Nadia Whittome
MP for Nottingham East · Labour · United Kingdom
“My hon. Friend is making an incredibly emotional speech. I know, from the Nottingham maternity review, the harm and hurt that is caused when people with knowledge and involvement in institutional failures are allowed to dodge accountability and scrutiny.”
“There is little evidence that the Bill will do what it claims and fix the most serious issues in our asylum system. In fact, experts say that it will divert focus and resources to a system that is unfair, unsafe and unworkable.”
“The Government could have brought forward a Bill containing evidence-based policies that would fix our broken asylum system—for example, a not-for-profit asylum accommodation system to improve living conditions and integration, genuinely safe routes that are not severely restricted and heavily capped, and fast tracking of obviously well-f…”
“That undermines the independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers, which are key cornerstones of our democracy. The Law Society says that it risks “more wrong decisions, more court challenges, higher costs and longer uncertainty.” Poor Home Office decision making drives the appeals backlog.”
“It is great to hear my right hon. Friend supporting schemes like Homes for Ukraine. The reason we do not see Ukrainians crossing the channel on small boats is because, rightly, we have a safe and legal route.”
“The continued expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied west bank and East Jerusalem is having a profound impact on Palestinian communities, where military violence and attacks by extremist idealogues are spiralling.”
The complete record
Every one of 551 lines we hold for Nadia Whittome, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 5 of 12.
“For 137 days, tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians have been killed. Entire families have been wiped out by intense bombing that has spared no one. Israeli forces have opened fire on unarmed civilians in hospitals, in queues for aid lorries and in fishing boats. They have killed children, such as six-year-old Hind Rajab—her desperate call to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, trapped in a car alongside the bodies of her dead family members, should haunt us all. The UN has expressed serious concern about the detention of women and girls, with credible reports of degrading treatment and sexual violence by Israeli soldiers.”
“For decades, the world has been far too indifferent to the plight of the Palestinians, who are subject to oppression and discrimination simply because they are Palestinian. Israel cannot continue to deny their right to self-determination. It must end its 67-year-long illegal occupation of the west bank and its brutal siege of Gaza. The UK Government must stop their selective empathy and help create a path to safety, security and freedom for both Palestinians and Israelis.”
“I am afraid that I need to make progress. If there is one moral principle that all of us in this House should share, it is that genocide should never be allowed to take place. The ICJ has said that, under article 1 of the genocide convention, states must “employ all means reasonably available” to prevent genocide, within the limits permitted by international law, so what are the means that our Government have? They surely include doing everything they can to bring about an immediate ceasefire, increasing humanitarian aid, and ending the arms sales and military training that are enabling Netanyahu’s hard-right Government to continue their atrocities, while continuing to call on Hamas to release all hostages.”
“On 13 June last year, Nottingham was shaken by the horrific stabbings that took the lives of three precious members of our community, Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates. The person responsible had numerous interactions with mental health services and police forces in the months and years preceding the attacks, and the families of his victims rightly want answers about missed opportunities to prevent his crimes. Will a Minister make a statement to the House on the various investigations that are taking place, and tell us whether the Government will convene an independent inquiry?”
“I thank my hon. Friend for all his work on this important report. It is a privilege to serve on the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee under his chairship. He does not need me to tell him that, like many local authorities, Nottingham City Council is in a perilous financial position. Our council’s spending power has been cut by a huge 28% compared with 2010, despite high levels of deprivation in our city. This is considerably higher than the average, still devastating, reduction of 19% among councils. How important does he believe it is to make the local government funding system fairer?”
“He called on all nations to “cease all licensing or funding of new oil and gas.” In addition, the International Institute for Sustainable Development has said that “no new oil and gas development is possible if the world is to stay within the Paris agreement temperature limit.” The director of the International Energy Agency said: “If Governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investment in oil, gas and coal”. Moreover, more than 700 scientists wrote to the Prime Minister last year, asking him to halt the licensing. Should we be taking advice from hundreds of leading climate experts or from lobbyists for fossil fuel industries? The Bill in front of us will not solve any of our problems. It will just contribute to wrecking the planet and undermine our climate creditability on the international stage.”
