Tulip Siddiq MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Jun 2026 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. During Prime Minister’s questions today, the Leader of the Opposition called the Secretary of State for Education a “spiteful class warrior”, and previously she has compared her to a Gestapo officer. I started working in Parliament when I was a teenager, and in 25 years of being involved in politics, I have never seen the atmosphere here in Parliament and outside to be quite so hostile and intimidatory, especially towards female elected representatives. Words matter, and inflammatory language contributes to this hostility towards politicians, especially women. Could I ask your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker, on whether the language used by the Leader of the Opposition today towards the Secretary of State for Education—a woman who grew up in poverty on a council estate, was raised by a single mother and was on free school meals, and worked her way up to the Cabinet—is appropriate to be used in the Chamber? I ask because not only does this language contribute to hostility, it puts off women from coming into this important profession.

• 2 Jun 2026 · Preparedness for National Emergencies · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making a powerful argument. He has mentioned the M25 a few times; people may not expect South Hampstead to suffer from frequent surface water flooding. I have been contacted by two groups, the Hillsiders and the Hampstead and Highgate Climate and Nature Group, who would like to talk about strengthening education, especially about climate change in the national curriculum. There is limited information in the national curriculum when it comes to climate change and the climate emergency. Does my hon. Friend agree that strengthening education for children and young people would help in the long run when it comes to tackling national emergencies?

• 20 Apr 2026 · Antisemitic Attacks · Hansard source

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  The Minister will be aware that I have a thriving Jewish community in my constituency—a community that I grew up in and which I feel very protective of. I want to share with the Minister an email from my constituent Richard, who said that “many in the community are fearful”. He said that some are not attending synagogue and communal events, and that Sunday schools for children are taking place behind thick security cordons. Richard’s niece attends a Jewish primary school, which had two police officers at the gate this morning. He went on to say: “Instead of action, we are receiving platitudes from those in power. Why hasn’t your government proscribed the IRGC, who are directly involved in terror against Britain’s Jewish community and against British interests.” I ask the Minister, who recently visited my constituency and had a conversation with community leaders, what shall I reply to my constituent Richard—why have the Government not proscribed the IRGC?

