Shockat Adam MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jun 2026 · Household Energy Bills · Hansard source

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  The typical annual dual fuel bill is 40% higher today in real terms than it was in 2021. After accounting for inflation, that means it is £511 more per household. The bad news does not stop there, with Ofgem announcing that the crisis is going to get worse, with a 13% increase to the energy price cap. My constituents in Leicester South were already suffering. Labour promised to fix that, but the cost of living is just getting worse. The Minister says that the only way to protect our country is through clean, home-grown power, so what is he doing to decouple the bills from gas prices and when will my constituents feel that?

• 2 Jun 2026 · Household Energy Bills · Hansard source

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  8. What recent steps he has taken to help reduce energy bills for households.

• 10 Mar 2026 · Digital ID: Public Consultation · Hansard source

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  My constituents are overwhelmingly against digital ID, and that appears to be the national consensus. Does the Chief Secretary agree that asking 100 members of the public to legitimise an already bad idea initially espoused by Tony Blair is a waste of time, resources and money? When will the Government go back to addressing issues that really matter to the public, such as the cost of living crisis?

• 5 Mar 2026 · Commonwealth Troops: First World War · Hansard source

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  I would like to congratulate the hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal)—for stealing most of my speech. It was absolutely wonderful and very powerful. We live in very polarising times. As the hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi) mentioned, all debates seem to be along the lines of our differences—what religion we are, what colour we are, what creed we are and where we come from. These debates are sadly not just on the airwaves or the news channels, but in this Chamber. It is all about what divides us, and not what brings us together. That is why I thank the hon. Member for Ilford South, in all seriousness, for bringing this debate to the Chamber; it gives us an important opportunity. Many people from my community or background, or from the empire, are not aware of their own history, and so do not have the knowledge to debate these matters coherently. The contributions made by Commonwealth soldiers in the first world war have been mentioned already by many speakers. They were men of every faith and no faith, and of every colour. Can we imagine living in Africa or British India at a time where there were no televisions and very few photographs, and being sent abroad to a foreign land? It must have been very frightening for them. Some may have seen it as an adventure, but as soon as they landed on this shore, with climates they were unaccustomed to, it must have been a real shock to them. More than 1.3 million soldiers from British India served in the first world war, including over 400,000 Muslims, 53,000 of whom gave their lives. In total, more than 2.5 million Muslim soldiers and labourers from across the globe supported the allied war effort. The work of the National Muslim War Memorial Trust reminds us that their sacrifice was immense, yet, as we have mentioned already, it is not spoken about very often. Commonwealth soldiers of all faiths served in the trenches of Europe, in the deserts of north and east Africa, in Madagascar and in the far east. Together, they faced unimaginable hardships, enduring gas attacks, machine gun fire, waterlogged trenches, hunger and fear. We remember that the war was won not only by Britain, but by the Commonwealth united in purpose. Yet it is painful to acknowledge that the story told through our memorials has been incomplete. Animal sacrifices in the war effort were honoured with a national memorial in Hyde Park in 2004, and rightly so. However, that was way before the black and Asian soldiers who fought, bled and died for Britain were recognised. It is only recently that they have begun to receive that recognition. This is a truth we cannot shy away from. Why did it happen? We have already heard the story of Khudadad Khan, who was born in 1888 in Punjab and served with the 129th Baluchis, becoming the first Indian soldier to receive the Victoria Cross. We have heard of his bravery in Belgium in 1914, when his regiment was completely outnumbered. Knowing he was the only one alive, he pretended to be dead and slid away in the darkness of the night; he later came back and, as the hon. Member for Ilford South said, changed the destiny of that battle. Now, his descendants live in Leeds. This is not somebody else’s history; it is our history. Consider Walter Tull, one of the most celebrated black British soldiers of the first world war. He enlisted in 1914, endured shellshock, returned to fight at the Somme and was commissioned as an officer in 1917, despite regulations that should have barred him because of his race. He continued to fight and was mentioned in dispatches for “gallantry and coolness” in Italy in 1918. Sadly, two months later, he died in no man’s land. Think of Lionel Turpin, a 19-year-old from Guyana who travelled to the mother country, as he called it, to serve on the western front. He survived the Somme, but not the effects of gas attacks. Think, too, of the 60,000 black South Africans and 120,000 other Africans who served in the labour units, and of the men of the British West Indies Regiment who, in 1915, sailed all the way from Jamaica to train on the Sussex coast before being deployed to Egypt and beyond. These people are not and should never be footnotes in history. They were part of the very fabric of our armed forces. They should not be footnotes, but headlines. That is why, when Laurence Fox questioned the inclusion of a Sikh soldier in the fantastic first world war film “1917”, it exposed not diversity gone too far, but history not yet understood deeply enough. Sikh soldiers made up more than 20% of the British Indian Army during the war. In my city of Leicester, a statue unveiled in 2022 now commemorates their service—long-overdue recognition of their extraordinary loyalty and courage. We recognise their bravery, we honour their sacrifice and we commit to remembering them. What does their service teach us today? It teaches us that courage knows no nationality, religion or race. If we allow polarisation to divide us along lines of colour or creed, we dishonour those who stood shoulder to shoulder in the mud of Flanders. If we forget the global nature of their sacrifice, we shrink our own national story. Let us tell that story fully, teach it honestly and commemorate it properly. For lest we forget—by forgetting, we dishonour not only what those troops endured, but the legacy that they pass to us: a nation strengthened, not diminished, by the diversity of those who defended it.

