Bell Ribeiro-Addy
MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill · Labour · United Kingdom
“The hon. Member will know that, with the extreme heat and reduced rainfall, a lot of water companies are introducing hosepipe bans to mitigate the risk of drought. Does he agree that that seems a bit redundant, given that artificial intelligence data centres use between 11 million and 19 million litres of water a day?”
“This Bill seems inspired by the belief that hostility towards asylum seekers will deter them, whereas hostility towards migrants will not deter those we need economically, but we cannot have it both ways. There is a deeper problem with the Bill’s logic on citizenship provisions.”
“This appears to be blurred with a separate Bill that stops citizenship being restored after the first successful appeal, letting this Government sound tougher than they are while avoiding scrutiny of a power that is already used disproportionately against black, Asian and migrant-heritage citizens.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. First, I will acknowledge that although I disagree with the premise of this petition, I recognise the strength of feeling among the hundreds of thousands of people who signed it.”
“The petition that we are debating today raises the issue of asylum seekers being held in hotels and temporary accommodation. I certainly agree that that is unacceptable; I have seen for myself the diabolical conditions in such accommodation.”
“Automatic deportation for custodial sentences introduces double jeopardy; a wrongful sentence can now also mean unjust deportation. The deportation system is already a mess and is run by the Home Office, which is now asking for sole control of it, without oversight.”
The complete record
Every one of 600 lines we hold for Bell Ribeiro-Addy, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 1 of 12.
“The hon. Member will know that, with the extreme heat and reduced rainfall, a lot of water companies are introducing hosepipe bans to mitigate the risk of drought. Does he agree that that seems a bit redundant, given that artificial intelligence data centres use between 11 million and 19 million litres of water a day? Does he agree that, as we prepare to experience more extreme heat over the summer periods, there is an urgent need to address the water consumption of data centres to reduce the risk of drought across the country?”
“The conversation about funding that we keep on having is completely missing the point: it misses the Home Office backlog and the continuing engagement in negative rhetoric of politicians here. When we look at the issue of offshore detention, we have to be realistic with the country about how much it is going to cost and about the fact that it will not solve the issue at hand.”
“It is far more costly—as was proved by the last Government, with their failed Rwanda scheme that cost £700 million but under which only four people were voluntarily transferred. Other examples of offshore processing centres operated by Australia, Italy and Denmark show how costly they can be. They are not meeting those countries’ aims, but are causing huge problems and perpetuating those countries’ engagement in really awful rhetoric about migrants—just as we are, while the costs increase again and again. I want us to be able to talk about asylum seekers with some humanity and not to cast off those in our communities who have come here to seek support from us. As I have said again and again, we have a duty to them under the refugee convention and a moral duty to them.”
“The UK receives far fewer asylum claims per capita than countries such as Germany, France and Cyprus. Also, in most cases asylum seekers are barred from working here, so claims that they are taking jobs or living off benefits do not actually recognise the fact that asylum seekers are desperate for the right to contribute but are trapped in the system. In addition, the language of “swarms” and “invasions” is just inflammatory, racist and dehumanising, and it continues to cause problems throughout the discourse and debate on this subject. While we are discussing how much things cost, which again is a huge concern, we must realise that offshore detention can never be a cheaper alternative than the current system.”
“The petition that we are debating today raises the issue of asylum seekers being held in hotels and temporary accommodation. I certainly agree that that is unacceptable; I have seen for myself the diabolical conditions in such accommodation. The Home Office is paying millions each day to house asylum seekers, but that is not the fault of the asylum seekers themselves. It is the fault of the Home Office and the private contractors who seek to make a profit off the backs of vulnerable people. I do not dismiss the views of those who support the petition, but the public debate does not provide accurate information. It regularly conflates the number of legal migrants and so-called illegal migrants. Indeed, migration and asylum are among the most misrepresented issues in public debate.”
