Catherine West MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Sept 2026 · Student Loans · Hansard source

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  On 27 March 2026, the Minister for Skills wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) confirming that the Department for Education would release an equality impact assessment on student loan lifetime repayments and other borrower impacts for the plan 2 repayment threshold. Does the Chair of the Treasury Committee agree it is high time that the equality impact assessment was published by the Department?

• 8 Sept 2026 · Safety of the Jewish Community · Hansard source

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  From the number of people who have written to me since this debate was granted, I am very aware that resourcing is crucial. There are more than 500 additional officers across England and Wales, boosting security around schools, synagogues and community centres. It is deeply upsetting, as their MP, to hear mothers ask, “Why does my daughter say, ‘Mummy, why there are so many police outside my school?’?”

• 8 Sept 2026 · Safety of the Jewish Community · Hansard source

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  We have had an excellent debate. It is always a good debate when we want to say more but cannot fit it in. I thank everybody, across all the parties, for contributing to it. The problem of tackling antisemitism will take the whole of our polity. That means all of us: local, national, school governors, public sector workers, the private sector and trade union colleagues. It will take everybody to look this in the eye and sort it. We have had a good debate and, as the Minister says, it is a journey. I am very pleased that the Prime Minister is so intimately aware of the Manchester picture. I know that he is also engaged with London Board of Deputies colleagues as well. We look forward to a brighter future and to working together to tackle the scourge of antisemitism in our communities. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the safety of the Jewish community.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Safety of the Jewish Community · Hansard source

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  I will indeed, and I wish there were more of them, because that is at the heart of education. It is all very well having teachers teaching, but what we need is a response that it is embedded in communities. I thank the hon. Member for taking an interest in the Suffolk organisation. Support with resources for local government includes more than £2 million for more than 200 grassroots organisations, through the Common Ground award, bringing people from different backgrounds together to build trust and find common ground. We hear a lot in this House about Pride in Place, the £5.8 billion funding promoting community leadership, making local politics count. That does not just mean local politicians; it means us in this House going to events, promoting community cohesion, standing up when something is wrong and promoting the right way of doing things. The Mayor of London has also been proactive, investing £17 million in initiatives to tackle hate crime. Since the shared endeavour fund started in 2020, it has supported 138 projects across the capital and has worked with more than 220,000 participants, including projects focused specifically on countering antisemitism. Here I will mention the work of schools in Barnet. They are mainstream schools, but they come together to listen to the stories of headteachers in Jewish schools in order that we can share experiences and cross-pollinate ideas so that all children, across any local authority area, hear about best practice in tackling antisemitism and hatred. Research from the Centre for Countering Digital Hate shows a repeated pattern whereby real-world attacks on Jewish communities are followed by targeted abuse, calls for further violence and antisemitic conspiracy theories online. I welcome the inclusion in the Online Safety Act of measures to ensure that technology companies remove illegal content such as antisemitic material, but we need to ensure that it is effective. CCDH research into 10 leading AI chatbots found that eight in 10 chatbots would assist users to plan violent attacks, including on places of worship such as synagogues, and nine in 10 failed to reliably discourage them. That is shocking. Following the Manchester synagogue attack, the CCDH identified 171 hateful or violent online replies targeting 13 prominent British Jewish accounts. All remained live when checked. The 100 most viewed posts falsely alleging that Israel or Jewish people orchestrated the attack received 568,708 views; none displayed a dissenting community note. Following the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green, the CCDH identified 130 hateful online replies directed at 10 prominent British Jewish individuals and organisations; all remained live when checked. The 100 most viewed false flag conspiracy posts received 252,954 views, again without a single dissenting community note. How do people know what the truth is when they are reading online? CCDH research found that 11 Instagram accounts posting antisemitic and racist material accumulated 1.5 billion views while directing users to shops selling hateful merchandise. All 11 were also promoted through Instagram’s related accounts feature. Are we sure that the existing legal framework is enough to stamp out online antisemitism? Education on the dangers of extremism is so important, but good education and the outcomes of good education are so difficult to achieve. I welcome the Government’s £7 million to tackle antisemitism in schools, colleges and universities. As the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) mentioned, Sir David Bell’s review will look into the support available to schools and colleges; how well they use their policies to make decisions and handle hate-filled incidents; how they are accountable if they fail to handle an incident well; what they can do to prevent antisemitism, including identifying and tackling issues early; and the role and influence of campaigning organisations external to schools and colleges and how they influence school and college decision making. I look forward to reading the review, but most importantly to implementation of the practical actions to combat antisemitism that stem from the review. Early intervention is key. To sum up, my requests of the Minister are simple. Every Member of this House and communities and families up and down the country need to be reassured that the Government are leaving no stone unturned to ensure that Jewish communities are safe, that we are doing everything we can to stamp out online hate and that we are tackling antisemitism at its roots through work in schools. I will leave the House with the positive image of the retired Jewish MP whose daughter from the local synagogue planted an olive tree with our esteemed stand-in deputy lieutenant, Bibi Khan, who leads at the Wightman Road mosque. That was a symbol of our communities together. We dig the garden, we plant the tree, the roots take shape and we watch it grow tall.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Safety of the Jewish Community · Hansard source

