Melanie Ward MP: speeches

Speeches

• 9 Jun 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome the new package of important sanctions announced by the Foreign Secretary. As I raised with Government Ministers last week, and as I discussed with the Foreign Secretary last night, last week I submitted a formal complaint to the Charity Commission about 32 UK charities that have over the past five years funnelled some £28 million to illegal Israeli settlements. The research into that was conducted jointly with Israeli human rights organisations. They include UK Toremet, which currently has a live donation page to Artzenu, which the Foreign Secretary has just announced sanctions against. I welcome the fact that she has raised this issue with the Charity Commission. I would say that it was made aware of these issues in July 2025 but has done nothing so far. Can she be clear that we are not just looking for an investigation, but a ban? In reference to the letter that I and 140 other Labour colleagues sent her this week, on a ban on trade with Israeli settlements, can she also now say that we will look to move towards a ban, on top of the guidance that she has issued?

• 2 Jun 2026 · Preparedness for National Emergencies · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Barker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) on securing this debate. Before I was elected to this House, I served as a humanitarian aid worker and spent time in a number of war zones, so I know the importance of preparedness for emergencies and for scenarios that one hopes will never happen. In a country like ours, the role of the state is crucial in this. As my hon. Friend set out, foreign aggressors threaten our country, along with a whole range of new and emerging threats. My hon. Friend also spoke about Storm Éowyn, and we know that, as the rate of climate change increases, the effect of such storms will be exacerbated. When Storm Éowyn hit my constituency, more than 15,000 people across Fife lost power in freezing conditions, and it brought to light flaws in the preparedness for the storm at many different levels, including failures in the priority services register. People’s phone batteries ran out and they had no signal or way of contacting anyone. There were also failures in how the Scottish Government and local authorities planned to get resources to vulnerable communities, including those in areas served by independent distribution network operators, such as Fordell Gardens in my constituency, which was completely left out. It took me more than a year of follow-up to get any kind of action on that issue. We need more joined-up thinking to prepare for such events in future, but we must also be prepared for the international threats that we face. I have to say that we lag behind our European allies in this kind of national preparedness. Our peers such as Sweden and Finland are much further ahead than we are, because of the threats that they have faced historically from Russia. We have the new strategic defence review and the resilience action plan, but we must speed up that work so they are not just frameworks on a shelf but the culture of our country, where individuals, communities and agencies work together to prepare for the threats that we may face in future.

• 21 May 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

  More

  I commend the Government’s action on Iran; they are doing the right thing where others in this Chamber would have led us down a different and dangerous path. I agree with the Minister’s words on Palestine and Lebanon, but we are long past the point of words being anything like enough. I served in Hebron as a human rights observer 13 years ago, and what the Minister describes as happening there today was happening then. I have also visited Khan al-Ahmar, which the Israeli Government now wish to wipe off the map. Experts say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and working to ethnically cleanse the west bank. The Israeli Government have passed a law to hang Palestinians. The Minister is my good and hon. Friend, and he says that the Government are not hesitating to act on this issue, but that is not true. Unfortunately, for far too long, we have been hesitant to take further meaningful action. Where are the comprehensive sanctions on the people committing these human rights violations and holding up aid from entering Gaza? Why do we not yet have a ban on settlement trade? Why have we not yet banned British charities that are funnelling money to settlements?