“That means that we, as a signatory to the 1951 refugee convention, have a legal duty to assess their claim and place them under the care of the state while that process is ongoing. If their application is rejected, the state’s duty to them persists until the appeals process is exhausted. If that takes too long, it is inefficient, which is on us. Human Rights Watch and a number of other organisations have confirmed what most of us believe to be true, namely that holding asylum seekers in offshore detention is in contravention of our obligations under international human rights and refugee law. Regardless of whether a person’s application is deemed to be legitimate, they cannot be held in an offshore site until their asylum claim and subsequent appeals have been denied.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. First, I will acknowledge that although I disagree with the premise of this petition, I recognise the strength of feeling among the hundreds of thousands of people who signed it. However, I cannot support calls for offshore detention or processing centres, and nor will I support calls to immediately deport those who enter this country through irregular routes, because seeking refuge and safety is not illegal, and many safe and legal routes do not actually exist. I strongly believe that Members who support what this petition calls for are not being honest with the wider public about what it would cost, how it is a risk and what the true problems are. Of the people who enter the UK via an irregular route, 95% submit an asylum application.”
“These children are not migrants, and they are not asking for anything that is not already theirs. If it was not clear, I do not support this Bill.”
“Automatic deportation for custodial sentences introduces double jeopardy; a wrongful sentence can now also mean unjust deportation. The deportation system is already a mess and is run by the Home Office, which is now asking for sole control of it, without oversight. If the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs oversaw food shortages, would we accept a bid from it to take over all our farms? Finally, this Government have yet again missed the chance to fix child citizenship fees. It costs £1,214 for a child who was born here, and who has lived here their whole life, to register as a citizen in the country that they call home—a fee that the Court of Appeal found unlawful. Between 85,000 and 215,000 such children remain undocumented because their families cannot pay.”
“This appears to be blurred with a separate Bill that stops citizenship being restored after the first successful appeal, letting this Government sound tougher than they are while avoiding scrutiny of a power that is already used disproportionately against black, Asian and migrant-heritage citizens. Forcing asylum seekers to pay £10,000 for their own shelter is purely punitive and ignores the legal right to asylum. Denying the right to work and rent, and then demanding repayment, is designed to punish, not uphold human rights. The Bill also deliberately ignores article 8, the right to family life, potentially tearing people away from loved ones, including British citizens. The Bill contravenes the spirit of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 by imposing arbitrary disclosure deadlines and removing leave to remain for trafficking survivors.”
“My concern is that the Home Office, with its full arsenal, cannot think of any other way to ensure that we are safe from all groomers and abusers, regardless of where they or their grandparents were born. The Home Office seems able to resolve difficult cases only by creating citizens with fewer rights, which should trouble every single Member, whatever their view on deportation. Press briefings have suggested that the Bill hands Ministers sweeping powers to strip British citizenship. Rather, it moves deprivation appeals out of the independent courts and into an immigration appeals authority that is largely controlled by the Home Secretary. That is a serious change to who judges these decisions, but it is a change of process, not of who can be deprived of citizenship or why.”
“This Bill seems inspired by the belief that hostility towards asylum seekers will deter them, whereas hostility towards migrants will not deter those we need economically, but we cannot have it both ways. There is a deeper problem with the Bill’s logic on citizenship provisions. The only way to make this approach work is by creating a second class of citizen, but what do we do with those whom we cannot deport? What happens when the person who has done the harm was born here, with no claim to another citizenship? The Bill has no answer, because citizenship deprivation was never really about safety; it is about who this Government treat as fully British, and the proposed amendment on citizenship deprivation confirms that. To be absolutely clear, I am not arguing against deporting foreign national criminals, which we too often fail at.”
“Management agents can take thousands of pounds a year from leaseholders, deliver next to nothing, and walk away with a strongly worded letter. We do not accept that anywhere else in housing law, and we cannot keep accepting it here. An independent regulator must do what was not possible in the past, which is remove the licences, fine the managing agents and, as I say, prosecute where necessary, because what these organisations have been doing is absolutely criminal.”
