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.”
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“Beyond this being an incredibly disturbing trade, there is a clear moral and ethical case for banning it. There is no reliable way to establish how remains were acquired—whether they were looted or grave-robbed—their age or whether any consent was given by the individual themselves or by their relatives or descendants. During the colonial era, ancestral remains from communities across the world were stolen from battlefields, looted from graves, taken as trophies or curiosities, or used in the now discredited racist pseudoscience of phrenology, which sought to claim inherent inferiority based on skull shape. Many remains still in circulation are sold as so-called antique medical skeletons, having been imported in the tens of thousands during the 20th century until the export bans from India in 1985 and China in the 2000s.”
“Ultimately, the only hurdle sellers face is platform moderation; they face no legal barrier at all. In-person sellers face even fewer obstacles, with no oversight of the human remains sold in curiosity shops, flea markets or satanic markets. The UK is not wholly devoid of regulation, however. The Human Tissue Act 2004 makes it an offence to hold human remains that are less than 100 years old for certain scheduled purposes without a licence, but it does not expressly prohibit commercial sale beyond very narrow circumstances. It is silent on the sale of remains as curiosities or private objects outside regulated contexts. At present, we have stronger licensing rules for animal remains than for some human remains. That is what my Bill seeks to address.”
“In 2026, one can sell a piece of human remains or an object partially consisting of human remains with no checks on how those remains were acquired and no verification of how old they are, who they belonged to, whether consent was given or what the buyer intends to do with them. The biggest obstacle sellers face is not the law, but the user rules of social media platforms and e-commerce sites such as Instagram, Facebook, eBay, Gumtree and Etsy. Even then, sellers routinely circumvent those rules by misspelling words, mislabelling real names as replicas or advertising collections without explicitly stating an intent to sell before completing transactions through private messages or in person. The most serious repercussion sellers are likely to face is an account suspension, and we all know how easy it is to simply set up a new one.”
“One could purchase a wind chime made from a human skull cap with ribs and clavicles, a candlestick made from stacked human vertebrae, a human finger crucifix pendant, a skull fitted with brass nails for teeth and turned into a lamp, necklaces made of teeth or even wallets fashioned from human leather, and all of that is entirely legal. I should stress that this is by no means the full extent of the sales that take place. While the human remains taskforce does an excellent job of tracking what it can, there are undoubtedly hundreds more sales that go unnoticed. To my knowledge, the taskforce is the only body that actively attempts to police this trade.”
“These include human skulls and skeletal bones, partial or whole; shrunken skulls; elongated skulls; a Papuan Gulf trophy skull; a child’s shrunken head; and skulls that still have hair and soft tissue attached. They have encountered shops selling lucky dip bags of bones, from small boxes for £50 to larger boxes for £90. They have also come across the sale of wet sample human organs preserved in specimen jars, including foetal hearts and lungs and even slices of human brain. For Members wondering what on earth someone would want with these remains, there is a substantial market for decorative objects made from human remains.”
“I also want to thank the African Foundation for Development—AFFORD—which, with the all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan reparations, produced the “Laying Ancestors to Rest” report, which addresses the ethical, cultural and historical concerns surrounding African ancestral remains, many of which were taken during colonial rule and continue to be displayed and sold at auction today. I must apologise in advance to Members and warn anyone with a weak stomach, because some of what I am about to describe is truly stomach-churning. Members of the taskforce have documented and shared examples of sales that they have tracked over the years.”
“A growing trade in human remains is taking place through social media, on e-commerce sites, at in-person auctions, in curiosity shops and at oddities markets. Human bones, hair, teeth, skin and other organs are frequently sold by private traders to other private individuals, entirely without regulation. I want to put on record my thanks to the members of the trading and sale of human remains taskforce of the British Association for Biological Anthropology and Osteoarchaeology, who brought the scale of this abhorrent trade to my attention. They work tirelessly to confront, expose and ultimately bring an end to the private sale of human remains.”
“I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit giving or receiving a reward for the supply of, or for offering to supply, human remains or any object partially consisting of human remains; to prohibit advertising the sale, exchange, or offer of sale or exchange, of human remains or any object partially consisting of human remains; to make provision for specified exemptions from those prohibitions; and for connected purposes. In short, this Bill is about the buying and selling of human remains. To most people, the thought of buying a bag full of human bones, a shrunken skull or a piece of human leather would be unthinkable. In fact, most people would never have thought that this was something they could purchase, but it is.”
