Yasmin Qureshi MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Sept 2026 · Criminal Justice Reform · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Lord Chancellor’s statement. As a former criminal law barrister, I represented defendants who were given IPP sentences. They were required to complete courses, treatments and rehabilitation before they could be considered for release, yet many were never offered any of those things in time, leaving them unable to be reviewed by the Parole Board through no fault of their own. Can the Lord Chancellor say what he is doing to ensure that prisoners get the help and courses that they need in time for their parole eligibility?

• 9 Jul 2026 · Israeli Settlements: Trade Ban · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) on securing this very important debate. Somewhere in the UK today, a shopper will put a box of dates or a bottle of wine in their basket. A fraction of what they pay at the till will travel back to a hilltop settlement built on stolen land, which illegal settlers have bulldozed, fenced off and armed against the families who have farmed it for generations. Let me be clear: settler violence is not the work of a lawless fringe group; it is very much supported by the Israeli Government, the state, the army and Israeli Ministers. Israel’s basic law declares that settlement developments are of national value. We heard Prime Minister Netanyahu declare last year that there would be no Palestinian state. He was describing the Israeli Government’s E1 plan, which cuts the west bank into two parts, and his Finance Minister has published plans for annexation of the west bank. Many Israeli leaders have said that they do not want two states, and we have seen that the terrorists torching olive groves and the Ministers signing annexation maps are not separate problems. This year alone, two communities, Khirbet Yanun and Ras Ein al-Auja, have ceased to exist. More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, settler violence is at a record high, and 350 Palestinian children remain in Israeli military detention. The illegal settlers have swimming pools, but the neighbouring Palestinians cannot even get water. The International Court of Justice looked at the situation and said that there has been an international violation, and that it is racial segregation and apartheid, yet nothing has been done. We in this Government recognised the state of Palestine and restored the UN funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. We have also said that we would accept the decisions of the Internation Criminal Court, which has said that we should honour the International Court of Justice’s ruling that the occupation is unlawful and states must not help to sustain it. By not banning trade, we are effectively not abiding by what the International Criminal Court has said. I say to the Minister: please, promise us that those illegal goods will be stopped from coming to this country. I also ask the Minister to recognise that over a number of years we have seen devastation, destruction and genocide in Gaza, we have seen what has been happening in the west bank—what has been mentioned is only part of what has been happening—where old and young people have been terrorised from their homes, and it is about time that we stopped overlooking what the Israeli Government have been doing. It is ironic that, when it is a country that we are supposed to be allied with, nobody criticises their actions or does anything, but when it comes to other countries, we are happy to impose sanctions, make armed interventions and everything else.