Paul Waugh MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  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?

• 16 Mar 2026 · Strait of Hormuz · Hansard source

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  This Government are absolutely right to refuse to take part in the war being waged by the United States and Israel. Will the Minister confirm to the House that we are going to put British interests first in everything we do? That includes protecting the global economy, and protecting all our constituents’ energy bills.

• 10 Feb 2026 · Local Power Plan · Hansard source

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  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 · Holocaust Memorial Day · Hansard source

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  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.

• 11 Dec 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The residents of Littleborough, Smithy Bridge and Rochdale have been plagued by roadworks on the A58, and they have suffered appalling delays as a result. They have been late for work, school and hospital appointments. Given that the privatised water company United Utilities is responsible for many of these roadworks, often because of years of neglect of its pipework, can we have a debate on the changes in the law needed to end the misery on the A58, and other roads like it?

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

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Butler. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Irene Campbell), and others, for setting out the context of the modern-day moral outrage that is the plight of the people of Gaza. Gaza may have disappeared from the headlines and TV screens, but the suffering continues for many, and neither I nor my constituents in Rochdale will allow the Palestinian people to be forgotten this winter, or any winter. Yes, the ceasefire brokered by the United States and others was undeniably welcome—finally, we are seeing the deceased and living hostages returned, prisoners released and the bombing abating—but, for more than two years, innocent Palestinians have endured the destruction of their homes, the tearing apart of their communities, and a relentless assault on their basic humanity and dignity. Now, as the winter rains fall upon their battered land, the misery deepens. As has been said, camps have become swamps; families who once had roofs over their heads now huddle in mud and fetid water, some of it sewage water; and more than a quarter of a million people are in desperate need of emergency tents and tarpaulins. The skies may be quieter and the airstrikes fewer, but the silent killers of disease and deprivation stalk the land of Palestine. I ask the Minister, what are the United Kingdom Government doing to ensure that those emergency shelters reach Palestinians without delay? How will the new Civil-Military Co-ordination Centre be used to compel Israel to open the floodgates to the aid that Gaza so desperately needs? As many have said, UNRWA has been clear that Gaza remains in a catastrophic state, despite the ceasefire. Israel continues to block international staff and to choke the entry of aid: 6,000 aid trucks stand idle at the crossings—6,000 trucks that could feed hungry mouths, clothe children, and bring medicine to the sick. Some 90% of Gaza’s population now survive entirely on aid and families scrape by on one meal a day but, still, just 170 trucks are allowed in, far below the minimum required for basic survival. As has been said, as well as the scandal of the lack of food, the children of Gaza suffer gravely from a lack of education. UNRWA struggles to provide schooling for 300,000 students remotely and 50,000 in person, under intolerable conditions. Some 44,000 Palestinian children sit in makeshift learning spaces, often on cold floors without chairs. Their sense of security—their very childhood —is being eroded every single day. When I visited the west bank earlier this year, one of the most shocking sights was the ruins of a Palestinian school building in Zanuta that had been attacked by Israeli settlers. The trashed primary school desks, the maps ripped off the walls, the wrecked life chances—they will remain with me and many other parliamentarians who attended for a very long time, and all with zero accountability for the perpetrators. Education lies in ruins. Satellite imagery shows that 93% of Gaza’s schools have been directly hit or damaged—that is 526 out of 564 buildings destroyed or requiring reconstruction. In north Gaza and Rafah, every single school building has been hit. What kind of army bombs schools?

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

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman. Yes, this is a grassroots, people-led campaign, as the petition shows. There has been progress in November: expanded food rations; a catch-up immunisation campaign that vaccinated 13,000 children; the distribution of high-performance tents to learning spaces, at least in Khan Yunis; bread prices that are beginning to fall thanks to the World Food Programme; and households reporting two meals a day instead of one. But that is not enough—nowhere near enough. The challenges remain immense. Heavy rains have affected 13,000 households directly; hundreds of tents have collapsed; fuel shortages mean that half the population still burns waste to cook; infrastructure lies in ruins; and aid convoys are always blocked at Rafah, where they should not be, denied at Kerem Shalom and turned away at hospitals in the north. UNRWA has food parcels for 1.1 million people, flour for 2.1 million and shelter supplies for 1.3 million pre-positioned outside Gaza, but Israel refuses to let it in. I say again that for too many Palestinians, the ceasefire is a fiction. Between 12 and 19 November, the most recent data available, eight Palestinians were killed and 41 injured, with 18 bodies pulled from the rubble. As we all know, the toll since 7 October 2023 now stands at 69,513 dead and 170,745 injured. Even after the ceasefire, 280 people have been killed and 672 injured, and 571 bodies retrieved. What kind of ceasefire is this when the killing continues? Let us not forget that many ordinary Israelis want peace. Many Israeli human rights groups, civil society organisations such as B’Tselem, and others, are being targeted by Netanyahu’s Government. They know that, without full rights for Palestinians and full statehood, there will never be genuine security for them or other Israelis. This is not just a humanitarian crisis; it is a moral crisis. It is a test of our values as a nation. We must have urgent action to open all the crossings, lift the restrictions and flood Gaza with aid at long last. We must keep up progress for a two-state solution, with peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians side by side. Speaking of a two-state solution, it was particularly sickening this month to see the Israeli Minister Ben-Gvir taunting in prison the one man who many Palestinians see as the Mandela of the middle east: Marwan Barghouti. I had the privilege of meeting his son when I was in Jerusalem earlier this year. Does the Minister agree that Marwan Barghouti has a key role to play in a lasting peace for the region? The Government have rightly recognised that the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains desperate. As the Middle East Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr Falconer), has confirmed, in the financial year 2025-26, the UK will provide more than £100 million for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, prioritising humanitarian relief, economic development and strengthening the Palestinian Authority. Those are important commitments, but commitments must be backed by delivery. The people of Gaza cry out for shelter, food, education and dignity. The petitioners cry out for action, and history will cry out for accountability. The Labour Government have made an historic step in recognising the state of Palestine—something no other British Government have done before. We need similarly bold moves on aid. Let us ensure that Britain is remembered for solidarity and political courage. Let us press Israel to open all crossings, demand the entry of aid, support UNRWA in its vital work and, above all, work for a genuine ceasefire that stops the killing, allows rebuilding and restores hope for a two-state solution. Without hope and real justice, there can be no lasting peace in the middle east.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend references Scotland. I was at COP26 in Glasgow the last time we had a Conservative Prime Minister who showed real climate leadership on the global stage, yet we have now seen the sad spectacle—and we will see more of it later today—of a party that had a distinguished tradition of environmental protection and climate change reality running away to the Reform vote, which is an empty one. Does the Minister agree with the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who said: “Certainly in my party, it’s all about bashing the green agenda, and personally I don’t think we’ll get elected on that. I didn’t see us soaring in the polls as a result of saying what rubbish net zero is. I didn’t see a massive leap in support for the Conservatives”?

• 14 Oct 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  I thank the Prime Minister for his statement and warmly welcome the ceasefire, both for the beginning of the end of the suffering of the children of Gaza and for the release of the hostages, one of whom is Nimrod Cohen, whose brother I met in Jerusalem earlier this year and whose family are eternally grateful for everything that this country and the United States have done to secure their release. I also thank the Prime Minister for his emphasis today on the need to flood Gaza with aid, something we have not seen done at all adequately until now. Does he agree with the UN’s Tom Fletcher that more Governments need to urgently fund the UN’s flash appeal for the Occupied Palestinian Territories?