Brendan O'Hara MP: speeches

Speeches

• 23 Mar 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  Why, alone among our European allies, is the UK facilitating Trump’s illegal war by allowing the United States to use RAF bases to launch attacks? The Government admitted last week that they could not guarantee that such attacks were not made against civilian infrastructure in Iran. In the light of the Government’s complicity, have they uprated the risk assessment of the threats faced by the population of these islands? Finally, just what is it about illegal wars in the middle east that the Labour party seems unable to resist?

• 16 Mar 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

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  No matter how many Ministers the Government sent out over the weekend to try to spin their way out of this crisis, the story remains unchanged. The Prime Minister chose to ignore the fact that Mandelson remained friends with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein; he chose to ignore Mandelson’s own scandal-laden political history; and he even chose to ignore the advice of the security services, which questioned Mandelson’s suitability for the job. Given the Prime Minister’s appalling lack of judgment, can the Minister understand why so many people across these islands believe that he simply cannot be trusted to remain in office?

• 16 Mar 2026 · Strait of Hormuz · Hansard source

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  The Government previously said that the United States could use UK airfields only for the specific and limited purposes of defending against Iran’s reckless attacks, yet we know that RAF Fairford has been used by the United States to launch B-52 bombers carrying up to 24 cruise missiles at a time. Given President Trump’s reckless and dangerous language about Kharg island at the weekend, when he said that “we may hit it a few more times just for fun”, what guarantees can the Minister give this House that none of the missions coming from the UK will target civilians or civilian infrastructure?

• 11 Mar 2026 · Royal Mail: Universal Service Obligation · Hansard source

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  Whether it is the failure of Royal Mail to meets its USO or the skyrocketing price of heating oil, it seems that rural communities, such as those in my constituency, are most impacted. We all agree that despite the often heroic efforts of the workforce, the service provided by Royal Mail management is totally unacceptable. The Minister knows that we are 60 days from a Scottish parliamentary election in which 1 million people will vote by post. How confident is he that Royal Mail will be able to cope, and what measures is he putting in place to ensure that it does?

• 10 Mar 2026 · Digital ID: Public Consultation · Hansard source

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  It seems that even in the middle of an existing cost of living crisis, with another one looming, the Government have decided to plough ahead with a digital ID scheme that few folks actually want. Having committed so much money to the scheme already, and with the price of heating oil, gas, electricity and fuel soaring yet again, does the Minister believe that spending even more money on this unpopular idea is suddenly going to make it popular?

• 5 Mar 2026 · Civil Service Pension Scheme · Hansard source

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  The privatisation of the delivery of the civil service pension scheme has been nothing short of catastrophic. The Government were well warned that Capita was ill-prepared for a job of that size, but they pressed ahead regardless. Although Capita must shoulder much of the blame, the Cabinet Office has serious questions to answer about its responsibility for this fiasco. Will the Minister start by apologising to those in my constituency who, after a lifetime of service, have been left facing penury because of the Government’s part in the hopeless mismanagement of this transfer?

• 5 Mar 2026 · Consular Assistance · Hansard source

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  Our thoughts are with those stranded in the region, and we wish them safe passage as soon as possible. I fear that this is the moment when the hollowing out of the UK’s consular support service has real-life consequences for many UK nationals. Of course, there is no consular support presence in Tehran at the moment. I know that the Minister is aware of the dire situation faced by Craig and Lindsay Foreman, who are being arbitrarily detained in Evin prison. Before leaving Tehran, did embassy staff make contact with Craig and Lindsay directly to advise them on what to do in the event they were released or managed to escape from Evin prison, and if not, why not?

