Paul Waugh MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Jun 2026 · Armed Forces Day · Hansard source

  More

  To celebrate Armed Forces Day this year in Rochdale, there will be not only the usual flag-raising ceremony at Rochdale town hall, but on Saturday 27 June we will have a free community picnic in Denehurst Park, with live music from local bands and military vehicle displays. Will the Minister join me in thanking Adam Trennery of Get Together After Serving, known as GTAS, not only for putting on this marvellous event, but for all the work he does all year round?

• 16 Apr 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  Council tax arrears can be devastating for people’s finances and mental health, so I warmly welcome the Government’s changes to the debt collection rules today, which mean that people will not be tipped further into poverty by a single missed payment. In Rochdale and wider Greater Manchester, Jo Barker-Marsh and other anti-poverty campaigners have been exposing how the use of bailiffs in cases of genuine hardship is not just cruel and counterproductive, but a waste of public money. Might we have a debate in Government time to highlight the scandal of aggressive council tax debt collection, and will my right hon. Friend join me in praising the work of Jo, Debt Justice and, of course, Martin Lewis?

• 23 Mar 2026 · Hatzola Ambulance Attack · Hansard source

  More

  May I express my solidarity and the solidarity of all Rochdalians with Britain’s Jewish community in the wake of this horrific attack on the ambulance station in Golders Green? Whenever such an antisemitic outrage has occurred, my Muslim constituents stress to me repeatedly that it is not done in their name. They want to make that absolutely clear. In fact, antisemitism has now become normalised, not just offline in the playground, but online everywhere, as we saw in Louis Theroux’s documentary “Inside the Manosphere” last week. Does the Minister agree that Ofcom needs to take much tougher action against antisemitism online, perhaps by having a specific strategy to target men and boys who are being deliberately targeted by the antisemites in our community?

• 19 Mar 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  Last night, there was an emotional farewell for Councillor Ashley Dearnley, who attended his final full council meeting after an incredible 44 years of continuous service. As a Conservative, Ashley could be described as an endangered species within our borough, but his decency, courtesy and integrity and his hard work for Wardle, Shore and West Littleborough have won him widespread respect ever since he was first elected in 1982. Will the Leader of the House join me in thanking Ashley for his services to democracy and wish him well in his retirement?

• 18 Mar 2026 · Social Enterprises and Community Ownership · Hansard source

  More

  I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate and for mentioning Rochdale’s crucial role as the birthplace of the co-operative movement—a global social justice movement. Rochdale council is currently acquiring a church with the intention of turning it into a community-owned cultural venue, and our Pride in Place project in Hurstead, Belfield and Smallbridge similarly has the potential to become a community-owned co-operative, but at the moment the legislation works against both: co-operatives cannot claim gift aid, they do not get proper business rate relief, and there are many, many other ways in which it works against them. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should be removing those obstacles from co-ops so that they can thrive?

• 9 Mar 2026 · Social Cohesion Action Plan · Hansard source

  More

  I recently attended an anti-hate crime seminar organised by the Rochdale Council of Mosques. It struck me that it was clear that innocent Muslim men, women and children are subjected to vile Islamophobia in the street and blamed for terrorist outrages, just as Jews are subjected to vile antisemitism and blamed for the actions of Israel. I welcome today’s new definition of anti-Muslim hostility, which is needed every bit as much as that existing definition of antisemitism. I note that the definition of antisemitism has not had a chilling effect on free speech either.

• 5 Mar 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  Today is World Book Day. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating the winner of my World Book Day competition, Matilda Mann of Littleborough Community primary school, for her brilliant review of “A Box Full of Murders” by Janice Hallett, and congratulate all the local businesses that helped to sponsor hundreds of pounds-worth of books for our local schools?

• 10 Feb 2026 · Local Power Plan · Hansard source

  More

  Rochdale is the birthplace of the co-operative movement, so we know what happens when local people come together to take back control when there has been a clear market failure. That is one of the many reasons I am proud to be the Labour and Co-operative party MP for Rochdale. The Secretary of State rightly talked about the shift from community benefit, which is crumbs from the table for the big energy companies, to community ownership, and how this shift can sustainably lower bills for community groups and community buildings. Does he agree that the local power plan is all about power to the people—not just in the sense of clean energy, but communities having the power to determine their own bills and future?

