Alex Sobel MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for recognising the urgent need for the delivery of new homes and critical infrastructure, and I welcome the plan for 1.5 million new safe and decent homes by the end of this Parliament. My constituency is in desperate need of affordable homes to rent, and of one day people being able to own their own home. Planning should be a powerful lever to tackle nature loss and climate change, as well as meeting housing and low-carbon infrastructure needs. For the Government to meet their nature and climate targets, the planning system needs to integrate nature recovery alongside development. A new nature and climate duty on all planning authorities should require planning policy decisions to contribute to meeting our climate and nature targets. We cannot let developers avoid responsibility for biodiversity net gain simply by paying into the nature restoration fund, banking money that may never be spent on nature. We cannot let them see it as just the cost of doing business. The fund offers no guarantee that the populations of protected species will be replaced. According to an analysis by NatureSpace, protected species have limited impact on development. More importantly, existing schemes, such as district licensing, already accelerate development by shaving months from planning applications. We need to promote existing schemes better. We should acknowledge that the nature restoration fund and environment delivery plans will take years to set up. It is within the Bill’s scope to give the Forestry Commission a nature duty. With a nature remit, the Forestry Commission could give greater weight to habitat recovery in the woodlands it manages. The Bill offers a prime legislative opportunity to introduce promised reforms to national parks and landscapes. It should introduce a nature recovery purpose for protected landscapes and institute the promised governance reforms. In my constituency in Leeds, we are doing our fair share. Leeds city centre is planned to grow by 50,000 homes in the next decade. However, we are at crisis point with 27,000 on the council and housing association waiting lists, and 7,000 in the highest priority banding. They are now waiting for three years to get a home. As it stands, funding for local authorities is not fluid enough and settlements are not long enough. Councils need to be self-sufficient if rents are to cover maintenance and replenishment of stock. A big part of the solution is to re-implement grant funding targeted at property additionality, with a long-term approach to funding to unlock additional opportunities. Housing investment should be reclassified as infrastructure to support not only the efficient and effective use of funding, but in recognition of a decent home being the foundation of lives and productivity for an individual and the wider economy. I am asking us to marry the understanding that, when listening to community and ecological experts, environmental law need not be a blocker of development, but an enabler of nature restoration, sustainable development and everyone’s access to green space, with the understanding that housing and social housing are infrastructure for our local authorities to build and structure our communities for the future. Will the Minister meet me to discuss that, as he kindly did about the Renters (Reform) Bill?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Sustainable Farming Incentive · Hansard source

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  The fruit and vegetable aid scheme is an important lifeline for our producers. Collaboration between producers has meant that we have had a huge increase in our tonnage of various fruit and vegetables. Given that the scheme finishes on 31 December 2025, what plans do we have to support further collaboration between fruit and vegetable producers in 2026 and beyond?

• 11 Mar 2025 · Employment Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and my 28-year membership of the GMB union. New clause 72, which stands in my name, would place a duty on employers to investigate whistleblowing concerns and establish internal channels for reporting and managing whistleblower disclosures. In recent years we have seen scandals rock the country in which whistleblowers raised the alarm at an early stage only for their warnings to be ignored and for disastrous consequences to follow. Scandals with thousands of victims, such as the Post Office Horizon case, the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy and the collapse of Carillion, involved whistleblowers raising the alarm only to face a wall of silence. We saw the very worst of that at Yorkshire cricket club in my constituency when Azeem Rafiq suffered years of racist harassment and abuse. Despite the number of players who admitted to racist remarks or actions, the club’s leadership refused to accept their mistakes and refused to release the full report, instead releasing an edited summary. Only when Azeem appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee did the full scale of institutional racism at the club become known. These failures have a tragic human cost, and they often place a significant strain on the taxpayer. According to the report “The Cost of Whistleblowing Failures”, the avoidable costs incurred owing to the failure to listen to whistleblowers in the Post Office Horizon, Carillion and Letby cases was £426 million. It is unacceptable for the taxpayer to have to bear the burden of failed systems and a failed legislative framework, which is why we need a new legal duty on employers to investigate whistleblowing. New clause 72 would ensure that employers must take “reasonable steps” to investigate any protected disclosure made to them. It would compel large employers to establish internal channels and appropriate procedures for reporting. By ensuring that disclosures are investigated, we can prevent scandals such as Horizon from occurring and ensure that harm in the workplace is dealt with early. The new clause is proudly pro-worker and pro-business, and would tackle one of the long-standing issues with our current whistleblowing legal framework for workers. The status quo provides only an after-the-event remedy for whistleblowers, and this new clause would ensure that there are channels for whistleblowers from the start.

