Rupa Huq MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  It was the sitar-loving George Harrison who sang that “Bangladesh…sure looks like a mess”. He made the observation in 1971, soon after the country’s formation, but it applies again since 5 August, after momentous events happened in that country. No one saw it coming, but the previous Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, who had looked so entrenched, was overthrown. Within days, her replacement was Professor Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel prize winner for his concept of microfinance. That did not happen without bloodshed. Hundreds of students were killed in the struggle for the new Bangladesh 2.0, as people have called it, and thousands injured. Bangladesh’s founding constitution—it is only a young country—stressed democracy, secularism and socialism, but in recent years it has become synonymous with corruption, authoritarianism and repression. There were echoes of Saddam Hussein’s fall when we saw TV pictures of statues of the first ever leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, toppled, with effigies of him burned and pictures smashed, from the capital city, Dhaka, to Tower Hamlets. It was all because of his daughter, the ex-PM Sheikh Hasina, who had ruled in two bursts for a large percentage of the country’s existence. It was she who ensured the omnipresent pictures of her dad across the nation. For me, it had echoes of Tiananmen Square in 1990, although in this case the students won. There may be a fledgling interim Government, but I feel they have very good intentions, and we should congratulate them.

• 10 Sept 2024 · COP29: UK Priorities · Hansard source

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  Order. At 11 o’clock, we start the next debate. Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

• 10 Sept 2024 · COP29: UK Priorities · Hansard source

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  Order. I remind all Members to put their phones on silent.

• 10 Sept 2024 · COP29: UK Priorities · Hansard source

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  Order. I remind members to bob if they want to speak, so we can work out the order of speakers and how long everyone has available to speak.

• 10 Sept 2024 · COP29: UK Priorities · Hansard source

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  I will call the first of the three Front Benchers by 10.28 am, and I want to allow Deirdre Costigan time to sum up. The last two Back Benchers were not on the list that was submitted to the Speaker’s office, but if they stick to five minutes each, everyone will get in.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  Order. The Clerk always reminds me that Members cannot use “you” because it means me, even when used with “Minister”. We have had it all morning.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I remind everyone that this is a short debate, so everything is a bit squished, and most Members will not be able to make proper speeches. We have two Members down as intervening—we will seek clarity on the rest—and the Minister has 10 minutes to respond.

• 10 Sept 2024 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I see that there is another name down to speak. We have actually run out of time for that, but the Clerk is advising that Neil Duncan-Jordan can intervene on the Minister—that is a possibility. I call the Minister, Emma Reynolds.

• 4 Sept 2024 · Sheep Farming · Hansard source

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  I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to make a speech, so that we have an idea of how to divide up the time. I call Jim Shannon.

• 4 Sept 2024 · Sheep Farming · Hansard source

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  If Members could keep to within seven and a half minutes each, everyone will get in.

• 4 Sept 2024 · Sheep Farming · Hansard source

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  Order. I appreciate that there are new Members present and not everyone may be aware of this, but I am being reminded by the Clerk that Members should not use the word “you”. “You” means me, because I am in the Chair. That is just a general reminder for all.

• 4 Sept 2024 · Security in the Democratic Republic of the Congo · Hansard source

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  I think we have a fair amount of time. Two Back Benchers wish to speak and then there are the Front Benchers.

• 4 Sept 2024 · Security in the Democratic Republic of the Congo · Hansard source

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  It is not a question of time; the right hon. Gentleman was completely within his rights, but we do have at least one vote in the House—we think two.

• 4 Sept 2024 · Security in the Democratic Republic of the Congo · Hansard source

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  Order. The Clerk is telling me we need to pull the plug.

• 4 Sept 2024 · SEND Provision: Hertfordshire and Central Bedfordshire · Hansard source

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  As this is a 30-minute debate, I will call Alistair Strathern to move the motion, then I will call the Minister to respond. People can intervene on Alistair; that is the format for these debates.

• 3 Sept 2024 · Fly-tipping · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady makes an excellent point, and the idea of the community skip, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall raised in her speech, sounds like a good one. Why not take the solution to the people, rather than expect it from them? We know that all our local authorities are cash-strapped, so I wonder whether the Minister might propose a trial and give that idea a whirl everywhere, because it is free. I now have two boroughs in my constituency—Hammersmith and Ealing—and bulky items collection is at a charge. When I suggested the community skip, I was told, “But it would fill up with builder’s waste.” Great! Surely that is better than having it on every street corner. When I put to an officer the idea of CCTV, which I had received from people who email in with solutions, he answered: “In order to carry out the sort of enforcement your constituent is asking for with cameras, we would need an infrastructure and network the likes of which one finds in novels by George Orwell.” There is literally a “computer says no” attitude that comes back. Let us be a bit more creative.