• 24 Feb 2026 · Gaza Healthcare System · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) not only for securing this debate but for his impassioned speech introducing the topic, which was really appreciated. Last week, I and over 2 billion other people welcomed Ramadan, a month of fasting, reflection and prayer. In the Muslim community across the globe, Ramadan is generally treated as a guest: it comes, we appreciate and enjoy it, it gives us a lot of blessings, and then it leaves us. That is no different for the people of Gaza. Speaking to the Independent , a young man by the name of Ibrahim described Ramadan in Gaza before the war as having “a softness to it”. He explained how he remembered the “warm glow of lanterns”—my house is in fact lit up as well—hanging in the narrow streets of Gaza, the “smell of freshly baked bread before maghrib”, which is the prayer just before we break our fast, and the “sound of children laughing” during tarawih, the evening prayer. In Ramadan, Muslim families come alive in the evening: they gather in large numbers, doors are open and visits are constant. Ibrahim explained how, this year, the “tables are modest”, but his prayers are still heavy. People break their fast with what is available, but they “still welcome it, not because life is easy, but because it remains.” Let us have a look at what remains. If anybody has seen the scenes, it is like a dystopian disaster movie, with people breaking their fast against a backdrop of utter, apocalyptic devastation. They are breaking bread among 60 million tonnes of rubble because of the destruction of more than 90% of their homes. They are eating their dates, which is what we traditionally break our fast with, but I can assure hon. Members that the sweetness of those dates cannot mask the bitterness of the death, destruction and decay that surrounds each and every one of those people. Minister, imagine breaking your fast while sitting just metres from collapsed buildings where your friends and family lived. Imagine knowing that beneath the debris, according to reports, there are more than 10,000 unidentified people—loved ones, friends, family and teachers. People pray beside them and they eat beside them. Although the official death toll in Gaza has reached 72,000—equivalent to one out of every 33 people—a further 171,000, or roughly one in four, have been injured, and we expect the true number to be much higher. I can truly say that the joy of Ramadan has disappeared for most of the Muslim world. Even after the so-called ceasefire that came into effect on 10 October 2025, at least 603 Palestinians have been killed and 1,600 have been wounded, rendering it a ceasefire in name only. If 603 Israelis had been killed in the past four months, would we all be grateful and welcoming a ceasefire? In the short time I have, I will briefly focus on the children—who have already been mentioned—and on the sanctity of their healthcare and the right of every child to be treated when they are sick. Children are innocent bystanders who have faced the brunt of the IDF carnage. As reported by Save the Children, they are telling aid workers that “they want to die because there is food and water in heaven and because their parents are there.” Death has visited many of the children of Gaza: 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed—more than 100 of them since the so-called ceasefire. That is a child every single day. Those that death has spared have been plagued with more than 40,500 injuries. As has been mentioned, children account for a quarter of all the amputations in Gaza over the past two years, making it the place with the highest number of child amputees per capita, according to the International Rescue Committee. Let us consider this: children have seen their neighbourhoods, schools, colleges, universities and homes destroyed. They have seen their parents pulverised in front of their eyes and their siblings shredded into a million pieces, and now their own bodies are being destroyed. In whose arms are those children going to find solace? How do we envision a peaceful co-existence when these young souls have witnessed such barbaric, brutal horrors? We must act now, because more than 18,500 people require urgent medical care, while only 2,700 have been evacuated, according to Physicians for Human Rights. Since October 2025, only 235 patients have been evacuated and many have died just waiting. For the first time since May 2024, the Rafah crossing finally opened on 2 February this year, but on average only 12 patients a day have been allowed to leave, despite Israel’s commitment to allowing 50 people needing medical care to leave each day. The current rate of evacuation means it will take four and half years for people needing medical care to leave Gaza. Children are dying waiting for basic medical care. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) mentioned that hospitals in Jerusalem—a mere 70 km away—have the facilities to treat those patients with trauma. We must facilitate the opening of the humanitarian corridor to East Jerusalem for urgent medical evacuation. We must ensure that international medical NGOs can operate freely and bring equipment, medication and personnel without obstruction. The weaponisation of bureaucracy by insisting on the registration of aid workers by the IDF is costing lives. As has been mentioned, we must ensure that children are prioritised. In addition to tackling their health needs, we must ensure that they get access to rehab hospitals and clinicians who can provide comprehensive mental health and psychosocial support—particularly the most vulnerable children, such as those who have been orphaned, separated or disabled. We must advocate for an independent, rather than Israeli-controlled, aid access mechanism for Gaza moving forward. We owe it to the children, we owe it to all the healthcare workers who did not abandon their duty and we owe it to ourselves if we claim to uphold international law. Without health, there is no recovery. Without recovery, there is no peace. And without peace, this cycle will simply begin again. Minister, the time to act is now.

