Dr Rupa Huq
MP for Ealing Central and Acton · Labour · United Kingdom
“In the years since we have seen the influence of traditional broadcasters disrupted by online news and the two things are intertwined. Ofcom must pull its socks up.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On Talk radio last year, Mike Graham stated of dinghies that we should “destroy them, set fire to them, flamethrow them, do whatever you want with them.” There is no published Ofcom action. It has twice upheld complaints against that anchor, but there are no published financial penalties or statutory sanctions.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In fact, as its remit has expanded, Ofcom’s published investigations have shrunk; there are fewer and fewer, and long delays. In 2019 there were 142 editorial cases, but by 2025 there were just 36, and decisions in recent years have been glacially slow.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It often says, “People didn’t complain in the official form, so we are not doing anything about it.” It has defended at all costs channels that style themselves as disruptors but are actually echo chambers lazily putting out the same old content.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a genuine pleasure to follow three excellent speeches, with which mine will overlap to some extent. Ofcom’s role is vast. It has grown exponentially since it was set up in 2003, and it now has in its clutches online harms and the whole minefield of regulating social media, but my focus today will be on broadcasting.”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Section 2 of the Ofcom broadcasting code spells out the duty to protect the public from “harmful and/or offensive material”, section 3.2 explicitly forbids “hate speech”, and section 3.3 stipulates: “Material which contains abusive or derogatory treatment of individuals, groups, religions or communities, must not be included in” broadcast…”
House of Commons29 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“My hon. Friend always makes excellent points. When we are talking about minorities such as Hindus and Buddhists—there are various minorities—it is interesting to look at who is propagating the stories. There have also been pictures of devout Muslim students from the madrasas in their topi defending Hindu homes. BBC Verify has shown that some of these attacks have been on people associated with the previous regime. Sometimes these things are a bit amplified by people with agendas, but my hon. Friend makes a great point.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I totally agree with the hon. Member. The UK has a unique historical role in the colonial histories and as head of the Commonwealth. He does great work on the APPG. We should be vigilant on all these things.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In some of the middle eastern emirate states, the diaspora has supplied cheap labour to build such things as World cup stadiums in Qatar. Bangladesh is a place that exports people.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I have checked, and apparently some of those memorandums of understanding are being looked at by the new Government one by one to see if they are carried over. The hon. Member makes an excellent point. Let us have a reset. We have a fresh Government in this country and a fresh one in Bangladesh, so it is time to look at these things through new eyes. Back in the summer—in fact, it was at the same time as we saw race riots in this country—there was footage of jubilant Bangladeshis marching through the streets of Tower Hamlets, the hon. Member’s borough. That confused many people, but it was in happiness; they were not angry ethnic mobs. There is a big global diaspora, with 70,000 in this country, including me. The diaspora can be seen across Europe.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Before we broke for recess, I had a panel discussion, with the panellists including Toby Cadman, a barrister who has defended people from the Jamaat party that was banned by the previous regime—it has just been unbanned—and the head of Amnesty International UK. The discussion, which we had in the Grand Committee Room of Westminster Hall, was so oversubscribed that people had to be turned away, such was the thirst for information. I see the hon. Member for Leicester South (Shockat Adam) in his place. He was there, and I think that his defeat of Jonathan Ashworth may have had something to do with some comments about this subject, but let us not speculate.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I try to keep out of this subject—I do not have a very Bangladeshi electorate—but I was jolted when in 2018 I heard from the family of Shahidul Alam, a photographer who was taking pictures of an earlier student protest, that he had been banged up and tortured. Then I had to get involved. I was there as recently as May with the excellent all-party parliamentary group on global sexual and reproductive health rights—it has been reconstituted just today—for a United Nations Development Programme conference. Again, I realised that I was in a one-party police state—it is not quite right. As one of the diaspora, these human rights crackdowns came into my inbox, and they reached fever pitch in July when hundreds of brave students gave their lives in a struggle.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend is so right. I did not see any demos in Reading, but I do know that in all sorts of European capitals, including Paris and Rome, as well as in Manchester and Trafalgar Square, there were solidarity protests when these things went on. The diaspora has been active. I am a London-born Bangladeshi. I kind of knew about the country from my parents telling me that it was this paradise of coconut trees and those kind of things. I only went as a teenager. More recently, as an adult and as an MP, I have noticed the slightly more sinister side, with things like enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings. Every human rights organisation—Amnesty International and so on—has condemned those.