• 2 Mar 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

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  Although it would be churlish to deny that this Bill is a step forward, it is important to look at what it is a step forward from. I am one of the few Members of the House who sat through the Elections Act 2022 and went through it line by line in Committee. Along with colleagues who now sit on the Government Benches, we were united in saying that that Tory election Bill was an affront to democracy. But now in power, Labour has taken that affront to democracy and, rather than ripping it into a million pieces, is doing what Labour seems to do best: take the very worst of Tory legislation and make it slightly less offensive. Although elements of the Bill will improve existing legislation, and we will therefore support it, this is not what we were promised, and I fear that it will be seen as a huge missed opportunity. We very much welcome the extension of the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds for UK general elections, which would bring this place in line with Scotland, which has enjoyed that for more than a decade and where it has proven to be an unqualified success. We also welcome efforts to clamp down on dark money infiltrating UK politics. Shining a light on the murky world of Westminster political donations is long overdue. The Labour party has been promising that since 1997, so I think we had best put it in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” pile, particularly given that the scandal of dodgy donations that has now disgraced the Labour party, through Labour Together, continues to swirl around Labour MPs. As an Opposition party, one of our biggest arguments with the Tories was about the introduction of voter ID. We argued that it was a solution to a non-existent problem. The now Prime Minister was right when he said that it would lock people out of democracy. Yet now that Labour is in power, rather than scrapping the entire scheme, it has chosen to keep it and merely increase the number of acceptable forms of ID, knowing full well that the scheme disadvantages ethnic minority communities, the young, the homeless and the elderly. My problem with the Bill goes beyond what is in it; it is what is not in it. The rejection—once again—of any form of proportional representation is a scandal. The fragmentation of UK politics is happening at pace. The Government’s refusal to consider proportional representation is dangerously short sighted. Parliamentary elections have become a race to achieve 34%, because, as we know, that is where landslides happen. There could be a reality check coming after the next election, when a party whose Members sit not a million miles away from me, and which refuses to play by the rules, achieves a huge majority on barely a third of the vote. I urge the Government to reconsider their opposition to proportional representation. If they do not, we could all live to regret it. The Bill is deficient in several other areas: there are still weaknesses and loopholes in political finance, registration must be rolled out much quicker, there must be much tighter cryptocurrency regulations, and yet again, for whatever reason, the Labour party has decided to ignore the abomination of democracy at the other end of the corridor. The Bill is a million miles from being perfect, but on the basis that it is a very small step in the right direction, we will support it.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  The release of the Epstein files has shone a light where so many people did not want a light to be shone. Even with millions of documents still to be released, it is abundantly clear that for decades, the rich, the politically powerful and the well-connected have colluded to cover up their utterly appalling behaviours. That light which is now being shone does not just illuminate those who are personally responsible for their behaviour; it reveals those who knew what was happening, who enabled it and who chose to turn a blind eye. The people of this country are rightly furious. That is why I made the point yesterday, and will make it again today, on the Humble Address on the release of the Peter Mandelson files that with trust in the Government at an all-time low, they only have one chance to come clean about everything they know and they hold pertaining, in this case, to the creation of the role of special representative for trade and investment and the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor to that post. Of course, unlike the Mandelson files which this House demanded be released, the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor did not happen on the current Government’s watch. But Mr Mandelson leaves a long trail, and there may well be information which relates directly to him and which will cause serious embarrassment to many senior Labour party figures who were in power at the time. Let us not forget that the author Andrew Lownie explains in great detail in his book, “Entitled” about how it was former Trade Secretary Peter Mandelson who assisted Mr Mountbatten-Windsor in landing the role of UK special representative, seemingly against the advice of Mr Mountbatten’s brother, the then Prince Charles. Let me repeat my warning from yesterday that these files must be released and must be released in full, because any attempt to sanitise what is in them and to save face for any Government Ministers, past or present, could have serious long-term consequences for our democracy. That is also the very least that the victims and survivors deserve. We know that there are serious questions about the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as trade envoy back in 2001 that need answers. They include: whose idea was it? Who vetted him? Was he vetted at all? What role did Peter Mandelson play in making that appointment happen? What in his previous life made him uniquely suitable for the position of UK trade envoy? What warnings were given before and during his stint as trade envoy about his character and behaviour? Who was he responsible to while serving as trade envoy? Who scrutinised his behaviour and spending? What warnings were given during his time as trade envoy and how were those warnings handled? In a normal, functioning democracy, we would not have had to wait until Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had been stripped of his titles and evicted from his royal house, and was facing removal from the line of succession, before being able to discuss this issue. There have been serious concerns about Mr Mountbatten-Windsor for decades, many of them relating to his time as trade envoy. There are reports of him requesting that the public purse cover the cost of his massage services. When one understandably angry and unhappy civil servant complained, he was promptly overruled by his bosses. That now retired civil servant commented recently: “I can’t say it would have stopped him, but we should have flagged that something was wrong.” Of course something was wrong, but what difference would it have made to us in this House? As Mr Mountbatten-Windsor was a member of the royal family at that time, we were not allowed to question or examine what he was doing as a special trade envoy. It was not just civil servants who found getting information on Mr Mountbatten-Windsor all but impossible. The author Andrew Lownie has reported that he has had multiple freedom of information requests rejected, including on the grounds that it would be too time-consuming for Departments to go through the volume of information. One rejection actually said that looking at just one year of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s time as trade envoy would mean going through 1,927 digital files, each containing multiple pieces of information. Yet until Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s status changed, we in this House were not allowed to discuss that.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  The answer is quite simple: nobody can be above the law. Everybody has to be equal in the eyes of the law. As the great Paul Flynn said, we have to remove the bandages from our mouths in this place, and I will return to that point. Fundamentally, regardless of rank or privilege, nobody should be above the law. Many people will be embarrassed by what has happened, not least, as we have heard, the now leader of the Liberal Democrats, who, as Under-Secretary for Business, Innovation and Skills, and, I presume, with his fingers firmly crossed behind his back, was forced to stoutly defend the then Prince Andrew. He said: “I…believe that the Duke of York does an excellent job”. —[ Official Report , 3 May 2011; Vol. 527, c. 649.] He called him a “long-standing success” and said he had been great for British business, but what else could he have said as a Government Minister? We are not allowed to speak the truth about certain individuals in this place. Within three months of the right hon. Member making those comments, Mr Mountbatten-Windsor had resigned in disgrace because of his continued relationship with the convicted paedophile and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. It was not just Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s relationship with Epstein that caused concern. In February 2011, the Minister attempted to raise a question about the special representative role and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s links to a notorious convicted Libyan arms smuggler, only to be told by the then Speaker that “references to members of the royal family should be very rare, very sparing and very respectful”. —[ Official Report , 28 February 2011; Vol. 524, c. 35.] These archaic rules make a mockery of our democracy. The situation we face now was always going to occur, particularly as the royal family can and do both have a constitutional role and involve themselves in the political realm.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  Absolutely; I could not agree more. Isn’t it ridiculous that the King had to strip Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of his titles and evict him from his home for us to be able to have this discussion? That is what has to change. In conclusion, I hope the Government not only release everything they hold pertaining to the appointment of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor but remove what that great trailblazer, Paul Flynn, the former Member for Newport West, described as the bandages on our mouths so that no one is above the law and no one’s behaviour is beyond scrutiny by Members of this House.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor · Hansard source

