Zarah Sultana
MP for Coventry South · Your Party · United Kingdom
“In September, the Prime Minister stood at that Dispatch Box and told the House that he had full confidence in Peter Mandelson, a man whose relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein was public knowledge.”
“I rise in support of the motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) to disagree with Lords amendment 312.”
“US congressional staff were told on Sunday that Iran was not planning to strike American forces or bases unless Israel attacked Iran first. In other words, there was no intelligence indicating an imminent threat. Yet we have already seen pre-emptive strikes attacking a girls’ school, killing over 100 children.”
“That’s right: the leader of the Labour party and Prime Minister had full confidence in a man who was besties with a convicted nonce. What a disgrace! What we are witnessing is not accountability but the Westminster club protecting its own. This is not just about this Labour Government; large sections of the media also played their part.”
“This situation stinks. Peter Mandelson maintained a relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after he had been convicted. It was not before anyone knew about his grotesque crimes, not when it was being whispered about, but after his conviction, when the world knew exactly who and what Jeffrey Epstein was.”
“Suddenly it is about experience, pragmatism and “getting things done”. This is how power protects itself. What about the victims—the girls and young women abused by Epstein? They received an apology from Mandelson only after sustained pressure. It was not freely given, not offered because it was the right thing to do.”
The complete record
Every one of 600 lines we hold for Zarah Sultana, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 9 of 12.
“They do not have the same interests as my constituents. What is good for fossil fuel billionaires spells disaster for children in Coventry’s schools. If there are profits to be made, these companies will extract and exploit, burning fossil fuels and our planet along with them. Next month, Britain hosts COP26. We have a responsibility to show leadership on the world stage, demonstrating that we will rise to this historic challenge with the bold actions needed to avert climate catastrophe, taking on fossil fuel executives and transforming our economy for people and planet. Here is how the House must contribute to this historic task. First, Members of this House past and present are automatically members of a pension fund—a fund that invests in climate-destroying fossil fuel companies. Put simply, our pensions fund environmental destruction.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. I will come on to our pension fund and our responsibility to divest, especially as we are hosting COP, which brings urgency to that. Shell has spent $84 billion on fossil fuel exploration and development in the space of a few years, but it then asks its social media followers what consumers need to do to cut carbon. As a Harvard expert on the fossil fuel industry’s lobbying put it, these companies have gone from “blatant” denialism to “more subtle and insidious forms of delayism.” This is just the tip of the iceberg. The fossil fuel industry’s historical record is being uncovered, showing how it has spent decades propagating climate denialism and disinformation—protecting its profits while endangering our future. There is no doubt about it: these companies do not have our welfare at heart.”
“Does the Minister support the call that I made in my speech to divest from fossil fuels in our pensions fund? Will the Government support the more than 360 MPs who are supporting the Divest Parliament campaign? It is really important to make the statement ahead of COP26 that this House is committed to divesting, fully and immediately, from fossil fuels.”
“Sue is a single mum and a former nurse. She wrote to me saying, “The 20-pound a week Universal Credit uplift was a relief…but now it’s being taken away and I don’t know what to do… I can barely exist and I am terrified.” My inbox is filled by accounts such as that. The papers tell me that the Leader of the House has just been paid £600,000 from share dividends. I ask him for a debate, so that he and the other Conservative Members can explain how they sleep at night knowing that they are robbing people such as Sue and plunging 800,000 more into poverty.”
“This House has a special responsibility for the plight of the Kashmiri people. In 1947, as the colonial power, the British Government oversaw partition of the Indian subcontinent and rejected calls for Kashmiri independence. That decision laid the groundwork for the oppression we see in Kashmir today. But far from standing up to the Indian Government for their violations of human rights and international law, this Conservative Government would rather cosy up to Prime Minister Modi, and would rather refuse to speak out and, once again, demonstrate moral cowardice that shames this House. Britain has a special responsibility to the Kashmiri people, and it is long past time that we spoke up for their inalienable rights and pursued diplomatic channels to secure UN resolution 47, securing their right to self-determination.”
