Iqbal Mohamed MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Sept 2026 · Israel and Palestine · Hansard source

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  May I join many hon. Members across the House in thanking the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister for the statement and this vital change in Government policy? However, many will ask why this action has taken so long, since the ICJ advisory opinion was issued in July 2024 and ethnic cleansing and genocide have continued both in the west bank and Gaza. Will the Foreign Secretary explain why it has taken the Labour Government so long to act? Will they now fully comply with their obligations under the ICJ advisory opinion? Will they conduct a review of British policy of non-compliance with international law in Israel?

• 8 Sept 2026 · Falkland Islands: Sovereignty · Hansard source

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  It is clear to the British public that the special relationship between the UK and the US is more special for the UK than it is for the US under Trump. With the US extending threats, bullying and tariff threats, it is akin to an abusive relationship. Will the Minister unequivocally confirm that Britain will not tolerate intimidation and blackmail by the US, Israel or others, and that British sovereignty matters more than our relationship with hostile states that are committing blatant, horrific violations of international law?

• 8 Sept 2026 · Online Safety · Hansard source

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  I join the House in welcoming the statement and thank the Government for the steps they are taking to keep our children safe. Earlier this year, I met campaigners from SafeToNet who had invented hardware-level protection that they had installed on HTC-only devices and were trying to persuade other mobile manufacturers to include it. As well as software controls, hardware-level controls are out there, so I urge the Secretary of State to look at those. We know that Meta has just agreed to pay $18 billion in a legal settlement in the US, so will the Government pursue similar robust enforcement against such companies?

• 7 Sept 2026 · Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  Dewsbury and Batley is the capital of furniture, bed and upholstery manufacturing in the UK, but after Brexit it lost a lot of its export business. What are the Government going to do to support furniture, upholstery and supply chain manufacturers in Dewsbury and Batley as part of their investment in the north?

• 4 Sept 2026 · Infants, Parents and Carers Bill · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Member agree that most parents want to provide that support for the children, but given where we are economically in our country, many are unable to do so due to the primary commitments of breadwinning and putting food on the table? The message from across the House for a joined-up approach to early years, from prenatal to post-natal, is key.

• 4 Sept 2026 · Infants, Parents and Carers Bill · Hansard source

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  I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Lady. It is important for parents, mothers and families to know that Government policy is free from commercial influence, not just in this space but in all the spaces that impact our citizens. As an engineer and a regulatory compliance expert in the pharmaceutical industry, I believe that the marketing of breast milk and the formulation of breast milk need to be better regulated. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency should have responsibility to regulate the nutritional content of substitute breast milk and the marketing claims of substitute breast milk producers. That is an important measure that the Government could introduce to ensure the consistent quality and nutritiousness of substitute breast milk. As the Member for Dewsbury and Batley, I will focus my contribution on health inequality. In my constituency, we are proud of our diverse communities, but we cannot ignore the fact that outcomes for mothers and babies are not experienced equally. A recent Healthwatch report highlights the reality facing many children and families across West Yorkshire. Families repeatedly identified poverty, poor housing, long waiting times, barriers to healthcare access and the cost of staying healthy as factors that profoundly affect young children’s health and wellbeing. Poverty and its attendant effects mean that families struggle to maintain healthy living environments for their children through no fault of their own, whether because of mouldy housing or the lack of a nutritious diet. Health outcomes depend on income and place. The result is that infant mortality rates in Yorkshire and Humber are 5.1 per 1,000 live births, against a national average of 3.9 per 1,000 live births. This is a postcode lottery and we must do all we can to eradicate it. Yet those inequalities are also compounded by ethnic disparities. Nationally, babies of black ethnicity continue to be more than twice as likely to be stillborn as babies of white ethnicity. In 2026, that is a scandal and precisely why legislation focused on the early years matters. The research conducted and the reports published over decades have not led to a meaningful positive intervention to reduce infant mortality for ethnic minorities and black families. The Bill is a real opportunity to address that inequality. We know, too, that children from ethnic minority backgrounds in deprived communities often face additional barriers in accessing healthcare and support. The Healthwatch report I previously cited found that cultural and language barriers can make it harder for some families to navigate services, while stigma around receiving support in some communities can prevent parents from getting help when they most urgently need it. Those statistics and findings should remind us that improving services is not simply an administrative exercise; it is fundamentally a matter of fairness. That is why I believe one of the strengths of the Bill is its potential to shine a light on where support is working and where it is falling short. The annual report to be presented to Parliament on the state of services, outcomes and changes to outcomes since the previous year is extremely important, but it must be a catalyst to continuing to address the inequalities that remain at the end of each year. As the Bill progresses, I hope it will focus not only on the availability of services, but on whether outcomes are actually improving for children from disadvantaged and ethnic minority backgrounds. When support is available early, far greater cost to children, public services and society can be avoided later. Before I conclude, I would like to take this opportunity to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Dewsbury and District hospital and recognise not only the institution but the generations of dedicated staff who have served our communities with skill, compassion, dedication and commitment. I pay tribute and extend my deepest gratitude to the doctors, nurses, midwives, porters, healthcare assistants, cleaners, administrators, technicians, volunteers and countless others who have cared for patients through times of joy, crisis and profound change. I want to end by recognising the incredible work of health visitors, midwives and family support workers, and all health professionals across West Yorkshire and the whole country. They often provide the early intervention that transforms the course of a child’s life. Just a few months ago in my constituency I visited the reopened Brontë Birth Centre at Dewsbury hospital, which was closed for two years because of staff shortages. It is doing absolutely fantastic work and the facility is world class. I pay tribute to the Government who helped to implement and fund the facility, and to the staff who run it day to day.