• 20 May 2026 · Defence Readiness · Hansard source

  More

  I rise to speak in support of His Majesty’s Speech and to call for our Government to take bolder action on many of the challenges faced by our country, and indeed our world. We are living through global instability on a scale not seen for decades. The power shifts are real. Now more than at any time since world war two, we must stand up and defend our values on the international stage. To do that, we need more hard power—much more—but we should also protect and wield our soft power. After 14 years of Tory neglect, our Government’s commitment to defence investment is vital not only to our national security, but to communities like mine in Fife. From the £340 million invested in Rosyth dockyard to support for Methil-based Navantia, now with 120 new jobs and 20 new apprenticeships, this investment is creating skilled jobs and driving the local economy. It comes alongside a new Government support package for defence sector SMEs such as Viper Applied Science in Aberdour and PowerPhotonic in Dalgety Bay. UK Government backing is helping to strengthen our local economy for the future. After two decades of wilful neglect by the SNP on defence skills, Fife and Kirkcaldy in particular stand ready to play our part in rapidly scaling up the next generation of workers in the defence industry. We must heed the warnings on the defence investment plan and rapidly make it a reality—I am sure the Defence Secretary will agree with that. As we strengthen our nation’s ability to protect our people, we must work with our allies and form new relationships, including stronger relations with our European allies and friends. Our collective defence is a cause of the utmost urgency, but so is the defence of our common values: democracy, the rule of law and human rights. Make no mistake—they are under attack. We must act faster to build the UK’s national resilience, too. Our country and our people are not yet ready to face the kinds of turbulence and crises—even conflict—that may lie in our future. Comparable European nations are well ahead of us in building their resilience, and it is time to turbocharge that work in the UK. As we build our hard power and our own resilience, it would be a mistake to allow our soft power to fall away. DFID, a proud achievement of the last Labour Government, is a body that we miss today amid so much conflict and global health crises, such as the latest Ebola outbreak. As defence chiefs said this week, recent cuts to the aid budget are a source of deep pain to many of us, but to no one more so than the children going to bed hungry because of them. In north-east Nigeria, where I once served as an aid worker, more than 1 million people affected by the conflict with Boko Haram risk being cut off from food and nutrition support because of cuts to the World Food Programme. What happens when the world cuts aid at a time of greater global conflict than any other since world war two? Already displaced people will be further displaced. They will migrate in search of survival.

• 20 May 2026 · Defence Readiness · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about soft power and why it is such an important complement to hard power. It has become common to say that the rules-based order is dead or dying, but we must stand with our allies to preserve and defend all that was built to protect humanity from evil in the ashes of two world wars and the cold war. Data shows that since 2012, there has been an increase in the number of countries where mass atrocity crimes are occurring, and action is needed. Let us remind ourselves that we are talking about genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity from Sudan to Sinjar. These are the most heinous crimes that exist—mass identity-based violence. Where is the UK Government’s strategy to work with like-minded countries to prevent that? There is not one. We need to change that, and fast. Doing so would be an obvious complement to the important work that the Foreign Secretary is doing on women and girls in Sudan. The United Nations and the International Criminal Court—two imperfect but vital institutions designed to protect humanity and respond to it at its worst—are under enormous pressure, not least from the US Government, whose sanctions are designed to hobble the ICC. Our Government are supporting the UN and the ICC, but we should be making the case for them loudly and globally, working with like-minded allies to protect and defend their very existence. It is time to act at the pace required by global events. The time for incremental micro-steps is over. We must act at a scale appropriate to the urgency of the moment we are in. On Iran and Ukraine, the Government are doing the right thing, but the world can see for itself what is happening in Palestine and Lebanon. Experts say that there has been genocide in Gaza. Israel continues to bomb and kill, including doctors, hospitals and aid workers in Gaza and Lebanon. Israeli settlers in the west bank are trying to ethnically cleanse Palestinians with the support of their Government.

• 20 May 2026 · Defence Readiness · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is right. He is a doctor himself, and I know how well he understands and how much he feels the need for the world to do better—to make change in this area, and stop just talking about making change. It is time for much bolder action from our Government. It is time for them to stand against what is happening, and to influence events. We need not more words, but more action. To start with, we need comprehensive sanctions on Israeli officials who are responsible for human rights violations and the denial of aid, we need a ban on settlement trade, and we need to outlaw the funnelling of money to settlements by British charities. It is not good enough to say that it is difficult to do these things. Civilians need us to act, and both history and the public are judging us now. Incremental change does not cut it in this time of massive global shifts. We must be bold in our global action, just as we must be bold here at home.