• 12 Mar 2026 · International Women’s Day · Hansard source

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  I thank the inspirational speakers we have heard so far. International Women’s Day feels particularly poignant to me this year, and there are two reasons for that. The first is watching the women in Iran. The reason why this has particularly affected me is because of the six-year fight to bring back my constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, which many Members, including you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will remember. During that time, I encountered the brutality of the Iranian regime whenever we tried to negotiate her return to our country. The way that they treated her was like she was nothing, in all honesty—they attached a worthlessness to her identity. Now we are watching women fighting just for education and the right to dress the way they want—just for the right to live. Bombing primary schools full of little girls is something that is really hard to fathom. Every morning, no matter what happens, we can wake up feeling very lucky because we know that we can walk to work or get on the tube and we will be safe. Our thoughts today are with the people in Iran who are fighting for justice, especially the women. The second reason that International Women’s Day feels particularly poignant to me is because of the case I am dealing with of Bright Horizons nursery in my constituency, which some Members will have heard me speak about. Vincent Chan operated for seven years undetected, preying on little girls, toddlers and babies, inflicting pain on them and conducting sexual abuse— something that he had already done in previous workplace. He went undetected and was given a job in a place where parents entrusted staff to look after their children while they were at work. Parents only found out about the abuse because he had been reported by a brave whistleblower for acts of cruelty towards children—for bullying, not for sexual abuse. It was only when police decided to seize his devices, including nursery iPads, that he was discovered. He had filmed himself committing acts of sexual violence against little girls in the nursery itself, and he had used the iPads to airdrop the images to his own devices. This makes us realise that the fight is not over and that there is so much more work we have to do to combat violence against women and girls. I am pleased to be here today, surrounded by women who have been fighting that fight, and I hope that people like Vincent Chan get justice and end up behind bars. I want to pay tribute to all the mothers of the children who were affected in the nursery. They have made sure that this will never happen again. They are the ones who are fighting for mandatory CCTV. They are the ones who are fighting to make sure that there is a “two person per child” rule in every room in every nursery. They are the ones who are now fighting for a flare system so that whistleblowing can be done properly and without fear and nurseries are not able to mark their own homework. However, every time I speak about this case, I make sure that I say that for all the cases of sexual abuse in nurseries and early years settings that have happened, there are hundreds of thousands of other babysitters and nursery staff who look after children day in, day out and make sure that they are loved and protected. We must not tar everyone with the same brush, but we do need to take this seriously, and something does need to be done. Today I want to talk mainly about my brave constituent Sanju Pal, who is in the Gallery. The focus of the UN for this International Women’s Day is, as the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) said, rights, justice and action. Across the world, women and girls have just 64% of the rights that men have. That is why I want to concentrate on Sanju’s case. Some Members will have heard me mention Sanju before. After six years of fighting a legal battle against her former employer—a management consultancy firm— for unfair dismissal, she won a landmark case at the Employment Appeal Tribunal in London. Her case sets a legal precedent for endometriosis to be considered a disability under the Equality Act 2010. Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope you will indulge me while I talk about Sanju Pal’s case, because I feel that everyone in this Chamber, and everyone in the world, should listen to what she had to go through. In 2018 Sanju was diagnosed with severe endometriosis, and had large fluid-filled cysts on both her ovaries, requiring an immediate operation. She returned to work a month later in severe pain. She was bleeding and could hardly walk, because she had been pushing herself too much for a promotion to senior manager. She told HR in explicit detail how much pain she was in. Three months after her phased return to work ended, and without any warning, Sanju was sacked. She was told to leave the building immediately and not to contact anyone. She was told, “Do not contact any of the colleagues you have been working with for 10 years now; just get out and leave the building quietly.” She had worked there for 10 years, and she told me that her entire life was based around her work and making sure that she looked after people she was serving at Accenture. Sanju was sacked for not being ready for promotion within a required timeframe. This is known as the “up or out” policy, used by many corporates, where employees can be dismissed if their manager believes that they cannot be promoted. The termination letter—which, by the way, she received minutes after that meeting—did not state any actual reason for her dismissal. It also did not inform her of her right to appeal, and nor did it refer to the policy that was being followed. As a Camden girl through and through, who went to Camden School for Girls, Sanju decided not to take this lying down. She took it to an internal tribunal, and the High Court later found that this panel had completely disregarded what she had written in her impact statement. When she then took it to tribunal, the panel ruled that she had not proved that her illness had an ongoing substantial effect on her daily life, and stated that many women with endometriosis had mild symptoms or none at all. The tribunal rejected her claim for disability discrimination and lacked any understanding of the physical impact of her health condition on her own body. She appealed that decision, and the High Court eventually ruled that she was unfairly dismissed from her job without her employer following a fair capability procedure or providing any reasonable adjustments after she was disabled because of her health condition. I am so proud of Sanju for her tireless campaigning since her unfair dismissal in 2019. Employers must now follow this judgment on considering endometriosis as a disability and providing reasonable adjustments. More needs to be done to ensure that this does not happen to other women who are left physically disabled by endometriosis and other gynaecological conditions. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Ms Oppong-Asare) has done some brilliant work in this area for years now, but we need a collective voice. We need everyone in the Chamber to stand up and speak about this, because it has been a taboo for too long now. It is shocking, if the Minister is listening, that not a single gynaecological condition was introduced into the disability guidance of the Equality Act. That basic change could have saved Sanju her job, as well as so much time, money and anxiety, as she spent six years fighting for this unfair dismissal. It could also have made a huge difference for countless other women whom we have not heard about and who are facing the same discrimination in the workplace across the country. One in 10 women suffer from endometriosis, and 69% of sufferers say that they face discrimination at work. Such cases are far too common, leaving one in six women with endometriosis unemployed because of their condition. Women should not be forced to go to a tribunal just to get the rights that they deserve. That is why I believe that women with endometriosis should be given specific workplace adjustments and the right to reasonable adjustments for their condition. Alongside that, endometriosis should be listed under reoccurring and fluctuating impairments in the guidance for the Equality Act, so that employers actually understand their legal duty to provide reasonable adjustments to women who are suffering because of the condition.