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  There is a slight irony here. We call ourselves the mother of Parliaments and the cradle of democracy, yet when it comes to an issue such as this we are bound by archaic rules that mean that we cannot hold the most powerful people to account. Let’s be honest: there may be some very good members and some very bad members of the royal family, but if we believe in the hereditary monarchy, it is pot luck what we get. I have seen the rules that have led us to where we are now and it is surely time to review them. It is beyond ridiculous that someone in a similar position could be appointed to exactly the same job as Mr Mountbatten-Windsor was, but, because they have been lucky in the great genealogical sweepstake and found themselves born into the royal family, be automatically above scrutiny and accountability and therefore beyond reproach.

• 23 Feb 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

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  Right now, trust in this chaotic Government has all but evaporated and the Prime Minister’s personal judgment is now on trial. We know that millions of documents are still to come out, so the Government really only have one chance to come clean, and any attempt to sanitise what is made public could have disastrous consequences for our democracy. Can the Government guarantee that the criteria for releasing the information will be exactly what this House demanded, and that the appointment of a new head of the civil service will not alter that one iota?

• 5 Feb 2026 · Occupied Palestinian Territories: Genocide Risk Assessment · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the obligation to assess the risk of genocide under international law in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and may I put on record my thanks to the Speaker’s Office for working so hard to ensure that we have time for the debate this afternoon? Given the pressure on time, and in order to allow as many Back-Bench speeches as possible, I will not take any interventions. In his book, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”, the Egyptian-Canadian novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad wrote: “The moral component of history, the most necessary component, is simply a single question, asked over and over again: When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power? What makes moments such as this one so dangerous, so clarifying, is that one way or another everyone is forced to answer.” That question will have to be answered. That may not be today or even this year, but at some point all of us, particularly those who hold positions of power or have a public platform, will have to answer that fundamental question: which side were we on? Were we on the side of justice, or did we side with the powerful? When asked, each of us will have to answer: did we speak up for the tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children who were killed; did we use our platform to actively oppose the forced displacement of millions of Palestinians from their homes and communities as they were reduced to rubble, and condemn unequivocally the collective punishment imposed on an entire population when the basics necessary to sustain life—water, electricity, food and medicine—were deliberately withheld from them; or did we, either by what we said and did, or by what we did not say and did not do, side with the powerful, look away because it was in our political or financial interests so to do, and give political cover and legitimacy to the Netanyahu regime as it carried out its genocide while our Government supplied it with the weapons and military intelligence to do so? The Hamas attack of 7 October was utterly appalling, and no right-thinking person could excuse or condone what happened that day. Neither, however, could any right-thinking person excuse or condone the Israeli response, which has been not just disproportionate, but brutal and relentless. Israel’s response has been carried out in such a systematic manner that, in my opinion, no reasonable person could deny that what we have witnessed in Gaza over the past two and a half years constitutes genocide. The Government have denied, and continue to this day to deny, that it is a genocide. It is a decision that the Government will have to explain, and with which they will have to live. Today, however, I am not here to play ping-pong with the Government on the legal definition of what does and does not constitute genocide. Instead, I want to focus on the mountain of evidence that says there is at least a serious risk of genocide occurring, and that serious risk should have triggered the UK’s legal obligation to act under the terms of the genocide convention, as explained by the International Court of Justice in its 2007 Bosnia ruling—an obligation that comes into effect long before any determination of genocide has been made by a court. The standard of serious risk is designed to be an early warning that ensures that states and international bodies act to prevent a genocide from occurring. In the case of the Palestinian people of Gaza, the UK has clearly and undeniably failed abjectly to meet its legal responsibility when alerted to there being a serious risk of genocide. When the UK signed the genocide convention in 1948, it promised to prevent and punish this most heinous of crimes. Now, with more 71,000 people dead and 200,000 people injured, Gaza reduced to an uninhabitable wasteland, its population in the grip of a man-made famine and its medical infrastructure obliterated, hundreds of journalists murdered, water and electricity used as a means of coercion and punishment, food and medicine denied to the starving and the dying and the repeated forced displacement of millions of civilians, it is surely beyond any dispute that the minimum requirement for the UK to act to prevent and punish the crime of genocide has been met. Arguably the most damning indictment, however, is that more than 21,000 children have been killed by the Israel Defence Forces since October 2023. Let us not forget that in November 2023 the UK Government formally intervened in the case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar at the ICJ to argue for changes to the definition of genocide that included lowering the threshold when damage was inflicted on children. If it is appropriate for the UK to intervene to protect children from the bombs and bullets of the Myanmar military, why is it not appropriate for it to intervene to protect Palestinian children from the bombs and bullets of the IDF? Of course, genocide is not and never has been about numbers. The numbers killed, while shocking, do not in and of themselves necessarily prove genocide; there are other methods, including “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” That is why it is important that we look at what else has happened in Gaza since October 2023. Over the past two and a half years, Israel has obliterated the agricultural sector; the