“These repressive actions have been mirrored in how the Indian Government have cracked down on the largest protests in world history, led by tens of thousands of farmers; in how they have unlawfully detained British Sikhs in India, such as Jagtar Singh Johal; and in how they attempted to have three British Sikhs from the west midlands extradited, only for Westminster magistrates court yesterday to rule that there was not evidence to justify it. I send my solidarity to the families of these men, who have faced months of agonising uncertainty and fear, and to the Sikh community in Coventry and across the UK. Human rights abuses in Kashmir are not simply some issue of foreign policy of which Britain can wash its hands of responsibility, nor are they a bilateral issue for India and Pakistan to resolve.”
“This has intensified human rights violations in the region, with widespread reports of torture, rape, extrajudicial execution and illegal detention. In what is now the largest military occupation in the world, the internet connection was cut off, and political leaders, activists and journalists were arrested. In 2020, following its reports of widespread state abuses, human rights organisation Amnesty International faced reprisals from the Modi Government and was forced to halt its operations in the region.”
“Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). Today’s debate on rights abuses in Kashmir is one close to my heart. It is very personal for me. In the 1960s, my grandfather came to the west midlands to work in the foundries, having left his home in Kashmir. I still have family in the region, and that is what makes what is happening in Kashmir all the more painful. It is now more than two years since the BJP Modi Government unilaterally revoked articles 370 and 35A of the constitution, robbing Indian-occupied Kashmir of autonomy, reflective of its status as an occupied territory, violating UN resolution 47 and initiating a brutal lockdown.”
“The decision to raise the energy price cap to its highest-ever level will push half a million people into fuel poverty next month. At the same time, an additional 800,000 people will be pushed into poverty by the £20 a week cut to universal credit. On top of that, the national insurance hike will hit low-paid workers the hardest. These are political choices, so rather than relentlessly attacking the working class, will the Minister avert a worsening winter poverty crisis by cancelling the cut to universal credit, raising taxes on the richest and bringing energy companies into public ownership and running them for the public good, not private profit, to slash bills and cut carbon?”
“If Government Members have even a single scrap of decency, they will vote against this cut and instead, at the very least, extend the uplift to all legacy benefits.”
“The Conservative party is from a different world from those who are being hit by this cruel cut. In one of my first speeches in Parliament, I called for an end to the inequality in opportunities that exists between working-class children and those born to wealth and sent to schools like Eton. For that simple demand, a Government Member accused me of “class warfare”. But if there is class warfare in Britain, this is it: led by an old Etonian, a Chancellor who is the richest member of the House, a Cabinet that is two thirds privately educated, and funded by the super-rich. The Conservative party is launching one of the biggest ever attacks on the living standards of the working class in this country, pushing millions more into desperation and misery.”
““How can they do this to people?” was the question. It is the single biggest overnight social security cut in the history of the welfare state, hitting more than 6 million families, including around 10,000 households in Coventry South. It is expected to push 700,000 more people, including 300,000 children, into poverty, with more than 500,000 pushed into extreme poverty. Let us look at who is pushing this through. In the words of Amy, another person who wrote to me: “I truly wish the Conservatives understood the impact of this cut. I don’t want to be on benefits”. But what makes it “really humiliating”, she said, is “that we have to prove we’re worth an extra 20 pounds a week to people who say they can’t survive on 150,000 pounds a year.” That is the truth.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. “I will not have enough money to buy food or heat my home…I don’t know how I will eat...I am afforded no dignity... I am thrown on the scrap heap”— those are the words of Joan, a woman in her 60s who wrote to me about the effects of the cut to universal credit. She said: “I am ashamed to be in this situation”. Another person who wrote to me was a single mum who told me about her beautiful daughter. They escaped domestic violence but now, even “with the uplift... life is crushingly hard”, she wrote. She continued: “But losing 20 pounds a week will send us spiralling down.” She said that she does not know “how the Conservatives can do this to people”. That is a tiny snapshot of the correspondence that I have received about the cut to universal credit and working tax credits.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I share many of the concerns about HS2 that she has raised. These concerns were made very clear to me when I joined constituents affected by the project earlier this year and saw the impact of HS2 on them and their local area. In addition to the environmental issues that my hon. Friend has raised, what keeps coming up time and again from constituents is noise pollution. Does she agree that it is long overdue for HS2 to put up noise-cancelling barriers to stop the disruption that is plaguing so many constituents?”
