Rupa Huq MP: speeches 2025

105 published records · newest first.

Speeches

22 Jul 2025 · UK Internal Market · Hansard source
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We are going to leave a couple of minutes at the end for the Member in charge to conclude.
22 Jul 2025 · Housing Provision in Stafford · Hansard source
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Reciprocated all round, I think. Question put and agreed to.
22 Jul 2025 · Humanitarian Situation in Sudan · Hansard source
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Leaving time for Harpreet Uppal to conclude, I call the Minister.
22 Jul 2025 · Humanitarian Situation in Sudan · Hansard source
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We are going to set the clock for speech duration. Everyone has to remain within 4 minutes and 30 seconds so that everyone can get in.
22 Jul 2025 · Humanitarian Situation in Sudan · Hansard source
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Order. I need to calculate how long everyone will get to speak. Is everyone standing who wishes to speak? Okay. In that case, I call Jim Shannon.
21 Jul 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source
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We rightly re-funded UNRWA, but since then aid has become a daily death trap and starvation is widespread. Our calls for a ceasefire only saw the last one get broken. Now, as my right hon. Friend has pointed out, the chilling order to forcibly displace an entire population of 2 million people has been condemned by ex-Israeli PM Ehud Barak. What more concrete actions are we taking to stop the man-made destruction of Gaza—35 hospitals, as well as hostages, soldiers and civilians—before our very eyes? History will not judge this well, and words are not working.
14 Jul 2025 · Homelessness Prevention · Hansard source
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7. What steps her Department is taking with local councils to prevent homelessness.
14 Jul 2025 · Homelessness Prevention · Hansard source
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London boroughs now spend £4 million a day on temporary accommodation. While costs and rough sleeping have soared, central Government subsidy has been frozen for 14 years, pushing councils to the brink of bankruptcy. Do my hon. Friends on the Front Bench agree that it is time to lift the 2011 Tory cap, so that London councils can get the support they need to make homelessness history?
9 Jul 2025 · Clarion Housing management services · Hansard source
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I rise to convey the anger of the Du Cane Road Residents Association, which covers a cluster of different blocks including the very handsome Pankhurst House, which was in the Ideal Home exhibition in 1928. It was built for working women but has seen better days, and this is all because of Clarion Housing. The petition highlights repairs issues, such as a broken window that has been in that state for years, the ever-increasing and opaque service charges that nobody is really clear about, and the allocations policy. Once it was working women living there, but it now seems to be undesirables of both genders. I am all for equality, but it seems to have turned into a bit of a dumping ground. Following is the full text of the petition: [T he petition of the residents of the constituency of Ealing Central and Acton, Declares that numerous constituents residing in homes which are managed by the housing association Clarion including Pankhurst House and neighbouring blocks are seriously concerned with the poor level of service and delayed responses they have been provided regarding repairs, for example, a broken window for years on end; further declares that residents are unsatisfied with transparency around how service charges are calculated; further declares that residents are displeased with the allocations policy by which residents are assigned which they fear is leading to it becoming a “dumping ground” for undesirables when the original nucleus of the estate was women’s keyworker accommodation. The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to work with the Council to compel Clarion to ensure that; concerns are listened to and actioned in a timely manner, that more transparency is enacted with service charges, to commit to working with the council for improvements in the system of allocating residents so that existing tenants have a say in who their neighbours are, to provide a better balance of tenant and reverse the current system which is cumulative and having a detrimental effect on the community. And the petitioners remain, etc. ] [P003084]
7 Jul 2025 · Actions of Iranian Regime: UK Response · Hansard source
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An Iranian-origin woman who lives in Acton came to see me the other day. Although she is relieved that her 90-something grandparents are not among the civilian casualties from Netanyahu’s US-backed bombings the other day, she reports that the hated hard-line regime in Iran is cracking down even further on its beleaguered population. I urge my hon. Friend—I think he hinted at this—to proceed with caution. It is a very delicate situation and the consequences are manifold, including Iranian refugees washing up on our shores in dinghies, which did not use to be widespread. There is a temptation to go in all guns blazing, but I urge my hon. Friend to do all he can to get a diplomatic solution. We all want to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but to do so in the right way.
