Rushanara Ali MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 Sept 2026 · Battle of Cable Street: 90th anniversary · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) on securing this important Adjournment debate. She represented Cable Street until the last general election, and I am very proud to represent it now. She and I have much in common. We are the beneficiaries of all those who came before us, who fought in the battle of Cable Street to make the east end the place it went on to become, and the generations after, who fought against the racism of the National Front—some of our colleagues who are in this Chamber and in this House, who made the east end a safe place for us to grow up in. My hon. Friend and I studied at the same secondary school and, as children and young people, along with our peers, benefited from learning about the battle of Cable Street and by visiting the memorial that she spoke about, which has inspired young people in the generations that came after as well as before us, and it continues to do so. The significance of what happened almost 90 years ago, as we look to the 90th anniversary, which we will mark on 4 October, remains crucial for our society if we are to fight the modern-day intolerance, hostility and hatred that we are seeing yet again, in even greater force, fuelled by the disinformation and online hatred that is playing out in our society and in our communities up and down the country. Growing up, I heard the testimonies of so many in our community. I am a few years older than my hon. Friend, so I was able to meet many powerful advocates of the anti-racism movement, including two of my former constituents who are no longer with us. I pay tribute to their struggles and what they did. They were young people when they took part in the battle of Cable Street: the late, great Max Levitas, whom I had the good fortune of being able to campaign with as a Member of Parliament, who fought against the English Defence League and other far-right groups that sought to exploit division and stir up hatred in my constituency when I was first elected; and the late Beatty Orwell, who died in 2023 aged 105, who also took part in the battle of Cable Street. They were two people who inspired me and supported me through my political career, along with many others in our community who told the story of the anti-racism movement and continued to work across communities. My hon. Friend spoke eloquently about that period and what happened afterwards. The fight against intolerance and hatred continues. We have to build on the legacy of that generation, who worked so hard to ensure that division is not amplified by those who seek to divide us. I hope that as we mark the 90th anniversary of the battle of Cable Street, we can all work together to redouble our efforts to build strong communities, cohesion and strong inter-faith relations, as well as relations with those with no faith, and recognise that the modern-day challenge of intolerance and hatred is even greater in some respects, though much has been achieved. We have to be vigilant and we have to work together to ensure that we stand against racism, fascism and intolerance of the kind that we are seeing grow once again. I look to the Minister to work with us to do that.

• 8 Sept 2026 · Israel and Palestine · Hansard source

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  I thank the Foreign Secretary for his incredibly moving and courageous statement. He has been a friend of Israelis and Palestinians. When he was Leader of the Opposition, he and the Labour party recognised Palestinian statehood, and I am proud of the fact that this Labour Government have recognised Palestinian statehood. We know that at least 17 companies linked to illegal Israeli settlements were found to hold 125 UK public sector contracts worth £2.1 billion, so does the Foreign Secretary agree that without sanctions, we will not be able to take the necessary action to protect a viable two-state solution and ensure that we see the day when we have a Palestinian state?

