Barry Gardiner
MP for Brent West · Labour · United Kingdom
“Sir Desmond, imagine that the top brains in the country’s security and intelligence community produced a report that told you how to save the world. You would want to see it, right? Well, the report we are discussing is not about how to save the world; it is about what happens if we do not.”
“The nuclear threat will rise as clashes between nuclear powers become more frequent. Those are the cold assessments of the Joint Intelligence Committee. The Government were right to think that those assessments might scare people—they scare me—but they were wrong to think that they could hide them from the public.”
“The Minister will know that the grant structure on which UKRI is based gives out grants for a maximum of three to five years. Very few are for five years—most are for three years or under—yet the sort of long-term scientific development that my hon.”
“My hon. Friend is making a superb case for the importance of funding for her deep earth facility. I had the privilege of going to the National Oceanography Centre’s deep oceans facility, and the innovative science there on carbon sequestration is superb.”
“The Prime Minister has spoken powerfully about the devolution of power and giving back control. Will he therefore ensure that the proposals for commonhold and leasehold reform, for which 5 million leaseholders in this country are waiting with bated breath, do give that power and control back to those people, through the right to enfranchi…”
“We know how much land there is in the UK, and we know the extent of our inland waters and seas, so we can know how much we have to do to protect them, as we are required to do by target 3 of the global biodiversity framework.”
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“The Minister will be aware of the work of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology on biodiversity indicators. Indicators can be used to aid policy decisions, but the difficulty of setting appropriate baselines for reference and the ambiguity of biodiversity targets are compounded by the differing sensitivity of indicators to change over time. Indicators may be about biomass, endangered species or trends of common species. The ability to obfuscate about whether targets have been reached is too great, unless the Minister is specific about the indicators that will be adopted, what the baselines are, how they will be measured and what their implications are for policy development.”
“The problem is that the interim is too short and the return on investment demanded by the companies takes too long. That would mean that fracking companies left us with stranded assets. Some would say that is their problem, but when the Government have offered the fracking industry the most generous tax reliefs anywhere in the world and 75% capital allowances, it is not their problem, but that of taxpayers. So fracking in the UK should be prohibited and new clause 12 would do that. The Government have now accepted the need for a statutory target to halt the decline of nature by 2030, and I welcome that, but the Minister must set out further details of the measures she proposes to deliver on the targets and how implementation will be reported to Parliament.”
“I support new clause 24 to protect the full 355,000 hectares of upland peat in England. I also support new clause 19, tabled by the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). Land conversion to agriculture for our high-meat, high-dairy diets is a key driver of biodiversity loss. It is responsible for 14% of global emissions and for 35 million tonnes of CO 2 in the UK alone. Tackling deforestation in UK company supply chains is therefore essential, and the new clause would introduce a labelling scheme so that consumers can be assured that the food they are eating is not a driver either of biodiversity decline or the climate emergency. The right hon. Member also spoke about new clause 12, arguing that we should permit fracking in the UK as an interim fuel as we transition to a fully renewable energy system.”
“I am delighted to support new clauses 12 and 24, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones). It is vital to preserve our most effective carbon sinks. The UK’s peatlands cover only 10% of our land, yet they store about 3 billion tonnes of carbon. Sadly, we have degraded our peatlands to such an extent that only 20% are now in their natural state. Heather and grass burning regulations currently only cover upland peat in areas designated as SSSIs and special areas of conservation, so new clause 24 extends the ban on rotational burning across all upland peat habitats. Burning vegetation on our most important natural sinks not only hinders our ability to meet our emissions targets, but impedes our biodiversity and water quality ambitions. Currently, only 40% of our peat is covered by the existing regulation.”
“But the fact that it had not yet been able to access the void to survey it means that it must already have been aware that there was no compartmentation in the roof space. Indeed, I have discovered that Blackberry Court, which was built in 2007, never got a completion certificate, despite being covered by the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005. That prompts the question of why the company had not acted on this fire safety defect before. Some may suspect that the properties were unsaleable and devalued—unless the work was done—because of the EWS1 form. The Government did change the requirements on the form, but the Minister knows that the banks and the mortgage lenders have not changed their stance, nor have the insurers.”