18 Jun 2025 · HS2 Reset · Hansard source
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I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for her honesty as she set out this latest reset, necessitated by the mess that the Tories left. Old Oak Common is part of my constituency, and this week eight associations across two boroughs have banded together to create the Old Oak Alliance, with the purpose of fighting for compensation and mitigation in the current circumstances. They will be bitterly disappointed by the news of even more prolonged disruption. Will my right hon. Friend meet me—or, better still, come on a site visit to meet them and see what they are putting up with? We are dealing with a company whose idea of engagement is jam tomorrow and death by PowerPoint.
17 Jun 2025 · Prostate Cancer Treatment · Hansard source
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The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. We are seeing a theme of uneven application. The rule of law means that the law applies to everyone, so it looks like something has gone wrong here.
17 Jun 2025 · Prostate Cancer Treatment · Hansard source
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Yes, I will. What an honour to give way to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)!
17 Jun 2025 · Prostate Cancer Treatment · Hansard source
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I totally agree. West London needs the same as the west of Scotland, the west of Wales, and all the other bits of those other nations. Men can access abiraterone on the NHS in Scotland and Wales, but not in England, even with an identical diagnosis. It seems at best anomalous that their postcode, not their prognosis, is determining their treatment, and we all know that the NHS is meant to be free at the point of need. I would give anything to have had longer with my dad. I was reminded of him when, like the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon), I had someone come to see me: Peter Treadgold, who came to my advice surgery and pointed out that he is falling between the cracks. He had a long-standing diagnosis, with remission, and he diligently followed all the advice. He was under NHS monitoring for 20 years because he had heightened prostate-specific antigen levels, although he was never actually offered an MRI or ultrasound scan. Last year, his cancer came back, and he was told that he would need hormone and radiation therapy; abiraterone was not offered. Peter is one of the one in three people who get the devastating news that their cancer has come back, and has been denied access to a treatment that could save or extend his life. The first time I heard of abiraterone was when I met Peter, because as my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) said, in my dad’s day, it would not have been cost-efficient. However, it is now a generic drug—it has gone off patent—but it is licensed only for metastatic cases. As my hon. Friend the Minister knows well, there is a complicated, convoluted process involved in getting it approved for non-metastatic cases. There is no question about the effectiveness of abiraterone. It has had one of the biggest trials known to mankind, a genuinely world-beating trial. When NHS England’s own clinical priorities advisory group plotted the clinical benefit against the net cost, abiraterone scored highest in that tabulation. It is calculated that two years of abiraterone treatment would halve the death rate for men with locally advanced prostate cancer, but we hear about budgetary challenges. I have written to the Minister and tabled questions, and have been told that NHS England has not identified the recurrent budget to support provision of the drug. We should look long-term, at the remissions, and at the cost of chemotherapy, hospital appointments and other associated things. Those costs add up. University College London found that abiraterone would pay for itself if it were £11 a day. Do Members know what the NHS is actually paying? Does anyone want to hazard a guess? Oh, we are not doing call and response. Abiraterone costs £2.75 a day, now that it is off patent and has come down in price. That is less than three measly quid to avoid costly relapses, scans, chemo, hospital appointments and everything else—less than three little round ones to improve lives and reduce deaths. As we have heard, only people who can fork out up front for private treatment or private medical insurance currently have that option, and again, our NHS was not meant to be for private profiteering or big pharma drug pushers. People are seeing their pensions and life savings evaporate, and we are in a cost of living crisis. This drug should be universally available. It took less than one year for abiraterone to be approved for men with non-metastatic prostate cancer in Scotland and Wales. In England, it is now three years and counting, and we still have not had a concrete resolution. Right now, abiraterone is the cheapest and most cost-effective it has ever been, and as the excellent Prostate Cancer UK put it, the postcode lottery must end. Lord Darzi’s independent investigations into the NHS found that the UK had higher cancer mortality rates than other comparable countries, and sadly, progress in diagnosing cancer at stages 1 and 2 is flatlining. Just over half of prostate cancers are caught at an early stage. That falls well short of the NHS target of 75%. I appreciate that Labour has just come into power after 14 years of the Conservative party, so it will take time to fix our health system, but we need it to be more responsive—to act early and rapidly, to use all the tools it can, and to offer preventive rather than after-the-fact care in every case. Abiraterone exemplifies all those things. I