“My hon. and learned Friend is making a fantastic speech, and I thank him for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall. According to the Royal College of Nursing, 60% of internationally educated staff without ILR have said that it is very likely that extending this qualifying period will affect their decision to remain in the UK. That equates to 46,000 nursing staff at risk of leaving the UK. Does he agree that this policy would worsen the retention crisis? Also, does he agree that the Government ought to produce an NHS-specific impact assessment for this policy?”
“The Equality and Human Rights Commission’s draft code of practice has caused uncertainty and anxiety among the trans and non-binary community. It has also left many workplaces, businesses and single-sex spaces confused about how they should proceed. Although I am pleased that the Government have not rushed ahead with the EHRC’s proposals, we urgently need guidance on how to remain trans inclusive while also protecting single-sex spaces. Will the Minister provide an update on where her Department is with the guidance, and what assurances and guidance she can give on single-sex spaces that will fully consider and guarantee the human rights of all trans and gender non-conforming people in the UK?”
“I welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement about the deployment of 13,000 more neighbourhood officers. That will be incredibly welcome in my constituency, where we have a serious antisocial behaviour problem. However, residents in my borough of Lambeth overall have a historical issue with levels of trust in the police, largely due to racial profiling. Will the Home Secretary reassure me and my constituents that reforms to policing, including any measures that grant more powers to the police, will seek to address the issues of police mistrust and racial bias in policing?”
“A quick question on road traffic accidents, only because it would involve simple secondary legislation that inserts the word “cat” to give cats the same protection as dogs. Are there any plans for that?”
“I thank the hon. Member and alongside him I wish to put on record on behalf of my constituents what an absolute disgrace Thames Water is. In a desperate attempt to secure their investments, avoid special administration and keep the company within the private sector, Thames Water’s creditors are trying to strike a deal with Ofwat that would see them polluting our waterways for up to 15 years. That is a shameless attempt that proves that they cannot be trusted to put the best interests of their customers or the environment ahead of their own purses. Does the hon. Member agree that Ofwat ought to reject that deal and use the powers it has been granted through this Act and put Thames Water into special administration?”
“I love new year’s fireworks, and I recall how enjoyable my local council-run fireworks always were. However, as someone who has had fireworks thrown at them and gets similar reports from constituents, I know how terrifying they can be. It definitely seems that we need more regulation. Constituents complain that because fireworks are not considered serious, the police do not necessarily come when called, or they only come a few days later. Does my hon. Friend agree that part of the appeal of personal firework displays is that many local councils such as my own have had to cut their budget for firework displays and can no longer hold them, while other firework displays end up being ticketed so people across the area cannot necessarily participate?”
“Sickle cell anaemia is the UK’s fastest growing genetic condition, with nearly 300 babies born with it every year. Instead of specialist capacity increasing, we are seeing the sickle cell day unit at the Royal London hospital facing a questionable six-month trial closure. This will put significant pressure on neighbouring services, extend emergency travel time by up to two hours, and place patients at serious and potentially fatal risk during a crisis. Five years after the sickle cell and thalassaemia all-party parliamentary group’s report, “No One’s Listening”, will the Government do what the last Government failed to and make a statement on their plans to deliver a national strategy for specific and specialised sickle cell treatment?”
“While many small businesses in my constituency were grateful for the support they received, their main concern, which many repeated to me, was about the abrupt end to support measures. Almost overnight, small businesses found themselves having to repay loans, and cover staff wages and all those other expenses, even though the economy had not bounced back and their sales had not returned to pre-covid levels. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to ensure that in the event of a future crisis, as well as not excluding those who need support, anything given to people to help them through such a period does not end with a cliff edge but is tapered to allow them to adjust to the post-crisis system?”
“My understanding was that the Government’s immigration plans were geared towards tackling so-called illegal immigration, such as channel crossings—although I would argue that they are in fact irregular, not illegal, because it is not illegal to seek asylum. The measures we are discussing today are about retrospectively making regularised migration rules more stringent. As such, they will not have any impact on channel crossings, but will instead cause fear and uncertainty for many settled, tax-paying families. This is not just about Hongkongers; there are people from all over the world who are equally deserving of our compassion and integrity. Does my hon. Friend agree that to tackle channel crossings—”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be better to tackle channel crossings by introducing more humanitarian visas and, once we have, not pulling the rug out from underneath people?”