“FirstPort has written to the 27 leaseholders in Blackberry Court, which is a two-storey block of flats, to advise them that the fire safety work will cost more than £20,000. It has not provided a breakdown of costs or issued a section 20 notice, as it is legally obliged to do for any work costing more than £250 per leaseholder. What is most disturbing, however, is that FirstPort has been demanding access to the roof void through the only loft hatch, which is located in the bedroom of my constituent, who is an elderly lady of 94 years of age. FirstPort would brook no objection to this until I intervened to forestall this intrusion and asked it to create new access to the roof void from the common parts of the building.”
“This Bill has been passing backwards and forwards between the Lords and Commons because the Government will not do the right thing and protect leaseholders from the ruinous costs of replacing cladding and remediating internal fire safety defects during construction. By refusing to do so, the Government are making liars out of all the successive Ministers—and, indeed, a Prime Minister—who have told this House that leaseholders should not pay for building defects for which they are not responsible. Today I want to focus on the impact of the EWS1 regulations and the callous way in which another operator, FirstPort, is treating vulnerable residents in Blackberry Court in my constituency.”
“There were no visible fire barriers at vents or around windows/door frames and it could not be confirmed that the window/door frames themselves formed cavity barriers.” That indicates that at the time of construction the building regulations then in force were not followed. That means that these people were sold a building that was not fit for habitation, yet the Government are not pursuing the people responsible; they are making sure that it is the innocent parties who will pay. Their lives are being ruined, as Members in all parts of this House have said. It is vital that the Government address this and accept the Lords amendment. In particular, they need to focus on addressing the very real issues in building control regulations that allowed this scandal to happen in the first place.”
“The cost of the remedial works to the fire alarm system across Central Apartments, Ramsey House and Metro Apartments is estimated to be in the order of £250,000 to £300,000. The owners said that they were unable to say the total cost of all four recommendations and that they therefore could not advise the liability of each leaseholder. I find it unacceptable that the Government are imposing billions of pounds of costs on leaseholders retrospectively to remedy misconduct by others, such as the developer, the builder or those producing the Government’s own advisory documents and in particular building regulations control. The fire survey for these particular buildings said: “There is evidence that the junctions between compartment floors were inadequately fire stopped…as there were gaps at mineral wool fire barriers at steel framing.”
“The Minister should be very careful. The speeches in this debate today are an example of Parliament at its best and Government at their worst. The Minister has heard Members from across the House, and from his own party in particular, criticise what the Government are doing. He would be a very wise Minister to listen to Parliament. If he refuses to listen, I think he should think about his future. In March this year, leaseholders in Wembley Central apartments in my constituency were told that in response to the publication by the Government of the Building (Amendment) Regulations 2018, a waking watch system would be implemented as soon as possible. The cost of the waking watch patrols would be recovered from leaseholders in the sum of £91,380 a month.”
“The Indian community in my constituency is traumatised by the scenes that we are seeing of the covid crisis in India. I welcome the UK’s emergency package of ventilators and oxygen concentrators, but the Minister earlier acknowledged that no country is safe until the virus is under control in every country. Is this therefore not the worst year to cut the aid budget, because by doing so he is endangering lives not only overseas but here in the UK too?”
“The truth is that the next crisis is already here: it is called the climate catastrophe and environmental destruction, and this Budget has not prepared us to meet it.”
“On the super deduction of 130% tax reliefs on investment, the Chancellor should have said that this could be used only for sustainable green investment, and not to subsidise what could be environmentally damaging infrastructure by oil and gas corporates. No wonder it took him until precisely 37 minutes into his speech before he even mentioned the word “green”—and that, ironically, came just after saying there would be no fuel duty rise. I welcome what he said about changing the remit of the Bank of England to consider environmental sustainability and net zero, but a transformative Budget would have mandated both climate and nature-related financial disclosures by listed companies. He patted himself on the back and said that he would be ready when the next crisis comes.”
“Alongside it, the Chancellor should have put in place incentives for companies that spread employment through job sharing while using non-employed hours engaged in a new, paid national retraining scheme for the zero-carbon industries of tomorrow. That would have been transformational and given people currently in old industries hope and security for the future. Yes, set targets for electric vehicles, but retrain the mechanics. Yes, bring in more solar and wind arrays, but train the new generation of engineers. Yes, retrofit our homes, but where is the skilled workforce to carry out the work?”