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  On that point, may I commend the police in Barnet in the run-up to the local elections, which is always a tense time? I want to put on record how outstanding the communication, reassurance and work with our local leaders—both Conservative and Labour—on Barnet council was.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Safety of the Jewish Community · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the safety of the Jewish community. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for letting me hold this debate. I am honoured to represent one of the most diverse, inclusive and welcoming communities in the world. One hundred and eighty languages are spoken in our schools, and both Haringey and Barnet councils, together with community partners, have been instrumental in ensuring that our community is a place where discrimination and hatred are rejected and diversity is celebrated. I am proud of the excellent Haringey and Barnet multi-faith forums. The Metropolitan police independent advisory group in Barnet and Haringey also does great work. Members of those different groups have joined us today in the Public Gallery. My job is to work with the community to promote Hornsey and Friern Barnet as a beacon of diversity and integration that shines a light on what can be achieved when the whole community comes together. We have a long and rich history of challenging hate. In 1977, the battle of Wood Green at Ducketts Common saw a rainbow coalition led by Jewish, Irish and black communities unite to drive out the far-right National Front. Former councillor Sheila Peacock, who is now in her 90s, remembers those days well. In recent years, Hornsey and Friern Barnet has become a safe haven for those fleeing persecution in Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and other conflict zones around the world. Later today, I will host a roundtable with HIAS+JCORE, which has its roots in the Kindertransport movement, to discuss support for newly arrived communities. We have a long and rich history of challenging hatred, and that means we stand against antisemitism. It has been a frightening and dark six months. On 2 October last year, two Jewish people were killed and three left in a serious condition after a car-ramming and stabbing attack outside the Heaton synagogue in Manchester. In March this year, four ambulances belonging to the Hatzola ambulance service were set on fire in the car park of a synagogue in Golders Green. Hatzola provides a service for all Londoners, responding to thousands of emergencies every year, from minor injuries to life-threatening conditions. It works collaboratively with emergency services such as the London ambulance service, the London fire brigade, the helicopter emergency medical service and the Metropolitan police to co-ordinate and provide professional care. On 15 April, we saw an attack on the Finchley Reform synagogue. Three days later, the Kenton United synagogue was targeted. On 27 April, an arson attack was carried out at a memorial wall in Golders Green. Later that month, two Jewish men were stabbed in Golders Green. We know how quickly my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Sarah Sackman) acted; the then Prime Minister, the former Member for Holborn and St Pancras, also rushed to the scene to reassure the community. The Community Safety Trust recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in the UK in 2025, the second highest total ever reported to the CST in a single year. This year, we had the second highest total ever reported to the CST in the first six months of any year. I applied for this debate because the House needs to have a full and frank debate. We need to reassure not only our constituents but ourselves that we are doing all that we possibly can to stamp out the scourge of antisemitism. I will cover three issues briefly; I am aware that other Members wish to contribute to the debate, and I want to hear from those in all parts of the UK about what their communities are doing to tackle antisemitism. On policing and community cohesion, I welcome the recent Government announcement on investment to protect Jewish communities: more than £250 million across the next three years, including a further £86 million to the Metropolitan police, which will fund about 300 additional officers in London to increase police presence. That is particularly important: as London MPs we understand that any event in central London that needs to be policed means that we lose our local police force.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Safety of the Jewish Community · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In my second point I will talk about the online world, which is indeed a frightening place for many of us. Policing and community cohesion are at the heart of ensuring that everyone in the country feels safe. The late John Hume, a Nobel peace prize laureate and former Member of this House, said that our differences make us special and “should never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies the most fundamental principle of peace—respect for diversity.” The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and local councils up and down the country do excellent work with programmes on tackling division and building bridges between communities, but I think that in some communities we are better at that than in others. There are some places where that day-to-day confidence-building in the communities we serve is absent.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Safety of the Jewish Community · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. Although we have not yet heard back from the Bell inquiry, I will touch on it in my third and final point and will pick up the hon. Lady’s points then.