fishing industry has gone; the road network has been wrecked; agricultural wells have been demolished; most crop land and greenhouses have been rendered unusable; the vast majority of livestock have been killed; and the vitally important and culturally significant olive tree crops have been targeted and destroyed. Such is the devastation that a Guardian journalist on board a Jordanian air force plane wrote: “Seen from the air, Gaza looks like the ruins of an ancient civilisation.” And he added that Gaza was razed by an Israeli military campaign that has left behind a place that looks like the aftermath of an apocalypse. That does not happen by accident, and it is impossible to view this as anything other than a premeditated attempt to erase Palestinians from their land by making it impossible for human life to survive. By any measure, collectively, all of that constitutes unimpeachable evidence that there has been a serious risk of genocide. And that should have triggered a UK Government response to prevent that becoming a full-blown genocide, but is has not. It is not as if the Government can say that they did not know or that they were unaware, because, time and again, statements made from that Dispatch Box, including from the former Foreign Secretary and the current Prime Minister, have conceded that they knew exactly what was happening, but they have chosen to do nothing about it. They have accepted and have publicly condemned the siege tactics, the denial of humanitarian assistance, the use of starvation as a weapon of war, the use of evacuation orders, the denial of water, food and electricity, the targeting of journalists, the destruction of healthcare, the astronomical number of civilian casualties, and the deliberate dehumanising of the Palestinian people. In their own words, the Government have denied undeniable proof that war crimes are being carried out, that mass atrocities are being carried out, and that civilians are being denied the basics to maintain life. A quick trawl of Hansard will reveal that as far back as January 2024, the then Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), said that “85% of the population are displaced and millions face the risk of famine.” —[ Official Report , 29 January 2024; Vol. 744, c. 622.] Two months later he said that “famine in Gaza is imminent... but what distinguishes the horror in Gaza from what has come before is that is it not driven by drought or natural disaster; it is man-made.” —[ Official Report , 19 March 2024; Vol. 747, c. 806.] And in May 2024 he said that “aid is reportedly being blocked and northern Gaza is now in full blown famine”. —[ Official Report , 7 May 2024; Vol. 749, c. 443.] A year later, in May of 2025, he openly acknowledged Israeli war crimes against the civilian population when he said: “The whole House should be able to utterly condemn the Israeli Government’s denial of food to hungry children. It is wrong. It is appalling.” —[ Official Report , 20 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 927.] And then he continued that “what we are seeing is inhumane, it is deadly and it is depriving Gazans of their human dignity. —[ Official Report , 21 July 2025; Vol. 771, c. 662.] It is there in black and white. The Government have acknowledged it. And the Prime Minister, when he was Leader of the Opposition in October of 2023, acknowledged that serious risk, saying: “Civilians must not be targeted. Where Palestinians are forced to flee, they must not be permanently displaced… International law is clear. It also means that basic services, including water, electricity and the fuel needed for it, cannot be denied. —[ Official Report , 23 October 2023; Vol. 738, c. 593.] And as Prime Minister he said: “We continue to see mounting evidence of appalling atrocities against civilians and unacceptable restrictions on humanitarian access.” —[ Official Report , 30 October 2024; Vol. 755, c. 806.] There are so many more examples of the Prime Minister, the former Foreign Secretary and other Ministers admitting from that Dispatch Box that Israel was using food as a weapon of war, that it had manufactured a famine, that it was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, that it was committing war crimes, and that it was stripping Gazans of their human dignity. Yet it remains the official position of the UK Government that none of that—none of it—meets the threshold for there being a serious risk of genocide. I ask the Minister whether we are being asked to believe that, even when the Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, said: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”. Did that not trigger within the Government the thought that perhaps there was a serious risk of genocide? Finance Minister Smotrich said: “Gaza will be entirely destroyed; civilians will be sent to...the south…and from there they will start to leave in great numbers to third countries.” Did that not trigger the thought that, perhaps, there was a potential risk of genocide occurring? The Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, said: “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible”. Did that not suggest to the UK Government that perhaps Israel’s response to the atrocities of 7 October was going to be disproportionate, brutal and illegal; and that continuing to sell weapons and maintaining a “business as usual” relationship with Tel Aviv might put us in grave danger of breaching our obligations under the genocide convention? Despite Israel making its intentions unambiguously clear from the very start—that it was going to ethnically cleanse Gaza, would do so using whatever means necessarily and would do so indiscriminately—it appears that the UK Government made the political choice to deliberately ignore their obligations so that they could continue a business-as-usual relationship with Netanyahu’s Government. I will finish where I began, with that powerful quote from Omar El Akkad: “When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power? What makes moments such as this one so dangerous, so clarifying, is that one way or another everyone is forced to answer.” This UK Government and the Government who preceded them have chosen to side with power over justice, and history will judge them accordingly.

• 2 Feb 2026 · US Department of Justice Release of Files · Hansard source

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  Try as he might, the Prime Minister cannot escape his responsibility in this latest scandal to engulf Peter Mandelson. Ordering a very limited investigation into Peter Mandelson’s activities is pretty meaningless. We need an investigation that is fully independent of Government and the Labour party, with the scope to investigate not just Mandelson, but those who put him in the House of Lords, those who promoted him to UK ambassador to the United States, and those who have done everything possible to protect him over several decades, despite his scandal-ridden career. Does the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister agree?