“The people spreading this hate target not just Muslims but black people, Jewish people, Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, migrants and refugees. There is safety in solidarity, and it is only through uniting our struggles that we will defeat racism.”
“My party has seemingly welcomed back a man who said that Muslims “see the world differently from the rest of us”, and that we are a “nation within a nation”. It has been silent after a Muslim colleague was cleared following vexatious claims and endured 18 months of horrendous Islamophobia. In a recent by-election, it supposedly had a senior source pit Muslims against Jews, demonising whole communities. I have always known what it is like to face racism, and through my political life I have come to understand this bigotry better—to see it in its different forms and to recognise the need to confront and challenge it wherever it is found. Islamophobia is very real in Britain today. It is something that I know too well, but it cannot be defeated in isolation.”
“I held back where I might otherwise have criticised Blair and Bush for illegal wars. Growing up, I might have hoped that things would be better, but if anything they have got worse. Today, our Prime Minister mocks Muslims as “letterboxes” and “bank robbers”. Far from scrapping Prevent, earlier this year his Government announced that a review of the programme would be led by William Shawcross, a man who once said: “Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future.” That appointment led dozens of human rights organisations, including the likes of Amnesty International and Liberty, to boycott the review, saying that it was just there to rubber-stamp the discriminatory programme. Closer to home, things are not good either.”
“Muslims, wherever we are, were portrayed as a security threat in need of discipline and suppression. Abroad, that was the background to disastrous wars in the middle east. False links were drawn between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, providing false legitimacy to a war that had more to do with oil than the safety of British citizens. At home, it meant the erosion of the civil liberties of all and the targeting of Muslims in particular, with policies such as the Prevent programme, which countless studies and human rights groups have demonstrated discriminates against Muslims, from young girls being referred to the programme simply for choosing to wear a hijab to a Muslim teen being questioned by anti-terrorism officers for wearing a “Free Palestine” badge. I knew about that at university, so I, too, feared speaking out in class.”
“When a far-right online account targeted me with racist abuse, suggesting that Muslims were an invading army, a Conservative MP replied, not by calling it out for its racism, but by insulting me instead. When our England football stars were subjected to vile racism, in the Chamber I highlighted that the Prime Minister had fanned those flames by ridiculing Muslims and black people. At the Dispatch Box, the Minister told me to watch my tone. Although none of that is nice, the worst effects of Islamophobia and racism are not just abusive language, but policies and political decisions. This Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of 9/11. That horrific act of mass murder cast a long shadow. The war on terror, launched by George Bush and Tony Blair in its wake, set a narrative that too many readily embraced.”
“It was summed up by these words, in a hand-written letter, “If you can’t stand the racism, perhaps you would be happier going back to your country of origin—foreigner.” It is worse when I speak up for migrants’ rights, speak in support of the Palestinian people, or criticise Tony Blair for the war in Afghanistan. One abusive letter said, and I quote, “Our cities are full of Muslims. Send them to Pakistan.” Another suggested that I must support the Taliban—all because I am Muslim and against endless war. This Islamophobia does not come from a vacuum. It is not natural or engrained; it is taught from the very top. These fires are fanned by people in positions of power and privilege.”