• 4 Feb 2026 · Nurseries and Early Years Providers: CCTV · Hansard source

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  I am coming to my questions to the Minister; I know she is highly focused on the early years sector and has done an enormous amount for it. One of those questions is about Ofsted; I will get to that in a minute. The Secretary of State talked about appointing an expert panel on CCTV. Can the Minister give an update on that panel, and is there an opportunity for me to sit on it as a representative of the parents in my constituency? I ask the Minister for her response to the Lullaby Trust’s Campaign for Gigi. One of its three objectives is mandatory CCTV in nurseries, stating that CCTV “should not only be checked once there has been a serious incident. CCTV can give staff the confidence to speak up when they see something that is concerning, and could help Ofsted to monitor regular practices in nurseries even before there is a concern.” In addition, the Lullaby Trust is “calling for Ofsted and the Department for Education to explore reviewing CCTV footage as part of Ofsted inspections. This can act as an active safeguard, revealing concerns that may not be visible during a short, scheduled inspection.” Cost is an issue, which we are all aware of. Will the Minister commission a study to look into the costs for nurseries to install CCTV? Before I finish, I want to make it clear that although I have talked a lot about keeping our children safe in nurseries, I am a huge champion of the early years sector. There are thousands of workers out there who work really hard to love, protect and look after our children. I sent my children to Pinocchio nursery in my constituency; it looked after them better than I did, and they still call their nursery manager Jana their second mother. In no way is this debate a slight on the people who work hard to look after our children. We owe them a debt of gratitude. My focus today has been on the safeguarding crisis in some of our nurseries. There were almost 20,000 reports of serious childcare incidents in English nurseries in the five years to March 2024. That was up 40% on the previous five years. Meanwhile, the number of legal claims involving injuries to children in nurseries has increased tenfold over the past decade. I spoke to the late Genevieve’s father John last night. He told me categorically that, without CCTV, the investigation into his little daughter’s death would not have opened. It would not have taken place, the case would not have gone to trial, and the deputy manager of the nursery would not have been convicted of manslaughter. I am not naive to the challenges; I do not think CCTV is a silver bullet, but I do think it is one step closer to safeguarding our children in the future. If there is any Government who should put forward policy to look after the most vulnerable, it should be a Government with Labour values.

• 4 Feb 2026 · Nurseries and Early Years Providers: CCTV · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the use of CCTV for safeguarding purposes in nurseries and early years providers. It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Stringer. I have now been a public servant for 15 years, initially as a local councillor and then as a local MP for nearly 11 years. A lot of people who see me doing my job will know about the bits relating to voting, legislation and making decisions on national policy, but most will not know about my casework. That casework is often on matters of life or death, whether helping women fleeing domestic violence, people fleeing persecution, or my constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was imprisoned in Iran for a crime she did not commit. Some of the most harrowing examples of my casework have been about children. Very early in my career, I dealt with a young boy who was abducted from his mother, and taken overseas by his estranged father. I then dealt with a man who was grooming his step-daughter, and had to step in to help get him away from her. Finally, I have dealt with parents whose children have been abused, either sexually or through neglect or cruelty, in nurseries. It is very difficult to put into words what those casework surgeries are like, because they are every parent’s worst nightmare. Parents have put their child in a nursery at a time when they are unable to speak, walk or talk and entrusted it to look after them, only to find that that very place, rather than being a safe haven, has abused that trust, and that their children have been subjected to violent acts or sexual cruelty. For six years, I was a shadow Minister for early years and early education, and I am an absolute champion for the sector. I want to emphasise that every time I spoke to early years educators and practitioners, safeguarding was the focus of all their work and they wanted to make sure children were protected. Many of the conversations I had were about strengthening security so that nurseries could do their job properly, whether that was through the mandatory two person per child rule, ensuring that Ofsted can examine digital devices or having a proper whistleblowing system in case anything problematic was happening. In particular, those conversations were about whether mandatory CCTV should be a safeguarding tool for nurseries across the country.