• 13 Apr 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome the Prime Minister’s continued clarity on the need for Lebanon to be included in the ceasefire, but Israel’s tactics in Lebanon—forced displacement, evacuation orders, 165 children killed and 87 medical workers killed—are straight out of its Gaza playbook. Does the Prime Minister agree that in Lebanon, as in Palestine, there must be proper accountability for these war crimes, because this age of impunity puts us all in greater danger?

• 24 Mar 2026 · Middle East: Economic Update · Hansard source

  More

  My constituents are appalled by supermarkets and other petrol retailers that are price gouging and profiteering from global instability and a middle east war that was backed by both the Tories and Reform. Let us make no mistake: if they were in government, our country would be right in the middle of it. Will the Chancellor set out the action that she is taking to clamp down on price gouging? I thank her for the £9 million announced yesterday to help my constituents in Cowdenbeath and elsewhere affected by the changes at Mossmorran.

• 19 Mar 2026 · International Development · Hansard source

  More

  The Foreign Secretary is aware of the impact of humanitarian aid and how it saves lives in the midst of the most horrific situations that humans experience on this earth. She will also be aware of the vital role that UN agencies, including the World Food Programme, play in co-ordinating humanitarian actors in the midst of these crises. Will she set out the impact of these changes on humanitarian aid and on UN agencies? May I also say that her recognition of and focus on women and girls really matters, and many of us strongly support that?

• 19 Mar 2026 · Online Harms · Hansard source

  More

  It is an understatement to say that the internet and social media have changed everything. The early optimism of internet pioneers was that we would all benefit from a world in which all information was at our fingertips. In many respects, they were not wrong, and rapid technological advancement has massively improved our lives, whether that is significant developments in healthcare and easier communication with friends and family or online banking, which is a real benefit to many people here in the UK. We have also seen the benefit across the world—in humanitarian crises, for example, where cash transfers are increasingly used as part of the humanitarian response. It is much safer and easier to make those happen from a laptop or someone’s mobile phone, rather than having to helicopter huge sums of cash through war zones or refugee camps, which is what happens without that ability. The fact that the online world has amplified everything means just that: almost everything, no matter how sinister or extreme, is available to us and, most distressingly of all, to our children. Not only is it available to us, but algorithms designed to push extreme content mean that violent, misogynistic, racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic and other hateful content is winning the battle for our attention and causing real harm. It is no longer just in ideological echo chambers. Algorithms and the introduction of suggested content that is pushed at the user mean that such content has permeated youth culture and taken over many of the spaces where young people communicate with each other and the language that they use. It is now just as easy—if not easier—-to tune in to extremist content online as it is to watch cartoons, go to the park or go to a house party, and that has real-life impacts in our constituencies. In Cowdenbeath in my constituency, antisocial behaviour is a real issue. Tomorrow, I will hold a second meeting on antisocial behaviour, following an antisocial behaviour summit I held in December. We have found that social media is having a real impact by encouraging more extreme behaviour between young people, because it is filmed and shared online. Local headteachers also report the impact of apps like Snapchat as a real factor in bullying between schoolchildren. We know that this is a global problem. Radical and violent groups profit from the recruitment to their online causes of young men in particular, pushing violence and very real threats to our democracy, including ISIS in the middle east, the Proud Boys in the United States and Yoon Suk Yeol, whose misogynistic platform was a factor in his election as President of South Korea and the attempted insurrection in 2024 for which he is now serving a life sentence. The truth is that the big tech companies are so obsessed with outdoing each other to profit from the attention of our children or other vulnerable people that they have ignored their responsibility to keep them and our communities safe, and to prevent people from being exposed unwittingly to the most horrific material. Madam Deputy Speaker, I am about to mention another hon. Member, who is not present, and I just want to confirm that I have notified him in advance. Too many people have been prepared to sacrifice the safety and cohesion of our communities for the right price. This week, an investigation showed that the leader of Reform has been paid to take extreme political positions on the Cameo app. According to The Guardian , the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) took money to call for the release of P. Diddy and of a Honduran drug trafficker, to support a rioter, to repeat extremist slogans and to endorse a neo-Nazi event. Members of the public will be able to draw their own conclusions from that kind of behaviour. Too often, action to prevent harmful content is too slow. In March last year, when new powers in the Online Safety Act came into force, I wrote to Ofcom requesting that action be taken, using that Act, against a website that actively encourages its users to die by suicide—I will not name the site for obvious reasons. Ofcom launched an investigation of the site, but it had still taken only a provisional decision against that site last month. I promise hon. Members that spending five minutes on the site would tell them immediately that it has no place in our country and no place online at all. It is shocking that action has not been taken. Tragically, since the illegal harms code came into force last year, the death of two more people have been linked to that site. Does the Minister agree that Ofcom is far too slow in responding to sites like this, and will he please take that up with Ofcom? There are so many reasons why I am glad that our Government are taking steps to consult on a social media ban for under-16s. To be clear, I support such a ban.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Fuel Duty · Hansard source