• 2 Sept 2026 · Representation of the People Bill · Hansard source

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  I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) on her appointment as the Minister for Democracy. I thank her predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), for the work that she and the brilliant officials in the Department did on this very important Bill, and I thank the Minister for tabling the Government amendments. I had the privilege of serving as her predecessor’s predecessor and working on the strategy that formed this important Bill. This is a significant piece of legislation, and the proposal to bring forward votes at 16 is important, radical and necessary. It is right that we give young people the right to vote when they can participate in other areas of life, and when they get the vote, political parties will absolutely pay much greater attention to their interests. I would like to see whether those who oppose this particular change go and canvass for the votes of 16 and 17-year-olds when they have the vote. We certainly will, because we believe that it is important to encourage participation from an early age. This Bill introduces important changes to tackle harassment and intimidation and to move towards automated voting, and it picks up on the important findings from the Rycroft review. This significant piece of legislation has been improved as it has gone through its different stages, and today marks another opportunity for my hon. Friend the new Minister to take on board some of the suggestions that have been made in the form of the amendments. I express my support for new clause 34, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), which would beef up our resistance to cryptoassets flooding our political system. I am grateful for the Minister’s reassurances that we are moving in the right direction, but we need to go further, as the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee also pointed out. For reasons that are well documented, and as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill has said, the Bill must include digital tokens and meme coins accepted into crypto-wallets, as defined by the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. My right hon. Friend has done a huge amount of work and provided an analysis to warn about the dangers of cryptoassets being used to drench our democracy with malign messages, fuelling populist hate and misinformation. We are seeing that play out in our streets and our communities at the moment. I do not think that I am allowed to make a plug for his excellent book on populism, but he has outlined that £200 million has already been spent in the UK on promoting division and undermining our democracy. That is terrifying. We need to put a stop to it, and that is why this Bill needs to go further. Nothing less than a full ban on crypto donations will do, and I hope that Ministers consider doing this now rather than coming back later. I have seen the ability of the enormously talented group of civil servants to move at pace in amending legislation and being more and more ambitious over time in making this Bill much more significant—from the time I started working on it to the end of the period when the strategy was published and subsequently. Where there is a will, there will be a way. In the interests of moving away from the incremental changes to which the new Prime Minister has committed, I hope that we can get this done in one go. I appeal to my hon. Friend the Minister to be bold and to get this done now. Furthermore, I support new clauses 41, 47, 82 and 83, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington), which seek to tackle online harms and online hate in the context of elections and deepfakes, especially videos purporting to depict politicians and candidates. This has become more and more dangerous and serious. In the 2024 election, only a handful of candidates were depicted in AI-driven deepfake images, which were already presenting disinformation and causing damage to candidates’ election chances. Now, these have become more and more sophisticated, more and more problematic and, at worst, damaging and dangerous. It means that the elector often cannot see the distinction between a real image of a candidate and a deepfake-created image. Now—don’t get me wrong—I have seen some of those deepfakes, and some of them are quite entertaining. The problem is that the ones that are filled with poison and hate can do deep damage to the reputation of candidates. That is very damaging and is moving very fast. When citizens look at such material, we are asking a lot of them. We are asking them to make a distinction between what is real and what is fake in the context of social media, which is heavily funded with billions of pounds by tech companies. Ordinary citizens have to compete with that, and it is not feasible. That is why it is really important that we make those changes. As I have said, when I worked on the election strategy that was the foundation for this Bill, it was challenging to get the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to do more. I therefore hope that those Ministers can work with my hon. Friend the Minister for Homelessness, Democracy, Communities and Faith and her Department to include the changes that are needed in the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central, so that we can get this done in one go, rather than waste time while damage is done at the speed of lightning in the form of deepfake and disinformation spreading, which is infecting our democracy and forcing candidates and elected representatives out of politics. Increasingly, too many Members of Parliament, candidates who did not make it here and those in local government and other areas of public life are asking: how is it going to be at the next election? As well as trying to keep ourselves safe, how do we protect our reputations when lies are spreading at breakneck speed? What is the point, and how do we protect our families when these lies are being spread online? How do we compete with that as candidates? How do we protect our protected characteristics? People of colour and people from minority faiths are particularly targeted, and women—female candidates—are being subjected to a scale of misogyny and hatred using deepfake and disinformation on a scale and at a level that I never thought I would see in my lifetime.

• 6 Jul 2026 · Foreign Interference in UK Politics · Hansard source

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  I commend my hon. Friend for the work that she has done, and for accepting the recommendations of the Rycroft review. Can she clarify whether consideration was given to an outright ban on crypto donations, as opposed to a moratorium? Given the reports in the press, can she also tell us what additional steps will be taken to strengthen legal duties in the Representation of the People Bill, and impose restrictions on major online social platforms that are spreading hate and disinformation and interfering during our election periods?