• 29 Jan 2026 · Non-league Football · Hansard source

  More

  I bow to my hon. Friend’s preference when it comes to Hartlepool, not least because Rochdale were recently subjected to an awful defeat at the hands of the Pools, and I was there to witness it. Hopefully that will not prevent us from winning the national league. He makes a powerful case for the community links of non-league clubs. Will he join me in praising the Dale Trust—the supporters trust—and Dale 1907, which do so much for our local community? Will he also join me at the end of the season, when we put the up into “Up the Dale”?

• 29 Jan 2026 · Holocaust Memorial Day · Hansard source

  More

  I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) and for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) for their powerful and moving testimony. They are a credit to their community and their constituents. Holocaust Memorial Day is a time when we remember the 6 million Jewish men, women and children murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust. The theme of this year’s memorial day is “Bridging Generations”. It is the solemn duty of all of us, in this place and beyond it, who have had the privilege of meeting Holocaust survivors, to pass on their testimony to younger people so that we all may bear witness, collectively, to their suffering and their memory. On that note, it was a real honour last week to meet 95-year-old Mala Tribich MBE in Parliament, and to hear her very moving testimony of how she and her brother were the only members of her family to survive the Nazi Holocaust, following her imprisonment in Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen camps. Many Members will agree how heartbreaking it was to hear of her pleading with the SS guard not to put her on a train. Mala told me afterwards how proud she was of her brother Ben, who went on to represent Britain at the Olympics as a weightlifter. Ben, who passed away in 2023, was one of the 700 Jewish youngsters taken to Cumbria from the death camps. Ike Alterman, who passed away at age 97 in December last year, was the last surviving Greater Manchester member of that group of so-called Windermere children. I mention Ike because his story is well known by the children of Rochdale, particularly in Falinge Park high school, which he visited three years ago to share his experiences. Ike recalled picking sprouts in the bitter Polish winter for the SS officers’ Christmas dinner. He and the other Jews had no proper clothing and no shoes—Ike strapped straw to his feet to walk in the snow. The SS officer said that if he and fellow children sang “Silent Night” they would get a bonus: a ladle of warm water to put sprout skins in. Ike said: “To this day I've never touched sprouts again.” Ike was just 13 when his family were lined up in the town square alongside other Jews. He saw his mother, sister, and brother led away by men with rifles. Later he found out they were likely sent to Treblinka, an extermination camp. At Birkenau, Ike’s job was to take bodies from gas chambers to the crematoriums. He said, “At Birkenau they had four chimneys and they were glowing 24 hours a day, day and night.” That is invaluable testimony to the children of Rochdale from someone who was there. Someone whose story cannot be denied, and someone who we still remember with great fondness. Despite his passing, Ike’s testimony lives on because his talk to the students was captured on video and is shown by the school every year, thanks to the great efforts of the excellent teachers, such as the Holocaust education lead at Falinge Park, Adele Turner. Falinge Park has legacy beacon status as one of the schools under the umbrella of the University College London Centre for Holocaust Education, and has developed a special Holocaust ambassadors and youth champions programme. Its youth champions are year 9 pupils who design and lead the extracurricular lunch time and afterschool sessions on the Holocaust for younger children in the school—beautifully bridging generations even within their school, which is the theme of this year’s memorial. Last week, Greater Manchester’s commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day featured a video of Falinge Park high school pupils Abiha Imran, Willow Greenwood and Dylan Ogden, as they joined Andy Burnham to interview Tomi Komoly, another Holocaust survivor. Tomi revealed he had spoken to 27,000 students in his 10 years of work with the Holocaust Educational Trust—27,000 students who will remember his story. His advice to the next generation was simple. He said, “the one word that immediately pops into my mind is tolerance. Just look at other people in the world and accept that we each have our own way of living and habits…just be respectful of that, and live peacefully side by side.” This year has shown that antisemitism is not just the world’s oldest hatred, but very much a current one, fed by extremists that blame Jews across the globe for the actions of Israel’s Government. The Bondi Beach attack was truly appalling, but in the north-west, we will never forget the Heaton Park synagogue attack on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. We remember Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, who were killed in that attack on that dark day. Marc Levy, who many of us in this place know, is Manchester’s Jewish Representative Council leader, and his father Alan, is a chairman of the synagogue. They were deeply affected by that incident and the loss of their friends. Alan recently recalled how Adrian Daulby leapt up from his seat and ran the length of the synagogue to help them hold shut the front doors from the terror attack, before he was shot and killed. It is truly disgusting that within hours of that attack, a local councillor in Rochdale shared on his Facebook page an article called, “False flag…could the Manchester synagogue attack be orchestrated?” which is an antisemitic dog whistle, as clear as day. But there are glimmers of light amid the darkness. Marc Levy told me that his children marked their B’nai Mitzvah at Heaton Park recently—a very powerful moment of resilience and remembering. Teaching about not just the Nazi Holocaust but genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur has been part of the national curriculum for 35 years. Hatred based on race or religion, with victims scapegoated for sins they never committed, demonised, blamed, and punished for things that had nothing to do with them, becomes a narrative that curdles into deadly extremism. Our school children are taught of that danger. But with young people online more than ever, it is not what happens in the classroom that really worries many of us, but what happens outside it. The potential for them to come across antisemitic content and Holocaust denial and distortion—conspiracy theories that the Holocaust never happened or antisemitic theories that it was orchestrated and faked by Jewish people or Israel—is greater than ever. Meanwhile, we have had regular debate on xAI’s Grok in this House in recent weeks. The AI tool has not only denigrated and degraded women, but generated multiple antisemitic comments, including praise for Hitler, denying the scope of the Holocaust and using so-called Jewish-sounding surnames in the context of hate speech. I hope that Ministers will engage with the Antisemitism Policy Trust to see how the Online Safety Act 2023 can actually crack down on such memes on Reddit and other online platforms. As others have said, Holocaust Memorial Day is also a time to remember all the Roma and Sinti people, gay men, disabled people, political opponents and others murdered by the Nazi killing machine. We also remember all those affected by the subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur and Bosnia. Speaking of Bosnia, it was a truly humbling experience to visit the Srebrenica memorial centre and cemetery in Bosnia last year. In July 1995, more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered by Serb paramilitaries driven by religious, nationalist and ethnic hatred to commit the worst genocide on European soil since the Holocaust. I went to pay my respects and meet the incredible Mothers of Srebrenica campaign group, and to see the very moving testimony in the memorial centre itself.