• 4 Sept 2026 · Infants, Parents and Carers Bill · Hansard source

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  To extend that point, does the hon. Gentleman agree that the use of screens by adults or people in the room with the child can also have an adverse impact? It is almost like second-hand smoke in the ’80s; we have now banned smoking indoors to protect people who do not smoke, including children. It is important to educate parents and carers on the use of screens in the presence of a child as well as on allowing the child to use screens.

• 4 Sept 2026 · Infants, Parents and Carers Bill · Hansard source

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  The House will agree that we believe that all children should be born equal. However, we are here today because we also know that in the fifth or sixth richest country in the world, not all children here are born equal. I am delighted to be able to speak in support of the Bill, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on bringing it before the House. Some would say that he has been very lucky to be drawn first in the ballot, but as a person of faith, I believe that it is divine intervention, and that almighty God has bestowed a responsibility on this House to support children, parents and carers in our country in the way they have the right to be supported and deserve. The central idea behind this legislation is simple yet radical: every child deserves the best start in life, regardless of their postcode, family income or ethnicity. As we have heard in eloquent speeches from right hon. and hon. Members from across the House, the first 1,001 days are among the most important in all human development. They shape physical health, emotional wellbeing, educational attainment and life chances for decades to come, yet support during those crucial early years is too often fragmented, inconsistent, and dependent on a family’s individual circumstances or where they live. The Bill rightfully seeks to address that injustice by ensuring that needs are assessed and timely support is provided. It recognises that giving children the best start in life cannot be the responsibility of any single Department. Improving outcomes for babies and families requires health, education and local services to work together. I welcome the Bill’s emphasis on greater co-ordination and accountability. Before I talk about my constituency and some of the challenges that it faces, let me pick up the point about breastfeeding. It is absolutely the right of the mother to choose, and sometimes it may not be possible for that mother to breastfeed. However, it is important that substitute breast milk is not commercialised and sold for immense profit in this country or elsewhere. Parents, especially those in low-income households, struggle to make ends meet as it is. The children of mothers who, for whatever reason—medical or other—are unable to breastfeed depend on substitute breast milk. That must not become the cost that suddenly unravels the household—not just for the child, but for everybody living in it.

• 4 Sept 2026 · Infants, Parents and Carers Bill · Hansard source

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  I completely agree with the hon. Member. Services must be of the same quality and standard, with the resources that the demand in an area requires. Whether in rural areas, urban areas or city centres, there should not be a postcode lottery for the quality of care that expectant or new mothers receive anywhere in our country. These amazing individuals—healthcare workers, midwives and obstetricians—are working under immense pressure, as is our entire health system. We have seen a significant reduction in the health visiting workforce over recent years, while demand has continued to grow. If we are serious about giving the Bill meaning beyond good intention, the resources required to deliver it must follow. Health visitors in Kirklees and in my area used to have manageable caseloads, with a number of families that they could visit at the appropriate frequency and provide the necessary support. However, due to funding reductions and the necessary cuts to balance the books, there are reports that individuals now face mountains of casework and up to almost a thousand families per caseworker or healthcare professional. That is clearly not sustainable and will never deliver the support that those families need. In conclusion, I am honoured and delighted to support the Infants, Parents and Carers Bill. It will not solve every challenge facing families with young children, nor should we pretend that this legislation can address the root causes of poverty, poor housing or widening inequality. However, it is a vital step towards ensuring that babies and their families are visible in public policy and that access to support becomes a consistent expectation, rather than the roll of a dice. Every child gets only one start in life. Our responsibility in this House is to ensure that that start is as fair, safe and healthy as possible, and we must act in the period when intervention can have the greatest impact. This is not simply a maternity issue; it is a health issue, a social justice issue and an education issue. I fully support this Bill.