“Ofgem, which is not always that great, ordered E.ON Energy to pay £5 million, after customers were left waiting on hold for 18 minutes on average, and half their calls were never even getting through. It fined Maxen Power £1.65 million for poor communication and mishandled accounts. Just this January, a landlord in Harrow was prosecuted and fined £9,000 for failing to provide fire and electrical safety certificates, and a landlord who fails to carry out an annual gas safety check can face an unlimited fine or up to six months in prison. In every one of those cases, Parliament has decided that taking someone’s money and failing to deliver is not just providing a bad service, but carries real consequences.”
“Frustrated leaseholders are paying ever-increasing service charges, and it is simply not right that they are struggling to even get a basic response. Charges climb year on year, but transparency does not climb with them. When my constituents ask for a proper breakdown of what they are paying for, too often they get vague figures, unanswered emails or silence. Lifts are broken, stairwells are unsafe, and communal areas never get cleaned, but still the bill arrives, unchanged and unexplained. Leaseholders have no real power to challenge what they are being charged for—and heaven forbid they refuse to pay their service charge, because then the communication they once begged for comes swiftly, in the form of threatening letters claiming the money. This would not be tolerated anywhere else.”
“I have a specific concern about leaseholders in housing association buildings. While recent legislation has improved leaseholders’ rights in privately owned blocks, housing association freeholders have often fallen outside the scope of reforms. Housing associations must be specifically addressed in future legislation. I turn to the unregulated headache that is managing agents. There absolutely needs to be a mechanism of oversight and enforcement, so I welcome the recommendation from an independent regulator, but that regulator needs not just teeth but claws. It needs to be able to fine managing agents, remove their licence, and prosecute repeat offenders who we know are gaming the system. I cannot tell the House how many cases I deal with in which a constituent is just trying to get a response from their property managing agent.”
“Whether we are looking at EWS1 forms, cladding, major works or service charge transparency, leasehold involves a number of different parties, each with their own interests, and the vast majority of cases end with all avenues being exhausted and the constituent having to seek legal advice, but not everyone has the time to go back and forth with their MP, raise internal complaints through every mechanism, and then complain to the ombudsman, and not everyone has the time and resources to seek legal support for their case. Thousands of leaseholders are encountering these issues, and they are completely locked out from accessing support. Past legislation to improve leaseholder rights seems to have added an extra layer of complexity, so any new legislation must simplify the system, not further complicate matters.”
“I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for securing this important debate. Leasehold has become the ultimate con. Given the sheer quantity of leaseholder issues and complaints about the behaviour of property managing agents that my team and I come across weekly, some would think that we would be experts in this area, but no two cases are the same, and each case is more complicated than the last. The system of leasehold is far too complicated.”
“They have been published now, so will the Secretary of State finally give us a timetable for delivering on that target? I remind him that black women are three times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth, and their babies are twice as likely to be stillborn. These are not statistics; they are mothers and children who are still dying. We promised a target at the last election. Without one, we cannot measure progress, and we cannot end that disparity.”
“I, too, put on the record my thanks to Baroness Amos and her team, and to the families who relived their pain so that this report could exist—they are the real heroes here. I welcome the report, as well as the announcement of the new maternity and neonatal commissioner. It is vital that the report recognised structural racism, but that will mean nothing unless it leads to national standards that tackle inequality and deliver high-quality care for every mother and their baby. I note that the report stops short of recommending a target to bring racial disparities in maternity care to an end. Perhaps that is because the commitment was ours to keep from our manifesto. In April, the Minister for Secondary Care told the House that the target to end racial disparities in maternity outcomes would be informed by this report’s recommendations.”