“Unfortunately, though, they have misrepresented the advice of that Committee to the point that its chair, Piers Forster, has been forced to speak out. In response to the Government’s false claims, he said: “UK oil and gas consumption needs to fall by over 80% to meet UK targets. This and the COP… decision…makes further licensing inconsistent with climate goals.” It is not only embarrassing, but deeply concerning that, on an issue as important as the future of our planet, the Government are either unable or unwilling to understand expert advice. It is not just the Climate Change Committee that has warned against new fossil fuels, so, too, has the UN Secretary-General. [Interruption.] Conservative Members would do well to listen to this.”
“If they cared about securing our future, they would be focusing on investing in publicly owned home-grown renewables, which have never been cheaper. They would be delivering a green new deal to protect our living standards and our planet for decades to come. Therefore, if not to lower our bills now, to ensure energy security in the future, and to enable a green transition, why are the Government pushing through this dangerous and unpopular Bill? Is it just to annoy environmentalists and turn climate policies into a wedge issue? Or could it have anything to do with the fact that the Conservatives have taken £3.5 million in a year from big polluters, climate deniers and fossil fuel interests? Madam Deputy Speaker, when justifying this act of climate vandalism, the Government like to reference the Climate Change Committee.”
“The Government claim that it is about lowering household bills, but even the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero has admitted that it will not do that. The energy generated from new oil and gas would not belong to the British people, powering our homes for cheap, it would be in the hands of private companies and sold on the global market for internationally set prices. It would be owned by those same energy companies that have already made record-breaking profits in the cost of living crisis, while 13 million households sat in the cold last winter, too scared to turn on the heating. Madam Deputy Speaker, those corporations do not need any more state handouts. If the Government really cared about energy bills, they would be funding a mass programme of insulating homes, which the Tories slashed support for in 2013.”
“Just last month, COP28 made history by acknowledging for the first time the need to transition away from fossil fuels. It should not have taken 28 COPs to accept what scientists have known for decades. Despite all the vested interests at play, the efforts of hundreds of lobbyists, and the huge sums poured into preventing climate action, the truth became impossible to ignore. The effects of climate chaos are now in plain sight: 10 of the hottest years on record, as mentioned previously in this debate, all happened in the past decade, and the speed of change is only increasing. To avert catastrophe, we must work now towards a fossil-free future. Why do our Government insist on keeping us in the past and trying to build our recovery on a resource that the world has formally committed to moving away from?”
“Military action in places such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, in which the UK has played a part, has frequently resulted in unintended consequences, triggering further cycles of conflict in and around these countries. Will the Prime Minister accept that the US and the UK bombing Yemen risks escalating tensions at a time when violence is spreading in the middle east, and will he commit to allowing Parliament to vote on any further action?”
“The Israeli Government’s assault on Gaza has endured for over two months, and there is no end in sight. The atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October were truly horrifying, and I know that I speak for every Member of this House when I say that such appalling acts cannot be justified, but they do not give the Israeli military licence to indiscriminately kill Palestinian civilians in retaliation. The IDF admits that civilians constitute two thirds of its victims, but the real proportion is likely to be much higher, given that around 70% of those killed are women and children. Gaza has become a graveyard of children and parents, infants and elderly people, doctors, journalists and poets—thousands upon thousands of innocent people who simply wanted to get on with their lives in peace.”
“We must push for a proper peace process, working towards a just, lasting solution that protects the safety, rights and self-determination of the people of both nations.”
“Last night, I was honoured to host in Parliament representatives of Standing Together, a movement of Israeli Jews and Palestinians united for peace, justice and human rights. One of its organisers, Uri Weltmann, wanted to send this message to our Prime Minister: standing with the Israeli people is not the same as standing with this violent, hard-right Israeli Government. Bombing hospitals and starving children will not bring peace to Israel and Palestine. We must immediately suspend the sales of arms to the IDF and end the UK’s complicity with the Israeli Government’s war crimes. I called for that in 2021, when Gaza was once again under attack, and it is even more urgent now. We must demand an immediate ceasefire, the unconditional release of hostages and for the siege to be lifted.”