“One person wrote to me to say, and I quote, “Sultana, you and your Muslim mob are a real danger to humanity.” Another wrote and said that I was a “cancer” everywhere I go, and soon, they said, “Europe will vomit you out.” A third called me a “terrorist sympathiser” and “scum of the earth”—and that is sanitising their unparliamentary language. I have discovered that to be a Muslim woman, to be outspoken and to be left-wing is to be subject to this barrage of racism and hate. It is to be treated by some as if I were an enemy of the country that I was born in—as if I don’t belong.”
“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the chair, Mrs Murray. I would like to begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) and the hon. Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) on securing this important debate. Before I was elected, I was nervous about being a Muslim woman in the public eye. Growing up, I had seen the abuse that prominent British Muslims were subject to—I knew I would not be in for an easy ride. Today, I would like to say that I was wrong to be worried. When young Muslim girls ask me what it is like, I would like to say that there is nothing to worry about, that they would face the same challenges as their non-Muslim friends and colleagues. However, in truth, I cannot say that, because in my short time in Parliament, that is not my experience. Let me read out a few examples.”
“Our care system needs to be transformed into a national care service, modelled on our amazing NHS and free at the point of use for all, but that must be funded by a wealth tax on the super-rich, not by an income tax on the poor.”
“Yesterday, the Conservative party announced that it would break the triple lock on pensions, robbing retirees of nearly £350 a year at a time when pensioner poverty is already at a 15-year high. This Government are hammering working-class people, raising taxes on workers while cutting their safety net, and doing nothing to rein in the vast wealth of the super-rich. They pretend they are one nation, but today they show that they only represent one class—that of billionaire donors, super-rich property developers, big landlords and fossil fuel barons. Yes, the NHS and the social care system desperately need more funding.”
“This national insurance hike will hit low-paid and young workers the hardest, while doing absolutely nothing to tax the wealth of the super-rich. It will cost a band 5 nurse in Coventry more than £250, and the marginal tax rate of a recent graduate, once student loan repayments are included, will now be close to 50%. That is another attack on the living standards of the working class and the young, from a party that for 11 years has let the rents of my generation soar, as student debt rockets and wages stagnate. That does not come in isolation. Next month the Conservative party plans to cut universal credit by £20 a week—the biggest overnight social security cut in the history of the welfare state. That move will push 500,000 working-class people into poverty.”
“Over the course of the pandemic the UK has amassed a record number of billionaires—171. Their wealth has rocketed by more than £106 billion and in total now stands just shy of £600 billion, up nearly 25% since May 2020. It is safe to say that the super-rich class has not had financial worries over the past 18 months. Unlike millions of people across the country, they do not have to worry about putting food on the table, paying the rent, or the cost of caring for elderly relatives. One might think that instead of hitting the living standards of our heroic key workers, that super-rich class would be asked to pay more when the NHS and social care system is in desperate need of funding, but that is not how it is under a Conservative Government.”
“A few years later, the now Prime Minister wrote, “We are in Afghanistan to teach them the value of democracy.” Today, after 20 years of bloodshed, it is incumbent on us to learn that democracy cannot be bombed into existence and that American military might is no friend of freedom, and to ensure that this first war on terror is Britain’s last war of aggression.”
“On that issue, I want to raise again with the Government the case of my constituent Jamal and his father. Jamal was a translator for the British Army for six years and his father worked as a gardener in a British base. While Jamal made it safely to Coventry, a proud city of sanctuary, his father has been denied relocation and is still in Afghanistan in grave danger. I have written to the Secretary of State, but I have not received a reply, so today I urge the Government to act immediately and provide safe passage for Jamal’s father and all Afghans who face that threat from the Taliban. The war on Afghanistan was the first war on terror. I was just seven years old when British air strikes hit the country.”