• 15 Jan 2026 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  The British Bangladeshi community in Rochdale, across the whole north-west, and stretching as far as Scotland and the midlands rely on Biman Bangladesh Airlines’ direct flight from Manchester to Sylhet. However, Biman has suddenly announced the suspension of that route, cutting off a lifeline for families and businesses who travel and trade between our two countries, and leaving many facing the huge cost of travelling directly through London instead. Will the Leader of the House join me and every other MP across the north in urging the airline to think again, listen to our constituents, and restore that flight as soon as possible?

• 7 Jan 2026 · Ukraine and Wider Operational Update · Hansard source

  More

  The people of Rochdale are extremely proud of our long-standing Ukrainian community, which is made up of both those who fled Soviet terror in the 20th century and those who sought refuge from Putin’s crimes in the 21st century. Does the Secretary of State agree that what Putin fears most is western unity, and cross-party consensus and unity in Houses like this one in democracies across the west? Does the Secretary of State agree, therefore, that if Reform MPs vote against deployment of our brave British troops in Ukraine, it would be the biggest gift to Putin since Nathan Gill took that bribe from the Russians?

• 5 Jan 2026 · Venezuela · Hansard source

  More

  From state-sponsored assassination attempts to illegal invasions, in recent years we have seen an alarming rise in the number of countries that are behaving like rogue states, including countries that are permanent members of the Security Council—I name Russia, given what happened on British soil, in Salisbury. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that international rules-based order and international law should be a fundamental principle and practice of the UK, and that we expect other countries to uphold that in all circumstances?

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

  More

  I welcome the fact that, as the Minister said, the UK is spending £116 million this financial year on vital aid to the Palestinians, providing healthcare, food, clean water and sanitation. However, that aid is often stuck at the border because of the continued closure of the Rafah crossing. More importantly, at a time of desperately urgent humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the decision by the Israeli Government to withdraw support or accreditation for NGOs such as ActionAid, CARE International, the International Rescue Committee and the Norwegian Refugee Council is an act of calculated and unconscionable cruelty, is it not? Will the Minister join me in condemning that act and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) says, urgently consider the question of sanctions against the Israeli Ministers responsible for it?

• 9 Dec 2025 · Grooming Gangs: Independent Inquiry · Hansard source

  More

  I strongly welcome the appointment of Anne Longfield as the chair of the new independent inquiry into national grooming gangs. As the Home Secretary said, the key is to find the facts and follow the evidence, wherever it leads. During the trial of some of the Rochdale child rapists earlier this year, the prosecution said that the abuse of the girls took place “under the noses of social workers and others who should have done far more to protect them”. Does the Home Secretary agree that we must hold to account anyone who ignored these crimes, and that no council, police officer, social worker or racial group should ever be exempt from the scrutiny of this new inquiry?