  More

  I could come back to the hon. Gentleman on all the ways in which my constituents are getting really poor value for money in Scotland, such as the cuts to police numbers in Fife and excessively long waiting lists in the NHS that are not falling, as they are under a Labour Government in England. The hon. Gentleman talks about heating oil. He will be aware—in fact, I think he referenced it—of the additional £4.6 million for the Scottish Government that the Prime Minister announced on Monday to support people in rural areas and vulnerable households dealing with the increases in the price of heating oil caused by the war in the middle east. Can the hon. Gentleman tell us when the Scottish Government will make that funding available to his constituents and my constituents?

• 17 Mar 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

  More

  The Government are right not to be drawn into this war and that it needs to end, including with a negotiated agreement. I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s comments about the situation in Lebanon, where I used to live and work as an aid worker. Does she share my serious concern at the conduct of the Israeli military, with at least 28 attacks on hospitals and health facilities in Lebanon so far and threats of forced displacement? The tactics used in Gaza were criminal and must not be exported with impunity.

• 16 Mar 2026 · Heating Oil Support · Hansard source

  More

  I warmly welcome the Minister’s confirmation that the UK Government have provided the Scottish Government with £4.6 million to ensure that the most vulnerable households in parts of my constituency, like Auchtertool and Kingseat, are shielded against the increases in the price of heating oil caused by war in the middle east. Does he agree that it is up to the Scottish Government to act very rapidly to ensure that the most vulnerable households in my constituency get the support that they need?