• 22 Jan 2026 · Government Decision Making: Transparency · Hansard source

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  In the interests of improving Government transparency, will the Cabinet Office now publish the details of how the Government reached the decision that allowed Lord Mandelson, the man who described the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein as his “best pal” and who then urged him to fight for his early release following his conviction, not just to retain his place in the House of Lords but to keep the Labour Whip and his Labour party membership card?

• 19 Jan 2026 · Arctic Security · Hansard source

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  I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Greenland. President Trump’s threat to annex Greenland either “the easy way” or “the hard way” is pushing Europe to the verge of one of the biggest political and security crises we have faced in decades. Now, his threat to impose punitive tariffs on those opposing his illegal annexation means that the President of our closest ally is using economic and military threats against the UK and other European nations simply for defending sovereignty, self-determination and international law. On what basis do this Government view this particular President as being a trustworthy and reliable ally?

• 14 Jan 2026 · Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State talks about supporting economic growth in Scotland. Perhaps he should check in with the local authorities across the highlands and islands, which, combined, have received absolutely nothing from the UK Government’s local growth fund. Life is tough enough for our rural communities, and the decision to exclude them from the fund will only make things more difficult. Will the Secretary of State listen to the advice of the leader of Argyll and Bute Council, Councillor Jim Lynch, who desperately wants him to rethink this allocation?

• 8 Jan 2026 · Myanmar: Religious Minority Persecution · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Betts, for this important debate on religious minority persecution in Myanmar. As I have done so often over the years, I sincerely thank and pay tribute to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the driving force behind the APPG for international freedom of religion or belief, for securing this debate and ensuring that people who have been persecuted for professing their beliefs or—just as importantly—those exercising their human rights not to believe or practise a faith, wherever they are in the world, are not forgotten about. With the world on a seemingly endless cycle, stumbling from crisis to disaster and back again, it would be all too easy to forget or choose to ignore issues such as the persecution of religious minorities, but it is vital that we do not do so or allow others to forget or choose to ignore such a fundamental human rights issue. No one would wish us to forget or ignore this issue more than the military regime in Myanmar, where for decades a deliberate policy of religious and ethnic cleansing has been pursued as they seek to Burmanise the country. Burmanisation is the belief that true Myanmar citizens are both Burman and, of course, Buddhist. That is why the citizenship law was introduced in 1982 to strip Rohingya Muslims of their citizenship, rendering many of them effectively stateless and making them foreigners in their own land. That hideous, racist, sectarian policy excluded minorities from the political process and limited the social and economic development of ethnic minority communities by curtailing their cultural and religious freedoms. The attempt to erase the identity of anyone who is not both Burman and Buddhist has resulted in the most appalling oppression of religious minority communities. Notably, as we have heard, Rohingya Muslims and Christians have been the primary victims of this ethno-religious Burmese nationalism. As we just heard, this year the charity Open Doors declared that Myanmar has risen up its world watch list rankings, and is now deemed the 13th most dangerous place in the world in which to be a Christian. Since 2021, Open Doors has recorded a steep rise in murders, destruction of places of worship and forced displacement, and has now put Myanmar in the extreme category for religious persecution. State-sponsored religious persecution—as we have heard from every speaker in this debate—has caused Rohingya Muslims to flee, predominantly over the border to refugee camps in Bangladesh, where they are having to endure some of the worst living conditions on the planet, because they are fleeing what the United Nations has described as an “ongoing genocide” at the hands of the Myanmar military. So fearful are they of returning that appalling squalor and overcrowded camps are deemed preferable to the fate that would await them should they return home. Displacement, murder, repression and widespread endemic gender-based sexual violence are every bit as real a threat there today as they were in 2017, when over 1 million Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh. It is worth remembering that in 2019, the United Nations described gender-based sexual violence as the hallmark of the Burmese military’s operations in Myanmar. The Rohingya are stuck in what has been described as a hell on earth. For the benefit of Members who were not here the last time we debated Myanmar and the situation in Cox’s Bazar and Bangladesh, I will repeat what the journalist and documentary filmmaker Simon Reeve said after he visited one of those camps. He said it was “like nothing I have seen anywhere on Planet Earth. This speaks of a Biblical exodus of an entire people terrorised into fleeing.” Yet for those people, living in that unimaginable horror is deemed preferable and safer than returning home. The hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) is right that the situation for Rohingya Muslims living in the camps is only getting worse. Minister, that is in no small part due to the shameful decision by this Government to ape the previous Government and slash UK overseas aid, leaving Bangladesh—already one of the poorest countries in the world—to shoulder a massively disproportionate share of the costs of looking after more than 1 million refugees. When helpless, homeless refugees are dumped on impoverished countries, it leads to the crisis in Bangladesh that was alluded to earlier. We have a moral responsibility to do something about that. As much as the Rohingya may wish to return home in a safe and dignified manner, such a return is not possible while the military in Myanmar is pursuing its reign of terror. The stark truth is that the Rohingya will be able to return home only when a Government committed to human rights, religious freedom and the rule of law are established. That prospect is unfortunately a long way off, because Myanmar, as we have heard so often, is in the grip of a man-made humanitarian crisis. The situation for the country’s religious minorities who have remained continues to worsen and the regime ramps up its persecution of those communities by attacking places of worship, forcibly conscripting minorities into its military, and continuing its genocide of the Rohingya Muslims. As we also heard earlier, there are other armed players in this conflict who are also perpetrating abuses that disproportionately affect religious minorities—notably, the Rohingya Muslims and Christians. It is a dire situation. I desperately urge the Government to reassess the short-term, counterproductive and frankly inhumane decision to cut overseas aid; every single penny taken out of that aid pot has real-life, real-world consequences for men, women and children. Although the return of UK aid would undoubtedly help considerably, so too would allowing refugees in Bangladesh the right to work and thereby to support themselves and their families. Of course I can understand why the Bangladesh Government would be reluctant to make legislative change that would, in their eyes, encourage 1 million or so refugees to stay within Bangladesh’s borders. But the reality is that these people cannot return home until it is safe for them to do so, and that is not happening any time soon. Last month, I visited Thailand and Malaysia with the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief to meet many of those refugee communities who have been fleeing persecution—chiefly the Ahmadiyyas, Vietnamese Christians, Uyghurs, Chinese Christians and Iranian Christians, but also many more. Like Bangladesh, Thailand is not a signatory to the 1951 refugee convention. Legally, in Thailand, there is no such thing as a refugee, despite hundreds of thousands of them living there. The largest group of refugees in Thailand are from Myanmar, and they have lived in the camps along Thailand’s northern border for decades. With no legal right to work they obviously make a living in the black market, but in recent months the Thai Government have recognised the reality that such people are unable to return home and could well be an economic asset, and so have loosened the rules to allow them to work legally in Thailand. Perhaps, at least, the Government of Bangladesh might look at that—and indeed, why would the UK Government not look at it as well? What is happening in Thailand could happen in Bangladesh, and here. Refugees can be that economic asset. Allowing them to work will allow them to contribute, better themselves and benefit us all. I again thank the hon. Member for Strangford for securing this debate. I hope the Government can see that, although the persecution of these communities happens so far from our shores, we have a moral and a humanitarian obligation to help—because we absolutely, certainly do.