“That dangerous fantasy, cooked up by neo-conservative fanatics in Washington and championed by their faithful followers in London, has brought untold death and destruction to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and many other places, in wars that have made us all unsafe. Today, we must rid ourselves of the delusion that the answer to failed intervention is yet more intervention and dispense with the belief that freedom abroad and safety at home can be won through wars and regime change. After all this bloodshed, we have a special duty to the people of Afghanistan. Today, as Afghans flee for their lives—with heartbreaking images of people desperately clinging on to planes, hoping that the sky is safer than the land—the Afghan asylum seekers who are already here must be provided with an unconditional amnesty.”
“Today, nearly 20 years since Tony Blair dutifully followed George W. Bush to war in Afghanistan, this House has an obligation to learn its lessons and to ensure that its mistakes are never repeated. I want to start by stating a hard but clear truth that some in this House do not want to hear: the 20-year war on Afghanistan was a mistake of catastrophic proportions, causing untold human tragedy, with 240,000 people killed—men, women and children—including tens of thousands of innocent Afghan civilians and 457 British personnel. This House must never again send British service personnel to die in futile wars. Rather than repeating the mistakes of the past, we must learn that lesson for the future. The west cannot build liberal democracies with bombs and bullets.”
“The Minister gave the usual Tory platitudes. Yes, she condemned the horrific racism our England stars have faced, but what did she think about the Prime Minister when he was describing black people as “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”, when he used newspaper columns to mock Muslim women as “letterboxes” and “bank robbers”, when he refused to condemn the booing of England players taking the knee, and when his Home Secretary derided that anti-racist message as “gesture politics”? Is it not the case, like England star Tyrone Mings has said, that the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister were stoking the fire of racism and giving the green light to racism, and only now, when the consequences are clear, are they feigning outrage?”
“It will put private companies on healthcare boards, giving them a say over our care and public funds. It will add steroids to the cronyism on steroids that we have seen in this pandemic, whereby Tory mates and donors have been handed billions of pounds in dodgy covid Government contracts. It will implement a healthcare model that incentivises cuts and closures, and rations funding to health boards. This dangerous Bill is another step towards privatisation. In its place, we need to reinstate the NHS as a truly public service with a proper pay rise for its workers of 15%, making up for a decade of falling pay.”
“He has been making £150,000 a year from a company that—I quote from its literature— “see the opportunities that lie ahead” for private healthcare. The Health Secretary’s ideological hero, Ayn Rand—whose work he says he rereads every year—was an extreme right-wing libertarian philosopher, who detested socialised healthcare. It is not just words; it is deeds too. The Government are breaking up the NHS, not all in one go, because they know that the public would not like that, but piece by piece. Privatisation by stealth—that is what they have been doing. Since coming into power in 2010, more than £96 billion has gone to non-public healthcare providers and nearly 20% of healthcare bids now go to private providers. This Bill will not reverse that. It will simply entrench it.”
“This NHS corporate takeover Bill is another step away from the original truly public healthcare system, free from the corrosive influence of profit. The Conservative party still opposes that idea. Conservatives should not just take my word for it; they should take the words of their own Members. The Prime Minister, when he was a Back Bencher, slammed the NHS as “monolithic” and “monopolistic”, and called for privatisation. Four senior Cabinet members, when they were Back Benchers, wrote a manifesto in which they argued that two thirds of hospitals should be run outside of the NHS, and run privately or not for profit. We also have a new Health Secretary, who in the last year, alongside his role as a Back Bencher, has been on the books of US megabank JP Morgan.”
“When a Labour Government proposed a national health service after the second world war, promising free universal healthcare for all, it was a radical idea opposed by the Conservative party, which complained—I quote from an amendment tabled at the time—that it “discourages voluntary…association…and undermines the freedom and independence of the medical profession”. The Conservatives did not like that the NHS was centralised, public and free for all. They condemned it as Marxist and voted against it 22 times. Fundamentally, they opposed the NHS for taking healthcare out of the market and for putting public good before private profit, but they saw its popularity and begrudgingly were forced to accept it. Those fundamentals have not changed.”