• 29 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  When will the Government announce the results of their British industrial competitiveness scheme consultation, and provide the fabulous manufacturing industry in my constituency with some much-needed help towards its energy costs?

• 19 Jan 2026 · Business Rates: Retail, Hospitality and Leisure · Hansard source

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  One of the worst things for business owners in my constituency is the unpredictability of running a business. They need to know, and it is simply killing them. They already have to deal with poor parking, a rise in antisocial behaviour and rises in national insurance contributions, wage costs and energy costs. Now, when they thought that they were going to have a reduction in business rates, they are possibly going to have a rise instead. Can the Minister alleviate their fears and put them out of their misery? What is it going to be? Is it going to rise or is it going to stay the same?

• 2 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I welcome the Government’s abolition of the two-child benefit cap, but it should not have taken 16 months—it should have been the first act of a Labour Government. I will speak first about the national health service. It is the jewel in the UK crown, but under consecutive Governments, millions of pounds of public money has gone to waste on interest payments for PFI schemes—that is money that should have been spent on frontline care or paying for doctors and nurses. PFI was a costly failure that lined the pockets of private consultants and contractors at the expense of NHS patients and staff. Now, it appears that the Government are planning to do the same again but expect different results. Failed PFI schemes from the noughties, for three Leicestershire hospitals, saw the NHS sued for almost £30 million by the favoured consortium despite work not being taken and not a single hospital being built. Leicester’s three hospitals are still without any new buildings, as Ministers have pushed their development into wave 2, way beyond the original 2030 target, more than 30 years after the need was first identified. Coventry hospital, which was built, costs £1 million a week alone. The law was even changed to ensure that private contractors were paid before our NHS staff. Since the inception of PFI, around £60 billion of private money has gone into 700 PFI projects. In return, the Government will pay £306 billion. Those escalating costs eat into the NHS budget and leave less for frontline services. Secondly, I will speak about private providers. As an optometrist, I have referred people for cataracts surgery because the waiting time is much shorter and it makes sense to do so, but unfortunately the transfer of taxpayer money to the private sector reduces resources for NHS services and ultimately limits its ability to treat patients effectively. The Government have apparently set aside £2.5 billion—and that is set to rise to £16 billion—for private services That is disappointing, as they could have used the Budget to expand NHS capacity by building new facilities, rather than buying out private sector clinics, but they did not. They could support local authorities and not-for-profit organisations to take over social care, but they have not. These are political decisions that have consequences in the long run. Thirdly, I would like to speak about the deal with Palantir on data sharing that the Health Secretary is pressing ahead with. I have had patients contact me who are really concerned about data sharing. In fact, two of them wrote to me in the last week because they are really frightened that they have to opt out of this. It seems that our data is a commodity that is going to the highest bidder. I would also quickly like to touch on hospices. I am running out of time, but LOROS hospice in my constituency is serving 1.2 million people in Leicester with only 18 beds—

• 26 Nov 2025 · Home Insulation · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for raising the issue of warm homes. Does she agree with my constituents who have formed the WarmHomesLeics Coalition that insulation is one of the most proficient and efficient forms of climate action that we can take locally?