• 7 Jan 2026 · Rural Fuel Duty Relief · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) made the point that getting this rebate was one of the few successes of the coalition Government. The reason there was no political reward for it was that, at £1.60 a litre in rural Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber, it does not feel like a benefit. If the Minister will not make it index-linked, can he tell us what mechanism the Government have put in place to check that this rebate—albeit scant—is actually reaching the consumer? It does not feel as though it is for people living in rural communities.

• 7 Jan 2026 · Rural Fuel Duty Relief · Hansard source

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  I sincerely thank the hon. Member for securing this debate. My constituency of Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber is 10,500 sq km in size, with 23 inhabited islands; it is absolutely vast. Life is difficult for people living in rural areas and anything that we can do to make life a bit easier for them should be considered. Does he agree that the scheme should not only be further extended to cover more people in rural areas, in order to stop the scourge of depopulation, but that the value of the scheme, which has declined by 35% since 2012, should be restored by this Government as soon as possible?

• 10 Dec 2025 · Kashmir: Self-determination · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Roger. I thank the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain) for securing the debate. I want to put on the record that the SNP fully supports the right of the people of Kashmir to exercise their fundamental human right to have a free, safe and legal vote on their own future. That vote has been mandated by numerous United Nations Security Council resolutions, and that vote must be not only free, fair and transparent, but conducted free from violence and intimidation, and under the auspices of the United Nations. As we have heard from several Members, for almost 80 years the people of Kashmir have suffered persecution, oppression and injustice while the world has, at best, wrung its hands and issued ineffectual statements condemning India’s actions or, at worst, shrugged, looked away and totally ignored their plight, allowing the world’s largest military occupation to continue largely unchallenged and unquestioned. That decades-long military occupation has resulted in a catalogue of human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, forced disappearance, arbitrary detention, media censorship, attacks on journalists and political activists, the targeting of human rights defenders and mass incarcerations. The security forces have also used rape and other forms of sexual violence as a way to control and punish Kashmiri civilians. As we have heard, the ongoing repression took a sinister, unconstitutional twist in 2019, when the Indian Government unilaterally revoked articles 370 and 35A of the constitution. In the wake of those decisions, and in a move straight from the authoritarian playbook, the Indian Government acted swiftly to prevent the possibility of public protests by arbitrarily detaining hundreds of people, including journalists. They imposed a communications blackout and severe restrictions on the right of freedom of movement and assembly. That move was not only unprecedented, unilateral and unconstitutional; it was a direct violation of international law and a flagrant breach of the commitments that India had made to Kashmiri people. It was a cynical and blatant attempt by the Modi Government to crush the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination once and for all. I echo the question posed by the hon. Member for Bradford East, when he asked where the international community has been for the last 78 years. Seven decades of issuing condemnatory statements denouncing India has made little or no difference to the lives of the people of Kashmir. Whether we like it or not, the United Kingdom has a historical and moral obligation to take a lead in finding a just and lasting solution to the conflict. The UK cannot pretend to be a neutral bystander, because history dictates that the UK is not. We need a resolution in line with the UN resolutions, and one that recognises the inalienable right of the Kashmiri people to determine their own future through a free, fair and transparent referendum. The voice of the Kashmiri people is the most important voice here, but I fear that, unfortunately, to date their voice seems to be the one that is being listened to least. That must not and cannot be allowed to continue.