“I completely agree with the point my hon. Friend makes. It is not only bombs causing death and despair in the strip: nine in 10 people in northern Gaza have gone a full day and night without eating; doctors are heroically battling to save lives with no anaesthetics, antiseptics or even clean water for their patients. The World Health Organisation has warned that untreated diseases caused by the siege and the resulting collapse of healthcare could claim even more lives than airstrikes. This humanitarian catastrophe is not a result of some natural disaster, but the intended consequence of the actions of the Israeli authorities—actions that our Government still cannot bring themselves to condemn. Not only that: while Israeli Ministers call openly for a second Nakba, our Government continue to license arms sales to the Israeli Government.”
“T5. A YMCA report last year found that £1.1 billion had been cut from youth services since 2010-11—a real-terms cut of 74%. While the Government’s national youth guarantee does provide a funding injection for youth services, it is nowhere near enough to reverse those cuts, and the funding is predominantly for capital investments. Will the Secretary of State commit to providing youth services with the sustainable revenue funding that they desperately need?”
“A moment ago the Secretary of State quoted the Climate Change Committee, which also said that expanding fossil fuel production is not in line with net zero. By the Secretary of State’s own admission on Monday, not a single Bill in the King’s Speech will help families struggling with energy bills. How can the Government justify turbocharging new oil and gas, when that does nothing for the cost of living crisis and blows a hole in our climate ambitions?”
“A Labour Government would also insulate 90 million homes, cutting bills and emissions at the same time. I am thrilled, too, that our party is serious about preparing young people for their future, with teaching about the climate and sustainability throughout the curriculum in schools and colleges across the country. This was not the King’s Speech that our country deserved. My constituents deserve action on the climate, the cost of living, and decent jobs. This Government have shown that they will not deliver on any of them. Perhaps in her winding-up speech, the Minister can tell us when the Prime Minister will be putting the country out of its misery and calling a general election.”
“We must not be fooled: it is working-class people who will suffer the greatest consequences if we fail to lower our emissions. The climate crisis and cost of living crisis are two sides of the same coin, and there are solutions that can tackle both at the same time. A just transition is possible if the super-rich and polluters are made to pay their fair share. We should see the sprint to net zero as an opportunity to redistribute wealth and power in our communities. Public ownership is an important way of doing that, and it is popular too. Recent polling shows that 65% of people support public ownership of energy, so I am pleased that a Labour Government are committed to setting up a new publicly owned energy company that will create jobs and help us to reach 100% clean energy by 2030.”
“Not only are the Government failing to tackle the biggest challenge of our future, but they are intent on escalating it. Already catastrophic flooding turns millions of lives upside down every year, including thousands in the UK, while droughts are affecting food production, causing prices to soar. The climate crisis will only make that worse. The science is clear: without decisive action, our future is under threat. But as we have seen throughout the course of today’s debate, this Conservative Government are in thrall to fossil fuel companies and are attempting to turn the race to net zero into a culture war. There is no other explanation for their decision to water down climate policies and turbocharge new oil and gas, announcing legislation for a new annual system for awarding drilling licenses.”
“I am sorry to put a downer on the debate, but frankly the King’s Speech shows that the party in Government is completely out of ideas. Some 1.5 million food parcels have been given out by the Trussell Trust in the last six months, thanks to this Government’s policies. I am regularly contacted by constituents living in cold, damp homes, thanks to this Government’s policies. NHS waiting lists are the longest on record, thanks to this Government’s policies. And in the midst of this crisis, what is the Government’s response? The Conservative party is more worried about preventing key workers from exercising their right to strike and cracking down on pedicabs in London than cleaning up the mess it has made of the country after 13 years in Government.”