“Once we understand that our economy is bounded by nature, natural capital, we will perhaps understand the need to stop consuming each year goods and services that the planet takes 1.6 years to reproduce. Economists call this living beyond our means. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear that we need urgent and unprecedented transformational change. If this Budget had adopted the principles of the Dasgupta review, we would have got that change. It would have set out the basis of a green industrial revolution, full investment in low-carbon infrastructure and the greening of our economy. It could have created a million new jobs. Protecting jobs and maintaining incomes through furlough is only a baseline.”
“Today, the Chancellor has been dealing with the economic cost of coronavirus. Coronavirus is a zoonotic disease and, just like SARS and Ebola, it has come about as the result of the increasing stress that human activity has put on the natural world. As a result of coronavirus, the Chancellor admitted borrowing a record £355 billion, and for the first time in more than 50 years public debt has risen above 100% of GDP. Let me say it again: coronavirus is a zoonotic disease; there will be others. Our species is grappling not just with one global pandemic, but with the two global emergencies of climate change and the destruction of nature through biodiversity loss. Today should not just be about the allocation of money; it should be about the management of our assets.”
“Does the Chair agree, then, that the Government should bring forward much greater investment in energy efficiency programmes and resolve the serious delivery problems around the green homes grant?”
“I thank the Chair of the Committee not only for the way that he presented the report but for chairing the Committee with such patience, tact and, often, humour. Covid has caused unprecedented hardship, physical, mental and economic. The Government’s own figures suggest an 11% contraction of our economy this year and a loss of 1.5 million jobs from the high street. That comes just as the economy is embarking on a profound transition away from transport and heating infrastructures based on fossil fuels, which will see even more jobs lost in those old industries, with unemployment forecast to rise to 2.6 million this year. The report makes clear that not only is retrofitting and upgrading the 29 million UK homes essential to meet our 68% emissions reduction target by 2030, but it would be a huge creator of new jobs.”
“There was a duty to disclose that information, but no such disclosure was made. In my view, that means my constituents were victims of fraud. In July 2019, the then Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government issued a written statement to say that all cladding remediation would be completed by June 2020. Seven months on, instead of expecting building owners and the construction industry to do the right thing, the Government should wake up, impose a windfall levy on the industry, and get this work done.”
“I have reason to believe that that was known by the construction company, Shepherd Construction, by the approved inspectors, Head Projects Building Control, which is now in liquidation, and by the project managers for the development, who were from CBRE. Those defects were known about and recorded in reports that were prepared for CBRE by its quality assurance agent. Those reports were then doctored. Evidence suggests that that took place before residents were moved into those unsafe properties. Given that there was full knowledge of the statutory breaches of the fire safety elements of building regulations, it is clear that life was put at risk. I believe that therefore constituted a criminal offence, and that withholding such information from leaseholders, who purchased their apartments in good faith, was fraud by false representation.”
“The developers hold the construction companies responsible. The construction companies hold the building control inspectors responsible, and the building control inspectors say that the Government privatised the system of building control, creating a downward spiral of monitoring and control, as inspection became a competition about who would let the builders get away with the most short cuts. Nobody blames my constituents, yet they are now paying for all those mistakes. They are unable to move house, unable to sell their homes, and unable to get on with their lives. They are trapped in unsafe accommodation, with no end in sight. In advance of this debate I was sent documents that show that many of the fire safety defects that exist in the Capitol Way development were not mistakes.”
“Residents trapped in unsafe buildings are fed up with sympathy; they want action—certainly those in Elizabeth House, Damask Court, Capitol Way, and many other developments in my constituency do. They know that this debate should not just be about who pays. Lord Greenhalgh has admitted that the Government’s building safety fund will not even cover one third of the cladding defects, and residents in Capitol Way know that this debate should not just be about cladding. This is about a whole range of fire safety defects that have turned their homes into a building site for the past three years, and threaten to do so for three years more. The Minister started the debate by saying that the Government “absolutely expect” building owners to do the right thing. Three and a half years on—really? The Government hold developers responsible.”
“So for those Members who go into the Lobby tonight saying they will support the Government on lifting the ban, perhaps we, with Friends of the Earth, should dig out those photographs and start publishing them one by one to show just how much Members meant it when they had their photograph taken with that bee. On deforestation, the Government are saying that there should be an imposition on companies to look at the legality of the sourcing of their materials, such as soy and timber. Legality is not enough. Yesterday I met a number of people representing the Brazilian interests as well as the commercial interests, and it is clear that what has happened already in Brazil is that the laws have been weakened because of the pressure. Companies must be asked to look at the sustainability of their supply chain, not just the legality of it.”