• 12 Mar 2026 · International Women’s Day · Hansard source

  More

  I congratulate the hon. Member for Gorton and Denton (Hannah Spencer) on her first speech, and welcome her to this place. I do not know whether she has noticed, but the Palace of Westminster is in need of some maintenance, so it is entirely possible that both her plastering and plumbing skills will come in useful in the very near future. I rise to speak in my first International Women’s Day debate. I have followed these debates since before I was elected, so it is a true privilege to take part today. I have to say, if the composition of the Chamber were like this more often—by which I mean the number of men and women relative to each other—we might have different kinds of debates. Today, we celebrate women in our communities, across the country and throughout our world. We celebrate extraordinary women who achieve incredible things for the good of humanity. In that context, it is a great but sad honour to sit opposite the coat of arms of my late dear friend Jo Cox, with whom I served on the board of the Labour Women’s Network. I think of her every time I come to this place and see her coat of arms. We miss her and her contributions dearly. I have previously mentioned Jennie Lee, a proud Fifer who grew up in Cowdenbeath in my constituency and served two spells as a Labour MP. As well as having been the first ever UK Minister for the Arts, and the creator of the Open University, it is less known that Jennie served in the Ministry of Aircraft Production during world war two, keeping aircraft factories running during the blitz. She was called on to do so because of her no-nonsense attitude and ability to get things done. I take inspiration from that. I am proud to follow Jennie as the 595th woman—among many thousands of men—elected to this Parliament, together with an unprecedented number of women MPs. Our Labour Government have important plans to advance women’s equality, from halving violence against women and girls to transforming women’s experiences of maternity care—a subject I discussed with the right hon. Baroness Amos just this week. Beyond the women who are recognised for extraordinary achievements, we must be clear that the unseen work that women across the world do every day does not receive the recognition it deserves. According to the UN, women and girls do 16,000,000,000 hours of unpaid care work every single day. Their work is the very glue of families, communities and economies—countries could not function without it—yet it remains largely invisible, undervalued and unequally distributed. Today, I want to sound a warning. We know that violent struggles are being fought for global power, but around the world, and increasingly at home, the struggle for power is being expressed as a struggle for control over women and our bodies. My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) and I have written about that together this week. There are many shocking examples of the battle to control women’s bodies. As my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Ms Oppong-Asare) mentioned, the oppressive regime in Iran has been desperate to prevent women from dressing in the way they want to, despite the incredibly brave protestations of amazing women there in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s death. As the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) said so eloquently, in Afghanistan, the Taliban have tested the limits of whether the world will stop them enforcing gender apartheid, by forcing women out of schools and workplaces and into the home. They looked for, and found, the answer they wanted: that the world does not care enough to stop them. In Sudan, which is suffering the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, rape and sexual violence is routinely used as a weapon of war. At the recent Munich security conference, which I attended, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary spoke powerfully about her visit to Sudanese refugee camps and the horrific accounts that she heard there, including of the systematic rape of girls as young as eight. I am proud to be a former chair of The Circle, the global feminist organisation founded by Annie Lennox. Only this morning it shared with me data showing that sexual violence in conflicts worldwide has increased by 25% in the last year. In conversations about a shift in the global order, there is an increasing subtext of the need to control women’s bodies. We see that in some of the attacks on the legitimacy and funding of the United Nations. I worked with the UN in my previous work. Let us make no mistake: the UN would benefit from many reforms, but starving its institutions of funding to do work that no one else will do, for people no one else will help, is a grave error. That work includes providing contraception to women in war zones and refugee camps, so that they have some basic control over their bodies in situations where they have control over almost nothing else. In the context of domestic cuts to our own aid budget—a source of concern to many of us—we must do everything possible to preserve support for women and girls. I know that the Foreign Secretary is doing important work on that. We must not content ourselves by believing that such misogyny only exists abroad. Matt Goodwin, the Reform candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, said that women who do not have children should be taxed more, and that young women need an education in fertility—as if “The Handmaid’s Tale” was something we should aspire to. He seems to believe that women who choose not to have children, or who cannot, are somehow failing in their duties. Reform has said that, were they in government, the Equality Act—the basis for much of the progress we have made on women’s rights in the UK—would be repealed. Shame on them. Online, British women are stripped of the agency we have over our own bodies, exemplified by Grok weaponising women’s bodies through nudification. Our Labour Government are right to crack down on such apps. My hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) had the truly awful experience of someone using that technology to make a fake video of her being chloroformed and “prepared for rape”. That makes the comments by the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam), in the previous statement all the more unacceptable. The intended humiliation of women online is not simply cruel or misogynistic, although it is certainly both. It is intended to instil fear, to signal that some violent men believe that they are entitled to dominate women and to normalise such abhorrent behaviour. Last week, ahead of International Women’s Day, I met members of the Fife violence against women partnership. We discussed the more than 5,000 incidents of domestic abuse and the more than 1,100 crimes of indecency reported to the Fife police last year. We know that many more will have gone unreported. They also shared with me their concerns about social media and the misogyny spread online by so-called male influencers. I heard shocking reports about some of the things that local schoolboys have said to female teachers—comments that they have learned online. They included female teachers being told by boys that they teach, “You’re so ugly, I wouldn’t even rape you.” Male influencers online also seek to spread the idea that the role of the tradwife is what girls and young women should aspire to in life. This is the idea that women belong only in the home, and that we should all take our fulfilment simply from cooking meals for our husbands and rearing children. This online misogyny is spread by the likes of Andrew Tate, the late Charlie Kirk and far too many others, and it is aided by harmful algorithms. Perhaps it should not surprise us that a new global survey has found that younger men increasingly believe that a wife should obey her husband, and that men are expected to do too much to support equality. That is not an accident; transnational organisation is making that happen. The European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights has found that $1.18 billion was pumped into European movements dedicated to rolling back women’s rights between 2019 and 2023. That funding came from 275 different actors, including church-run non-governmental organisations and far-right populist parties. Russia was the biggest source of donations, and the United States the second biggest—especially from American Christian nationalists. That American funding is now accompanied by financial help from the US Government, who have set aside $200 million to support MAGA-friendly think-tanks in Europe. Let us be clear: this is designed to spread their ideology, including here in the UK. When we, the decent majority, both in this House and outside it, confront the grassroots arm of the far-right—local groups acting in our communities—we must be clear that they are not just isolated local groupings of people; they are the grassroots arm of a well-organised international effort to reverse women’s rights. Our Government are doing a huge amount to drive forward women’s equality on closing the pay gap on childcare, on tackling violence against women and girls, and so much more. I am proud of that work. But we face a dark threat to the fabric of our society from the organised misogyny that I have described. We must defeat it, and we have much to do.