“According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, more than 10,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces in the past month—that is one of every 200 residents of Gaza. That does not include everyone who may have died due to lack of clean water or the collapse of the healthcare system after fuel was cut off. How many more people must die before the Government join the UN Secretary-General, the World Health Organisation, UNICEF, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, Oxfam and the UN General Assembly in calling for an immediate ceasefire?”
“The targeted killing of civilians, whether Israeli or Palestinian, must be condemned, as must the kidnapping of hostages. The civilians of Gaza should not be made to pay the price for the atrocities of Hamas. Blocking children’s access to food goes beyond self-defence; it is a violation of international law. The World Health Organisation has described forcing patients to relocate from hospitals as tantamount to a death sentence for some. Will the Prime Minister do anything he can to convince the Israeli Government to cancel the relocation order, lift the siege and end indiscriminate bombing?”
“A recent report from Carbon Tracker found a huge disconnect between what scientists expect from climate change and what our financial system is prepared for, with flawed economic modelling leading pension funds and others to seriously underestimate the risks. Meanwhile, Energy UK warns that we are lagging behind on green energy investments. Surely the Minister agrees that to revive our economy and avert climate catastrophe we must rapidly phase out fossil fuels and invest in a green new deal to reach net zero.”
“The amendment is calling for the Government to undertake an assessment of the benefits of providing this funding to local authorities. I hope the House will invest in our future by supporting new clause 35.”
“If the Government had not cut energy efficiency support in 2013, just imagine how many more people might have spent last winter in a comfortable home and how many fewer families would have had to choose between heating and eating. Short-sighted Tory cuts have cost us a decade in a fight we cannot afford to lose. We need long-term consistent funding and a clear road map of how the decarbonisation of housing will be achieved. Local authorities are uniquely placed to understand the needs of their area and to target schemes where they can provide the most benefits. In Nottingham, against the odds, more than 4,000 homes have been retrofitted by the city council in the past decade. Just imagine what more could be achieved by councils across the country with long-term predictable funding for decarbonising homes.”
“It would also create new jobs in every part of the country, helping build the green economy we so desperately need. The Climate Change Committee has found that people accept the need to make changes to their homes, but they need well-designed policies to help them to act. The biggest barrier for many will be the up-front cost. The Government have funding to retrofit the homes of people on low incomes, and that is available through the social housing decarbonisation fund and the sustainable warmth fund, but the amount on offer just is not enough, particularly given the rising labour and material costs. In fact, last year, the number of Government-funded energy efficiency measures installed in UK homes dropped by half, year on year. It is now a shocking 97% below 2012 levels.”
“I rise to speak in support of new clause 35. My amendment is about funding for decarbonising homes and I hope Members across the House will agree that it is badly needed. Our homes are among the least energy-efficient in Europe and heating them accounts for 14% of all UK carbon emissions. If we do not retrofit around 29 million existing homes in the UK we will not be able to reach net zero by 2050. This is a mammoth task, so we must act now. However, decarbonising housing is not just about tackling the climate crisis: millions of people are living in freezing homes that are expensive to heat, left at the mercy of the volatile gas market. Poor-quality housing is costing people their health and even their lives. Retrofitting homes would reduce bills, make homes safer and improve people’s quality of life.”
“Is the Minister aware of the recent study by the London School of Economics, published last month, that found that the two-child benefit cap policy has not increased employment levels? We can only conclude from that that even on its own terms, the policy is failing while hundreds of thousands of families have been pushed into poverty.”
“In Nottingham, we have significant numbers of people, including Hongkongers and those from other parts of the world, who have fled from many countries perpetrating human rights abuses. They rightly do not want their councils or universities to be complicit in human rights abuses that their family and friends continue to experience. Does the hon. Member agree that public bodies must have the right to take a principled stance against, for example, the persecution of the people of Hong Kong, the Uyghurs in Xinjiang or political dissidents across China?”