“If I write to a constituent, and they post my letter online, did I break the law? Did they break the law? Did we both break the law? There is something deeply wrong here. I can stand in this Chamber and say, or write in a letter, words that could get a constituent arrested, if they put them on a placard. If an MP cannot say with confidence what is lawful, what hope does a member of the public have? Madam Deputy Speaker, can you advise on how MPs can get clear guidance on what we can and cannot say about Palestine Action, especially since the Secretary of State cannot seem to give that advice, particularly in my case, as I would simply be citing a matter of record?”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Since the proscription of Palestine Action last year, I have received hundreds of emails from constituents concerned about the decision, arrests for actions as minor as holding up a sign, and the wider chilling effect on protest rights. I am on record as opposing the proscription. I was a Teller for the Noes, so my position is well documented. With the Court of Appeal upholding the ban this month, much more correspondence has followed. I am genuinely unsure whether I can even explain the view that I held at the time without breaking the law. An answer to a written question that I tabled gave little clarity, simply citing the Terrorism Act 2000, which makes it an offence to express support for a proscribed organisation.”
“I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this very important debate. Many big tech companies are a cause of concern, but a particular one is Palantir, which holds Government contracts worth more than £900 million, spanning 10 Departments. Does he agree that more concerning than its dominance is the fact that we do not know what data it holds and has access to? Numerous groups warn that patient data in the NHS federated data platform could be accessible by US authorities under the American CLOUD—Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data—Act, so does he agree that the Government must exercise the February 2027 break clause until those questions are property and publicly answered?”
“The true figure is likely higher, since several contracts remain unacknowledged or heavily redacted. Palantir’s largest single contract is the NHS federated data platform, which is worth £330 million over seven years. My inbox has been rammed with constituents calling for the Government to trigger Palantir’s February 2027 break clause. I support that call, and I hope the Minister will say whether the Government do, too.”
“I thank the right hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) for bringing forward this important debate. It comes at a pertinent time, as we discuss the impact of social media on our children, the way we use AI, and the influence of big tech companies, including on our lives. As I pointed out earlier, a growing number of voices—doctors, nurses, civil society organisations and Members across this House—are sounding the alarm about the unchecked expansion of one company: Palantir Technologies. The concern seems to centre around two issues. The first is the sheer scale of Palantir’s involvement in our public infrastructure. It holds at least 34 current and past Government contracts across at least 10 Departments, totalling a minimum of £900 million.”
“I am not suggesting that every Palantir contract should be cancelled tomorrow, but we are sleepwalking into a dependency on this company that we will come to deeply regret.”
“Palantir built its reputation as a surveillance and intelligence tool for the US military; it is not a healthcare company, but a data aggregation company with software designed to link datasets across systems. This is no longer a hypothetical risk: NHS England has confirmed that Palantir staff can access identifiable patient data on the federated data platform through a new admin role on the national data integration tenant. The British Medical Association, Medacs, the Good Law Project, Privacy International and Amnesty International have all warned that that data could become accessible to other departments, or to US authorities under the American Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act 2018, regardless of what any contract says. Some 50,000 patients have written to their NHS trust boards to urge them not to adopt the platform.”
“I say that with confidence, because Palantir’s founder, Peter Thiel, has accused us of having Stockholm syndrome over our affection for the NHS and said that we need to “rip the whole thing from the ground and start over”. His broader political views are just as concerning, and I encourage Members to look into them. The current CEO of Palantir UK is Oswald Mosley’s grandson. I do not wish to judge a man solely by his grandfather’s sins, but that gets harder when the views on display are not entirely dissimilar. Nor can we ignore Peter Mandelson’s role in arranging the Prime Minister’s undeclared 2025 visit to Palantir’s headquarters—a meeting where no minutes were taken and that raised transparency questions that are still unanswered. The second concern is data.”