• 1 Sept 2026 · Direction of Government · Hansard source

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  I wish the new Prime Minister the very best, and welcome his commitment to a better kind of politics. Nationally, 4.4 million people are now in council tax debt, 1.2 million more than in the previous year, and last year 1.7 million instructions were made for bailiffs. Bailiff use comes at a significant human and economic cost, so will the Prime Minister look at this issue? Will he, for instance, consider revoking regulation 45 of the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992, which allows councils to call in bailiffs, and introducing a new duty of care that puts harm reduction at the heart of council tax collection and helps to write off unfair debt?

• 15 Jul 2026 · National Energy System Operator: Blackout Risk · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Minister’s response so far, amid the shocking allegations that staff covered up the greater risks of power blackouts during the recent heatwave, but it is not just heatwaves and climate change that are increasing demand for electricity. Artificial intelligence data centres are expanding rapidly across the UK and internationally, bringing with them significant demands not only for electricity, the demand for which is estimated to double globally by 2030, but for water for cooling, land, construction and infrastructure. Will the Minister set out what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure does not compromise our energy security, increase the risk of supply shortages or blackouts, place unsustainable burdens on local infrastructure, or leave local communities bearing the costs while others reap the benefits?

• 9 Jul 2026 · Timms Review: Interim Report · Hansard source

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  I apologise for crossing between you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) earlier. I thank the Minister for Social Security for his statement, for the interim update, which, as he said, is a rare thing as part of a process, and for his approach to dealing with this complex subject with kindness and compassion and treating disabled people with dignity. They really appreciate that. Nearly 300 of my constituents contacted me about the proposed changes to disability support during this consultation period. They consistently described a system that is too often unfair, distressing and mistrustful of disabled people. Can the Minister explain how today’s proposals will restore confidence among claimants that PIP exists to support disabled people, rather than to challenge their entitlement at every turn, and that those who need it will receive it?

• 9 Jul 2026 · Israeli Settlements: Trade Ban · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 9 Jul 2026 · Israeli Settlements: Trade Ban · Hansard source

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  I thank my Yorkshire colleague the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) for securing this debate, and for introducing it with the passion and power she did. Every single pound that goes from Britain to Israel is in one way or another helping Israel perpetuate its illegal occupation and apartheid system against the Palestinian people. Just this week, Haaretz reported that Israeli nationalist crime in the west bank is up by 560% since 2019, according to official police data. We know that the vast majority of the crimes by these terrorist settlers go unreported and unpunished, so if the percentage increase is officially 500-plus, it will actually be in the thousands given the crimes that will have gone unreported. These settlements are illegal colonies. For years, Ministers have stood at the Dispatch Box and rightly described these “settlements” as illegal under international law—this Government have done so more times than I can count—yet the condemnation rings hollow. If settlements are illegal, why are we still treating their products as legitimate? Every shipment from a settlement carries a human cost in the displacement, deprivation of income and death that it constitutes. It is the economic bedrock of a system of apartheid. Up to 110,000 Palestinian families rely on the olive harvest as their source of income. For generations, olive trees have sustained communities economically and culturally. There has been settler violence for many decades, but during last year’s harvest it reached unprecedented levels, all against the backdrop of a genocide in Gaza. A Palestinian farmer named Jamal Daraghmeh was beaten alongside his sons as Israeli settlers tried to harvest olives from the land his family had cultivated for generations. That is how settlements expand: families are terrorised, livelihoods are destroyed and communities are driven from their land, creating the single greatest obstacle to Palestinian economic development and self-determination. These injustices are accelerating before our eyes. As we have heard, since the genocide in Gaza began, settlement expansion has surged, with 165 new settlement outposts established. That is an average of 47 every year, up from just over five between 1996 and 2022. The consequences are also measured in the number of lives taken. According to B’Tselem, Israeli forces or civilians have killed 4,000 Palestinians since 2000. In the past year and a half, 70 Palestinian children have been murdered in the west bank, at an average of almost one every week. Just last week, Smotrich celebrated what he called the “revolution” in settlement expansion. That a sanctioned Minister is publicly boasting about accelerating annexation while settlements continue to grow unabated shows that this Government’s approach is having zero meaningful impact.