“This Bill is anti-democratic and anti-human rights. It frustrates peace efforts in the middle east and it is an obstacle to social justice everywhere. As such, it has been condemned by a huge range of civil society organisations, including trade unions, charities and faith organisations. Does my hon. Friend agree with them and with me that for those reasons the Bill must not receive a Second Reading?”
“14. What steps her Department has taken to ensure that the free trade agreement with Israel complies with the UK’s obligations in section 5 of United Nations Security Council resolution 2334.”
“I welcome the Minister’s restatement of Government policy in his previous answer, but if the UK signs a trade deal without a territorial clause defining the border between Israel and Palestine, it will be seen in legal terms as equivalent to letting Israel decide by default to include its settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as part of Israel. Is the Minister aware that that risks a situation where, in effect, the UK recognises illegal settlements in the west bank as part of Israel, which is counter to the Government’s stated policy?”
“Recent research by a former chief competition economist to the European Commission—shared with me by Unite the union—estimates that average UK mobile phone bills could rise by up to £300 a year in the case of a merger between Three and Vodafone. Is the Secretary of State aware of that risk, and will her Department be taking any action to prevent such a merger, which would be disastrous for competition in the mobile network operator sector?”
“I thank the hon. Member for securing such an important debate. He is making extremely powerful comments, but what does he make of the comments of Mike Moser, the former chief executive officer of the British Fur Trade Association and former director of standards at the International Fur Federation? Mike Moser spent 10 years defending the fur trade, but he now dedicates his life to being an anti-fur campaigner, and he confessed that “neither welfare regulations nor any industry certification scheme, would ever change the reality of these animals being stuck in tiny wire cages for their entire lives.” Do not those comments add to the argument that there is no such thing as humane fur farming?”
“It is clear from the Minister’s words that she understands the importance of animal welfare and the impact that fur farming has, not just on animal welfare but on the environment and public health. Given that, can she tell us a date by which the Government will introduce an import ban on fur?”
“I send my deepest condolences to the families and friends of the victims of yesterday’s attacks and wish a full recovery to those injured. I also thank those in the emergency services who have been working tirelessly in responding to this tragic incident, including the first responders who battled to save lives at the scene. Nottingham is devastated by the deaths of three residents of our city: Grace Kumar, Barnaby Webber and Ian Coates. It was incredibly moving to join the vigil yesterday at St Peter’s church where hundreds of people came together in grief. Among them were many students who lost two much-loved members of their community. Will the Home Secretary join me in paying tribute to the people of Nottingham and to their unity and resilience at this painful time?”
“T6. More than one in 10 social care roles are vacant, and the biggest culprit in this recruitment and retention crisis is low pay. According to recent TUC analysis, a £15 an hour minimum wage for care workers would not only tackle staff shortages, but level up places such as the east midlands, introducing an £800 million economic boost. Will the Government introduce that?”
“T2. Over 1 million households are waiting for social homes, including more than 9,000 in Nottingham alone, but rather than expanding our council housing stock, there was a net loss nationally of 14,000 council homes last year. When will the Government take action on our housing crisis and enable council housing to be built en masse?”
“The holodomor was a great crime against humanity, and its impact has been felt in Ukraine and by the Ukrainian diaspora for generations.”
“It is estimated that the holomodor claimed the lives of at least 4 million people—around one in eight of the Ukrainian population. Entire villages perished as Soviet authorities knowingly set unmeetable grain quotas, raided homes for any hidden food to confiscate and banned internal travel to stop people leaving. The mass starvation was no accident. Contrary to propaganda, it was not just the result of drought or bureaucratic mismanagement—it was an act of mass murder, a calamity deliberately inflicted on a nation by an imperialist, totalitarian regime. It was engineered to crush Ukraine’s resistance, and it coincided with Stalin’s campaign of Russification of suppressing Ukrainian culture and identity, reversing the earlier Bolshevik policy of encouraging it.”