“Women and girls should be able to travel across our city without fear for their safety. We urgently need to get a grip on this issue. As I come to the end of my speech, I want to make sure to make the point that, as well as prevention, we need to ensure that when women speak out, they have somewhere safe to go. Too many specialist support services are still struggling to keep their doors open, and the services that do exist are often inaccessible to black women, migrant women and women with insecure immigration status. A refuge that a refugee woman cannot access is no refuge at all.”
“Fewer reports lead to fewer prosecutions, fewer prosecutions remove any meaningful deterrent, offending escalates, men become emboldened, and women feel increasingly unsafe on the city’s transport networks. I recognise that the Mayor of London and TfL have expanded poster campaigns to encourage reporting and bystander intervention. It is important that these things are done to improve our culture, but we need more. We need far stronger co-ordination between TfL and the British Transport Police to identify and catch offenders. We need concrete, measurable action to improve conviction rates. We need every institution involved—TfL, the British Transport Police, the Met, City Hall—working together with absolute clarity and purpose to tackle harassment, protect victims and hold perpetrators to account.”
“Transport-related incidents are no exception. Too many women who do come forward are not believed, are treated as though they are the problem rather than the victim, or witness at first hand the shortcomings of investigations. They are told that the perpetrator could not be identified because the carriage was too busy, that the CCTV was not working, or that nothing can be done on this occasion but they should report it if it happens again. Those responses erode confidence that the police are willing or equipped to deal with such cases, and they add to the wider crisis of trust in policing that women and girls feel acutely. Perpetrators are effectively given the green light. They know their victim may not report, and that even if she does, the chances of being caught, let alone prosecuted, are slim. This creates a vicious cycle.”
“Last year, more than 120,000 crimes of violence against women and girls were reported to the Met, with alarming levels on public transport. In the first half of 2025, 907 sexual offences were reported across Transport for London services, up from 879 in the same period the previous year. On the Elizabeth line, there was a 247.8% increase from 2023 to 2024, followed by a further rise this year. On the underground, offences rose to 856 cases from 745 the previous year, and on the bus network, reports rose by 28.6%. Again, we know these figures represent only a fraction of the true scale of offending. Surveys have found that more than half of women in London have experienced sexual harassment on buses, the tube or trains. A significant proportion of women who have experienced this harassment and assault never report it.”
“We must confront the gaps in our criminal justice system that in practice decriminalise these offences, signalling time and again that they can be committed with little fear of consequence. I am a London MP and violence against women and girls is definitely a city-wide problem. We have heard and will continue to hear statistics that show its scale. For most women, this violence can occur anywhere—at home, at school, at work, on a night out, walking in a public space and even when travelling on public transport. Most women and girls in London will have a story about harassment on the capital’s public transport network. The data suggests it is harder to find a woman who has not experienced such harassment, although we know it is rarely reported. Of the incidents that are reported, the figures paint a very stark picture.”
“There is no action that a woman can take that will ever justify her harassment, assault, rape, abuse, femicide, mutilation or any other of the horrific crimes committed by men against women and girls. Violence against women and girls is not inevitable; it is the predictable outcome of a society that still treats women’s safety as optional rather than fundamental. If we are serious about ending violence against women and girls, we have to start with prevention, and that means embedding consent and healthy relationships in education in every single school. Our focus has to be addressing the culture that raises some men and boys to believe that such behaviour is acceptable.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) for securing this crucial debate and for the incredible work that she has always done to shine a light on this issue. I want to be absolutely clear that we are discussing specifically male violence against women and girls. The word “male” is often omitted, giving us the neat acronym VAWG, but when we leave it out in discussion, we remove the perpetrators from the conversation and the focus shifts solely to victims. While the protection of survivors must always be a priority, we cannot treat this as a women-only issue. This is not a female issue at all—we are not the problem. It is and always has been a male issue.”
“I want our country—my country—to be looked on with respect and admiration, not because it never got anything wrong, but because we had the courage to put what we got wrong right.”