• 4 Sept 2026 · Social Care and Mental Health Services: Hornsey and Friern Barnet · Hansard source

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  It is a real privilege to be awarded an Adjournment debate to discuss the profile of social care in decompressing the strain on mental health services in Hornsey and Friern Barnet. I begin the debate by emphasising how many improvements we have seen in society over the past 20 years when it comes to the position of people who suffer from poor mental health. I do not want this debate to be a counsel of despair. Rather, I want it to be an opportunity to push forward the work that Baroness Casey from the other House is doing, and to be positive about what can be achieved with the opportunity we have—with people seeing mental health services as part of a normal health condition—and how we can support people to have long and happy lives and live with a condition, and to support families and so on. I know that Members across the House will have constituents who get in contact time and again because they have fallen through the cracks of our porous health and care system. Navigating the endlessly complicated care pathways, from primary NHS care to social care, community support and housing, is not easy. The exponential growth in mental health referrals, coupled with the enormous pressures on local authorities to provide social care and social housing against increasingly constrained budgets, has created a perfect storm. That is being felt across the country, but most acutely in my community, where people are too often failed in their time of greatest need. Too many people are being left without the care, support and stability they desperately need to recover. A previous Labour Prime Minister emphasised that his priorities were “education, education, education,” but when it comes to mental health and social care, we need to talk about “early intervention, early intervention, early intervention”. The North London foundation trust, which covers Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington, says that the financial challenges facing local authorities are really straining their ability to work together, as they are forced to consider more radical reductions in adult social care services. In particular, the reduction in investment in preventive and early intervention services is having a catastrophic effect, but local trusts are finding it hard enough to fund their basic statutory responsibilities. The lack of suitable housing and step-down care is also having a direct impact on in-patient services and contributing to much longer hospital stays. That is the system I will be focusing on today. The trust says that of the five local authorities it covers, Haringey is the most affected by the lack of suitable and affordable housing, and therefore has the largest number of delayed discharges. From January to July 2026, a total of 846 occupied bed days were unavailable to other patients desperate for care due to Haringey residents being unable to be discharged from mental health in-patient wards despite being clinically ready for discharge. In July alone, the trust had an average of 10 in-patients on their wards who were clinically ready to leave but could not be discharged due to lack of suitable housing provision or social care support, and 8% to 12% of the total adult in-patient bed base was unavailable to other patients who needed one. Healthwatch Haringey has highlighted the recurring barriers to gaining access to timely, co-ordinated and person-centred mental health support, such as lack of continuity between services, fragmented care pathways and inconsistent communication between providers. When services do not work together effectively, people experience poorer outcomes and are more likely to reach crisis point. This is precisely the cycle that we need to break. We need to protect organisations like Healthwatch and others that amplify voices so that we can understand the data behind monitoring service quality and amplifying patients’ voices. Someone who is clinically well enough to leave hospital can become trapped at the most expensive stage of the care pathway, unable to continue their recovery in the community. At the same time, someone desperate, experiencing an acute mental health crisis, may be unable to gain access to a hospital bed. This is not an effective use of public money; that public money could be spent on quality of care, which is desperately important for the families who are suffering due to issues around the particular care that their loved-ones have received. In March 2024, mental health trusts in England recorded 49,677 delayed discharge days—the highest level since national reporting began. Analysis of NHS data identified Barnet, Enfield and Haringey mental health NHS trust among the trusts with the highest levels of delayed discharge nationally. These figures demonstrate exactly the point I am making today: mental health cannot be treated in isolation from housing and social care. In order to fix one, we must fix all three. Disability Action Haringey, which does excellent work supporting disabled people to maintain their independence and freedom, has highlighted the combination of difficulties in accessing suitable housing, delays in obtaining social care, the financial hardship that so many suffer, social isolation and the challenges of navigating multiple services simultaneously. People experience poor housing or