“I commend the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) for securing this important debate. I start with the recent testimonies of Petro Mohalat and Oleksandra Zaharova, two Ukrainians who survived the holodomor as children. They said: “There was a brigade with pitchforks who came to every house searching for bread. I was five at that time. We locked the door and all the windows but they used crowbars to come inside. I saw people who died. They made a pit and threw all the bodies there. My father went to Western Ukraine, taking everything good from our home to exchange for food, but he got nothing. ” Some 90 years on, the memories of those dark days live on, as does the campaign for the world to recognise the great famine for what it was: a genocide.”
“It would be impossible to have this debate without mentioning the current context in which Ukraine is fighting yet another attempt to violently subjugate it. Let us send a clear message that we see and understand Ukraine’s struggle against Russian imperialism, not just over the past 15 months or since 2014, but across centuries. While the oldest survivors of the holodomor are still alive, let us honour their decades-long battle for truth and justice. Let us join 28 countries around the world, and the European Parliament, in recognising the holodomor as a genocide.”
“While the archives have since been opened and the truth is now easier to access, Putin’s regime has continued with a policy of downplaying the seriousness of this atrocity and denying its genocidal nature. Agnieszka Holland’s film “Mr Jones” tells the real-life story of Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist who risked his life to inform the world about the holodomor, and who was murdered a few years later. In 2021, a screening of the film in Moscow, organised by a human rights non-governmental organisation, was interrupted by a group of masked men who stormed the venue. When the police arrived, they shut down the screening, locked the doors and spent hours interrogating the audience, rather than the mob who came to disrupt it. Last year, in Mariupol, Russian occupiers used a crane to dismantle a holodomor memorial.”
“I completely agree with the points made by my hon. Friend. I know he has been working closely with the Ukrainian centre in Reading. What further deepened that immense trauma was the state-enforced silence that followed. For more than half a century, those who survived the great famine and saw their loved ones die of hunger were not allowed to openly discuss the horrors they had been through. Under Stalin’s rule, even mentioning the famine carried the risk of being sent to a gulag or executed. Evidence of the scale and true causes of the tragedy were concealed and fabricated. Even the statisticians who conducted the national census, which showed a dramatic population decline, were killed, and the data was manipulated to hide the number of victims. That was a systemic suppression of historical memory—the collective gaslighting of a nation.”
“My hon. Friend is making some excellent points. Is he aware of comments made last month by the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas? He said that he remains “unconvinced” that we should be worried about the risk of a wage-price spiral, highlighting that wage inflation continues to lag far behind price inflation, while profit margins have “surged”. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should be exploring all avenues to boost wages, including a £15 an hour minimum wage, above inflation public sector pay rises and, of course, scrapping anti-union laws?”
“The Human Rights Act 1998 is an essential piece of legislation that protects us all from abuses of power, yet the Bill of Rights Bill proposes to scrap it, weakening human rights protections in UK law and making it harder for people to hold the Government and other public bodies to account. If the Minister will not answer my question about the Bill’s future, can he at least commit to keeping the Human Rights Act on the statute book?”
“I thank the Minister for giving way; I recognise that he speaks on this topic with a great deal of experience. I also particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) for securing this important debate. In the midlands, four in five schools are set to have to cut their education provision to cover costs this coming year. In 2020 in Nottingham, secondary school teachers left schools at a rate of 33%, which was one of the highest in England. Does the Minister accept that the situation is completely unsustainable and is damaging children’s education? Will he look again at funding for schools and teachers’ pay?”
“The Minister is being very generous with his time. On SEN funding, local authorities in England are facing a £2.4 billion black hole in special educational needs. I had the pleasure of visiting a SEN school recently, Rosehill School in my constituency, which had the same story to tell. What will the Minister do to improve that situation?”
“The Minister has repeatedly used the example of hundreds being able to protest as evidence that our right to protest has not been undermined. But when people can be pre-emptively arrested on the flimsiest of pretences and then thrown in a police cell for the best part of 24 hours, how can he reassure people who are attending a protest, or even walking near a protest, that the same thing will not happen to them? How can he claim that our right to protest is not being undermined by his Government?”