• 3 Sept 2024 · Fly-tipping · Hansard source

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  Fly-tipping sounds faintly amusing but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) so expertly pointed out, it costs millions and blights lives. A constituent wrote in about how, on a daily basis, he sees stuff—including “gas canisters” and “rotting food”— “blown all over the street after foxes have” opened bags. He says, “It’s relentless and tiring” and that something needs to be done. Another constituent posts daily Facebook pictures of a dump where there are all sorts of things—dining chairs, a sofa, a divan bed, a TV in bits and decorators’ leftovers. She says it “looks like a flat clearance.” The most recent figures we have show that, in 2023, fly-tipping cost councils hundreds of millions of pounds and that there were over 1 million incidents. As has been stated, there are a lot of logistical issues. Fran, who volunteers with the aforementioned group LAGER Can, says that the overlapping, different fly-tips in her street have created a sort of illegal, unofficial dump. Even once it is cleared, it reappears because the cycle continues. One email to me says: “the council should figure out who keeps doing this and should come down hard on them with big fines.” As was pointed out, fly-tipping is a criminal offence under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. It can result in imprisonment, unlimited fines and even being deprived of rights to the vehicle used to commit the offence. However, as my hon. Friend said, there is a perception that this is low-level stuff, and the likelihood of being caught is low. People are unaware that leaving items in the street, or outside a charity shop, is an offence. Solutions should combine carrot and stick. The attitude to fly-tipping should be that it is completely socially unacceptable, and we should treat it more seriously as a crime, enforcing penalties and punishment. However, we should also make it as easy as possible for people to dispose of waste. It is not rocket science that since the Acton dump closed, the prevalence of mattresses on street corners in the area has exponentially risen. Alternative sites at Greenford or out of borough on the north circular are further away, necessitating more emissions. Sites also require pre-booking, with a lot of intrusive personal details—inside leg measurement, hat size. As a small Asian woman with a car, I know that dumps are often not the most user-friendly places, so let’s make things easier. People are not allowed to take a neighbour’s items, and items cannot be walked in either. That fails to understand that not everyone in a street will possess a car.

• 3 Sept 2024 · Fly-tipping · Hansard source

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  It sounds like a panacea, but we do not know who these people are, so there are a lot of issues. But yes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall pointed out, having more funding from central Government would be great after 14 years of cash-strapped councils. If we get rid of the booking system, the possibility of spontaneously mowing the lawn and taking the waste down to wherever would also be opened up. I think we are running out of time and there are lots of Members present, but I want to praise LAGER Can and Kathy Swift on tirelessly doing community clean-ups. It terms of the necessity of having such groups, it is a bit like food banks: the fact that we have more food banks than branches of McDonald’s in this country is really a sign of state failure. It should not be Kathy who is cleaning up every unofficial dump in a borough of 360,000 people. This has been a great debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall. Let us install some community pride in areas, because well-maintained areas are less likely to become hotspots for dumping. I hope our suggestions do not fall on deaf ears. In a similar way to the Jubilee 2000 debt campaigners, let us make fly-tipping history.

• 30 Jul 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, you and I are both old enough to remember Tiananmen Square. The use of lethal force on student protesters in Bangladesh has rightly been condemned by our Government. I urge the Government to put pressure on the Bangladeshi investigation, so that it has an international element, because a country that can just turn off all communications with the outside world and that controls all institutions, right down to its stormtrooper-like police, should not be allowed to mark its own homework.

• 25 Jul 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  In recent days, there have been protests in Rome, in Paris, in my right hon. Friend’s city of Manchester and in Trafalgar Square over what has been going on in Bangladesh. A three-figure number of student protesters have been killed; we do not know how many, because the internet has been turned off. May I press again for an urgent Government statement on our position, because I was not successful in the ballot for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office questions on Tuesday? We have a historic, unique role in this situation.

• 25 Jul 2024 · Government Departments and Agencies: Fraud and Error · Hansard source

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  As well as Matt Hancock’s pub landlord scoring a PPE contract despite having zero relevant expertise, non-covid error, fraud and waste cost the public purse £58.5 billion in the year 2020-21 alone. Could my right hon. Friend tell us how those colossal sums of money will be recovered? He mentioned a commissioner; can he also tell us how we will get rid of cronyism and nepotism, so that these things never happen again?

• 25 Jul 2024 · Government Departments and Agencies: Fraud and Error · Hansard source

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  10. What recent estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of fraud and error in Government departments and agencies.

• 22 Jul 2024 · NATO and European Political Community Meetings · Hansard source

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  It was incredibly pleasing to see the Prime Minister both at NATO and welcoming leaders from across our continent to Blenheim palace, at a historic moment for a reset with Europe after the disastrous legacy that the departing Government left behind. Did the subject of youth mobility for students and suchlike arise, and could his Government look into repairing it for its soft power, cultural exchange and growth-boosting properties that have been so valued, as we are now in a post-Erasmus era?