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“So far, so predictable, but then in the biggest plot twist since Bobby Ewing in the shower, when all those tensions were coming to a head, we heard that the previous Prime Minister had suddenly scarpered. She helicoptered out. A regime so entrenched that it looked like it would last forever suddenly collapsed like a pack of cards. In January, there was an election in Bangladesh—we hear that 40% of the globe is going to the polls this year—although there were not any other real candidates in it, so that was declared null and void. We now have this caretaker Government who are there to oversee fresh elections. We do not know exactly when those will be.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I completely endorse what the hon. Member is saying. We do need to temper our language and be careful. Every Member in this House has a curry house in their constituency, and that will not be an Indian restaurant—it will be Bangladeshis who run it. An enormous contribution has been made to our society. With the things we saw this summer, we should stamp on the misinformation that I referred to in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi). Again, those Bangladeshi university students showed courage, and they were not just the elitist ones from the capital city; it happened all over the country at public and private universities, with boys and girls. Their demands were initially against corruption but they grew to wider pro-democracy concerns and the overthrow of the Prime Minister.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“He has the in-tray from hell, and a big job to do in repairing democracy. He was here in March, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali) organised a meeting for him with the all-party parliamentary group for Bangladesh, which she then chaired. He is such a modest man; he had 200 different court cases against him, but he did not go on about them—it had to be teased out of him by Baroness Helena Kennedy, who chaired that day. He is known as the banker to the poor. Nobody saw this coming. Bangladesh is a country of contradictions. It has 175 million people on a land mass the size of England and Wales, and is beset by natural disasters—at the moment, there are the worst floods in 30 years. Youth unemployment is sky high, which partly explains the protests.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree. Our loved ones were worried, and we did not know that was going on. We are talking about a country that can, at will, shut off the internet so that people cannot communicate with the outside world, or even with each other via phone signal—there was a Digital Security Act that was a bit sinister, and stopped all freedom of speech, thought, expression and assembly. Yes, we must rebuild. The hon. Gentleman made a great point. The sight of Muhammad Yunus—until recently, the previous regime had tried to lock him up—was baffling but reassuring for many, because he is globally recognised. He was a character on “The Simpsons”; Lisa discovered his microfinance loans to women. Among his friends are the Obamas and the Clintons, and 197 world leaders have signed a memorandum to welcome him to power.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Let us rebuild Bangladesh, so that human rights and democracy are a given. I look forward to hearing what the Minister says.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Money that belongs to the Bangladeshi people was looted and plundered. We need asset tracing to recover it. I understand that Professor Yunus is coming to the UN General Assembly. It would be great if His Majesty’s Government warmly welcomed him—I do not know if they will be represented by the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West), the Prime Minister or whoever. We are talking about Bangladesh 2.0 and human rights. When Gandhi was asked what he thought of western civilisation, he famously said: “I think it would be a good idea”. Let us make sure that democracy and human rights in Bangladesh are not just a good idea, but a given. People are talking about this as a second revolution.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Hendon police training college is renowned all over the world; perhaps we can rebuild the police in Bangladesh, because apparently there has been a bit of a vacuum there recently. The Stormtrooper-like Rapid Action Battalion force should be disbanded, and the death penalty should be gone. Maybe we could do something about climate finance, because countries in the global south face the brunt of climate problems, and we are in the run-up to COP29. These measures do not even have to cost anything; we could put a polluter-pays levy on some countries. Lastly, we need to recover some of the assets. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) mentioned foreign Governments’ interference. When I last went to Bangladesh, I saw Chinese power plants and Russian flyovers—lots of things like that; I cannot remember what they all were.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is plenty more to say. We need a fresh start—a reset, as the right hon. Gentleman said, and “in neither Washington nor Moscow”, as the slogan used to be. We need less gerontocracy. Yunus is 84, though he is very sharp. The leader he overthrew is 76, and the opposition rival, Khaleda Zia, is 78. I have some questions for the Minister. As I said, there is a big job to do. Given our unique role in all this, we should offer support. Apparently, the constitution is being amended and redrafted. Could we lend expertise there? British lawyers have good form on this; we constructed the European convention on human rights. Capacity building is needed to cleanse all sorts of institutions of party people who were in the pocket of the last regime.”
House of Commons11 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Order. I remind members to bob if they want to speak, so we can work out the order of speakers and how long everyone has available to speak.”
House of Commons10 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will call the first of the three Front Benchers by 10.28 am, and I want to allow Deirdre Costigan time to sum up. The last two Back Benchers were not on the list that was submitted to the Speaker’s office, but if they stick to five minutes each, everyone will get in.”
