and Roman villa complex, to its Regency and railway booms, with its huge sense of spirit and a warm welcome to every visitor to our famous beach.

But Brighton has always been so much more than a seaside resort. The richness and variety of our culture and entertainment is legendary. From Victorian innovation, through the 1960s of my parents and my own decade of youth in the far away 1990s, to the present day, our music, theatre, comedy and literary traditions have always blended with cutting-edge, creative and exciting counter- culture movements to reflect and enrich the modern world. Our cultural richness has survived, strived, struggled and then thrived through many turbulent times, not least the recent pandemic, and I am confident it will continue to do so for many centuries to come.

I am proud that the latest census confirms that nowadays my city is home to one of the UK’s largest populations of LGBT+ people, and that we host the biggest and best Pride celebrations, including Europe’s largest Trans Pride, which will be this weekend. Brighton and Hove is a welcoming city in so many ways, and I am very proud we are a city of sanctuary, committed to a culture of hospitality and welcome for those seeking refuge from war and persecution.

Brighton Pavilion has a history of dedicated, long-serving MPs. From its first election as a single-member constituency in 1950, it was represented until 1969 by Sir William Burke Teeling, an Irish writer and self-described “amateur tramp”, who walked from London to Newcastle to explore how councils were tackling unemployment. Our MP was then Julian Amery for 23 years and Derek Spencer for five years, before David Lepper served in this House as a highly-respected and hardworking MP for 13 years. And, of course, I have one of the easiest and most pleasurable jobs among new MPs in paying tribute to my immediate predecessor.

Brighton is also a special place because it has been at the heart of the green movement in England and Wales, and that continued when our own, beloved Caroline Lucas won the seat for the Green party in 2010. Caroline held the seat through three further elections, leaving a 14-year legacy that I look up to as a shining mountain to climb, as I take my very first steps here today. As well as being an excellent constituency MP, of the many ways in which Caroline influenced policy, I was most charmed by her success in working with the nature writer Mary Colwell to win a new GCSE in natural history. Helping to inspire and train up a generation of new David Attenboroughs is a real national service.

Most impressive has been Caroline’s steadfast and long-standing opposition to threats to the public’s right to protest. Caroline lived that principle and through it played a key role in ending fracking in the UK. I know that all of us sitting here today are humbly aiming to live up to the high standards, values and work ethic that she represented, and to serve here with the same energy and enthusiasm.

It is those principles that will guide my work as an MP, as well as some of my own values and enthusiasms. People who know my work in other places will be aware that listening to and supporting young people is something I feel very strongly about. With huge pleasure, I commend to the House the incredible work of Brighton and Hove Citizens, which has just won a huge campaigning victory with a beautiful example of raising up and empowering young people and their voices to make change happen. With schools across Brighton and Hove working with colleges, religious groups, workers, universities and the charity sector, Brighton and Hove Citizens has this year won a big new commitment from the council. After a long and engaging campaign, sixth formers Fi Abou-Chanad and Tally Wilcox presented a 2,000 signature-strong petition and won a pledge for hundreds of young people in Brighton schools to benefit from investment in mental health support and counselling.

That is just one group of young people among many inspiring organisations across our country that I cannot wait to hear more about in this job. They include Green New Deal Rising, the UK Youth Climate Coalition, YoungMinds, People & Planet, the National Society of Apprentices, the National Union of Students and many more. Young people should have a louder voice wherever decisions are being made, not just when they organise. I am therefore disappointed to see no specific Bill in today’s list removing barriers to voting for young people, including voter ID and age limits for elections to this House and English local councils that do not apply in Wales and Scotland.

Our 16 and 17-year-olds, and our young people, need a real voice and need those measures in this Parliament. I hope that, when we debate the Bills put forward in today’s King’s Speech, the voices of young people are sought out and listened to, and that many changes and additions are made where they are needed most, including removing the two-child benefit cap.

I am grateful for the patience of hon. Members in listening to me. I greatly look forward to seeing the impact of the young voices I plan to raise up in this Chamber being granted the same attention and respect.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Edward Leigh)]

I call Mr Luke Charters to make his maiden speech.