• 10 Mar 2025 · Syria · Hansard source

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  We are obviously all aghast at the deaths and terrible violence against minority communities in the western coastal region of Syria, but in the past few weeks we have also seen attacks on Tishrin dam and neighbouring areas by Turkish forces, including the bombing of areas where there are civilians. What discussions has the Minister had with our Turkish NATO allies about ceasing the violence in northern Syria, considering in particular that the PKK over the border in Turkey has declared a ceasefire?

• 5 Mar 2025 · Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office · Hansard source

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  On alternatives, does my hon. Friend agree that it sometimes creates a false dichotomy to separate defence and ODA? In a human security approach, when there are crises such as conflict, famine or pandemics, we can utilise our forces to go in and deliver aid, as well as utilising traditional ODA.

• 4 Mar 2025 · Hong Kong Democracy Activists · Hansard source

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  I also spoke to Chloe Cheung this morning, and I want to reiterate what the shadow Home Secretary has said. I want to ask the Minister whether guidance can be given to police forces, not only to give reassurance to Hongkongers who have a bounty on them or threats made against them, but to carry out target hardening and security work to ensure that Hongkongers are safe in their own homes in the UK and not under threat of abduction. It is a real, serious and live threat, and we need to do more than just tell people to call 999.

• 3 Mar 2025 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  First, I thank the Prime Minister for the leadership he has shown in pulling together all our allies yesterday in London and for acknowledging the bravery and sacrifice of the people of Ukraine. I was in Ukraine last week. I met the mayor of Kharkiv, a frontline city of 2 million people undergoing daily attacks and blackouts from Russian forces. He told me that a power project funded by the United States Agency for International Development had been cancelled at short notice. It would have generated 11.2 MW, shoring up their energy pipeline. Where others have stepped back, will we step forward and support such projects, using either Russian assets or our own aid budget?

• 12 Feb 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I visited Estonia last year and spoke to our ambassador there. We are now on our third agreement between the UK and Estonia on Government e-services and digital collaboration. That was underutilised by the previous UK Government. It would be great to see the Minister and his colleagues step up the work with Estonia and bring that sort of work here, given that those agreements are in place.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Data (Use and Access) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I say gently to my hon. Friend that the difference is that then people understood from looking at the book whether it was printed or scribed, whereas with AI-generated works it is sometimes hard to distinguish, which is why we need labelling and additional consumer protections in this space.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for that reassurance. As the Bill progresses to Committee, it would be helpful if those items were listed among the relevant articles to give some solace to the NGOs, which have pointed out their concern to me. That would be an easy thing to add to the list already in the Bill. To conclude, I welcome this significant step forward for children’s rights. I look forward to further strides during the Bill’s passage to find ways of bringing unaccompanied children and family reunion into the migration system once again.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the Home Secretary and the Minister for Border Security and Asylum for introducing the Bill, which undoes some of the harmful elements of the asylum system, including the measures introduced in the Illegal Migration Act and the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act. In particular, I welcome the measures to repeal child detention powers and Home Office accommodation powers over unaccompanied children. From the Kindertransport to the many children we have welcomed into our homes from Ukraine, the Great British public really care about the welfare of children coming from war zones and fleeing persecution. We must be diligent to ensure that the Bill does not criminalise the wellbeing of children or lead to cruel measures against children fleeing persecution in their own countries. It is the people smugglers who are putting lives in danger, yet they are not the people who are trying to migrate here. Those migrating here are escaping persecution, and we must be mindful of that when we seek international and EU powers to criminalise those who are actually trafficking people. Children are too often caught up in politics that leaves them cruelly treated, such as in 2023 when the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), as Immigration Minister, ordered that murals of Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters designed to welcome child asylum seekers to a reception centre in Dover be painted over because they sent “too welcoming” a message. These are children fleeing war and persecution. I want to draw the Minister’s attention to my concern about the new law enforcement elements of the Bill. The changes include new criminal offences of supplying or handling almost any item to be used in connection with illegal immigration, and of collecting information to be used for arranging an unauthorised journey to the UK. I will give an example. Some non-governmental organisations in border zones provide a play service to create space for refugee and asylum-seeking children to process trauma, develop key skills and make positive memories in hostile environments. That can be a lifeline for children at risk across continents. It helps mitigate some of the traumatic effects they experience and hopes to lessen the impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder. If the new law enforcement powers criminalising the supply or handling of almost any item to be used in connection with illegal immigration do not include exemptions for toys or other items used for play, are we penalising children’s ability to play or enjoy a toy that brings them solace in the chaos of their fleeing journey? We must ensure that children and aid workers are not penalised under the Bill for supplying toys or items that bring solace to children.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Biomass Generation · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for his statement. I have met women from the southern United States and British Columbia who live next door to primary forests that have been cut down by Drax so that wood pellets can be burned in Yorkshire. As we know from the BBC’s “Panorama” and Ofgem, Drax has utilised primary and old-growth forests. Drax cannot be trusted to ensure that the sustainability requirements that the Minister has put forward will be met. What powers and audit trail will the new independent sustainability adviser utilise to ensure that Drax is burning 100% sustainable wood and not ruining the lives of people in North America by using primary forests?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Gambling Harms · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making a wonderful contribution. GamCare has found that there has been exponential growth in online gambling. More than half its callers struggle with online gambling and 60% said online slots were the main problem. We just heard about many people struggling with debt and the affordability of gambling. Does my hon. Friend think that, with the amount of data online gambling companies have, we should pursue affordability checks, so that nobody can gamble more than they can afford?