• 2 Dec 2025 · Homelessness: Funding · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers and I thank the chair of the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for bringing this debate. Winter is coming and the temperatures are dropping. I remember a particularly bitter winter 28 years ago, in 1997, when a new Labour Government, with Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, opened up Admiralty House to 60 young people to serve as a winter shelter. That was as powerful symbol of the change that came from that Government. I remember a certain Conservative MP, Crispin Blunt, was not happy with this scheme. He said that it would reduce a historic building to a flagship for undesirables. That is the difference between a Labour Government and a Conservative Government, I have to say. In subsequent years, homelessness was indeed slashed by that Labour Government, but sadly, during the last 14 years under the Conservatives, it has risen again. This year, thankfully, this Government are investing £1 billion in pursuit of ending homelessness and rough sleeping. I am pleased that this winter we have topped that up with a further £84 million cash boost. I will talk a bit about what can work. In Rochdale, we are seeing the tangible results of what happens when there is sustained investment and a relentless focus on combining early intervention schemes with investment in temporary accommodation options that actually get people back on their feet and build better, more sustainable pathways out of homelessness. Rochdale council has seen a 79% reduction in B&B placements compared with November 2024. That is the difference that a Labour council can make when it is working with the Labour Government. I pay particular tribute to Hannah Courtney-Adamson and her team at Rochdale council for all their work in this area, but of course, there are also lots of people on the ground who make such a difference to charities such as the Army of Kindness in Rochdale, Petrus, Sanctuary Trust and Angie’s Angels, who do fabulous work with people who have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. The provision of affordable housing is not keeping pace with demand. In Rochdale, over 7,000 households are on the housing register and we have almost 1,500 live homelessness cases. That is precisely why we need to build more homes for rent. The £39 billion we are investing in affordable and social homes is ultimately the only way out of this crisis. In the meantime, the private renting sector is often the only option, but rising rent prices and cruel section 21 evictions are cited by Rochdale council as the main cause of homelessness, and make the private rented sector impossible for many. That is why I am so proud that this Government has abolished section 21 evictions. Finally, I will say something about the need to tackle homelessness among veterans. It should be a source of national shame that those who served our nation cannot find a home, or they find a safety net filled with holes when they end up on the streets. We are proud of our support networks for veterans in Rochdale, and I am pleased that the council is renovating Denehurst House, a Victorian manor house, and turning it into five new apartments for veterans. I pay tribute to Get Together After Serving for every bit of work they do in this area. Finally, the people of Rochdale really care about fellow Rochdalians who fall on hard times and have no roof over their head. As a Government, we will be judged by how quickly we tackle this crisis—not just in winter, but all year round.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