“That is why I was so pleased the right hon. Member called the debate. I hope he agrees that once a contractor has failed for one Department, it should not be given a contract for another Department. I hope the Minister will speak to that. I hugely support my constituents’ call for the Government to use that February 2027 break clause with Palantir. I hope the Minister will tell us more about whether they intend to act on that. Some will say that Palantir’s expanding portfolio simply proves that it is the best company for the job. That may be true for some places—I doubt it—but it is not a reason to dismiss concerns. We should be worried about one company having this much dominance across so many pillars of our society, and particularly a foreign corporation that may not have the UK’s best interests at heart.”
“Once again, British citizens taking part in the Global Sumud Flotilla—a peaceful aid mission to break the illegal blockade of Gaza—have been severely mistreated by the Israeli Government. This is beyond dispute, with video evidence of a far-right Israeli Minister mocking activists while they are bound and on their knees, as the Foreign Secretary referred to earlier. The Italian Government have opened an investigation into the incident and the EU is expected to vote on sanctions next Monday; I am sure the Foreign Secretary agrees that British nationals deserve the same protections and robust response. Will she therefore confirm her earlier response that the offending Minister remains under sanctions, and will she set out what further actions will be taken specifically to stand up for those British citizens?”
“I know that we cannot sell people the world, and systematic changes need to be made to facilitate reforms, but we cannot solely offer that and then tell people that their lives have been changed, especially not after the very clear message that the electorate delivered to us last week. People may call me unrealistic, but I would say that I am ambitious for what we can achieve in government right now in this parliamentary Session. Labour Governments have always accompanied radical transformational change in our society. This is the change that the electorate want—they made that very clear—and it is the change that we promised them, but I do not believe that this legislative agenda goes far enough to achieve it for them. The public are demanding more, and I believe that we can do more to give them that.”
“Even at these difficult times, we remain one of the richest countries in the world, so why do we have such a huge cost of living crisis? Why are people skipping meals, rationing heating and working themselves into the ground doing multiple jobs just to stay afloat? This does not happen by accident. It happens because those in power decided it was acceptable. For the avoidance of doubt, we are the ones in power. The question is not really affordability; it is whether we have the courage and the will to take on such a transformative policy. At the moment, it feels like we are offering piecemeal change and minor tweaks. They may be necessary, but I do not believe they will excite anyone or make the tangible change that we need.”
“I have raised this subject again and again in this House—just about every single year—and I was guaranteed that there would be some changes. I do not like being misled, inadvertently or otherwise, on such issues. Whatever our differences on migration, people right across this House agree that these children are not migrants, yet we continue to treat them like that and to price them out of their rights. I acknowledge the fact that there are measures in this King’s Speech to tackle the cost of living crisis but, frankly, successive Governments have been skirting around this issue for years, making minor tweaks that slightly ease the pressure but do not go far enough. It is time to be bold and to consider the merits of a universal basic income. This is not a radical idea; it is a logical one. Poverty is a political choice.”
“It would have been relatively straightforward to end this practice, but the Government have no plans to close this loophole and implement such legislation. As I said, I understand that these things take time, but there are some simple things that we could just get done. It feels like the Government may be inclined to capitulate to the right and row back on some of their climate goals, but I remind them that we lost more votes to the left of us than we did to the right of us; if we carry on doing the bare minimum on climate issues, this could only get worse. I would also have welcomed steps to strengthen the citizenship rights of children who were born here or have grown up here, and to address the extortionate fees that block them from becoming citizens.”
“We can now all stop pretending that Brexit was in any way a good idea. Watching the disastrous impact that it has had, I feel vindicated, but I would also advise the Government that, with all the Henry III clauses in that legislation, we could do so much more and faster, and we could do it in a way that would quickly benefit our nation. I understand that some things take time, but other things are not hard. I would have liked to see steps to address the continued private sale of human remains. At the start of this year, I presented a simple Bill that ought to have ended the vile practice of human remains, many of which have unknown provenance, being bought and sold by private individuals.”
