Rupa Huq MP: speeches 2025

105 published records · newest first.

Speeches

10 Mar 2025 · Legal and Illegal Migration: Suspension · Hansard source
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I remind Members to stand if they want to speak, so that we can work out who is going next.
10 Mar 2025 · Legal and Illegal Migration: Suspension · Hansard source
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Order. Through the Chair, please.
4 Mar 2025 · Gaza · Hansard source
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Instituting an aid blockade, while getting on for 50,000 Gazans have been killed and there is a polio epidemic, surely looks as if civilian deprivation is being used as a weapon of war. What are the Government doing about that, and to ensure that the entire fragile ceasefire does not fall apart and the hostages can come home?
3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source
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I am not finished addressing the first point. Can we do this sequentially? I will respond to the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) first and then I will take the hon. Lady’s intervention. It is interesting to learn that, but my point is that such schools are still going to be quids in after this.
3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers, and to see the newly minted Minister in his place—I think it is the first time I have been in a debate with him. It is also a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), who was the Secretary of State; I sometimes see him on the District line, because we head the same way. I rise to speak on behalf of constituents who have contacted me about this issue—in my inbox, in person at the advice surgery I do every Friday, and on the doorsteps when meeting and greeting voters in the recent general election. This issue comes alongside an array of others raised by mums and dads. I am familiar with the arguments and have read the Government’s response; it contains very compelling figures—94% of schoolchildren in the UK, including my own, attend state schools. I also know that the policy polls very well. However, there is also that 6%, and 14 of those private schools are in the constituency of Ealing Central and Act; in 2023 there were 15, in fact, but one has closed its doors since then. I want to vocalise some of their concerns to my hon. Friend the Minister. Fourteen is a higher than average number of private schools in a constituency, and the petition was signed by 821 people in the constituency—although that is not even in the top 10. The heat map shows that the top 10 seats all have more than 1,000 signatories. I think two of those constituencies are in Surrey, but the remaining eight tend to have a W, NW or SW postcode. What I am trying to say is that the distribution of the signatures and the schools is a fairly west London-type phenomenon. In fact, if we look at the 650 constituencies across the land, the first one on the list is single digits; it is a seat in Wales starting with A—Aberconwy, or somewhere like that. This is not a phenomenon everywhere, but in west London it is not that unusual. The high school of the hon. Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford) was not very far from my high school in my constituency. I was a Notting Hill girl, and I know that he was a St Benedict’s pupil back in the day. The prep school of the Minister who is often sent to respond to this debate—my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (James Murray), who is my neighbouring MP—was Durston House, and it is in my seat of Ealing Central and Acton. We should not demonise these parents. In some senses, they are people who I have grown up with and live alongside, and they do have genuine concerns. As a parent, I would never dream of going private, but I can understand and accept that people do. I went to school in the 80s—the dark days of Thatcherism—before the Labour Government reforms that made excellent state schools in my constituency. My parents chose to put me in the state sector for primary school, at Montpelier primary, and as a parent myself, I have benefited from Gordon Brown’s reforms. The child trust fund came to maturity for my son recently; it did go up in the end—it was the one that could go up as well as down. I have not used the private sector as a parent—as a child I did, but it was not my own choice. I completely appreciate that people, like my own parents at the time, make enormous sacrifices to send their children to independent schools, as my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Alison Taylor) said. I have heard people say on the doorstep, “We have the worst car. We never go on holiday.” That was me in the ’80s. I want to point out some unintended consequences of the policy to the Minister aware. These are people who consider themselves to be working people. The strapline of the Labour manifesto was “No taxes on working people”. We should be careful with our rhetoric sometimes and not seek to—[Hon. Members: “Come over here!”] Hang on—let me carry on. The first unintended consequence—or commonly misstated thing—is that pupils with an education, health and care plan still remain eligible. It is impossible to get one in west London. We have