House of Commons10 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I remind everyone that this is a short debate, so everything is a bit squished, and most Members will not be able to make proper speeches. We have two Members down as intervening—we will seek clarity on the rest—and the Minister has 10 minutes to respond.”
House of Commons10 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I see that there is another name down to speak. We have actually run out of time for that, but the Clerk is advising that Neil Duncan-Jordan can intervene on the Minister—that is a possibility. I call the Minister, Emma Reynolds.”
House of Commons10 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Order. The Clerk always reminds me that Members cannot use “you” because it means me, even when used with “Minister”. We have had it all morning.”
House of Commons10 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to make a speech, so that we have an idea of how to divide up the time. I call Jim Shannon.”
House of Commons4 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Order. I appreciate that there are new Members present and not everyone may be aware of this, but I am being reminded by the Clerk that Members should not use the word “you”. “You” means me, because I am in the Chair. That is just a general reminder for all.”
House of Commons4 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As this is a 30-minute debate, I will call Alistair Strathern to move the motion, then I will call the Minister to respond. People can intervene on Alistair; that is the format for these debates.”
House of Commons4 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is not a question of time; the right hon. Gentleman was completely within his rights, but we do have at least one vote in the House—we think two.”
House of Commons4 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“People are not allowed to take a neighbour’s items, and items cannot be walked in either. That fails to understand that not everyone in a street will possess a car.”
House of Commons3 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Solutions should combine carrot and stick. The attitude to fly-tipping should be that it is completely socially unacceptable, and we should treat it more seriously as a crime, enforcing penalties and punishment. However, we should also make it as easy as possible for people to dispose of waste. It is not rocket science that since the Acton dump closed, the prevalence of mattresses on street corners in the area has exponentially risen. Alternative sites at Greenford or out of borough on the north circular are further away, necessitating more emissions. Sites also require pre-booking, with a lot of intrusive personal details—inside leg measurement, hat size. As a small Asian woman with a car, I know that dumps are often not the most user-friendly places, so let’s make things easier.”
House of Commons3 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Fran, who volunteers with the aforementioned group LAGER Can, says that the overlapping, different fly-tips in her street have created a sort of illegal, unofficial dump. Even once it is cleared, it reappears because the cycle continues. One email to me says: “the council should figure out who keeps doing this and should come down hard on them with big fines.” As was pointed out, fly-tipping is a criminal offence under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. It can result in imprisonment, unlimited fines and even being deprived of rights to the vehicle used to commit the offence. However, as my hon. Friend said, there is a perception that this is low-level stuff, and the likelihood of being caught is low. People are unaware that leaving items in the street, or outside a charity shop, is an offence.”
House of Commons3 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Fly-tipping sounds faintly amusing but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) so expertly pointed out, it costs millions and blights lives. A constituent wrote in about how, on a daily basis, he sees stuff—including “gas canisters” and “rotting food”— “blown all over the street after foxes have” opened bags. He says, “It’s relentless and tiring” and that something needs to be done. Another constituent posts daily Facebook pictures of a dump where there are all sorts of things—dining chairs, a sofa, a divan bed, a TV in bits and decorators’ leftovers. She says it “looks like a flat clearance.” The most recent figures we have show that, in 2023, fly-tipping cost councils hundreds of millions of pounds and that there were over 1 million incidents. As has been stated, there are a lot of logistical issues.”
House of Commons3 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“When I put to an officer the idea of CCTV, which I had received from people who email in with solutions, he answered: “In order to carry out the sort of enforcement your constituent is asking for with cameras, we would need an infrastructure and network the likes of which one finds in novels by George Orwell.” There is literally a “computer says no” attitude that comes back. Let us be a bit more creative.”
House of Commons3 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Lady makes an excellent point, and the idea of the community skip, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall raised in her speech, sounds like a good one. Why not take the solution to the people, rather than expect it from them? We know that all our local authorities are cash-strapped, so I wonder whether the Minister might propose a trial and give that idea a whirl everywhere, because it is free. I now have two boroughs in my constituency—Hammersmith and Ealing—and bulky items collection is at a charge. When I suggested the community skip, I was told, “But it would fill up with builder’s waste.” Great! Surely that is better than having it on every street corner.”
House of Commons3 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It should not be Kathy who is cleaning up every unofficial dump in a borough of 360,000 people. This has been a great debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall. Let us install some community pride in areas, because well-maintained areas are less likely to become hotspots for dumping. I hope our suggestions do not fall on deaf ears. In a similar way to the Jubilee 2000 debt campaigners, let us make fly-tipping history.”