• 4 Feb 2026 · Nurseries and Early Years Providers: CCTV · Hansard source

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  I am very sorry to hear about that case. I fully agree that if we are to have CCTV as a safeguarding tool, we must be able to access it in incidents like the one my hon. Friend described. Another case I want to mention is that of Riverside nursery in Twickenham, where the local MP has been doing a huge amount of work. Roksana Lecka was convicted of abusing 21 babies at that nursery after footage showed the worker pinching and scratching children, and kicking one boy in the face. As in the case of Genevieve, which I just mentioned, CCTV was essential to the prosecution in the case. The Metropolitan police went through CCTV from the nursery, which showed Lecka pinching and scratching children, all aged 18 months to two years, under their clothes and on their arms, legs and stomachs. The Crown Prosecution Service put forward compelling evidence that clearly showed her targeting children when colleagues were either out of the room or had their backs turned. It also called on experts to prove that the injuries the victims sustained were consistent with pinch marks. Another horrific case happened in Bristol, where a nursery worker sexually abused five toddlers in his care. The prosecutor told the jury that some of the evidence against the perpetrator came from CCTV from inside the nursery, and she used CCTV showing the nursery worker’s predatory behaviour towards young children. That nursery worker was initially caught because the nursery manager witnessed him on CCTV putting his hands down the trousers of a child. She immediately sent him home and got in touch with human resources, but he would not have been sacked, and then ultimately convicted, had the CCTV not been there. The final example is from Australia. Some hon. Members will be aware that last August Australian federal and state education leaders signed off on plans to begin a trial of CCTV for childcare centres, in which 300 childcare centres across the country will install purpose-built daycare CCTV systems. The trial is part of a larger $189 million Government-funded initiative to enhance safety, security and reporting in the childcare sector. Funds will be released over four years to help small and medium-sized operators purchase and install CCTV cameras for childcare centres. The Australian childcare CCTV trial is taking place as part of federal reforms to enhance safety in the childcare sector, particularly in response to a high-profile allegation of misconduct in which a childcare worker was charged with more than 70 child sex offences, including rape, after working for eight years at several nurseries, many of which did not have CCTV. During the announcement, the Australian Education Minister stressed the importance of CCTV as a safeguarding measure, referring to daytime security cameras as “an essential component in what we need to do if we want to keep our children safe”. He went on to say that police suggest that CCTV cameras “can be an important aspect in deterring bad behaviour” as well as in helping police with their investigations. Some nursery chains in our country do use CCTV, but there is no consistent national standard. That raises questions about whether current safeguarding arrangements are sufficient. If we consider implementing this proposal, we need to consider a number of issues. One is the security of CCTV systems: whether footage is monitored, whether it is stored locally, how secure the footage is and whether there are controls around remote access. We also need to think about whether and in what circumstances we can view the footage in the case of an incident, and how that access is recorded. We could consider role-based auditable access, and also whether there is a case for authorised access for Ofsted inspectors as part of routine inspections. Another area is data retention. How long should footage be kept? When should it be deleted? How should it be preserved automatically if a safeguarding concern is raised? Clear guidance would need to ensure compliance with data protection law and prevent inappropriate access. We need to look carefully at wider digital safeguards in early years settings and the potential benefits of introducing technical controls, such as restricting devices in early years settings to approved apps and systems, or even limiting camera or gallery functions where they are not required. Routine audits, spot checks and clear escalation processes would need to form part of that picture, alongside appropriate staff training on digital governance and responsible use. We should also be open to emerging technologies that could help to strengthen safeguarding processes further. That might include harnessing specialist tools designed to detect illegal content quickly and automatically —for example, Project Arachnid, developed by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, which is used to identify known sexual abuse material online. I do not claim to have answers to all the questions, but if we work collectively with the Government, we could implement this measure to safeguard the future of children in nurseries.

• 2 Feb 2026 · Indefinite Leave to Remain · Hansard source

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  I am sure that my hon. and learned Friend’s mother is very proud of him. My constituents, a same-sex couple with a child, fled from Russia because of fear of persecution. They work here, they pay tax and their child is in a local school. They are fully integrated into the community, but have written to me to say that they are 10 months away from gaining ILR and feel that changing the rules retrospectively does not honour the commitments that were made to them when they were granted refugee status. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that it is very shameful for our country to row back on what was promised to my constituents when they first arrived here?

• 14 Jan 2026 · UK-France Relations · Hansard source

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  We have a big, thriving French community in Hampstead and Highgate who have told me they are concerned that the UK is becoming a high-risk destination for French nationals who want to live and work here because of the issues around indefinite leave to remain. Locally, French parents are particularly concerned about having different settlement timelines to their partners because of childcare responsibilities, as it reduces their salary threshold. Does my hon. Friend think the Government should consider childcare responsibility when they reform the ILR situation for French nationals in our country?

• 4 Dec 2025 · Camden Nursery Sexual Abuse Case · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for Education for her statement and for reassuring us that the case is being given the importance and treated with the urgency it deserves. This is every parent’s worst nightmare. I pay tribute to my constituents and to the brave parents, who are here today to watch proceedings. They not only want justice for their own children, but want to ensure that never again are children put in this situation. The parents in my constituency have a number of requests. I recognise that the Secretary of State will not be able to answer all of them, but I would be grateful if she could write to me. Has she considered enhanced background checks for everyone working with children, enabling the use of safeguarding CCTV in nurseries and early years providers, and a mandatory two-adult supervision rule for all nurseries and childcare practices? Is she looking into expanding Ofsted ratings to include a clear assessment of nurseries’ digital device policies and controls? Is she looking into establishing an independent, state-run safeguarding reporting body that parents can approach directly when concerns are raised, as they were in the case of this nursery? Such a body must be fully resourced to investigate childcare providers without reliance on internal nursery procedures. Finally, will the Secretary of State ask the Prime Minister if he will meet me and affected parents to discuss not just this particular case, but how we strengthen the safeguarding process and the accountability of large childcare providers in our country?

• 22 Oct 2025 · Heathrow: National Airports Review · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend knows my constituency well, and she will know that my constituents are very concerned about air quality in London and worried that the expansion of Heathrow will affect air quality in the constituency, especially for future generations. Will she reassure not just me, but local organisations such as Green School Runs and the London Clean Air Initiative, which are campaigning hard to ensure that air quality is not impacted and is at the heart of the review, not ignored by the Government?