insufficient care, their mental health deteriorates, and they reach crisis point, requiring hospital treatment. We must break that cycle. In my constituency, the Safe Haven crisis hub provides a vital service, helping people to de-escalate during a mental health crisis and providing an alternative to accident and emergency. I know that this is the kind of example that Baroness Casey will be looking at. She is very welcome to come and visit Mind in Haringey, which hosts this particular crisis hub, because it shows the best practice. Staff there have seen people reaching out to their services with increasingly complex needs, often requiring co-ordinated support across health, housing, social care and the voluntary and community sector. That is why collaborative care and cross-body communication are so critical. We also have a rapidly ageing population across Haringey and Barnet, which will inevitably place additional pressure on social care. Haringey council’s older people’s needs assessment reported that Haringey had around 27,700 residents aged 65 and over in 2022, and that figure is projected to rise by approximately 40%. The pressure on our social care system is therefore going to grow, as we all know, and we need to ensure that the system is ready for it. The evidence is clear: mental health services cannot be considered in isolation from social care. Investment in social care is not separate from investment in mental health services—it is investment in mental health. Investment in supported housing is not separate from relieving pressure on the NHS, but part of relieving that pressure. Investment in community-based support is not simply about providing an alternative hospital, but about helping people to recover, maintain their independence and avoid reaching crisis point in the first place. I strongly welcome the Government’s commitment to address these enormous challenges, and was particularly excited to hear the Prime Minister talking about tackling social care in advance of 2028, which was when Baroness Casey was going to report back. I also welcome the Government’s wider action to improve mental health care through the NHS 10-year plan, and would like to ask for a meeting to discuss standards of care in the mental health service. I also invite Baroness Casey or the Minister to Mind in Haringey to see an excellent way in which the statutory and voluntary sectors work together. The Government’s actions meant that, earlier this year, we successfully reached the target of recruiting 8,500 mental health workers. That is a crucial step towards providing better and earlier care, closer to people’s homes. I welcome the £343 million to open 159 NHS mental health centres across England, which will give people access to specialist support away from A&E. These problems are not just about cash, but about the system being proactive and improving workforce morale so that we can improve outcomes for patients. Investment in housing is crucial, but the £39 billion earmarked for social and affordable housing has the potential to be transformative. Yesterday, we heard the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government lay out her vision for tackling rough sleeping, which is an element in the mental health jigsaw puzzle. If we want people to maintain their independence, they need appropriate homes and community support. If we want to prevent people from reaching crisis point, we need to address the circumstances that contribute to stress, worry and deteriorating mental health. Social care reform has been pushed down the road too many times, but now is the moment for it to come forward. We must invest further upstream to improve people’s lives, free up NHS capacity, reduce unnecessary hospital stays, support recovery and create a health and care system that is preventive rather than reactive. People living in Hornsey and Friern Barnet and communities across the country should be able to live safely, recover with dignity and get the right support. In pulling together my words, I thank the wonderful mental health staff at the North London NHS foundation trust, which sadly lost members during covid, because they were so close to patients—I feel that it has still perhaps not got back to where it was pre-covid. We need to support that workforce. I also thank Mind in Haringey, Safe Haven, Disability Action Haringey, Healthwatch Haringey, Haringey council, Barnet council and all the elected Members who care deeply about the future of social care in the UK.

• 1 Sept 2026 · Direction of Government · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend for the work he has done to date on tackling the scourge of rough sleeping, which is so prevalent in many of our cities and towns and outside them. What vision does he have to include the voluntary sector in the crucial task of tackling rough sleeping?

• 13 Jul 2026 · Immigration and Asylum Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the Home Secretary put on record thanks to communities like mine in Hornsey and Friern Barnet who have opened their doors for the Homes for Ukraine scheme? People have been deeply involved—through the synagogue, the mosque and the church—in community-based schemes that find accommodation locally, and have helped people into work who were already refugees—the UNHRC had decided they were refugees, so there was no question about their application—and that has been a really positive development for our communities.