• 18 Nov 2025 · UNESCO: 80th Anniversary · Hansard source

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  It is a real honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. My speech, borrowing the term from the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies), is more about lofty ideals than the more detailed presentations that have been given by other hon. Members. As UNESCO’s founding fathers said: “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed”. That was a noble ambition at a time when the world, following world war two, was in a state of devastation. Although we are commemorating 80 years since UNESCO made its declaration, it is disheartening to note that since then we have never seen a single day without conflict somewhere in the world. We can have no “Sliding Doors” moment because we cannot say for sure what the world would have looked like without ambitious endeavours like UNESCO and its call for common humanity. The pursuit of peace is incumbent upon us now more than ever, with the devastating capacity of modern warfare to cause such death and destruction at the touch of a button. With our collective threshold for witnessing devastation and evil so elevated—partly due to social media, where we can see entire villages, hospitals, aid workers, men, women and children eviscerated in front of our eyes on our phone screens and continue to do what we were doing before—I suggest that we redouble our efforts, resources and ambitions for global peace by spotlighting, amplifying and celebrating the common cause of shared humanity. The sheer scope of projects undertaken by UNESCO is vast and varied, and it has been really interesting to hear hon. Members speak about them. I am from Leicester, where we do not have a world heritage site, but I think Charnwood forest would make a good bid for it. Today, I will speak about three projects that protect world culture and natural heritage, starting with Mount Mulanje. This mountain stands in Malawi, the country of my birth. Mount Mulanje is the latest UNESCO heritage site there. The mountain is not only a resource for nearly a million people, providing clean water, firewood, edible products and protection from the elements, including storms; it is also a place of great spiritual significance for the local population. What does recognition by UNESCO mean? It means that when mining companies come to drill extracts such as bauxite and other minerals, the listing preserves not only the beauty but the natural resources for its people, as well as the unique spiritual ties between the people and their land. Secondly, we are now living in a post-truth world, and the issue is about to enter another dimension with the advent of artificial intelligence. UNESCO has pre-empted some of the challenges the globe will face, including the dangers of embedded biases, threats to human rights and climate degradation, through its recommendation on the ethics of AI, which was adopted by the acclamation of 193 member states. In this journey to the unknown, humanity will need all the assistance it can get to navigate the complexities, challenges and dilemmas mankind will face. That resource could become a standard of reference, as it provides information on the gold standard of practice for legislators, educators and commercial entities, among others. Finally, we have witnessed carnage in the war in Gaza. We are hopefully now coming out on the other side, but a source of constant tension—often the flashpoint—is Jerusalem, the epicentre of the three Abrahamic faiths and a UNESCO world heritage site. The Dome of the Rock is sacred for Muslims as the site where the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven to meet his Lord. The Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, is a remnant of the Second Temple, signifying a place of not only spirituality but identity for the Jewish people. Additionally, we have the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which houses the tomb of Jesus Christ. This small area of 0.9 km is potentially the area where we need to implement the spirit of the first UNESCO contribution more than anywhere else, embodying the spirit of peace through mutual respect. Yes, UNESCO, like other organisations, must evolve in its efficiency and proficiency in these challenging times, but organisations like it are too important and vital to abandon. If we pursue a similar policy to that of our international aid and start cutting funding, as we did when we removed ourselves in 1985 for 12 years, it will leave a vacuum that will be filled by others who will shape the world in their image. The cost of that is potentially incalculable, and the result unimaginable.

• 17 Nov 2025 · Illegal Waste: Organised Crime · Hansard source

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  We all agree that fly-tipping is a national scourge. In addition to causing dismay, it causes a lot of disunity between communities. Furthermore, according to a 2018 report, it costs us £392 million to clear up. Will the Minister agree to give more resources to our local councils to fund enforcement measures such as cameras and to implement a zero-tolerance policy, prosecuting offenders and imposing custodial sentences on those who break the law?

• 10 Sept 2025 · Occupied Palestinian Territories: Humanitarian Access · Hansard source

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  It is a real honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. Nine children lie in bloodstained, torn clothes. They were not fighters, militants, extremists or terrorists; they were simply queuing for water in what Israel itself has declared a safe zone, and yet the so-called most moral army in the world unleashed death upon them. Their small bodies now bear witness to a horror that no child should ever know. That is not an isolated strategy, as the hon. Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) so powerfully said. We have seen the death of innocent people in churches, mosques, hospitals and schools—every sector of Palestinian society has been destroyed. For those who survive the bombs, starvation is tightening its grip. Families are already watching loved ones waste away: 361 people have already died of hunger, including 83 since famine was officially declared. The world’s leading genocide scholars, Israeli human rights organisations and international experts are clear: what is happening in Gaza meets the legal definition of genocide. Yet here in Britain, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), in his final flurry as Foreign Secretary, wrote that the Government have not determined that Israel acts with intent, and therefore there is not a genocide. How can anybody look away relentlessly when all this tragedy is happening? I have very little time, so I ask the Minister: will he call on diplomatic—