• 5 Feb 2025 · Overseas Territories: Tax Transparency · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that without those actions there is a real danger that significant sums of Russian assets and money, which could be sanctioned and used to reconstruct Ukraine, will be left in the hands of the supporters and perpetrators of the war in Ukraine?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  I will be brief, because we have had a long and thorough debate. I thank everyone who took part in it, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal), who cut a lonely figure in opposing a change to the voting system. I thank him for his bravery in the face of such opposition; it is a shame that we could not have had more Members speak against changing the voting system, as so many spoke in favour. I thank the Minister for committing to work with the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections, which I chair, and I will follow up on that. Let me make just one substantive point, because I feel that there may be a lack of understanding about something. I am well aware that we had a referendum on the alternative vote system in 2011. The alternative vote system, which is used to elect the Australian Parliament, is a preferential system, not a proportional system, so we have had a referendum on preferential representation but we have never had a referendum on proportional representation. I do not see why we need to wait a generation, as has been suggested. I certainly do not think that we need to have another referendum on a preferential system, but we need to consider, as I laid out in the debate, a commission to look at the failures in our electoral system, and whether we should move to a more proportional system. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered proportional representation for general elections.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  I am coming to that exact point shortly, and I thank my hon. Friend for raising it. The 2024 general election was a stark illustration of the problems with our voting system, and it is important to understand that it was not a one-off. These problems have been getting worse for decades, and that is set to continue if we keep the system as it is. We have gone from 97% of people voting for Labour or the Conservative party in the 1950s, to just 58% doing so in 2024—a record low. In the first-past-the-post system, that produces hugely volatile and erratic results—electoral chaos theory, as Professor Rob Ford has called it. Back in the mid-20th century, parties needed close to 50% of the vote to win a majority of seats, but that threshold has been falling to new lows for decades— 39% in 1974, 35% in 2005 and, as I said, one third last year. There is every reason to think that this trend will continue. That a party, even an extreme one, can win a huge majority with less than a third of the vote is not just senseless but dangerous. If we do not address this now, I fear that election results will become even less representative. Governments and MPs will be elected with lower support than ever, and there will be increasingly chaotic and random results. That will drive trust and engagement still lower. That is unsustainable, and I think the Government know it. Labour’s official policy on first past the post is set out in the final national policy forum document that the party produced in the previous Parliament, which set the policy platform for our manifesto. It stated: “The flaws in the current voting system are contributing to the distrust and alienation we see in politics.” I agree, as do almost all the parties on the Opposition Benches. We know that the public agrees—two thirds want the flaws in the voting system to be addressed before the next general election, according to Survation. The long-running British attitudes survey found record majority support for changing to PR, with those who trust politics least the most likely to support change. Are they not the people we need to engage? Just this month, YouGov found that support for PR hit an all-time high, with support for first past the post at an all-time low. Every single MP in Great Britain has been contacted by constituents in recent days asking them to support PR in this debate. I have received hundreds of emails, even though my name is on the debate. The Prime Minister has made it clear that restoring trust in politics is a key priority, calling the fight for trust “the battle that defines our age”. If the Government are to win the battle, they must address our flawed voting system—one they know is driving distrust and alienation in politics, which means that millions of people’s votes do not count, and which most people do not want to continue with. That is why I urge the Government to take this first step by establishing a national commission for electoral reform, as recommended by the all-party parliamentary group for fair elections, which I chair. The Government have said that there is no consensus on a new system, but that is exactly why there is a great opportunity to set up a process that begins to build consensus: a national commission to examine the issues that first past the post is causing, and to recommend a fair and democratic alternative.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. The turnout and engagement of voters in general elections should be a matter of concern for everybody in this place and in the country at large. The truth is that first past the post is failing on its own terms. It is becoming less and less representative and producing more and more random results; there are more outliers and more MPs are elected on less than 30% of their constituents who voted. In reality, some MPs represent constituencies in which perhaps 85% of those they represent did not vote for them. These are the lowest figures since the beginning of universal suffrage. The numbers do not lie, and they can no longer be ignored. The public know it, our parties know it and we in this place know it. These growing failures of representative democracy—the widespread feeling that ordinary people do not have a fair say over who speaks for them or how they are governed—are feeding the record low levels of trust in politics and faith in democracy, and that should worry all of us. The Government have a responsibility to face up to those problems and address them before the next general election, starting with the launch of a national commission for electoral reform. The 1997 Government were brave enough to undertake this work at a time when confidence in the electoral and political systems was much higher and those systems were less stressed than they are now. Let me begin by looking at last year’s general election. Most people got neither