all taken on new wards in our boundaries, so now I do not only represent Ealing borough but a bit of Hammersmith and Fulham too. A head from one of primary schools was saying that they have a large percentage of special educational needs and disabilities pupils. The wards that I have inherited are from the north of the borough—Shepherd’s Bush way. Apparently, by the age that a child goes to school and those issues show up, it is kind of too late. A sharp-elbowed, middle-class parent from the south of the borough might have had their child assessed privately at a very young age, ensuring they have support all the way through, but by school age, there is a waiting list of many years to get the assessment and then it is potluck. The problem is that the words “private school” imply a whole load of things—but they are not all Eton. Some of the comms around this policy have not been done very sensitively. I know that offence was taken at a comment about how they all have astroturf pitches, swimming pools and embossed stationery; that did not go down well with parents and heads in my constituency. They are not all like that. There are smaller SEND schools and smaller faith schools—what I am trying to say is that they are not all Eton, and some of the comms are based on a caricature. We should be careful about what we do in that regard. One parent, Matthew, forwarded me a missive from the private school that his boys are at, which read: “For music lessons with peripatetic teachers employed by the School…VAT will need to be applied at 20%.” He continued: “Traditionally the tax system has been a way of discouraging people from picking up bad habits like smoking and drinking. Not from picking up a trombone”. It seems as though people are capitalising on the policy, and then other things are coming in through the back door. I have been replying and trying to sound sympathetic to these parents. My constituent also said: “you referred to a consultation…on the VAT proposals—yet like most government consultations, what was passed didn’t seem, in any significant way, different to what had been proposed.” Maybe that is a lesson in life for all of us: if we put something out for consultation, we should make it look like we listened, because he is saying that it came back exactly the same. The right hon Member for East Hampshire raised that elitist private schools such as Eton have actually done quite well out of this policy, because they can cash in on windfalls from the new VAT rules on independent schools—they can claim it back on capital projects, such as buildings and land acquisition, over the last 10 years. All the VAT on costs, which is now 20%, is recoverable when factoring in non-business use, so the policy will basically hand money back to schools such as Eton from Treasury coffers. Surely there is a loophole there—an unintended consequence—that needs to be addressed by my hon. Friend the Minister. There are long lists of such things. The Times says: “Eton spent more than £20 million on a sports centre in 2023 and Winchester College’s”— where I think our former Prime Minister went— “accounts from the same year said it spent £15 million on capital expenditure”. It also says that Radley College, in Oxfordshire has a 20-acre solar farm and 40-acre woodland, and that Charterhouse in Surrey “built two boarding houses in 2021 and is developing a theatre and lecture theatre” Again, costs can come back for the big boys, but not for the little ones.
3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source
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I would suggest implementing it in a slightly different way, based on turnover—so doing it for the enormous schools that can afford it, but not for smaller ones that have been caught in the trap. There is also an argument for looking at grammar schools, which are a legacy from many years ago. We do not have them in my area, but when I was the Labour candidate in Chesham and Amersham in 2005, they came up as a hustings issue. The argument that the Labour party always gave me in those days was that we respect parental choice. At times, the Conservative party has flirted with bringing back more grammar schools, but they are even more elitist in a way because they take state funds for private school-type facilities. Dr Challoner’s grammar school in Amersham was way bigger than the school I went to; I felt very small when I went there. Perhaps something could be done about the grammar school system, because that is an inegalitarian one. I wanted to vocalise some of the concerns from my electorate and remind hon. Members that one size does not always fits all. In this case, that is far from the truth.
3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source
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The hon. Lady and I were both girls in those schools, and she talked about her daughter. Does she accept that it is often the parents who want their daughters to have an all-girls education. There are figures from the Girls’ Schools Association. There is also the head of Dame Allan’s girls’ school, who said that girls thrive better in all subjects in all-girls environments and that they choose things such as physics and maths more when there are not boys around mucking about.