“Let her also have the benefit of interim targets, because for someone regulating, targets can be really helpful. I listened to the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and he is absolutely right. We need interim targets to be able to hold people to account, but also to be able to incentivise businesses and give them clarity about what they have to achieve. When we are talking about enforcement, it is perhaps salutary if I remind colleagues of those who were there when, as chair of the then all-party group on biodiversity, I worked with Friends of the Earth to organise a photo opportunity for colleagues who came to support ensuring there was no relaxation of the ban on neonicotinoids. It was incredibly well supported: over 100 Members of Parliament came to support that campaign, and I have the photos to prove it.”
“I am pleased to support the amendments in the name of the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). The Government said they had a desire to have a “world-leading watchdog”. I wonder whether there was a misprint and it should have said a “world-leading lapdog”. Do they really mean it? I was on the hearing that met Dame Glenys Stacey, and she is a robust regulator, with a proven record of independence, and I trust her. The Secretary of State should set the criteria and the parameters that he expects the Office for Environmental Protection to work to, but he should then leave it to the regulator to regulate. Dame Glenys, I believe, has been appointed as the right person, so let her do the job without further interference.”
“Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) said about new clause 6: what difference will it make for the Secretary of State to report to Parliament once a year, given that the Government were not prepared to meet the legal obligation by 2015 and had to be taken to the Supreme Court twice? But perhaps we should at least try. This whole Bill is about our 25-year environment plan and leaving our environment in a better state than we inherited it. That means that we have to understand the whole nexus of connections that exist. That is why the Dasgupta report coming out later this month on the economics of biodiversity and the value of natural capital is so vital, to understand that we must balance the burden of costs that each part of society pays for our public goods.”
“It means that there is a risk that the UK could become a dumping ground for hazardous chemicals unless we maintain the same standards that we had previously. While talking about risk, let me turn to air quality. We have got used to understanding risk much better with covid and the statistics that we have seen every night on our television screens, but let us imagine if, on our television screens every night, we saw that in many areas of our country, one in 19 deaths can be linked to poor air quality—to air pollution. That is the level of risk. I tend to agree with what the hon.”
“The UK creates the second highest amount of electronic waste in the world, and we export 40% of that waste to other countries, most of them developing nations. How crazy is that, when that waste contains the rare earth metals and the other valuable metals that we need for our wind turbines, our mobile phone batteries and our car batteries? It is insanity. That is why I support new clause 8, which aims to ensure that the Secretary of State implements the waste hierarchy with specific emphasis on waste prevention, rather than simply waste management. I turn to amendment 24. Since 2007, the REACH directive has provided a database to assess the risk of more than 21,000 chemical substances in the UK, and it obliges manufacturers to manage the risk of dangerous chemicals. This amendment is very simple.”
“To achieve targets, footfall would have to increase and non-urgent patients be prioritised.” My local dental committee tells me: “Many practices are already finding the conflicting strain too much, and this comes on top of the emotional and physical drain of wearing full PPE for hours every day…The imposition of a target at this time serves no purpose whatsoever other than to destabilise, perhaps terminally, NHS dental provision, and to demoralise an already exhausted profession further.” Covid-19 has been felt most severely by those who were already more likely to have poor health outcomes—”
“It is clear that little thought, if any, had been given to dentists and their teams.” One dentist wrote: “When on the 8th June our high street practices in England were allowed to resume face-to-face care, the reality of what a new normal might look like hit…fallow time means the number of patients able to be seen is significantly reduced. It was anything but ‘business as usual’. I ask myself, at this time, what would be the worst thing to impose on dental practices? Very high up on my list would be precisely what the government has decided to impose—targets. The emphasis on targets from the NHS clearly prioritises a metric and finance over patient interest.”
“One said that “dental services have often been treated as an afterthought with no understanding of the NHS contract imposed on the profession. Dental practitioners found out in May on the news, at the same time as patients that they were to reopen in June…The panic and frustration this caused is deplorable. Dental practices, despite being high risk because of the aerosol generating procedures, were not able to access PPE from the Government portal until September and the vital FFP3 masks were not added to that until November.”
“Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) has lucidly set out the key demands of the British Dental Association: abandon the activity targets; support practices to increase the number of patients they can see safely; prioritise access to the vaccine; safeguard the supplies of PPE; and extend the business rates holidays to dentists. I will not rehearse and repeat her excellent arguments; I want to give voice to the frustration felt by the dentists who continue to serve my constituents in Brent so well. The BDA has catalogued the failure to properly communicate with the public, but what I had not appreciated until I spoke with my local dental committee is just how poor the Government’s communication with dentists themselves had been. I quote from their letters.”