the party they voted for into government nor the candidate they voted for as their local MP. Labour won a historic majority, and like other Labour MPs whose seats are perceived as safe in the living memory of all party members and probably all parties, I travelled around the country to work in many marginal constituencies where we needed to get votes to win. However, this speaks to the failure not to the success of our system. The 2024 general election was a culmination of years of falling vote share for the winning party, and we—the Labour party—won on just one third of the national vote. Of course I always work extremely hard for my party to be in government, and I am delighted that almost 10 million people voted for us. However, 19 million people voted for other parties, and we must admit that they are the vast majority of those who took part in the election. They did not get to influence the kind of Government the country has, and it can no longer be acceptable to have a winner-takes-all culture on the basis of a third of the country’s vote. That erodes our democracy. One of the arguments of supporters of first-past-the-post elections is that people are not really voting for a Government, but just for a local MP. Let us take this at face value. Only four out of 10 voters got the local MP they voted for at the last election, and six out of 10 did not get the MP they voted for. We have a system that ignores those six out of 10 people. We are now in an unprecedented situation where 554 MPs—85% of us—were elected by less than 50% of the voters who turned out to vote. I am one of the lucky few who received over 50% of the vote, so this debate and the changes I am proposing are not of personal benefit to me. Some 266 MPs—41%—were elected with less than 40% of the vote. A few colleagues— I am not sure any are in the Chamber—were even elected with less than 30% of the vote. When most people’s representatives in Parliament do not reflect how they voted, it feeds the all-too-pervasive sense that Westminster is some distant, unresponsive institution in which voters have no real voice. Like all first-past-the-post elections, 2024 was one in which some votes and areas mattered more than others. A system that forces parties to prioritise small groups of votes in a handful of marginal seats also forces them to neglect large parts of the country—where to go, who to speak to both directly and through the media, and the policies put forward. People in non-battleground seats, which make up the majority of seats at every first-past-the-post election, never have the resources spent on them that are spent on marginal seats. Candidates and activists are directed away from those perceived safe seats to marginals, meaning less contact in those seats. That is usually reflected in the turnout of safe seats compared with marginal seats, as voters are generally well aware of the relative importance of their constituency. It is hugely corrosive to our trust in politics, and we end up with most people and communities up and down the country saying that they feel “invisible to politicians”, to use the words of the Brown Commission. People can tell when they are being ignored. They can also smell unfairness a mile away. First past the post means that people’s votes are not equal in value. Sometimes, I fear that we in this place are used to that gross unfairness in elections and have become numb to it. But for millions of people, their stake in national politics is the vote that they get to cast in a general election every few years. When they see that a party won 2 million votes and got four MPs, or a party won 4 million votes and got five MPs, it is clear to them that the system is not fair. It drives voters either into the margins or away from voting at all. If we in Westminster are content to say, “That’s just the way it is”, it is no wonder that hardly anyone trusts politics.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  I have just said that the first step would be for the Government to set up a national commission. This debate is the first step for the APPG to try to persuade the Government to set up that national commission. We are on a journey. Not everything the Government announced at the start of the Parliament is what they are still announcing. Change is possible. The commission could draw insights from the experience of devolved bodies and other democracies. It could allow citizens, as well as experts, to contribute to evaluating the options and finding a way forward that would command public trust and confidence. None of this need distract from Government’s core mission of delivering their manifesto priorities, but it would demonstrate beyond doubt that they are serious about giving a stronger voice to millions of people who feel increasingly excluded from British politics.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Proportional Representation: General Elections · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered proportional representation for general elections. Before I speak on the matter at hand, I note that today is the funeral of one of my party’s and our country’s greatest politicians, John Prescott. I send my thoughts to his family and friends. They include some who would otherwise have been with us today; equally, some of us here would have wished to be there. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time in the Chamber for this crucial debate, and the many colleagues from across the House, and from every nation and region in the UK, who co-sponsored or supported the application. It is right that the House should provide time to consider proportional representation for general elections to this place. Just last month, the House voted in favour of PR for the first time ever, by giving leave to bring in the ten-minute rule Bill on the subject moved by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney), who I see in her place. That historic vote was an indication of the strength and breadth of feeling among Members on both sides of the House that our first-past-the-post electoral system is not working. It is desperately in need of an upgrade, and we need seriously to consider the alternatives. The last time we did so was through the Jenkins commission in 1998, when elections produced results in which the numbers of seats more closely matched the numbers of votes than they do now. My hope for today, and it is one I know many others share, is that Members can explain why so many colleagues and so much of the public at large have reached the conclusion that it is time to think again about our electoral system. In doing so, I want to encourage the Government to be bold and to be honest about how unrepresentative British general elections have become.