• 26 Nov 2025 · 1994 RAF Chinook Crash · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Dowd. I, too, begin by thanking the hon. Member for North Down (Alex Easton) for securing this debate and for the thoughtful and considered way in which he opened it. This debate is long overdue, and I share the hon. Gentleman’s hope that it will be the start of a process that leads to a much-needed and much-called-for fully independent, judge-led public inquiry. That inquiry must be able to compel people to give evidence so that we and, more importantly, the families can get to the truth of exactly what happened on the evening of 2 June 1994 when that ill-fated Chinook Mk 2 crashed into a fog-shrouded hillside on the Mull of Kintyre at the southernmost tip of my Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber constituency. It was of course a tragedy for the families, but it has also had a deep and lasting impression on the community of Campbeltown and south Kintyre, many of whom were first on the scene of the accident and are still haunted by the experience. This is deeply personal for many of my constituents. The issue has come up time and again since my election to this place in 2015, brought to my attention by people in the local area. I recall attending a packed memorial service at Southend parish church on 2 June 2019 to mark the 25th anniversary of the disaster, before joining scores of local people on that desolate, windswept hillside on the Mull of Kintyre for a ceremony at the memorial cairn erected to the memory of all those who died in the crash. The families have fought for more than three decades to get to the truth of what happened to their loved ones, only to be met by a wall of silence and obfuscation by the Ministry of Defence and repeated refusals to meet with them. No doubt the Minister will point to the fact that there have been numerous inquiries and investigations into the crash, but she knows that not one of those investigations has examined the central question of why the decision was made to authorise a flight in an aircraft that was known to be unfit and not airworthy. She knows, too, that every inquiry hitherto has not had the power to compel evidence, which is why it is essential that we have an independent, judge-led public inquiry. The Minister will also know that many of the findings of those early investigations have been thoroughly discredited, particularly the shameful attempt by the Ministry of Defence to pin the blame on the flight crew—Flight Lieutenants Jonathan Tapper and Richard Cook—who she knows were both subsequently fully exonerated. As one of the family members told me recently, “Rick and Jonathan were the best pilots, flying the worst aircraft.” Of course, if the MOD was so confident that it had got to the bottom of what happened on the Mull of Kintyre that evening and that there is nothing more to learn, why would it lock away and seal the key technical and legal documents for 100 years? There is a catalogue of such incidents, which means that the trust between the families and the MOD has completely evaporated over the past 31 years. That suspicion and loss of trust is deeply entrenched among the families. I recall, in 2019, raising on the Floor of the House of Commons how rumours were circulating that the Ministry of Defence was about to destroy some of the files pertaining to the crash. I had to ask the then Leader of the House to make sure that her colleagues in the Ministry of Defence did no such thing. That was the level of distrust back in 2019, and sadly, it has not improved. Last month, I was honoured to be asked, alongside the hon. Members for Lagan Valley (Sorcha Eastwood), for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) and for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay), to join the families when they handed in a 51,000-name petition to Downing Street, demanding an independent judge-led public inquiry to get to the bottom of why that unairworthy aircraft was allowed to leave Belfast, and why it subsequently crashed into a Scottish hillside. After we handed in the petition, a few of us sat with the families for a few hours to hear about the impact the crash has had on them—not just the crash but the subsequent cover-up. I leave Members with some of the statements I jotted down from those meetings with those still-grieving family members. One of them told us: “It is like living with a chronic disease… the pain is always there.” Another, whose father was a senior police officer on board, said that because of their circumstances, “we all held our lives so dearly, but officers and Ministers held it so cheaply when they loaded them”— their families— “on to that Chinook.” A third added that “this is not a political issue. It is just an old-fashioned issue of right versus wrong.” I am sure that the Minister will agree that it is hugely significant that two former Defence Secretaries, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Sir Liam Fox, have publicly expressed their support for the families’ campaign, stating that they now believe that they were misled regarding the circumstances of the flight. Given that, it has become increasingly difficult to conclude anything other than that what we have witnessed for the past 31 years is simply a cover-up. It is not a cover-up for reasons of national security; it is a cover-up for reasons of national embarrassment.

