Rupa Huq MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  Order. For the benefit of everyone in the room, we avoid the word “you” because it refers to me. I remind all hon. Members that we speak in the third person.

• 10 Oct 2024 · Gaza and Humanitarian Aid · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman mentioned aid workers. Does he not agree that it is not just aid workers but those in the media, teachers, doctors and medical staff where we are seeing a discrediting and delegitimisation of the UN? He mentioned buildings, even the oldest church in Christendom. It feels like even within the rules of war, something has gone wrong here.

• 9 Oct 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  12. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help tackle violence against women and girls.

• 9 Oct 2024 · Violence against Women and Girls · Hansard source

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  Women welcome this Government finally implementing buffer zones around abortion clinics, as repeatedly voted for by MPs in the House. Will the Minister tell me when that will happen and whether it will apply to those who, knowingly or not, silently intimidate at the clinic gates? The Tories were trying to scrap that bit on the sly.

• 8 Oct 2024 · VAT: Independent Schools · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is a London MP like me, and part of the problem is that the term “private schools” covers such a wide category and such a multitude of sins. Does she agree that this is also quite a London issue? I have an unusually large number of these schools, with 14 in my boundary—there were 15 a year ago but one has since closed. I know my hon. Friends on the Front Bench would be happy to meet me so I can feed in the comments that I hear at the advice surgery and when door knocking, which would take too long to recount right now.

• 8 Oct 2024 · Warm Homes Plan · Hansard source

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  19. What steps he is taking to introduce his warm homes plan.

• 8 Oct 2024 · Warm Homes Plan · Hansard source

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  Millions of cold, draughty homes need updating UK-wide, so it is great to hear that there will be a proper plan, rather than the itty-bitty approach of spraying bits of money here and there. In the plan, will the Minister look at the fact that there is no national retrofit advice service in the UK? Can the Government rectify that? They could take a leaf out of Sadiq Khan’s book, because his service in London has helped 24,000 households.

• 7 Oct 2024 · Anniversary of 7 October Attacks: Middle East · Hansard source

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  Among those killed in the horrors of 7 October were children, with a number still held hostage to this day. In Gaza since then, there is a grisly new acronym—WCNSF: wounded child, no surviving family—to add to the child death toll, which is now rising in Lebanon as well. Will my right hon. and learned Friend press for the protection of children in advocating for a ceasefire and in his humanitarian efforts, and does he agree that no parent should ever have to bury their child?

• 7 Oct 2024 · Benefit Sanctions · Hansard source

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  According to recent research by Gingerbread, a high percentage of sanctions have been misapplied to single parents, not because they have not met the job search requirements but because of missed meetings for reasons connected with childcare. Max, a bereaved single dad of two, had his sanction overturned, which involved a fairly challenging process. Will my hon. Friend please look into the possibility of overhauling the mess of a system that was left behind by that lot over there?