• 24 Jan 2025 · Climate and Nature Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister, with whom I served on the Environmental Audit Committee when she was Chair. At that time we were very critical of the Environment Act 2021, and the lack of delivery on a deposit return scheme and a neonicotinoids ban. Both of those things the Minister has achieved this week. That is delivery in action. Targets are targets, but delivery and action are utmost, and the Government are undertaking that on nature.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Holocaust Memorial Day · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Professor Zygmunt Bauman died in January 2017. He was a great supporter of mine and always had placards outside his house when I stood for election, but unfortunately he never got to see me elected to this place. I want to record my thanks to the Baumans. This debate is about a better future for people from conflict and post-conflict zones, and for those who have suffered genocide. All the subsequent genocides recognised by the United Kingdom happened in my lifetime, including Cambodia, Rwanda and the regime of Slobodan Miloševic and the Serbs. Since I became a Member of Parliament, we have had the atrocious murder of the Yazidis by Daesh and, looking at Syria now, I am afraid that genocide is probably not yet concluded. We need to act on that today so that they can have a better future for tomorrow. I have met victims of Slobodan Miloševic’s regime in the Balkans—people exactly the same age as me, with similar backgrounds and experiences, who witnessed and experienced the most awful and traumatic events. I have seen some of the exhibits from the Miloševic regime’s genocidal actions, and many of them reminded me of what I saw in Auschwitz-Birkenau, including single shoes and items of clothing belonging to children who were disappeared and whose fate is unknown—they never found the bodies. Obviously, the genocide in the Balkans was different from the Holocaust, but we recognise it as genocide nevertheless. After the conflict, people in those countries are still suffering, and they still do not have stable countries. Bosnia is still experiencing tensions. The Minister for Housing and Planning, who is no longer in his place, made an excellent contribution on issues in the Balkans, and I hope we can have a further debate with the Minister for Europe, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), on the contemporary situation in the Balkans, and particularly Republika Srpska. I am planning to visit the Balkans again this year, and we all have that duty because the Balkans are very near, and those events happened in the political lifetime of some of those in charge of Serbia—some of them, including the President of Serbia, were involved in the regime of Slobodan Miloševic. The events are still very close. For the better future of people in the Balkans, these issues are not yet resolved. We need to work on them in this place, not in an historical or educational way but in a very real and political way. It is our duty as a country to support a better future for everyone who has suffered in conflict and post-conflict zones.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Holocaust Memorial Day · Hansard source