“The Bill is part of this Conservative Government’s growing authoritarian agenda, whether that is the police crackdown Bill and its criminalisation of protests, their voter ID plans and their attempt at voter suppression, their Nationality and Borders Bill and its scapegoating of migrants, or this Bill and its attack on academic freedom, which they claim to protect. Instead of the Government defending the freedom of the super-rich to dominate and exploit, it is time for a Government who advance the freedom of all.”
“Whether it is Government Members demanding that the Department for Education sack academics at the University of Warwick in my constituency, or Ministers chasing critics of Britain’s imperial past off the boards of museums and cultural institutions, or Lord Wharton, chair of the Office for Students and previously head of the Prime Minister’s Conservative leadership campaign, telling Oxford academics to “leave their personal politics at home”, this Government and their allies are happy to silence those who dissent from their agenda, while giving free rein to fascists and holocaust deniers to spout their hate. That is what this Bill represents.”
“At the whim of managers, they often feel unable to speak openly or to freely shape their research and their teaching for fear of risking their careers. Rather than pushing universities to offer permanent, well-paid contracts, the Conservatives are content to sit on the sidelines while launching their own attacks on academic freedom.”
“Research has shown that one third of Muslim students feel negatively affected by Prevent, and I know that many students, including some of my constituents, are afraid to take part in political debates or even to organise events on campus. If the Secretary of State for Education is really concerned by “the chilling effect…of unacceptable silencing and censoring”, then he should start by addressing the main sources of that chilling effect in the Home Office and his own Department. This Government could not care less about the way our marketised higher education system restricts academic freedom. Tens of thousands of academic staff are on precarious contracts, with some living on poverty wages.”
“As a student, I quickly learned that this treatment extended to the university campus and that basic democratic rights and freedoms were not afforded to everyone equally. For students and staff who are Muslim, for staff on precarious contracts and even for student activists, freedom of speech and academic freedom are routinely restricted and denied. Those freedoms are not threatened by over-sensitive students or by academics researching the British empire; they are threatened by this Government’s policies, such as the Prevent duty, which the human rights group Liberty has said is the single biggest threat to freedom of speech on campus. Under Prevent, students have been policed and treated as suspicious and extreme simply for taking part in mainstream debates on topics such as British foreign policy, Palestine and Kurdistan.”
“This is not freedom of speech; it is hate speech. But it does not come in a vacuum. It is promoted by those at the very top—right from the Prime Minister, who sanctions racism by describing Muslim women as “letterboxes” and black people as “piccaninnies” and by refusing to condemn so-called fans booing players taking the knee. I will say this, Mr Deputy Speaker: Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, Jadon Sancho, three lions who represent the best of modern England, have so much more worth than the vile racists trying to drag them down. As a young Muslim growing up during the war on terror, I was sharply aware of my community being scapegoated and subjected to surveillance. Before arriving at university, I knew that many British Muslims were treated as second-class citizens.”
“Freedom of speech does not include the freedom of hate speech. Given the content of the Bill, I would like to begin with a very brief comment on the hate speech being directed at our England stars. This England team represents the very best of a modern, multicultural nation. On and off the pitch, the players have shown their quality. Last night, they came within a whisker of winning the first men’s trophy in 55 years. They did us so proud. Off the pitch, from Marcus Rashford helping to feed thousands of working-class kids, to Raheem Sterling combating racism in sport, to Jordan Henderson standing up for trans rights, they showcase an inclusive, progressive England. After last night’s agonising defeat, we have also seen the worst of the country, with disgusting racism targeted at our players.”
“When Tony Blair shamefully led my party into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, dutifully following Washington, he was fully backed by the Tories, but dissenting voices in this place and millions on the street foresaw the disasters that the wars would unleash. Twenty years on, it is clear that the dissenting voices were right and the British establishment was wrong. The wars took the lives of 50,000 Afghan civilians, more than 1 million Iraqis and 636 British soldiers. They destabilised a whole region, undermined democracy at home and made us all unsafe, and now the Taliban are set to regain power in Afghanistan. Does the Prime Minister agree that those catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq show the need for a new foreign policy—one that is based on restraint and diplomacy, not military aggression?”