“The call for reparations has survived centuries because it speaks to something beyond politics. It speaks to the human need for recognition, justice and dignity, and to the possibility of renewal—not just for the nations that were wronged, but for Britain itself, because black Britons are part of that story. I could be the richest person in this country and rise to the highest office in this land, but I understand that I will never escape racism; by its very nature, until there is justice for every single person who looks like me, nothing will change in that regard. Now the world is changing and our place in it is precarious if we do not change our attitude, which still feels rooted in empire.”
“The call for reparations is grounded in international law, in human rights and in the moral truth that those who profit from crimes against humanity have a duty to repair them. This is not about guilt or unpicking the past, as I have been accused of doing previously—it is about responsibility. It is about not division, but healing. However, healing cannot begin when the truth has not been told. That is why the teaching of black history as British history is in itself reparatory. If we are serious about tackling racism, we have to be serious about this repair. Racism is about not just words or attitudes, but material conditions—who owns wealth, who holds power, and who has access to housing, healthcare, safety and dignity. Racism persists because the harm has never been repaired.”
“They were built, and because they were built, they can and must be dismantled, but that will happen only if we have the political courage to do so. To do it, we have to move away from this lazy, reductionist style of politics, which often talks about what we cannot do instead of talking about what we can do. Every major institution in this country—banks, universities, the monarchy, museums—carries traces of wealth extracted through colonialism and enslavement. The evidence is in the bank ledgers and shipping records and in the foundations of buildings across this city. That history does not belong in footnotes; it belongs in how we shape our policies today. No individual group needs permission to demand justice.”
“When people ask, “Why reparations?”, I ask in return, “Why did we ever think that freedom without repair was enough, or that it was freedom at all?” In this Parliament, I am proud to be part of the legacy of the late, great Bernie Grant, who stood in this very Chamber and called for reparations when few dared to. Without truth, there can be no justice. Without justice, there can be no healing. That is why the all-party parliamentary group believes we need a commission for truth and reparatory justice. The commission would not simply investigate the past; it would examine how legacies of that past are alive in the present in the racial wealth gap, health inequalities, educational disparities and the policing of black communities. None of these patterns is accidental.”
“I am sorry, but I cannot see how, just because an arsonist feels guilty, we would absolve them for starting the fire in the first place. The injustice I speak of did not end with that emancipation. It continued through colonial rule, through the Berlin conference that carved up Africa without a single African present, through artificial borders and economic dependency, and through the extraction of resources that continues to this day. It means that at the UN in 2025, African nations still have to get up and ask to be included in the UN Security Council, despite the fact that African and Caribbean nations make up the majority of the countries in the world.”
“They were paid the modern equivalent of billions of pounds for the loss of human property. British taxpayers, including black Britons, finished paying off that debt in 2015. That is not distant history; it is the present. It is certainly the present in my taxpaying history. Meanwhile, the descendants of those who endured generations of forced labour received nothing—to this day, not even an apology. Their names were often erased from the story of their own liberation. Freedom has been paraded as a gift. When I talk about reparations, I, the descendant of enslaved and colonised people, am often told that I should be grateful that Britain abolished the slave trade. I am proud of the role that this country, my country, played in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, but that alone cannot be absolution.”
“If people think the call for reparations is a call for cash, they have not been listening. How can it be? What amount of money could ever really compensate for what happened, which was one of the greatest crimes in human history: enslavement, trafficking, genocide, ecocide, widespread theft and everything in between. Reparations are about truth, restitution and transforming relationships between nations, between communities and between the past and the present. Reparations are about acknowledging that Britain became one of the richest nations on Earth not just through industry and ingenuity, but through the extraction of human life and labour from Africa, the Caribbean, Asia and beyond. When enslavement was abolished, it was not the formerly enslaved who received compensation; it was the enslavers.”
“And yet in Britain we still refuse to apologise for our role in enslavement and colonialism. We refuse to return stolen artefacts. We even refuse to return human remains, denying dignity even in death. We refuse to engage meaningfully with reparatory justice. Even last year, when the Commonwealth nations called for a mere discussion on reparatory justice, we said no. What does that sound like, given the history of the Commonwealth? Our country has not apologised, it has not repaired and it has not made amends. But the tide is turning and young people are asking the right questions. Institutions are beginning to confront their own archives. The debate can no longer be buried or delayed. We have to be clear that reparations are not only about money. How could they possibly be?”