House of Commons3 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It sounds like a panacea, but we do not know who these people are, so there are a lot of issues. But yes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall pointed out, having more funding from central Government would be great after 14 years of cash-strapped councils. If we get rid of the booking system, the possibility of spontaneously mowing the lawn and taking the waste down to wherever would also be opened up. I think we are running out of time and there are lots of Members present, but I want to praise LAGER Can and Kathy Swift on tirelessly doing community clean-ups. It terms of the necessity of having such groups, it is a bit like food banks: the fact that we have more food banks than branches of McDonald’s in this country is really a sign of state failure.”
House of Commons3 September 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Mr Speaker, you and I are both old enough to remember Tiananmen Square. The use of lethal force on student protesters in Bangladesh has rightly been condemned by our Government. I urge the Government to put pressure on the Bangladeshi investigation, so that it has an international element, because a country that can just turn off all communications with the outside world and that controls all institutions, right down to its stormtrooper-like police, should not be allowed to mark its own homework.”
House of Commons30 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As well as Matt Hancock’s pub landlord scoring a PPE contract despite having zero relevant expertise, non-covid error, fraud and waste cost the public purse £58.5 billion in the year 2020-21 alone. Could my right hon. Friend tell us how those colossal sums of money will be recovered? He mentioned a commissioner; can he also tell us how we will get rid of cronyism and nepotism, so that these things never happen again?”
House of Commons25 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In recent days, there have been protests in Rome, in Paris, in my right hon. Friend’s city of Manchester and in Trafalgar Square over what has been going on in Bangladesh. A three-figure number of student protesters have been killed; we do not know how many, because the internet has been turned off. May I press again for an urgent Government statement on our position, because I was not successful in the ballot for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office questions on Tuesday? We have a historic, unique role in this situation.”
House of Commons25 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It was incredibly pleasing to see the Prime Minister both at NATO and welcoming leaders from across our continent to Blenheim palace, at a historic moment for a reset with Europe after the disastrous legacy that the departing Government left behind. Did the subject of youth mobility for students and suchlike arise, and could his Government look into repairing it for its soft power, cultural exchange and growth-boosting properties that have been so valued, as we are now in a post-Erasmus era?”
House of Commons22 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“T3. One month since UN Security Council resolution 2728 passed with UK support, what are our Government doing to bring about the immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the compliance with international law, the release of hostages and the passage of aid that it calls for? What are the consequences for non-compliance, apart from more death and destruction?”
House of Commons30 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is making an excellent speech. She has pointed out the opinion polls and the international examples—Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and so on—and mentioned the BMA’s neutral stance. Does she agree that some of us are massively conflicted on this issue? When it comes to abortion I am very pro-choice, but last time we voted on this subject I actively abstained—voted yes and no—and was relieved that the status quo was upheld. Does my hon. Friend agree that some of us are relieved that there is no vote today? With the Hippocratic oath and other things, we are just massively torn on this one, despite the opinion polls.”
House of Commons29 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In addition to Boris Johnson’s hedge fund lobbying in Venezuela there is his Daily Mail column, as well as his lettuce PM successor’s contravention of the Radcliffe rules in betraying royal confidences in her book. The Minister has said that the Prime Minister is judge and jury in respect of the code. Is it not time for a more independent system, such as Labour’s proposed ethics and integrity commission? If the Government will not do that, can they not just call a general election now?”
House of Commons25 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“With two former Conservative Prime Ministers having recently contravened the ministerial code—twice, in the case of Boris Johnson—and the Radcliffe rules, in the case of his successor, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), is it now Tory party policy to routinely ignore the rules? If not, what sanctions will they face?”
House of Commons25 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I echo the sentiments about Frank Field. Although his seat was elsewhere, he told me on day one that he was a proud Chiswickian. Week after week, MPs have pushed Ministers to restore UK funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, and all the while we have seen lives lost in Gaza. The stock response has been that we await the Colonna report—well, that report was published on Monday, and yet there has not been a peep from the Government. Can we have an urgent statement on this? Now that Canada, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Germany, France, Japan and, in fact, the EU have all unfrozen funding, when will we?”
House of Commons25 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Sports Minister is excellent on this issue—he went to Qatar with a rainbow armband—so perhaps he could tell us in his summing-up what he will do to address it.”
House of Commons23 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is also the problem of top teams in tournaments—and it is a problem. Let us not kid ourselves that the FIFA club world cup expansion did not have super league-style motives at its heart. Although that is gone, I think it is trying to come back in disguise, like the proposed champions league reforms. Those have been rejected for now, but let us be wary of all these things. There will be resistance to change, but we need a truly independent regulator as the Football Supporters Association tells us. I welcome this Bill, but when we have Joey Barton saying women pundits should be banned from ITV, and the awful things that John Yems said, such as the N-word and “curry munchers”, there is a bit missing.”