“The Book of Proverbs says: “Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth.” We are in a time of trouble and there are lots of broken teeth. While I cast is no aspersions on the fidelity of the Prime Minister, I can tell him that confidence in his Government, even before covid, was already at an all-time low with the dentists I speak to in Brent. There has been a total lack of investment in dental laboratories, a failure to recruit and train dental technicians, flawed dental contracts and chronic underfunding. My hon.”
“In my borough of Brent, our council leader is a fine and devout Muslim whose family is from Pakistan; our chief whip is a wonderfully authoritative Bangladeshi woman; and our Greater London Authority representative is an enormously respected Hindu.”
“The report speaks of widespread intolerance, violence and discrimination, and Pakistan is one of the countries of deterioration, as they are called by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The situation moved on. Despite further conflicts in 1965, the Simla agreement was signed in 1972, when both countries committed to resolving all differences bilaterally and peacefully. That is what they should do, and it is what UK policy is and should be: to let them resolve their differences without political interference from either side. I deplore the way in which some have always tried to import the conflicts of the subcontinent into our domestic politics.”
“Those camps belong to three main terrorist groups: Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Hizbul Mujahideen. One of the key areas around which the camps are located is Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. According to Human Rights Watch, the Pakistani Government repress democratic freedoms, muzzle the press and practise routine torture within Azad Jammu and Kashmir. According to the world press freedom index, prepared by Reporters Without Borders, Pakistan ranks 142nd out of the world’s countries. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s 2019 “Human Rights and Democracy” report noted that the human rights situation continues to worsen, and pointed out that freedom of expression and intimidation of journalists continue to be a serious problem.”
“It was only after the ethnic civil war in 1971, which saw the division of the country and the secession of East Pakistan to form Bangladesh, that Pakistan adopted Islam as its state religion under a new and less democratic—and much less secular—constitution. Stringent blasphemy laws mean that many religious groups face the death penalty if they are even accused of denigrating the Prophet, peace be upon him. Sadly, the infamous case of Asia Bibi is not unique, and the rights of women are of course governed by the Offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance 1979 penal provisions, which prevent women from exercising their marriage choices. The South Asia Terrorism Portal records that, of the 42 identified terrorist training camps located in Pakistan, 21 were located in Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.”
“The territory’s local representatives are excluded not just from the Pakistan Parliament but from even those Pakistani bodies that negotiate inter-provincial resource allocation and federal taxes. So much for “No taxation without representation”. It is not a country. It is not a province. It is not a state. It is a satrapy. Were I not a British MP, conscious of the fact that much of this mess is a legacy of our colonial past in the region, I might almost describe it as a prize of war; but then, of course, that is precisely what Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is. Yesterday in this Chamber we held a debate on religious persecution. Religious minorities in Pakistan have been systematically marginalised. Pakistan, while calling itself an Islamic republic, actually had a secular constitution in 1956.”
“Strangely enough for an entity that purports to be a country, the constitution bars anyone from public office and prohibits them from participating in politics unless they publicly support the principle of Jammu and Kashmir acceding to Pakistan. Imagine that: a country all of whose politicians can be politicians only if they say they do not want to be a country. It will therefore come as little surprise to colleagues when I say that all the major civil and police administrative positions in AJK are held by Pakistani civil and military officers. It may also come as no surprise to them to find that that putative country has no representation in the Parliament of Pakistan.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, on this important debate on the political situation in Kashmir. As a constitutional entity, the so-called Azad Jammu and Kashmir, which is better known to the world as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, is not just strange but unique. It has been given the trappings of a country, with a President, Prime Minister and even a legislative assembly, but it is neither a country with its own sovereignty nor a province with its own clearly defined devolved authority from the national Government. Under section 56 of the AJK interim constitution of 1974, the Pakistan Government can dismiss any elected Government in AJK, irrespective of the support it might have in the legislative assembly.”
“The Minister mentioned the DDC elections. Would he confirm that over 50% of the population freely took part in those elections, and that the largest single party—as opposed to the combined parties—that won in those elections was, in fact, the Bharatiya Janata party?”
