Sarah Champion MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 4 Mar 2026 · Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office · Hansard source

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  I will of course give way.

• 3 Mar 2026 · West Bank: Illegal Settlements · Hansard source

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  The rapid growth in Israeli settlements in recent months has been fuelled by settler violence, which not only goes unpunished, but receives tacit support from the Israeli Government. The UK Government continue to avoid responding to the International Court of Justice’s 2024 advisory opinion condemning Israelis’ forcible transfer of Palestinians—a war crime. Last month, the UN high commissioner for human rights noted that the forcible transfer of Palestinians from their homes in the west bank raises concerns of ethnic cleansing. Does the Minister agree with his analysis?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Gaza Healthcare System · Hansard source

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  The shadow Minister—thanks. Is the shadow Minister aware that the aid that is getting in includes things such as chocolate bars, and not items that are so desperately required to address the medical needs? He speaks about volume, but we are talking about the substance of what is getting in—the lifesaving aid, not the peripheries that people are making money from.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Gaza Healthcare System · Hansard source

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  The Minister referenced the aid that—

• 24 Feb 2026 · Gaza Healthcare System · Hansard source

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  Will the shadow Minister give way?

• 24 Feb 2026 · Gaza Healthcare System · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) for securing this much-needed debate. I will focus on one specific aspect of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza where the UK can really make a difference: medical transfers to the west bank. Israel’s continued ban on medical transfers from Gaza to hospitals in the west bank, including East Jerusalem, costs lives every day. It is not an unintended consequence of conflict, but a deliberate decision. Before October 2023, Gaza’s health system functioned as part of a wider Palestinian medical network, with around 2,000 patients travelling each month from Gaza to hospitals in East Jerusalem and the west bank for specialised treatment. The Augusta Victoria and Makassed hospitals alone handled more than 40% of Gaza’s referrals. At times, nearly one third of their beds were filled with Gazan patients. However, that system collapsed overnight. Since October ’23, Israel has banned all internal medical transfers from Gaza. In January 2026, the Israeli Government confirmed to its own High Court that it is standing by its refusal to allow seriously ill patients to travel to the west bank, including East Jerusalem, citing vague security concerns but offering no evidence of the threat supposedly posed by innocent Palestinian civilians. As of early 2026, more than 18,500 patients approved by the World Health Organisation are waiting for evacuation because their treatment is unavailable in Gaza. More than 4,000 of those patients are children, and more than 1,000 people have already died while waiting for care. For every week that the ban remains in place, more preventable deaths will become inevitable. Israel permits some patients to travel abroad for treatment, with more than 4,000 patients evacuated to third countries. But that only makes its continued refusal to allow access to nearby Palestinian hospitals even harder to defend. Hospitals in East Jerusalem are within a couple hours’ drive of Gaza. The WHO has been clear: reopening that route is the fastest, safest and most cost-effective way to save lives. Instead, patients are forced through the Rafah crossing, which operates under extremely severe restrictions. Exits through the crossing are capped at around 50 patients per day, with each allowed only two accompanying family members. At that pace, they will not survive long enough to be treated. At the current rate, Save the Children estimates that evacuating those in need could take more than a year. Furthermore, while departures through Rafah are possible, re-entry is heavily restricted, with more than 20,000 Palestinians who left Gaza earlier in the war still waiting to return. That puts medical evacuees in an impossible position: if they leave for essential treatment, they risk permanent displacement. Medical evacuations must not become de facto forcible transfer. Under the fourth Geneva convention, Israel, as the occupying power, has a duty to ensure access to medical care and supplies, and to maintain medical services. Article 33 explicitly prohibits “collective punishment”. A blanket ban on all medical transfers imposed regardless of individual circumstances risks breaching all of those obligations. The Government rightly emphasise the importance of international humanitarian law, and now is the time to put that into practice. The Government should publicly urge Israel to lift the ban on internal medical transfers and continue emergency overseas evacuations only as a stopgap, not as a substitute for lawful access to nearby care. Restoring access to hospitals in the west bank and East Jerusalem would save lives, relieve pressure on Gaza’s collapsing health system and reaffirm the basic principle that the sick must never be treated as a security risk by default.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Gaza Healthcare System · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Sir Jeremy. The subject of the debate is medical healthcare in Gaza, but the shadow Minister is not referring to that at all, apart from a tenuous “relating to healthcare” statement. Can you give some clarity, Sir Jeremy, on whether his speech is on point?