welcome the Chancellor’s 3% real-terms increase in NHS spending to deliver the exciting plan to build an NHS fit for the future. With the 10-year plan coming soon and the national cancer strategy due this autumn, we have a real chance to deliver significant improvements for people living with cancer, so as is customary, I have a list of questions for the Minister. I will incorporate those of my hon. Friends—I think we are all friends here, even if we sit on opposite sides of the Chamber. First, will the Minister commit to exploring ways of ensuring that additional NHS funding is used to make abiraterone available to all men who need it in England—and in Northern Ireland, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has pointed out? Secondly, will the Minister support the introduction of a national programme of screening for prostate cancer, like those that we have for comparable cancers in the United Kingdom? Thirdly, given the complexity of NHS England’s decision-making processes in relation to the availability of abiraterone—which sound like a right old bureaucratic nightmare—as the functions of NHS England are transferred back to the Department of Health and Social Care, will the Minister take steps to ensure that all decisions about access to medicine, including abiraterone, are timely and transparent? I know that she has had a long career in the NHS, and as I have said, she is on the side of the angels. Fourthly, will the Minister commit to publishing an equality impact assessment, given the disturbingly disproportionate effect that prostate cancer is having on black men, who are more likely to develop it and to receive a late diagnosis, and less likely to receive the right treatment? I am doing this partly for Dad, who is watching from somewhere up above, but also for the black and minority ethnic men who are implicated here and now. This is the second time that you have been in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, when I have been talking about health inequalities since Friday, when we discussed assisted dying. You have chaired both debates excellently. Fifthly, in the light of the lengthy approval process, will the Minister assess the adequacy of the funding formula model—we have NICE and we have the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and it all seems a bit knotty—and consider whether novel pharmaceutical treatments could be produced cost-effectively, especially, as my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip said, when they come off-patent. I am arguing for simplification in cases in which drugs are already prescribed for limited use and there is a credible case for expanding their application to a generic treatment. We are halfway there; we just need to go that little bit further. Prostate Cancer UK estimates that 672 men die prematurely each year because we have no access to abiraterone. Each week that this continues, 13 men in England will die from a cancer that could have been treated cheaply had they lived in Scotland or Wales. Labour is the party of the NHS, and a Labour Government introduced the UK’s first dedicated cancer strategy; so let us go for this win-win for all, end the iniquitous, unjust postcode lottery, celebrate the best of British science, and widen access to abiraterone for all those who need it, not just those who can afford it.
17 Jun 2025 · Prostate Cancer Treatment · Hansard source
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I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman that access should be based not on how deep somebody’s pockets are, but on need. Abiraterone halves the risk of relapse. Each relapse literally costs the NHS millions—the definition of lose-lose. As many Members have pointed out, it is already successfully available on the NHS and routinely funded for use in metastatic cases in England, but sadly there is a catch: abiraterone is not available on the NHS for men with non-metastatic prostate cancer living in England.
17 Jun 2025 · Prostate Cancer Treatment · Hansard source
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The hon. Member reads my mind about the postcode lottery, which I will come to in my list of questions. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister is very sympathetic and on the right side. Abiraterone is now a global drug. Half a million men around the world have had transformed outcomes, improved quality of life and extra years spent with loved ones.
17 Jun 2025 · Prostate Cancer Treatment · Hansard source
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Joe Biden’s recent diagnosis has to some extent put prostate cancer in the spotlight of late, but it is not just him—there is Stephen Fry, Jools Holland and Robert De Niro. More than 50,000 men in the UK and 1.4 million men worldwide are diagnosed with prostate cancer yearly, which is projected to double by 2040. With one in eight men diagnosed during their life, it is the most common male cancer. More than half of those men are pre-retirement age, such as the cyclist Sir Chris Hoy, who was diagnosed at 48, but 70-plus is the most common age. My late dad was 69 when he was diagnosed. He left this earth just shy of his 79th birthday in August 2014, so he had 10 years. It is often said that men die with prostate cancer, not of it. With my dad, it spread to bone cancer, but pneumonia was actually the cause of death on the certificate. I miss him every day. Treatment for prostate cancer has improved dramatically since then. One crucial breakthrough is the development of the drug abiraterone, a Great British success story discovered and initially developed in London at the Institute of Cancer Research. It is a shining example of British science leading the world and revolutionising advanced prostate cancer care.