3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source
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It is interesting to learn that—
3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source
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I do not know how parliamentary that language is. I am not going to join in the praise of Eton, particularly because I think the hon. Lady may have been an atypical parent. I imagine that some parents there would be able to bear a 20% increase, and for a school that is clever with its accounts, these things may just be a rounding error. I am talking about smaller schools for which that does not apply. It is interesting to see the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) here. I have a massively remain constituency, with 72% of my electorate voting remain, but, perversely for Reform, it is leaving the EU that has made this policy possible—it is a Brexit benefit. If only we had never left the EU, this would not be happening. Usually education is not a taxable luxury good, and there is a fear that if this increase happens, what could be next—nurseries or universities? I used to work in that sector. There is a slight worry that there is a loophole, because the policy contradicts the EU’s VAT directive that specifies there should be no VAT on any form of education. In Greece in 2015, the left-wing Syriza Government wanted to introduce VAT at 23%. They had to abandon that for a slew of different reasons, including because it was contrary to the EU’s VAT directive. University tuition is zero rated, and there is a worry among my friends in the sector there, who say, “You’re lucky to have got out when you did, because they’re closing so many university departments in the UK.” What could be next? I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister can assure me that nurseries and universities are off limits. We have heard all these things—that schools are going to close—and we have heard a lot of catastrophising, but it remains to be seen whether those things will come to pass. One of my schools went in 2023. My worry is that this policy will make an elitist system more elitist. The Government say in their response: “Ending tax breaks for private schools was a tough but necessary decision”, but when growth comes, is there a way of undoing it? It was a very clear policy in many manifestos, so I understand that it will not all be undone, but let us think a bit creatively.
27 Feb 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source
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T7. One thousand musical acts from Annie Lennox to Zero 7 have released an album of blank tracks, which is where they feel the text and data mining exception is leading. Will my right hon. and hon. Friends look into this, so that Great British creativity is not replaced with AI butchery?
27 Feb 2025 · Women’s Health · Hansard source
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With a time limit of four minutes—the clock is counting backwards—I call Jim Shannon.
27 Feb 2025 · Women’s Health · Hansard source
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Everyone who wants to speak should be bobbing, because we will be calculating the time limit depending on how many there are.
27 Feb 2025 · Women’s Health · Hansard source
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I am sorry to do this, but I am imposing a newly reduced time limit of three and a half minutes.
27 Feb 2025 · Women’s Health · Hansard source
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Finally, for what we think is her first outing as a Minister in Westminster Hall—although she is a veteran of the Chamber already— I call Ashley Dalton.
25 Feb 2025 · Defence and Security · Hansard source
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The Prime Minister’s statement hits the nail on the head, unlike the rantings of J. D. Vance on European freedom of speech at the Munich security conference. I know the statement will be particularly welcome at the Ealing ex-servicemen’s club, so will the Prime Minister recommit to our veterans, to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and to organisations like the Army cadet centre in Acton and the Territorial Army reservists in Wood Lane, either of which would welcome a visit, for those who have served our nation and those who will do so in the future?
28 Jan 2025 · Airport Expansion · Hansard source
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I am old enough to have been there the last time this question was voted on. In the spirit of Gordon Brown and his tests over the euro, we applied tests of our own on capacity, carbon commitments, minimising noise and environmental impacts, and ensuring benefits for the whole UK. Can the Minister tell me whether those sensible tests still apply? Can he add another one, about costs to the public purse and deliverability, for my constituents, who will be the most affected? They want a better, not a bigger, Heathrow.
22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source
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We are going to work out the time limit for everyone, because 34 names were submitted to speak, but I think there may be even more Members in this room now. The Clerk has done the calculation and it is 75 seconds each—one minute 15 seconds. We will start, as a model of brevity, with the Chair of the Education Committee.
22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source
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Order. I call Charlotte Cane.
22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source
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I call Marie Goldman to respond briefly to this epic debate.
22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source
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Order. I remind hon. Members to bob if they wish to speak so that I can work out exactly how long they have.
22 Jan 2025 · Education, Health and Care Plans · Hansard source
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I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
22 Jan 2025 · Certificate of Common Sponsorship · Hansard source
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Order. I remind hon. Members to stand. We will then work out how much time each Member gets.
22 Jan 2025 · Certificate of Common Sponsorship · Hansard source
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We said five minutes each.
22 Jan 2025 · New Hospital Programme · Hansard source
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Order. We have had the word “you” a few times, which refers to me as the Chair.
22 Jan 2025 · New Hospital Programme · Hansard source
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Order. The Clerk is frowning at me, because this is a bit long for an intervention.

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