• 9 Jul 2026 · Israeli Settlements: Trade Ban · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. As a barrister, he knows, as do many across the House who are not in that profession, that it is incumbent—an obligation—on the UK Government to take any and all practical steps to prevent and stop a genocide happening anywhere to any people, and that includes the Palestinians. To conclude, history will not remember how many times this Government have condemned illegal settlements. It will remember that Britain, for decades, has chosen to keep trading with Israel and the settlements anyway. Condemnation without consequence is nothing less than complicity. Israeli settlers, aided and abetted by the IDF and the Israeli Government, have taken away the rights of the Palestinians to live. Instead of sanctioning the settlers, successive British Governments have actively facilitated and allowed goods and services from the settlements to be sold in the UK. Why do the British Government despise Palestinian life so much?

• 9 Jul 2026 · Israeli Settlements: Trade Ban · Hansard source

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  Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this issue is not just about products coming from settlements to the UK, but companies in the UK trading in goods and services in the settlements? Airbnb, Booking.com and Expedia are all selling tourism services in the occupied territories.

• 8 Jul 2026 · NHS Corridor Care · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for securing this debate and for allowing me to intervene. The Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS trust published data about patients in corridors for the first time only in May, and in that month it recorded 121 patients per day being treated outside clinical rooms and areas. A constituent of mine, Catherine, wrote to me to describe seeing at first hand elderly people waiting in corridors for hours with no family members to support them. Does the hon. Member agree that corridor care has moved from being an exceptional problem to an everyday issue in many NHS trusts, and that the Government must act to address the root cause of this issue?

• 8 Jul 2026 · NHS Corridor Care · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) on securing this debate. Some very important points have been made. I am going to skip through some of those important points to reinforce the message, and bring forward issues raised directly with me by my constituents. What we have heard is that what was once regarded as an exceptional state of affairs in the NHS has become so commonplace that Parliament is now debating it as a national issue in its own right. We have heard about the lack of investment and the redirection of resources, and about the issue being compounded over the many years of the previous Government. I acknowledge and recognise the efforts made by the current Government to try to address this, as well as many other challenges in the NHS. I congratulate them on their efforts to bring down waiting lists by many, many thousands; my constituents appreciate that. We heard that more and more that patients are being treated away from clinical and sterile places: in corridors, cupboards and other places not designed for treatment. They are being denied their privacy, dignity and adequate support. One doctor described patients dying because they could not access appropriate clinical areas in time. That is not what we would class as a jewel-in-the-crown public service—but that is what the NHS is, and all of us across the House want to restore it back to being the world-class, free-at-the-point-of-need care service for every single person in our country. For many years, hospitals under pressure often managed overcrowding by keeping patients and ambulances outside emergency departments while they waited to be handed over and moved into clinical areas. That resulted in ambulance waiting times going through the roof and many patients not receiving the emergency paramedic assistance they clearly required. Under the previous Government, that issue was displaced: from holding patients inside ambulances to moving them into the hospital building, freeing up ambulances to go and serve other patients. I am not a medical doctor, but I am a scientist and an engineer, and what is obvious is that the 40 hospitals under the previous Government did not get delivered—not all of them were new, but that is also true of the ones that were to be refurbished and expanded. As with prison spaces, we lack the number of beds in our country that the NHS needs to provide safe and dignified care for every patient who seeks treatment. Catherine, one of my constituents, wrote to me to say that she went into hospital with her husband. She waited in a corridor for five hours, but she saw many elderly patients with no relatives or friends with them, who had been waiting there for many hours before she arrived, and nobody was able to look after them or offer them water. They had to keep asking for water from other patients. That experience will exacerbate somebody’s medical condition and increase demand on the NHS. We have heard—

• 8 Jul 2026 · Societal Impact of AI: Government Policy · Hansard source

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  Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that one of the primary obligations of any Government is to keep their citizens and the people living in their country safe from all avoidable harms? AI is a major potential cause of harm, and it is avoidable. Does he agree that the Government cannot wait 25 years to catch up?