16 Jun 2025 · Iran-Israel Conflict · Hansard source
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Ealing has long had a big Iranian diaspora. In 1978, when England did not qualify in the world cup and Iran did, a lot of my classmates were supporting the latter; now, they are my adult constituents, and they have been caught up in all this. Could my right hon. Friend tell me what steps he is taking to ensure the safe passage of our constituents back home, including one of my constituents, who needs to resume her cancer treatment and wants urgently to come back to England?
13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source
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I totally agree. We know that Esther Rantzen and Jonathan Dimbleby want the Bill to be implemented, but our role is to be voices for the voiceless, so I totally agree with her. As opposed to the vague, ever-changing qualifying criteria that are held up as safeguards, at least these amendments would put ethnic minority people on the board: new clause 6 says that if they are on the ward, they should be on the board as well. The Bill seems to have neglected them altogether, so the new clause would provide real protections. We know that in a cost of living crisis, assisted dying could be quite attractive. BAME communities have lower disposable household incomes than standard households, and during a cost of living and housing crisis, it is possible to imagine relatives wanting to speed up granny or grandad’s probate—or naani maa or dadima, even—to get a foot on the ladder.
13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source
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No, because I will not get any more time. Given the cost of care, people could convince themselves that elderly relatives would be better off out of the way, in order to get the younger generation on the ladder. We know from the experience of other places that once assisted dying is allowed, the scope broadens—depressed 12-year-olds in Holland can get it—and the incentive to fix palliative care will lessen. Why now, with the state of the NHS? What of Suicide Prevention Week? Yes, we know that public opinion is in favour of assisted dying, but public opinion also supports bringing back hanging.
13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source
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I rise to support amendments 34 to 36 and new clause 6, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich (Valerie Vaz), who sadly cannot be here today. Health inequality shapes life expectancy and outcomes —covid deaths illuminated that—but it is absent from the Bill. A younger me would have been 100% behind this Bill. I am very pro body autonomy when it comes to abortion, but 10 years of being an MP has exposed me to coercion, duress, the billionaire price of London property, and elder abuse. It is no coincidence that, like me, the majority of London MPs and of black and minority ethnic MPs oppose the Bill. Let us look at amendment 34. The experience of my aged parents—now no longer with us—opened my eyes to a world of pills, incontinence pads, hoists, power of attorney, key safe boxes and carer worries. I saw how non-native English-speaking pensioners—I am not talking about Welsh speakers—have their agency denied, perhaps unconsciously, by health professionals in a stretched system. My mum’s GP had a clear contempt for her accented words. At every appointment she would say to her, “One question only”. As my mum grew frailer and began to lose the power of speech, she reverted to her mother tongue and was seen by hospital teams as an annoyance, a time waster, and bed blocker. Similarly, the disabled are often written off. People cannot see beyond the wheelchair or the non-verbal. Amendment 34 would place a duty on the chief medical officer to provide information at every step of the way
13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source
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No, I am not giving way. At my advice surgery, people have pointed out the unfairness of the £10,000 cost of Dignitas. We know that the status quo is imperfect, but let us not remedy it with something that will make things worse. We need to get this 100% right if we are going to do it all. Although well intentioned, the Bill has too much room for error, manipulation, misapplication and unintended consequences. Six months to live is impossible to predict and, with life and death, it is too late to change your mind after the latter has happened, is it not? This week, 1,000 doctors have argued that it will widen inequalities and it is simply not safe. These amendments strengthen the Bill by taking ethnic minorities into account, when hitherto they have been completely unacknowledged by it. They must be incorporated into any assisted dying legislation, but the best thing of all would be not to rush down this road with indecent haste in the first place, because it is so littered with obstacles.
13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source
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Will I get more time? [ Laughter . ]
11 Jun 2025 · NHS Funding: South-west · Hansard source
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Order. I call the shadow Minister.
11 Jun 2025 · NHS Funding: South-west · Hansard source
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Order. I think that someone will probably end up falling off the call list; there are people standing to speak who were not on the list and who were not standing at the beginning of the debate. Let us see how we go.

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