“If racism is built into the economic foundations of this country—in land, in labour and in capital—then the remedy must also be material. We cannot tackle a problem without getting to its roots. It was not enough for us to express deep regret and other platitudes. It was not enough for us to change a few names and statues and call it progress. We must repair the harm structurally, economically, culturally and politically. That is the very heart of the global movement for reparations. This year, the all-party parliamentary group for Afrikan reparations, which I chair, hosted the third annual UK reparations conference. We saw hundreds of activists, scholars, lawyers and community leaders come together from across the world and the message was clear: the demand for repair is no longer a fringe issue; it is a moral and political necessity.”
“When far-right politics rises across Europe, when migrants are scapegoated and when global inequalities widen, Claudia Jones’s words feel prophetic. She understood that racism at its root is not about personal prejudice or isolated ignorance. Too often, we try to reduce it to the “few bad apples” argument. Racism is structural. It is the operating system of an economic and political order built through empire that exists today. It is the logic that justified, and still justifies, stolen land, stolen labour and stolen wealth. It is the logic that said that some people are disposable so that others might prosper. Racism did not appear by accident. It has no factual basis. Racism was engineered. That is why I say that we cannot dismantle racism without repair.”
“I believe that in order to stand firm in pride and power, as the theme of this Black History Month asks, we must address these issues, because where is the pride in not recognising you are wrong, and where is the power in not tackling global injustices that have failed to be repaired? Last night, I had the honour of delivering the National Union of Journalists’ Claudia Jones memorial lecture. Claudia Jones, the journalist, activist and mother of the Notting Hill carnival, taught us something very powerful. She taught us that the struggle against racism can never be separated from the struggle against imperialism. She wrote: “Imperialism is the root cause of racism. It is the ideology which upholds colonial rule and exploitation.” That is not just a historical observation; it is a diagnosis of the present.”
“That cherry-picking of what to teach points to something more worrying, because we also miss out on learning about other working-class struggles, such as the miners’ strikes and the suffragettes —those stories that educate us on the power we hold as citizens and the things people have done to challenge injustice. We cannot say that this nation is facing its history when it still refuses to teach it fully. We have talked a lot about patriotism recently. Let me be clear: I do not believe that patriotism is about pretending that our history was glorious and benign; patriotism is about being honest enough to confront the truth, because only a nation unafraid of the truth can hope to build a just future.”
“Black British history is still squeezed into one month and often taught only by those teachers who go above and beyond, using their own time and resources. Many young people grow up learning in history a lot about our monarchy, but not about our empire. The history of our monarchy is important—it speaks of how our country came to be. Some might be surprised to hear that I am a fan of the odd period drama. Those stories are very interesting, but it has to be wrong that some never hear about Queen Nanny of the Maroons, Mary Prince, Olaudah Equiano, the Bristol bus boycotts, or even the role of the British state in the enslavement of millions. That speaks to the fact that our country does not want to engage with these issues. Young people are taught about industrial innovation, but not about who paid the human cost for that progress.”
“In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, more than 240,000 people signed a petition calling on the Government to include Britain’s role in colonialism and enslavement in the national curriculum. It became one of the most signed petitions ever submitted to Parliament and that moment felt like a turning point. I sat in the debate that followed. I remember the sense of hope that at last we would be honest about our past, honest about the empire that built Britain’s wealth and honest about the lives it destroyed, because hundreds of thousands of British people wanted it. Yet five years on, and 39 years after Black History Month was founded in the UK, very little has changed. Britain’s colonial past is still treated as an optional topic, not a foundational one.”
“Many of my colleagues will rightly use this opportunity to honour the giants of black British history—the leaders, thinkers and ordinary people who achieved extraordinary things, often in the face of unimaginable obstacles. I pay tribute to them all, but today I want to use my time differently. I want to speak frankly about why, decades after the civil rights movement and years after Black Lives Matter brought millions to the streets, we still have not tackled racism in this country and beyond. I want to say plainly that we have not tackled racism because we have not fully committed to repairing the inequality we had a part in creating. We have not committed to reparatory justice.”