  More

  This is a Budget that cuts the cost of living for families in Rochdale, boosts apprenticeships, and helps the NHS and our public services—public services that were brought to their knees by 14 years of not just Tory cuts, but coalition cuts. This is a Budget that balances the books, with fairness at its heart, and it is also a Labour Budget that puts children at its heart. I want to focus, in particular, on the historic decision to lift the Tory two- child cap, a policy that has punished so many children in Rochdale and across the land, for the crime of simply being born. As a journalist who worked up in the Press Gallery for 26 years, I reported on, reacted to and analysed Budgets over more than a quarter of a century. With any Budget, there is always talk of winners and losers, but when the two-child cap was introduced in 2016, the biggest losers were children. Think about that: children losing money because of the warped ideology that they were to blame for their parents’ poverty. I grew up on free school meals, so I know what it is like to be in a household where money is tight. Indeed, one of the reasons I stood for Parliament in the first place was to reverse the shocking rise in child poverty that occurred since 2010 under the last Tory Government, and particularly in Rochdale. The decision to scrap the two-child cap would not have been possible without a Labour Government, but neither would it have happened without the many community groups and anti-poverty campaigners in each of our constituencies. Earlier this year in Rochdale we held a roundtable meeting on the Government’s child poverty strategy. It was a heartening gathering, because we in Rochdale are proud of the many things we do locally for our kids, from never closing Sure Starts—which was tough for the local council—to providing free breakfast clubs way ahead of any national roll-out, and giving kids a free lunch if they go to Saturday school. However, our roundtable was also a sobering gathering, because despite everything we have done locally to combat poverty among toddlers and youngsters, many of the adults and campaigners there told us that the biggest problem was the national two-child cap, which has been a catastrophe for the incomes of many families on low pay or between jobs. I want to pay tribute to some of those campaigners and community workers in Rochdale: Jo Barker-Marsh, Aqub Nazir, Heather Madden and Nazrine Akhtar. Without their passion and commitment to helping our children, today would not have been possible. I was not surprised by the Leader of the Opposition’s rant about welfare yesterday. She repeated the Tory misinformation about the two-child cap, basing it on the myth that penalising larger families will somehow stop others from having a third or fourth child. As the Chancellor said yesterday, and as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made absolutely clear from the Dispatch Box today, there is no evidence that the two-child cap led to any change in family size. Why is that? It is because families have children for a whole host of reasons. Women certainly do not get pregnant to get more benefits. In fact, the real scandal in this country is that having children results in a substantial and long-lasting financial penalty for mothers, due to reduced earnings, unemployment and a lack of support. That is something this Government are addressing. ONS research found that five years after the birth of a first child, a mother’s monthly earnings were, on average, 42% lower than they were one year before the birth. The important point to stress is this: people move in and out of work for a whole host of reasons beyond their control. Many people have had their third or fourth child before they lost the job, became ill or were widowed, disabled or had to care for a sick relative or a disabled child. There is a wider point, too, which is that welfare has become a pejorative term. We need to talk more about social security, a safety net that is there for families who fall on hard times through illness, redundancy and no fault of their own. As has been said many times, more than six in 10 families on universal credit are in work. Many are on universal credit for only a few months until they can get back on their feet, or until their children are older, or they can sort proper childcare. No one in this party will defend the tiny minority who game the system, but the tabloid caricature of people lounging about on benefits is far removed from reality, particularly for parents. In the real world, many parents of kids in poverty go hungry themselves, rather than let their kids go without. Many cut back on essentials such as food and heating because they have to. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that the depth of hardship is particularly severe for families with three or more children, with around seven in 10 having to skip meals or go hungry.

• 25 Nov 2025 · G20 and Ukraine · Hansard source

  More

  Last week in Rochdale, I joined our proud Ukrainian community to mark the Holodomor, which was Stalin’s forced famine of millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s. There is a modern-day Holodomor going on in Ukraine through the drone strikes and air strikes by Putin’s regime. Does the Prime Minister share my absolute disgust at the treacherous actions of the former leader of Reform in Wales, who lined his own pockets with cash from the Russian regime, and does he agree that Reform UK’s refusal to carry out a full investigation proves that they really are Putin’s poodles?

• 21 Oct 2025 · Co-operative Sector: Government Support · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend kindly mentioned Rochdale and its proud history in 1844 of the Rochdale pioneers founding this global movement for social justice. It is still a movement that is alive and kicking today. It is not a relic, as is evidenced by the Metro Moneywise credit union, which celebrated its 35th anniversary last week in a town hall ceremony in Rochdale at which I was pleased to be present. Does my hon. Friend agree that the most important point is that the Labour party has agreed to double the size of the co-operative economy, and that the whole of Government needs to get stuck in to achieve that—not just the Treasury, and not just the brilliant new unit in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the co-operative development unit, but every part of Government?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Social and Affordable Housing · Hansard source

  More

  I was lucky enough to grow up in a council house in Rochdale in a stable and secure home with an affordable rent, but sadly that is an opportunity and a childhood denied to far too many children in my constituency today. Why? Because under the last 10 years of the Conservative Government, the number of families on the housing list trebled. Does the Secretary of State agree that reducing the number of children in temporary accommodation should be not just the mission of this Government, but the moral mission of this Government?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Manchester Terrorism Attack · Hansard source

  More

  I pass on my sincere condolences to the families and friends of Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby, some of whom were in the Gallery earlier. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Middleton South (Graham Stringer) said, it is important to mention how Jews, Muslims and Christians came together, united in their revulsion and mourning in the wake of the attack. A few days before the attack, the punk band Bob Vylan told a concert in Holland: “F*** the Zionists, get out there and fight…get out there and meet them in the streets.” I and other Members from Greater Manchester have urged Manchester Academy to cancel the Bob Vylan concert that is due next month because the band is a direct threat to the Jewish community of Manchester. Does the Home Secretary agree that the concert should be cancelled?