• 7 Oct 2024 · Benefit Sanctions · Hansard source

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  17. What assessment she has made of trends in the number of benefit sanctions in the last five years.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  I have checked, and apparently some of those memorandums of understanding are being looked at by the new Government one by one to see if they are carried over. The hon. Member makes an excellent point. Let us have a reset. We have a fresh Government in this country and a fresh one in Bangladesh, so it is time to look at these things through new eyes. Back in the summer—in fact, it was at the same time as we saw race riots in this country—there was footage of jubilant Bangladeshis marching through the streets of Tower Hamlets, the hon. Member’s borough. That confused many people, but it was in happiness; they were not angry ethnic mobs. There is a big global diaspora, with 70,000 in this country, including me. The diaspora can be seen across Europe. In some of the middle eastern emirate states, the diaspora has supplied cheap labour to build such things as World cup stadiums in Qatar. Bangladesh is a place that exports people.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  I completely endorse what the hon. Member is saying. We do need to temper our language and be careful. Every Member in this House has a curry house in their constituency, and that will not be an Indian restaurant—it will be Bangladeshis who run it. An enormous contribution has been made to our society. With the things we saw this summer, we should stamp on the misinformation that I referred to in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi). Again, those Bangladeshi university students showed courage, and they were not just the elitist ones from the capital city; it happened all over the country at public and private universities, with boys and girls. Their demands were initially against corruption but they grew to wider pro-democracy concerns and the overthrow of the Prime Minister. So far, so predictable, but then in the biggest plot twist since Bobby Ewing in the shower, when all those tensions were coming to a head, we heard that the previous Prime Minister had suddenly scarpered. She helicoptered out. A regime so entrenched that it looked like it would last forever suddenly collapsed like a pack of cards. In January, there was an election in Bangladesh—we hear that 40% of the globe is going to the polls this year—although there were not any other real candidates in it, so that was declared null and void. We now have this caretaker Government who are there to oversee fresh elections. We do not know exactly when those will be.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  I totally agree with the hon. Member. The UK has a unique historical role in the colonial histories and as head of the Commonwealth. He does great work on the APPG. We should be vigilant on all these things.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  There is plenty more to say. We need a fresh start—a reset, as the right hon. Gentleman said, and “in neither Washington nor Moscow”, as the slogan used to be. We need less gerontocracy. Yunus is 84, though he is very sharp. The leader he overthrew is 76, and the opposition rival, Khaleda Zia, is 78. I have some questions for the Minister. As I said, there is a big job to do. Given our unique role in all this, we should offer support. Apparently, the constitution is being amended and redrafted. Could we lend expertise there? British lawyers have good form on this; we constructed the European convention on human rights. Capacity building is needed to cleanse all sorts of institutions of party people who were in the pocket of the last regime. Hendon police training college is renowned all over the world; perhaps we can rebuild the police in Bangladesh, because apparently there has been a bit of a vacuum there recently. The Stormtrooper-like Rapid Action Battalion force should be disbanded, and the death penalty should be gone. Maybe we could do something about climate finance, because countries in the global south face the brunt of climate problems, and we are in the run-up to COP29. These measures do not even have to cost anything; we could put a polluter-pays levy on some countries. Lastly, we need to recover some of the assets. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) mentioned foreign Governments’ interference. When I last went to Bangladesh, I saw Chinese power plants and Russian flyovers—lots of things like that; I cannot remember what they all were. Money that belongs to the Bangladeshi people was looted and plundered. We need asset tracing to recover it. I understand that Professor Yunus is coming to the UN General Assembly. It would be great if His Majesty’s Government warmly welcomed him—I do not know if they will be represented by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West), the Prime Minister or whoever. We are talking about Bangladesh 2.0 and human rights. When Gandhi was asked what he thought of western civilisation, he famously said: “I think it would be a good idea”. Let us make sure that democracy and human rights in Bangladesh are not just a good idea, but a given. People are talking about this as a second revolution. Let us rebuild Bangladesh, so that human rights and democracy are a given. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  I agree. Our loved ones were worried, and we did not know that was going on. We are talking about a country that can, at will, shut off the internet so that people cannot communicate with the outside world, or even with each other via phone signal—there was a Digital Security Act that was a bit sinister, and stopped all freedom of speech, thought, expression and assembly. Yes, we must rebuild. The hon. Gentleman made a great point. The sight of Muhammad Yunus—until recently, the previous regime had tried to lock him up—was baffling but reassuring for many, because he is globally recognised. He was a character on “The Simpsons”; Lisa discovered his microfinance loans to women. Among his friends are the Obamas and the Clintons, and 197 world leaders have signed a memorandum to welcome him to power. He has the in-tray from hell, and a big job to do in repairing democracy. He was here in March, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) organised a meeting for him with the all-party parliamentary group for Bangladesh, which she then chaired. He is such a modest man; he had 200 different court cases against him, but he did not go on about them—it had to be teased out of him by Baroness Helena Kennedy, who chaired that day. He is known as the banker to the poor. Nobody saw this coming. Bangladesh is a country of contradictions. It has 175 million people on a land mass the size of England and Wales, and is beset by natural disasters—at the moment, there are the worst floods in 30 years. Youth unemployment is sky high, which partly explains the protests.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend always makes excellent points. When we are talking about minorities such as Hindus and Buddhists—there are various minorities—it is interesting to look at who is propagating the stories. There have also been pictures of devout Muslim students from the madrasas in their topi defending Hindu homes. BBC Verify has shown that some of these attacks have been on people associated with the previous regime. Sometimes these things are a bit amplified by people with agendas, but my hon. Friend makes a great point.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is so right. I did not see any demos in Reading, but I do know that in all sorts of European capitals, including Paris and Rome, as well as in Manchester and Trafalgar Square, there were solidarity protests when these things went on. The diaspora has been active. I am a London-born Bangladeshi. I kind of knew about the country from my parents telling me that it was this paradise of coconut trees and those kind of things. I only went as a teenager. More recently, as an adult and as an MP, I have noticed the slightly more sinister side, with things like enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Every human rights organisation—Amnesty International and so on—has condemned those. I try to keep out of this subject—I do not have a very Bangladeshi electorate—but I was jolted when in 2018 I heard from the family of Shahidul Alam, a photographer who was taking pictures of an earlier student protest, that he had been banged up and tortured. Then I had to get involved. I was there as recently as May with the excellent all-party parliamentary group on global sexual and reproductive health rights—it has been reconstituted just today—for a United Nations Development Programme conference. Again, I realised that I was in a one-party police state—it is not quite right. As one of the diaspora, these human rights crackdowns came into my inbox, and they reached fever pitch in July when hundreds of brave students gave their lives in a struggle. Before we broke for recess, I had a panel discussion, with the panellists including Toby Cadman, a barrister who has defended people from the Jamaat party that was banned by the previous regime—it has just been unbanned—and the head of Amnesty International UK. The discussion, which we had in the Grand Committee Room of Westminster Hall, was so oversubscribed that people had to be turned away, such was the thirst for information. I see the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) in his place. He was there, and I think that his defeat of Jonathan Ashworth may have had something to do with some comments about this subject, but let us not speculate.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Democracy in Bangladesh · Hansard source

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  I will give way to the new Chair of the Defence Committee.

• 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.