“This is a shameful dereliction of duty, Mr Hollobone: a pattern of what is happening in India and how the British Government are failing to stand up for human rights. In recent years in India, there have been a growing number of arrests of humans rights defenders, student leaders, trade unionists, journalists, and others critical of the ruling Government. In occupied Kashmir in 2019, the Indian Government unilaterally revoked articles 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution.”
“Rather than standing up for the rights of British nationals overseas, they have failed to follow Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office policy to lobby for arbitrarily detained UK nationals overseas, and ignored calls from myself and 139 colleagues earlier this year to do precisely that. The Government have even failed to secure an independent medical assessment of Jagtar to judge the severity and extent of torture, and to secure private consular visits with him for over three years. The Foreign Secretary has failed to meet with Jagtar’s family and despite calls from human rights organisations to raise the issue, the Prime Minister failed to challenge Indian Prime Minister Modi on Jagtar’s detention and treatment in a meeting in April.”
“Why has he faced these basic violations of his rights? Prior to his arrest, Jagtar was involved in raising awareness of human rights abuses against India’s Sikh population. Human rights organisation Reprieve fears that he has been targeted for exercising freedom of expression and his right to it. It has already cost him four years in prison without trial. He has endured torture and now there is a real risk that confessions extracted through torture could be used to sentence him to the death penalty. Jagtar now languishes in prison, where mass covid-19 outbreaks have triggered calls for states to protect vulnerable prisoners. In the face of these human rights abuses, what have the British Government done?”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. While in India for his wedding on 4 November 2017, British citizen Jagtar Singh Johal was shopping with his newly wedded wife when he was bound, hooded and bundled into a car by plain-clothed police officers. Leaving his wife with no explanation why he had been taken, Jagtar was taken into police custody and denied his right to see a lawyer, family members or a representative from the British high commission. Once imprisoned, Jagtar reported being tortured by police. He said crocodile clips were placed on him, with electricity fired through his body. Such was the severity of the torture that Jagtar had to be carried out of the interrogation room. To make the pain stop, Jagtar reports that he was forced to confess to the alleged conspiracies.”
“The Secretary of State has again been found sleeping at the wheel. One in 20 pupils were self-isolating last week, and today my office was told of another Coventry school being forced to close. Teachers are doing the best they can, but with mitigation rules relaxed and without additional resources, the delta variant will continue to rip through schools. Why were masks required in class in April but not now, given that case rates were lower then than they are now? Will he abandon his “feeble” catch-up plan—not my words, but those of his former adviser? Will he now put in the resources needed to mitigate covid and for educational catch-up—that is £15 billion—as his adviser recommended?”
“It has been revealed that a handful of Conservative party donors who gave the party £8.2 million have won Government covid contracts worth £881 million. It was also recently revealed that just three days after a Conservative billionaire donor was made a Lord—with the Prime Minister overruling his own appointments watchdog to push that decision through—the donor gave the party half a million pounds. What does the Minister say to my constituents who ask why the pandemic has meant growing poverty for them, while for Tory donors it has been an opportunity to line their pockets through dodgy deals?”
“Since the Conservative party came into power in 2010, per-pupil school funding has been cut by nearly 10%, more than 750 youth centres have been closed, more than 800 public libraries have been closed, more than 1,000 Sure Start children’s centres have been closed, the education maintenance allowance has been scrapped, university maintenance grants have been scrapped, tuition fees have trebled, a two-child welfare cap has been introduced and more than £34 billion has been cut from social security. It was not the phrase “white privilege” that did this; it was the Conservative party. Will the Leader of the House give Government time to discuss the real causes of working class kids—white, black and brown alike—being neglected, not the nonsense that his colleagues are spouting this week?”