• 5 Mar 2026 · Local Museums · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for securing this debate on local museums. Local museums play a crucial role in our constituencies. They not only bring people to visit from all corners of the country and, indeed, the world, but strengthen the ties that bind us to where we live, giving us pride in the contributions that our homes have given to the world. Nowhere is that more evident than in the Kirkcaldy Galleries and War Memorial, which celebrated their centenary last year. They were the gift of John Nairn, whose family’s linoleum-making business helped to make Kirkcaldy the linoleum capital of the world. He paid for the construction of the galleries, in memory of his only son, Ian Nairn, who was killed in the Somme in 1918. The galleries building is one of the first things that people see as they leave the train station in Kirkcaldy and head to our town centre. The award-winning art galleries have a large collection of paintings by William McTaggart and Samuel Peploe, and have hosted exhibitions by Diane Arbus and Fife’s very own Jack Vettriano, who was heavily influenced by the works on display in the galleries. As it is World Book Day today, it would be remiss of me not to mention the excellent children’s library that is there, too, which my own kids spend many a happy hour in, usually looking for one particular Mr Men book or another. The galleries also contain a first edition copy of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations”, which celebrates its 250th anniversary this year. The father of economics was born and grew up in Kirkcaldy; there is a commemorative plaque on the high street marking his mother’s house, where he completed writing that book. Adam Smith’s titanic legacy has been preserved by the excellent work of the Adam Smith Global Foundation, which manages the heritage centre and Adam Smith Close, where the stones mark significant events in Smith’s life, by the Old Kirk where Smith was baptised. The Minister will be aware of concerns that Church leaders have expressed about the closure of the listed places of worship scheme; I wonder whether he might address those concerns in his response. While I have him here, I must also take the chance to give my utmost support to Kirkcaldy’s bid to be UK town of culture 2028. I am sure that all hon. Members present will agree that it would be a worthy winner. The bid has been led by the Lang Toun Partners, formed by the Adam Smith Global Foundation and other fantastic organisations from our town. Our town has so much going on, but it is a well-kept secret to too many outside the Lang Toun. It is time that we shouted louder, so I am delighted to support the bid to cement our position on the cultural map and make Kirkcaldy the UK’s town of culture for 2028. I would also like to mark the important contributions of Burntisland Heritage Trust, who do so much to celebrate Burntisland and preserve its important history, as well as the excellent Museum of Communication in Burntisland. Finally, with International Women’s Day taking place this weekend, I end by recognising the work of Jennie Lee, who grew up in my constituency, in Cowdenbeath. Jennie was the UK’s first ever Minister for the Arts. She trebled Arts Council funding, was a strong supporter of regional and national arts, and founded the Open University. Jennie’s legacy is truly one to be proud of. Perhaps the Minister finds her as much of an inspiration as I do. Her picture hangs in my office and I take inspiration from her important work every day that I sit in this place.