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  On Monday it will be 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I find this debate quite difficult, so please bear with me. I went with my own family, my father and my two sons, to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the summer of 2023. I know that many Members here have been to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and although it is a difficult place to visit, those who have not definitely should. I thank the Prime Minister for his recent visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. When you are there, you can imagine the industrial scale of murder that happened there. You see many skulls, shoes and clothes. You see the cabins where people had to live. You go through the killing stations where the Nazis murdered millions of people: Jews, the LGBT community, the Gypsy Roma community, trade unionists and others they decided had to be removed in their genocide—in our Holocaust. That really commits you to wanting to see the future education of generations on this subject. I have also been to the POLIN museum in Warsaw, which documents the history of Jews in Poland. It has a significant section on antisemitism in that country, which I will come to later in my speech. When you visit such places, you can better understand the rise of antisemitism and how things could get to that point. This year the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day is “For a better future”, which is uplifting. My own grandparents returned to Poland and Lithuania after the Holocaust. Following the Yalta agreement, they were very different countries from what they were before the war. My grandparents hoped to rebuild their lives, as did the few members of my family who survived the camps and ghettos, but it was still very difficult after the war. When I visited Warsaw with my father, he took me to the tower blocks where he grew up and told me stories of how, as a child, he received antisemitic abuse and bullying from Polish children after the war—this was after everybody knew about the Holocaust and the camps. Unfortunately, that was the reality for Jewish people. The state authorities had antisemitic attitudes too, which in the end resulted in the mass emigration of 13,000 Jews—almost the entire remaining Jewish population of Poland—in 1968. That was just 23 years after the war, which was very much in recent memory for those people. All of this made attempts to rebuild lives in eastern Europe very difficult, not just in Poland but in other countries. My own parents emigrated from eastern Europe in the ’50s and ’60s, and in the end arrived in Leeds in the 1970s. Similarly, thousands of Jews came out of communist and post-communist countries, found homes and contributed economically, socially and culturally to their new countries. I want to tell a story about two of my former constituents—they are no longer with us—who were very close family friends. When I was growing up, I spent a lot of my time in their house, and they certainly contributed a lot to my own Holocaust education. Yanina Bauman was a Holocaust survivor, having escaped the Warsaw ghetto with her sister and mother. Like other Jews, they were hidden by amazing Polish families in the countryside. Yanina and her husband, Professor Zygmunt Bauman, came to Leeds in the 1970s, and he worked as a professor of sociology. He was one of the most decorated sociology professors in the world, and his books are world class and outstanding. His literature discussed the theoretical effect of the “Holocaust mentality”, and he came up with the theory of “liquid life” as part of post-modernity. I do not want to get into a sociology lecture, because the Chamber is not the place for that, but people who are interested in those subjects should certainly look up his work. Yanina, who survived the ghetto, wrote two books about her own life and history; one was about her life in Poland before the war, and one was about her experience during and immediately after the war. Those books are recognised as part of a very important canon of literature on the Holocaust. I am really proud that Yanina and Zygmunt both lived.