“I would have liked to see greater acknowledgement of the biggest existential crisis we face as a species, nationally, by reducing the planning burdens on solar farms and on offshore wind. If the Government really want to help people with their energy bills, we need to be switching to renewables much faster. Internationally, I would have liked to see steps to introduce debt cancellations for those climate-vulnerable nations who are fighting the crisis with their hands tied behind their backs. If we want to reduce the numbers of people seeking asylum, we need to work with allies to tackle the biggest causes of displacement. As the only Labour MP to vote against the Brexit implementation agreement, I was very pleased to see measures on the strengthening of our relationship with the EU.”
“We acknowledge that those living in social housing need their rents capped and regulated, yet we disregard the thousands of low-income households and young people left at the mercy of the private rental markets. I had also hoped to see a second employment rights Bill announced today. While the first one deserves significant praise, it does not go far enough. We need a Bill that will restore sectoral collective bargaining, give basic rights to the self-employed and gig economy workers, and commit to greater insourcing. The nationalisation of British Steel is welcome, but this should have been accompanied by the nationalisation of rail, mail, water, energy and other essential services. These are not mere industries; they are lifelines. They should never have been handed over to shareholders, and it is long past time we took them back.”
“I do not believe that my constituents will hear this and think, “My life will be better when Labour introduces digital ID, replaces the water regulator and instigates another top-down reform of the NHS.” At a time of great turmoil and difficulty, with global uncertainty hitting households in their pockets, people need policies that will ease the financial pressure they are under today. Building on the successes of the last legislative Session—and there were successes—I would have liked to see an extension of renters’ rights and the introduction of rent controls, especially in major cities where private rents are beyond extortionate.”
“It seems that we have put the handbrake on offering change, and that we are wasting political capital on divisive measures that were not even in our manifesto, such as ID cards and curtailing the rights of asylum seekers. I want to be clear that I am not in any way objecting to the King’s Speech. I am pleased to see measures like the Bills on conversion practices, on votes at 16, on tackling antisemitism and on reforming leaseholds, as well as the Hillsborough law and many other key measures, but why are we not doing more? What is there to shout about? Last week, the electorate sent our party a clear message that they were dissatisfied with the Government, and I do not believe that this is a King’s Speech to inspire them back to us.”
“In 2024, the public voted for change, for an end to Tory chaos and for a Government who would transform their lives. That summer, our Government set out a King’s Speech to deliver that. In the past two years, in spite of everything, we have begun to make truly transformational changes, including ending no-fault evictions and finally scrapping the two-child benefit cap. Those are things that have changed lives, but today’s offering pales in comparison, perhaps because we have heard so much of it before, but definitely because it lacks the urgency and the radical transformation that we need. I do not believe that this is the “further and faster” that we have been hearing so much about.”
“Establishing a maternity commissioner will make it someone’s job not just to monitor the problem but to actually fix it. We cannot continue to fail women in this way; it has to be somebody’s sole responsibility to fix this issue.”
“They could drive the implementation of the recommendations that have been sitting in reports for years; they could ensure that trusts are training staff to recognise and challenge racial bias in clinical settings. They would have a mandate to bring together disaggregated data collection, so that the disparities cannot be buried in averages. This is about accountability, and about setting clear direction and focus. What I have realised over the years when challenging these issues, particularly in black maternal health, is that without a dedicated focus, black maternal health remains everyone’s concern and nobody’s priority. I have often said that addressing the racial disparities in maternity care will improve the state of maternity care for all women and babies.”
“During last year’s Black Maternal Health Week debate, the responding Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), insisted that the Government were working towards setting an evidence-base target, but she was not forthcoming about when one would be announced. I hope the Minister will give some indication of that today. The call for a maternity commissioner is about accountability. A dedicated maternity commissioner would, for the first time, create a single accountable authority, with the mandate, resource and institutional weight to confront the systemic failures driving the black maternal health crisis. Right now, we are seeing a situation where the responsibility is completely diffuse—a commissioner would change that.”