• 2 Mar 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

  More

  The Prime Minister is right to be clear that UK military action has to be in line with international law, and that we were not involved in the offensive action of Israel and the US. He is also right to act to protect British lives and British interests in the face of Iranian attacks. In rightly drawing lessons from Iraq, does the Prime Minister agree that a failed state in Iran is not in the interests of the UK, nor in the interests of the wider middle east?

• 25 Feb 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Gentleman talks about drones. A couple of weeks ago, I was at the Munich security conference, where I had the privilege of hearing President Zelensky speak. He said that in January, Ukraine was attacked by more than 6,000 Shahed drones, which are made in Iran, or in Russia based on Iranian design. Does he agree that the sheer scale of bombardment that Ukraine faces from those drones, and from countries that also wish our country ill, is just one reason why the United Kingdom is right to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Gaza Healthcare System · Hansard source

  More

  I am sure that everybody in this Chamber is absolutely opposed to the horrific Hamas attacks that took place on 7 October 2023. What confuses me is why the shadow Minister and his party continue to repeat Israeli propaganda points. I was an aid worker before I was elected to this place. I was in Gaza during the war. Can he give us some examples of all the things that he is repeating about the misappropriation and the stealing of aid? Can he give us one concrete example?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Gaza Healthcare System · Hansard source

  More

  Does my hon. Friend agree with me on the need for justice and accountability for horrific acts that have taken place in hospitals, including a massacre in the grounds of al-Shifa hospital, and a situation in Nasser hospital where many babies were left to die following Israeli military action?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Gaza Healthcare System · Hansard source

  More

  Will the Minister give way?

• 29 Jan 2026 · Holocaust Memorial Day · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) who, as so often on topics like this, speaks with great authority. I rise once again this year to remember the Holocaust, one of the darkest chapters in human history. The industrial-scale extermination of 6 million Jewish people and millions more prisoners of war, political prisoners, Poles, disabled people, members of the LGBT community, Roma and others is a horror so bleak that we must ensure the memory of what was done and those whose lives were taken never fades. The theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is “Bridging Generations”. In last year’s debate, we marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Like a number of other Members, I shared some of my own family’s story and spoke about my Jewish great-grandfather. In the intervening year, we have lost more Holocaust survivors who were determined to let the world know what happened to them, their friends and their family in that horrific place. Holocaust education is not just teaching history; it should play a crucial role in combatting antisemitism and hatred, and preventing future genocides. As we are able to hear from fewer and fewer survivors each year, there is an additional duty for all of us to educate future generations on the atrocities that were committed on European soil. In my constituency just last month, a group of masked young men were photographed giving the Nazi salute and brandishing the symbol of the SS on the steps of our town house in Kirkcaldy. It was so shocking that at first, I thought the image must have been generated by AI, because things like that don’t usually happen round our way, but the local police confirmed that it was real. It was honestly frightening that those men felt comfortable participating in such an act in broad daylight, not 400 yards from our Holocaust memorial or the war memorial, which commemorates the hundreds of Kirkcaldy men who died fighting the Nazis. Acts like this are a warning to us all: hatred spreads in plain sight. There are those among us, including some who sit in this place, whose purpose is to sow and stir hatred and division in our communities. It is fostered and spread online, in the presence of vulnerable young minds. This is an eradication of historical record and memory in favour of misinformation. I am grateful to my local police force in Kirkcaldy for its swift action in identifying, arresting and charging suspects, as well as to the many Fifers who expressed their outrage that such an ignorant, offensive and dangerous act had taken place in our midst. I have said to my constituents that, in the months and years ahead, sadly we—and they—must all be prepared to take a visible stand against hate. Some of the people in that photograph were not men but boys, who apparently said that they had not understood what the gesture of the Nazi salute meant, nor understood the SS symbol on the flag that they held, but that is why the theme of “Bridging Generations” is so crucial. As the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said, education and memory must become a responsibility. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols), in a profound speech, spoke about the difference between history and memory. We in Kirkcaldy are proud of our Holocaust memorial, designed by students from three Fife schools who visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2005. The sculpture is in the shape of a doorway, and has symbols carved into it that were used across Europe and America in the 1930s to tell others, “This is a safe place.” The UK, and towns like mine in Fife, has long been a safe place for minorities and those fleeing persecution. It is incumbent on all of us to call out racism and antisemitism and those who seek to divide us. I know that the vast majority of my constituents—indeed, of our country—agree with that, but we can take nothing for granted in today’s uncertain world. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) so eloquently said, we cannot assume that it will not happen again. Indeed, in the wake of the antisemitic attacks on Heaton Park synagogue and Bondi Beach, we must be clear eyed about what is happening. In the aftermath of the Holocaust and world war two, international law and the rules-based order were created, to put lines in the sand about right and wrong and to learn the lessons of what had taken place. Now, as the rules-based order is increasingly trampled on by nations that should know better, we the UK must do more to prevent mass atrocities. There must be better prediction, prevention and response to mass identity-based violence. Data suggests that since 2012 there has been an increase in the number of countries where mass atrocity crimes are occurring, and action is needed to stop it. There is a gap in global leadership on this agenda, and it shows. The UK has never had a strategy for the prevention of mass atrocity crimes. Given the state of global affairs, surely we need one now more than ever. Surely, too, we should seek to build a coalition with like-minded countries to monitor the warning signs and act together to prevent the mass murder of citizens who are targeted simply because of who they are. I ask the Minister to take that away. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, humanity was determined to prevent genocide, mass atrocities and identity-based violence from taking place ever again, but the warning light is flashing red and it is time for renewed domestic and international action, alongside education. Holocaust Memorial Day is often marked by the lighting of a candle. It is now up to us to light that candle, and carry the memory of those who perished with us always.