• 20 Jan 2025 · UK-Ukraine 100-year Partnership · Hansard source

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  I want once again to thank the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary and the Prime Minister for willing this partnership into life. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Ukraine, I fully support all nine pillars of the agreement, as I am sure all members of the all-party group do. Pillar 4 deals with the economy and trade, and there are many things we can do now to deepen and strengthen our trade relations with Ukraine, one of which involves joint ventures. What work will be done to remove insurance barriers and trade barriers, for instance, to give access to kindred or joint venture partnerships between UK and Ukrainian companies in all areas, including defence?

• 20 Jan 2025 · New Hospital Programme Review · Hansard source

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  Leeds general infirmary received outline planning permission in 2020. Two Conservative Prime Ministers came to Leeds and promised that we would get our new hospital, despite knowing that the funding was not there in the Treasury. I thank my right hon. Friend for visiting the LGI. Now that we know we are in wave 2, will he meet me and the chief executive to talk about one of the largest maintenance backlogs in the NHS, how we are going to cope in the intervening period, and how we are going to move forward and hit wave 2 running to get our hospital built before we need to close down our children’s services, which are at risk?

• 14 Jan 2025 · Renters’ Rights Bill · Hansard source

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  I express my gratitude to the Minister and the Secretary of State for tabling amendments on regulating the student lettings season, and on rent in advance. Both are issues that I have been campaigning on. Over a year ago, I went to Leeds University Union’s cost of living event, where those issues and others were brought home to me starkly. They were also brought home to me by the National Union of Students’ cost of living inquiry, and the all-party parliamentary group on students, which was led by our former colleague Paul Blomfield, and on which I served. I really thank the Government for tabling amendments 18 and 53 on regulating the student letting season, building on the work of Paul Blomfield, who spearheaded work on this in his constituency of Sheffield Central. I will not press my new clause 4, and I urge Members to support those Government amendments. If there is no regulation of the letting season, students are pressured and intimidated by the rental market into signing tenancies with people they hardly know, sometimes nine months before they are due to move in. Students of all backgrounds are forking out deposits to hold properties. Care leavers, estranged students and students from low economic backgrounds are left to either spend money that they do not have or risk housing insecurity for the next academic year. The Government’s decision to limit the letting season to six months gives students the space and time to create healthy social relationships and save money for a deposit for the next academic year, drastically improving their mental wellbeing. Government new clauses 13 and 14 are landmark measures that ensure that students are not subject to excessive and exploitative up-front costs by limiting rent in advance. That creates a fairer, more accessible rental market. For example, my constituent Olivia was once required to pay £2,500—six months’ rent up front—to move into a four-bed shared property. She is moving to Leeds to begin her masters. Leaving her without savings for a move to a new city is not how we should treat any person vulnerable to the rental market or looking to be an asset to the community. The Government new clauses will help prevent such unreasonable demands and alleviate financial pressure on tenants, so I am withdrawing my new clause 3 on limiting rents, and urge support for the Government new clauses. My constituent Olivia’s up-front costs were so high because she could not get a guarantor. Now that we have set limits on rent in advance, we must deal with the other side of the issue: the requirement for tenants to provide guarantors. The practice can exclude individuals who cannot meet those demands, or limit their access to secure housing. Adults who earn their own income can be excluded from signing up to rent basic accommodation in a shared house simply because they are not related to someone who owns UK property. My new clause 11 would place tighter restrictions on the requirement for tenants to provide a guarantor, especially when a tenant’s rental history or income offer sufficient security. By refining those provisions, we can balance the legitimate interests of landlords with the rights and needs of tenants. My new clause suggests that the need for a guarantor should be restricted when the following circumstances apply: when a reasonable assessment shows that personal income, including state benefits received and any other lawful source of income, is sufficient for the tenant to pay the full rent due under the tenancy; when arrangements are made for housing benefit or the housing element of universal credit to be paid directly to the landlord; when the landlord has entered into a contract of insurance, through which they are insured against non-payment of rent—that has been covered by other amendments—and in such other circumstances as may be prescribed in regulations by the Secretary of State. That gives the Government a wide avenue for implementing my new clause. The expectation that tenants, despite entering into legally binding rental agreements, must secure a third-party guarantor undermines the very purpose of their rental contract. For many students, particularly those who cannot rely on family support, such as care leavers and estranged individuals, that requirement can make renting nearly impossible. The Bill provides a generational opportunity to raise standards of living in the UK to where they should be. As I will not push my new clause to a vote, I would welcome further discussion and engagement with the Minister as the Bill progresses on how we can change the reliance on guarantors in our rental markets. I know that he is open to that discussion. In my constituency, 44.8% of constituents live in private rentals, compared with a national average of 19.4%. Leeds is home to a population of over 36,000 non-home students. The Bill is imperative to my constituents. Through its measures, I am hopeful that we can establish a rental market that promotes fairness, reduces inequality and strengthens communities across the UK. I am very happy to support the Government amendments.