“As we have heard many times in this debate, however, it cannot just be another report where we wring our hands and recommendations are produced that are simply ignored. In this country, in 2026, we cannot keep reeling off these statistics in debates such as this one. It makes no sense that a country like ours should be experiencing these issues and that so many women and their babies should be dying. Can the Minister specifically inform the Chamber whether a clear target to end the racial disparities in maternity care is expected to be included in the recommendations from the forthcoming report—something that appeared in our Labour party manifesto? Was the investigation tasked with offering advice on an attainable target, or will the Government develop a target based on the report’s findings and recommendations?”
“The survey also said that 23% of black women did not receive the pain relief they requested, and just one in five women had been informed of how to make a complaint, with only 8% going on to pursue a formal process. The report has many more harrowing findings and I encourage Members to read it. I recognise the fact that action is being taken to address the overall crisis in our maternity care, and I welcome the Government’s national maternity and neonatal investigation, led by Baroness Amos, which I was pleased to feed into with the APPG for black maternal health. It is a much-needed investigation that I hope will provide some understanding as to why our maternity services are failing so many mothers and babies, as well as give clear recommendations to improve the state of maternity care.”
“Although the disparities remain unacceptable, I recognise the work that is being done by NHS trusts to identify some of the shortcomings and address racial bias. As Members know, it is not just the death rate where racial disparities exist. Last year, Five X More conducted its second black maternity experiences report, a large-scale survey collecting the experiences of black women during their pregnancies and childbirth. Of the 1,000 respondents, 54% experienced challenges with healthcare professionals, 28% of women reported discrimination, mostly racial, and 49% stated that their experiences during labour and birth were not properly addressed. I cannot stress enough how deeply concerning it is that women are going through this intensely vulnerable experience and when they raise concerns they are being dismissed or ignored.”
“This week is Black Maternal Health Week, so I will speak about the continuing racial disparities in maternity care and why a commissioner would work to address them. Each Black Maternal Health Week, I usually start by addressing the statistics around black maternal health, which make for grim listening. When Five X More, the secretariat of the APPG, was first founded, black women were five times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than white women. Now, the most recent MBRRACE-UK report shows that black women are three times more likely to die at that time. Although awareness has made an impact, unfortunately that statistic is not necessarily because less black women are dying but because more of all women are experiencing that horrible situation. Black women are still twice as likely to experience stillbirth and baby death.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. I thank my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) for expertly introducing the debate, and the petitioners, Louise Thompson and Theo Clarke, who I was pleased to work with on the birth trauma inquiry, for their continued work on these issues. As many hon. Members will know, maternity care is an issue of great importance to me. It is also of great importance to my constituents, as demonstrated by the hundreds who signed the petition. I wholeheartedly support the call for a maternity commissioner; as I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for black maternal health, I am sure that that will surprise no one.”
“Here is the truth: we have made it cheaper to menstruate, but we have not made it safe to admit that someone is struggling because of it. Menstrual stigma continues to socially condition people to conceal their pain, push through it and stay silent at work. The cost of that silence is not abstract; for those living with endometriosis, dysmenorrhoea, adenomyosis or premenstrual dysphoric disorder, that silence means working through debilitating pain or losing earnings when they cannot, and in some cases losing jobs altogether. Those are real conditions. They are painful and often severe, and they exist within a system where female reproductive health has been chronically under-researched, underfunded and far too often dismissed.”
“We already see where progress has been made and where things have been championed in this House. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Ms Oppong-Asare) on the ten-minute rule Bill she introduced recently and her consistent campaigning for improved endometriosis care. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bathgate and Linlithgow (Kirsteen Sullivan) on her work as the chair of the APPG on endometriosis. All that work matters and it is making a difference. Scotland became the first country in the world to legislate for free menstrual products, and across the UK we rightly abolished VAT on sanitary products in 2021, finally ending the so-called tampon tax. Steps like those matter, but they are not the end of the journey—not by a long way.”