• 8 Jul 2026 · Societal Impact of AI: Government Policy · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member explain how this will work, then? Human beings at work pay national insurance, income tax and pension contributions, and then they can support their families. AI agents and AI-powered robots do not pay any of that—there are no tax receipts for the Government—so how will Government fund public services in that scenario?

• 8 Jul 2026 · Societal Impact of AI: Government Policy · Hansard source

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  Responsible AI, done right, could be the saviour of humanity. Irresponsible AI, done wrong, could lead to the destruction of humanity. There is, to my knowledge, no effective, self-regulated industry anywhere in the world that puts consumers and the planet before profit and shareholders. I thank the hon. Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) for securing this important debate. As he and many Members have highlighted, a handful of companies run by men answerable to no electorate and standing before no constituents are making decisions right now that will shape healthcare, education, employment, childhood and the economy more than most Acts of this Parliament ever will. I will focus on topics that have not been covered and speak about safety and economic risks. I have spent 20-plus years in the pharmaceutical regulatory industry, and we can learn much from it. We regulate medicines before they reach a single patient. We do not wait for harm; instead, we test, we license and we monitor. That is the entire logic of the GxP framework that underpins pharmaceutical safety in this country, yet AI is being deployed in our hospitals, schools, courts and welfare system with no comparable safety regime at all, not because the risk is smaller but because the oversight is simply not there. I put the following demands to the Government. First, where GxP protects patients from medicine, we need GAIP—good AI practice—regulation to protect patients from algorithms. Any AI system used in healthcare must meet a statutory standard before it touches a single patient record or clinical decision. The AI Security Institute already evaluates frontier models for biological, chemical and cyber risk, but only if the AI companies allow it to. That is progress, but progress in security assessments is not the same as regulating delivery in the healthcare industry. This Government brought Palantir into the heart of our NHS; in doing so, they handed a US surveillance contractor that is complicit in genocide the keys to patient data that belongs to the British public, not to a share price on Wall Street. I ask the Minister to guarantee the British public that their NHS data will never be given to or allowed to be stolen by Palantir or any other private company. Secondly, the Government must mandate independent statutory testing for AI before its release, and a yellow card scheme that would be a national register where safety incidents, near misses and harms caused by AI were reported, tracked and acted on exactly as we do for adverse drug reactions. It must not be the manufacturer marking its own homework and hoping that nobody checks; self-certification does not work and must end. Thirdly, every AI system developed in this country must have a kill switch that is triggered automatically the moment a system takes unauthorised action and that any human being can trigger manually at any time without obstruction or AI override. This danger is not only about safety but about who pays the bill as AI unfolds. More than 300,000 private-hire drivers in this country face displacement by robotaxis. I ask the Minister how the Government will fund public services going forward. There are dangers, but there are opportunities from AI. We must try to access them as much as possible, but we must address the societal, economic and safety consequences that AI poses.

• 8 Jul 2026 · Societal Impact of AI: Government Policy · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman says no one knows, but throughout history, when we have approached technologies or situations that we have never experienced before, we have done scenario planning and risk assessments, and we have prepared as best as possible for scenarios that may be plausible or possible. Does he agree that when it comes to AI, we have been absolutely asleep at the wheel and that planning has not happened?

• 8 Jul 2026 · Societal Impact of AI: Government Policy · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

• 8 Jul 2026 · Societal Impact of AI: Government Policy · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful point about big foreign tech companies. Does he believe that our dependency on six tech companies in all aspects of our lives poses a national security threat and needs to be assessed as such?

• 1 Jul 2026 · Israel: E1 Zone Expansion · Hansard source

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  All settlers are criminals— not just those who are violent—because they occupy land that does not belong to them. Since the late ’90s, successive Governments have called the E1 a red line because it would permanently divide the west bank and destroy the possibility of a Palestinian state. Meanwhile, more than 700,000 settlers now live illegally over 140 sanctioned settlements and 100 unsanctioned outposts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and settlements continue to expand while Palestinians continue to be forcibly displaced. The International Court of Justice has made it clear that states must not assist in this unlawful occupation. Is the E1 finally the moment when this Government will match their words with action, or will this simply become another so-called red line that Israel crosses without consequence?