House of Commons23 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It should not be seen as an add-on, with this patchwork of different systems and plans; we need a level playing field. Kick It Out figures show that racism and misogyny, offline and online, are all up. We need a proper regulatory framework for dealing with those, and I feel we have missed a trick. The word “fan” appears only 16 times in this 140-page Bill. The Bill stopped short of the golden share veto power that the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford recommended. This legislation is fundamentally about finance, but we have heard about the ending of FA cup replays. Brentford, a local team, did well out of them a few years ago, yet now that they are in the premier league, they are all for banning replays. That needs addressing, because it is a big financial incentive to the smaller clubs.”
House of Commons23 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for Chatham and Aylesford said in chapter 6 of her review: “Football needs to improve equality, diversity and inclusion in clubs with committed EDI Action Plans” regularly addressed by the regulator, but that is completely missing from this Bill. We know there are gaps in leadership, ownership and management—and who would benefit from reform? Players, parents and referees would benefit. The figures speak for themselves: the higher up we go, the boardrooms become almost a white male preserve. We know women’s football is increasingly expanding. We could also look at the issue of social class as well. How else will we Kick It Out, as the name of the racism charity demands? Even from a business point of view, in every other sector—civil service, local government, banks, wherever we go—EDI is central.”
House of Commons23 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Football brings soft power and tourism, but I worry that the value of the FA cup, which used to be such a big thing, is being lost with all these European competitions. We need some sort of transparency and consistency, and a clear system on points deductions: why are Everton falling foul repeatedly, and not Man City? Why the mismatch between different systems and different leagues? I welcome the focus in this Bill on the football pyramid, which often seems, as Diana Ross would say, “Upside Down”. My son gave me a figure of £1.7 million a day generated by Man United, but that is not finding its way down to the bottom of the pyramid. As the hon.”
House of Commons23 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“However, the relationship between the English Premier League and the EFL and the distorting effect of parachute payments, which have massively unbalanced the beautiful game, are not addressed in the Bill. Although there are clauses on regulatory powers to force a financial redistribution of revenue, the Bill seems to think only of broadcast revenue. It would be easy to knock the Premier League for its hospitality towards MPs—it was in here late last night, wining and dining people—and its attempts to push the free market, but in recent years our clubs have done us proud in Europe, in all-England finals in 2019 and 2021, and in 2023. They have changed football’s reputation from how I first remember it in the 1980s, when it was synonymous with fans behaving badly, racism, hooliganism and violence. They have cleaned up their act.”
House of Commons23 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“He described how his family have been Reading fans since 1871 and told me how Dai Yongge is not co-operating with the fans and has destroyed clubs in China and Belgium. After the pitch invasion against Port Vale, he said: “I was at the game and the protests that led to the abandonment…I was watching from the seats that my late mother and brother watched from until they died…my grandfathers supported from the 1920s…I have been going since 1969. That experience is not atypical of supporters in many towns and communities across the country, who have little or no say in the fate of their clubs.” The club may be saved—I think there is an American bid at the moment—but that is a perfect case study or a textbook example in the future of why we need more protections, because of the collective social and cultural heritage of our clubs.”
House of Commons23 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Against a backdrop of Bury going under, a pandemic that no one predicted and the spectre of the European super league thwarted for now, it is notable that, since 1992, 16 clubs have gone into administration. How much will the Bill address? It is too late for Bury; will Reading, on the brink of extinction, be next? We need a regulator with appropriate teeth to take away licences from rogue owners—those venture capitalists who think about balance sheets, profit margins, asset stripping and destroying clubs—because football clubs are so much more than simply businesses. I know that from the work done locally by QPR and Brentford, and the email that I got from Professor David Gilbert of Ealing.”
House of Commons23 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is much to welcome in the Bill, which builds on the excellent fan-led review conducted by the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Dame Tracey Crouch). It will give fans more of a say in how clubs are run and the wider premier league redistribution of broadcast revenues—what is not to like? The core of the Bill is financial stability. We do need an independent regulator to stand up for the interests of smaller clubs and the EFL against globalisation, which is seen in not just Americanisation but oligarchs and sportswashing. I welcome the Bill, but, of the Crouch recommendations, the Government have regrettably opted out of action on equality, diversity and inclusion.”
House of Commons23 April 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