“I am always very pleased to speak in this House during Black History Month. I say that not out of ceremony, but out of conviction. I believe that it matters for black Britons watching today to see this Parliament take time to reflect on our history, our struggle and our contributions. It matters that our story is not confined to footnotes or commemorative months, but recognised as part of the very fabric of British history. Each October, I believe this debate should be on the Order Paper as a matter of course, yet too often it has been absent or dependent on the will of a few determined Members. Let me thank all those involved in ensuring that this debate takes place during Government time.”
“It is hardly a luxury lifestyle. The notion that those seeking asylum and refugees make up a significant proportion of people coming to the UK is false. In fact, the opposite is true. Too often those on other visas are conflated with those seeking asylum just to help create a negative narrative. When we have these discussions, it would be helpful for others to highlight that we are talking about a very small proportion of people in the UK’s overall immigration figures and that the crisis is very much fabricated. We should meet our legal and moral duty instead of fuelling a false narrative.”
“I want to address the deeply misleading notion, which I was pleased to hear colleagues address, that asylum seekers are staying in luxury accommodation in so-called five-star hotels and being given a top-tier service. That could not be further from the truth. I have visited various types of asylum seeker accommodation in London and across the country, and there is nothing luxurious about it. It is one family per cramped single room, typically of a standard below what anyone would deem acceptable, many with infestations of bedbugs, cockroaches and other vermin. Some would have us believe that asylum seekers are being given hundreds of pounds a week to pay for a luxury lifestyle, but a vulnerable family seeking asylum is given a measly £5.84 a day—just over £40 a week—to live on. That is not a large amount for a family.”
“Implementing those simple solutions would be much easier than what we are currently doing, but I fear that those solutions are not chosen because it better fits the narrative that has become so popular in our discourse to say that we will ban people from claiming asylum if they came here through so-called illegal means—despite the fact that there are no safe and legal routes for them to come here—and house people in conditions far worse than those they are already in, all while private companies profit. I think that is the wrong narrative. We need to make a positive case and be clear that it is the system that is the issue, not the people.”
“If we really wanted to reduce the cost of housing and financial support for people seeking asylum, we could simply give them the right to work and adequately staff the Home Office to handle their claims. We could give local authorities all the millions that we are currently sending to private companies to build and buy social housing. I was pleased to hear my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan) mention that in his opening speech.”
“Many of them have overcome traumas and travelled to the UK because they want to make a better life for themselves and their families, but our laws prevent them from doing so. According to Refugee Action, at the end of 2024, 124,802 people were waiting for an initial asylum decision, with 73,866 having waited over six months. That is unnecessary. Although the process has sped up slightly under the new Government, we have to recognise that there are some countries to which we are never going to send people back, so why would we not make the claim process faster? It does not make sense to make those people wait; while they wait, they are unable to work, so the economy is missing out on hundreds of millions every year in tax and national insurance contributions.”
“The overwhelming majority of those seeking asylum in the UK have a legitimate claim in law to be here. For clarification, that means they are not illegal. The UK has a duty under international law to accept and process asylum claims. As someone has already said, we receive far fewer than other European countries. As a signatory of the 1951 UN refugee convention, we must comply with that obligation. I am sure there are people who want to withdraw us from that convention; I hope the day when they have the power to do so never comes. We also have an obligation under our own legislation—the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999—to house those seeking asylum while they await the outcome of their application. During that time, asylum seekers are not allowed to work. Many of them would want to.”
“I want to start by saying clearly and plainly that people who are fleeing war, famine, persecution and life-threatening situations are fully deserving of our compassion and support. I fear sometimes in these debates it sounds as if we have lost our humanity, empathy and compassion. Despite what is commonly stated on social media by far-right figures and parroted by the media and some political figures, many of the people we are discussing are fleeing awful situations that many of us can only begin to imagine. In this debate, many of their stories are lost or overshadowed by claims that they are trying to cheat the system. That is simply not true. We know that because almost half the applications for asylum submitted in 2024 were accepted at the initial decision and, of the other half, over 50% were granted on appeal.”
“As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on black maternal health, I extend my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton) and all the members on the Health and Social Care Committee for this vital report. Was my hon. Friend disappointed, as I was, not to see any specific mention in the NHS 10-year plan of black maternal health? We have long awaited a target and a plan for ending this disparity. Does she agree that that is something we should look towards?”