• 2 Feb 2026 · Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Bill · Hansard source

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  As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the ocean, I am delighted to see the Bill’s swift passage through Parliament, and I look forward to its full ratification, but I have some specific questions for the Minister. Can she outline the timeline for the next steps to ensure ratification? Specifically, will it happen ahead of the first ocean COP, expected later this year? If the Minister is unable to give that detail today, would she be willing to meet the APPG for the ocean to discuss the timeline, particularly given that we are now five years away from our 30 by 30 commitment? I note that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, tabled an amendment in the other place that would have ensured that the “polluter pays” and precautionary principles, alongside other principles in the Environment Act 2021, must be applied by UK authorities when they exercised powers or duties under this Bill relating to the high seas. As that amendment was not passed, there are concerns across the ocean sector that there is no statutory requirement in the Bill to extend those environmental principles beyond the UK’s territorial or domestic jurisdiction. Can the Minister comment on that? Will she also offer assurances that, when representatives of the Government or public authorities act under the Bill in relation to the high seas, they will apply the UK’s existing environmental principles so that we do have that coverage?

• 20 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Given the scale of the planned FCDO budget reductions and significant staffing cuts, what assessment has been made of which policy areas will be deprioritised as a result of those measures? What redundancy mitigation steps are being taken in line with the 2016 civil service protocols and how those changes are expected to impact both UK personnel serving overseas and country-based staff?

• 19 Jan 2026 · Proposed Chinese Embassy · Hansard source

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  I hear what the Minister has said, but I am not reassured and neither are our partners. We have now had interventions from the Dutch Government, the Swiss Parliament, and the Swedish Parliament, and we have had two interventions from the White House on the risks posed to UK infrastructure by the cabling that runs along Royal Mint Court. Last year, a Minister said that reports regarding the cables were inaccurate. Does the Minister still believe that to be the case? I understand that we are now briefing Five Eye partners that “no sensitive government data is transmitted through cables”. Would the Minister confirm that? Surely, that line is a tacit admission that financial services based in London could be affected by Chinese proximity. Minister, what were the mitigations that MI5 and MI6 suggested to avoid espionage risks, and will their implementation be conditional for planning approval? I remind the House that the US has confirmed three major infrastructure hacks in the past 18 months, while we have faced hacks on the Electoral Commission, the Foreign Office and parliamentarians, to name just a few. A Chinese mega-embassy in the heart of London is an issue of national significance, not purely a planning issue as the Government try to present it. Combined with the heightened risk to dissidents, campaigners and the wider public, is this really a risk we should be taking? Can the Minister offer reassurance to my British Hong Kong constituents that transnational repression will not increase if this mega-embassy is approved? Once planning permission is given, we cannot take it back; we will have lost control. I know I speak for colleagues across the House and the wider country, because they have contacted me, when I say that this is not a risk we can afford to take and the Government should refuse this disastrous plan tomorrow.

• 19 Jan 2026 · Proposed Chinese Embassy · Hansard source

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  (Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs if she will make a statement on representations made to Five Eyes partners on the potential risks posed by the proximity of sensitive cabling infrastructure to the site of the proposed new Chinese embassy.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Chinese Embassy · Hansard source

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  Multiple Government agencies and Departments have raised concerns about this mega-embassy. Our international partners have raised concerns about it, and every security briefing I have identifies China as a hostile state to the UK. I am in no doubt that this mega-embassy should not be allowed to go ahead. Internationally, China is terrorising the people of Hong Kong. It is terrorising democratic people in Taiwan, and it is terrorising some people already in the UK. I look to my local university of Sheffield Hallam, and also to what China is doing to parliamentarians right here. I want my Government to stand up to bullies, not to reward them. We need to put in place rules and limits around China to stop this behaviour, not reward it with the embassy that it so dearly wants.