“I am a Christian and I therefore have an interest to prevent the persecution of my fellow Christians; but, then, I am also a human being and I have never understood how anyone can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation, let alone the persecution, of a fellow being. I am also the founding chair of Labour Friends of India, and as one of India’s longest-standing friends in the UK Parliament, I am keen to see that the true nature of Indian democracy is properly represented and not distorted.”
“Many of my own constituents—British citizens whose families were originally from India—have written to me, outraged by the very fact that we are holding this debate at all. One of my constituents’ letters says: “It is a very difficult time in the UK due to the severe impact of the coronavirus pandemic. It is surprising to know that elected British Members of Parliament are debating subjects attacking the Government of India, rather than focusing on UK priorities.” There is of course a debate on covid in the Commons Chamber today, and I do not think that we must confine our debates only to immediate to domestic priorities, so perhaps I should have begun my remarks by declaring my interests.”
“Members have brought for debate in this Chamber today—injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere—but to give ourselves a sense of humility and a little perspective about how we might feel, as parliamentarians, if legislators in India were to pronounce on our institutions from afar, putting us under the microscope in the same way that colleagues are doing for their Indian counterparts today. Add to that the fact that the UK is the former colonial power, whose influence in what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh was not entirely beneficent, and certainly not above pitting one religious or ethnic group against the other. In this light, it is not beyond ordinary powers of imagination to conceive that people in India might not regard our intervention as either wholly welcome or appropriate.”
“Or, in 2011, when the London riots broke out after the police shooting of Mark Duggan, that there had been questions asked in the Indian Parliament about the impartiality of the Metropolitan police, and how it was that they stood by and did not use force to stop the rioters for four days before those riots were brought under control. Imagine that there had been debates in the Indian Parliament all through the troubles in Northern Ireland, accusing the British Government of persecuting the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland. I say this, not to minimise the subject that hon.”
“Before I begin, I want to say that I resent having to come here this morning. I also resent the fact that this will be one of the last debates that we are able to have in Westminster Hall. Scrutiny is very important, and the scrutiny we do in this Chamber is important, but we should be able to do it remotely and observe the guidance that the Government have given to others. Imagine when the Windrush scandal broke in the UK if there had been a debate in the Indian Parliament about the persecution of black people in Britain.”
“When the Muslim trader Alimuddin Ansari was later lynched by a Hindu mob for allegedly transporting beef, 11 people were sentenced to life imprisonment, including one local BJP worker. That justice was meted out by a fast-track court and was the first case ever successfully prosecuted against such religious extremists in India. The state acted. It did not sanction the atrocities. Are there atrocities in India? Yes, there are. Are they often perpetrated against religious minorities? Yes, they are. Do they represent persecution by the state? No, they do not. Islam is the second largest religion in India. There are 40 million Muslims in Uttar Pradesh alone. As the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said, there are 1.4 billion people in India and the second largest population is Muslim.”
“Though different political parties have formed the Government since its independence, all have respected the constitution and worked within its boundaries, so it is important to say that 21 years later, Dara Singh is still serving a life sentence for his crimes. It is also important that he was convicted in the year 2000 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, at the head of a Hindu nationalist BJP Government. In June 2017, in response to the growing violence of Hindu mobs known as cow vigilantes, it was the current Hindu nationalist Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who spoke out against that violence and proclaimed that killing people in the name of protecting cows was criminal, illogical and unacceptable.”
“I think I was the first person in this Parliament to raise the matter with the then high commissioner, my good friend Lalit Mansingh. As a human being, I also remember that Dara Singh murdered the Muslim trader Sheikh Rehman, chopping off his hands before setting him alight too. Psychopaths and murderers exist in all countries, but when talking of persecution it is important to examine how the authorities in those countries respond to such atrocities. The Indian constitution is, importantly, a secular constitution and it provides for protections of minority communities including Sikhs, Muslims, Jains, Buddhists and Christians.”
“I shall refer to the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks later, but at this point I will continue to make some progress. I represent the constituency of Brent North, which only Newham, which includes the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), might be able to rival for diversity of ethnicity and religious faith. Perhaps 40% of the families in my constituency are originally from the Indian subcontinent. Many are Hindu and many are Muslim and I am equally at home visiting the mosque or the mandir. As a Christian, I remember the appalling murder of the Christian missionary Graham Staines in Odisha. He was burned to death with his two little boys, aged 10 and six, when Dara Singh led a group of Hindu militants who set light to the van that they were sleeping in.”