• 24 Nov 2025 · Gaza: Humanitarian Obligations · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair for this hugely important debate, Ms McVey. I begin by thanking everyone from every corner of the UK who signed the petition and forced us into having this debate. It is another perfect example of just how far ahead of the Government and, unfortunately, of this place generally the people of these islands are when it comes to the plight of the beleaguered civilians of Gaza, and demonstrates once again their desire to see peace with justice for the Palestinian people. Never before have I witnessed such a sustained coming together of people and communities who are determined to show solidarity with the victims of what can only be described as one of the greatest injustices of our time. The people have decided that if 70,000 deaths, 200,000 injuries, Gaza being reduced to an uninhabitable wasteland, the population being in the midst of a man-made famine, the medical infrastructure being obliterated and the occupying power using water and electricity as means of coercion and punishment are not enough to make their Government act decisively, they are going to do something themselves. The people can see that, by denying food and medicine to the starving and the dying, and repeatedly forcing the displacement of millions of civilians, Israel is, beyond any dispute, in flagrant breach of the genocide convention. They also see that the UK has failed abysmally in its legal obligation to both prevent and punish the crime of genocide. By their actions, the people from across these islands are saying to their Government, “Not in my name.” I pay tribute to the groups in my constituency of Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber that have organised, petitioned, prayed, raised awareness and raised funds for the people of Gaza over the past two years. Events take place every single week. I thank every one of the individuals involved for their humanitarianism and their determination not to turn a blind eye to the suffering and the injustice, as I fear far too many of us have been persuaded to do. In the past three weeks alone, community-led events have taken place in Oban, Dunoon, the Isle of Bute and the village of Ardentinny. I put on record my appreciation of the astonishing efforts of Kathryn Wilkie, Graham McQueen, Marion Power and Dr Anna Leerssen from Oban Concern for Palestine, who raised more than £11,000 for medical aid for Palestinians at one fundraising event in the town a couple of weeks ago. A population of just 8,000 people raising that amount of money is absolutely remarkable. They are not alone. Last week I spoke at an event organised by Father Roddy McAuley and the parishioners of St Mun’s in Dunoon, where, following a mass for justice and peace and a lively discussion about how we can advance justice and peace in Palestine, a collection was taken for the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund’s Gaza appeal. The same evening, in Rothesay, the Isle of Bute Palestine Solidarity Group held a sold-out music event, raising almost £1,200 for humanitarian projects in Gaza. The following day, in the tiny village of Ardentinny, Dina Macdonald organised an afternoon of music with Rickeera Kaur of the Argyll and Bute Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign where villagers raised funds for humanitarian aid. Those are just the events that I know about; I am sure there have been many others across Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber. People and communities are refusing to sit back and, by their silence and inaction, allow the suffering of the people of Gaza to be conveniently forgotten about. It confirms what I have known for the past two years: when it comes to supporting defenceless civilians from genocide, the people of these islands are miles ahead of the current and the previous Government. They know that, however welcome the arrival of a ceasefire might be, the crisis has not gone away. There are still millions of people suffering who desperately need our help. Given the shameful track record of successive UK Governments over the past two years, they have to be held to account and never be allowed to give up on their moral responsibility to the people of Gaza. The people of these islands recognise that, unlike other one-off appeals made at times of humanitarian crisis, this is not a natural disaster. This is an unnatural disaster being perpetrated by one of the UK’s closest allies while the UK Government continue to provide them with political and military support. It is not that the current Government or the previous Government do not know what Israel is doing. In May the then Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), openly acknowledged Israeli war crimes against the civilian population when he said, “the Israeli Government’s denial of food to hungry children…is wrong. It is appalling.” —[ Official Report , 20 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 927.] But not, it would appear, appalling enough to stop the supply of weapons and end military co-operation, for the UK to make available the contents of reconnaissance flights over Gaza to anyone bar the Israeli military, or for meaningful sanctions and a co-ordinated effort to end the siege and have aid flood into Gaza free from Israeli control. It is inconceivable that the UK would have allowed any other state to act with the impunity with which it is allowing Israel to act. The UK rightly sanctioned Russia, but now stands rightly accused of allowing a two-tier system of international law to operate. The UK Government’s failure to put significant pressure on Israel to lift the siege is nothing new. Last year, as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I visited Al-Arish on the Egypt-Gaza border, where I saw warehouses full of donated medical equipment, including wheelchairs, crutches, incubators, individual birthing kits for women in labour, medical cold storage boxes, generators and water storage bladders. They were in warehouses because the Israeli authorities had rejected out of hand the Red Crescent’s application to deliver them to those most in need in Gaza. There were warehouses full of food and miles and miles of lorries parked up waiting for permission from Israel to deliver that food aid. That is what I mean when I say that this is an unnatural disaster—unnatural because it is deliberate. It is a man-made catastrophe in which people are not starving; they are being starved. The Prime Minister recognised that in September when he said, “The Israeli Government are preventing urgently needed aid from getting in, which is why we are now seeing a man-made famine”. —[ Official Report , 3 September 2025; Vol. 772, c. 286.] Yet despite recognising that the Israeli Government are responsible for creating this man-made famine by using food as a weapon of war, that same Prime Minister and his Government have steadfastly refused to do anything other than impose performative sanctions against a couple of individual Ministers, while continuing to provide the military and political support the Netanyahu regime needs to continue doing what it wants. That is why the people of the United Kingdom have over the past two years come together to support the civilian population in the way that they have. By signing this petition, people in every corner of the UK, including the great folk of Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber, are demanding that the UK Government do much more to hold Israel to account for its actions, to force Israel to lift the siege, and to assist the United Nations in flooding Gaza with whatever assistance is required to end the appalling suffering. I sincerely thank them, commend them and applaud them for their efforts.

• 24 Nov 2025 · Gaza: Humanitarian Obligations · Hansard source

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  I wholeheartedly agree with everything that the Minister has said, and applaud much of it. The restriction of aid in Gaza is utterly reprehensible. There have been multiple calls for action in this Chamber, but what is the plan if Israel says no? If Israel says that it is not allowing unfettered access to humanitarian aid, what do we do?