• 5 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  We continue to await a Home Office decision on the future of the Gaza student scholarship scheme. While thinking about that, will the Government commit to honouring the visas of the small number of students and their families who already have funded places to come here but have not yet been permitted to leave Gaza?

• 5 Jan 2026 · Middle East and North Africa · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Minister for all his work on Yemen, which gets too little attention. It is a personal commitment of his. The humanitarian crisis there is truly horrific. As he said, over Christmas, the Israeli Government banned 37 international humanitarian organisations, many of them British, from delivering lifesaving aid in the state of Palestine. They include Medical Aid for Palestinians, the International Rescue Committee, Action Aid and Médicine sans Frontières. In doing this, Israel follows in the footsteps of other aid-banning regimes, such as North Korea, Russia and Myanmar. More civilians are dying as a result. We know from the past two years that words and statements have no impact on the behaviour of this Israeli Government. When will the UK take real action and impose sanctions on all the Israeli Government officials who are involved in this illegal, inhumane ban on humanitarian organisations?

• 17 Dec 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

  More

  I associate myself with the Prime Minister’s condemnation of the horrific attacks in Australia. We must be clear that antisemitic terrorism is always an outrage. At Christmas time, many across our country will be thinking of Bethlehem, where the situation remains extremely difficult. The Government’s important scheme for students from Gaza with scholarships to study in the UK expires on 31 December, but a number of scholarship holders and their children have not yet been permitted to leave Gaza. If the scheme closes, these brilliant Palestinians will lose their university places and we will lose their talent. Will the Prime Minister extend the UK’s existing scheme into next year to prevent that from happening?

• 22 Oct 2025 · Scottish Independence Referendum · Hansard source

  More

  The SNP’s renewed chatter on independence is understandable, because it wants to distract from its abysmal record of running down our public services. Given that its plans for defence in an independent Scotland include giving up the nuclear deterrent and replacing it with little more than a Scottish navy comprising the Waverley and the Vital Spark, does the Secretary of State agree that Vladimir Putin will be rubbing his hands with glee at the SNP’s latest outbursts?