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 7 of 12.
“The hon. Member will correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds as though he is suggesting that being trans, which is to do with somebody’s identity, is as harmful as anorexia—the most deadly psychiatric condition.”
“It is also deeply worrying that, even for sexual orientation, the ban covers only under-18s. That means that adults can consent to non-physical forms of conversion practices. People cannot consent to their own abuse—and that is what conversion therapy is. It should be banned without caveats. I urge the Minister to listen to LGBTQ organisations, mental health experts, MPs here and our constituents, and ban conversion practices for everyone, in all circumstances.”
“Mind has described that differentiation as “deeply disappointing”. I am extremely concerned that trans people’s exclusion is yet another cynical attempt by this Government to create a culture war between these different groups—that they are scapegoating trans people, who already face a tirade of violence and discrimination, with the aim of stirring up so-called anti-woke sentiment. We have seen it all before. The Government do the same to migrants, refugees and people of colour. We saw Thatcher’s Government whip up the same moral panic against gay people in the 1980s. I believe that, just as society looks back with disgust at how gay people were treated in decades gone by, we will hang our heads in shame at trans people’s treatment in decades to come.”
“The Government’s 2018 national LGBT survey found that 5% of LGBTQ people had been offered, or threatened with, conversion therapy, and one in 50 had been put through it. Trans people are twice as likely to have been offered conversion practices than those who are cisgender and gay or bi. The Government have now been promising for four years that conversion practices for LGBTQ people will be banned. Now that a ban has finally made its way to the Queen’s Speech, in which conversion therapy was described as “abhorrent”, the proposals it puts forward are discriminatory and unacceptable. If the Government truly believe that conversion therapy is abhorrent, why do they intend to ban practices aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation but not those aimed at changing their gender identity?”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell, and to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who made a powerful speech. I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for securing the debate, and also the creators of the petition, along with the 145,000 people who signed it, for ensuring that it was debated here today. LGBTQ people do not need to be fixed or cured. There is nothing wrong with who we are; what is wrong is how society treats us. Mind, the mental health charity, has said that “all forms of conversion practices can result in poor mental health”. People have reported suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and feelings of guilt, shame and self-hatred. The United Nations has said that conversion practices can amount to torture.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that given that wages have been falling for the last 14 years and inflation is now at 9%, or 11% for the poorest families, there is an alternative to people’s wages being squeezed—that the Government could squeeze profits instead? Shell and BP raked in more than £12 billion in the first three months of this year alone, and it is shameful that every Conservative Member voted against a windfall tax yesterday when they had the chance to support it.”
“On that point, does the right hon. Member agree that climate education in schools—from primary through to secondary and vocational courses—is essential if we are to meet our legally binding targets of net zero by 2050?”
“What kind of message does that send to young trans people fighting to survive? We need a Government who are on the right side of history, but instead we have a Government of pound-shop authoritarians made on the playing fields of Eton and in the Daily Mail ’s wildest dreams. They know there is a problem, but what they cannot do is recognise the truth—that the problem is them.”
“We need a publicly owned energy system that delivers cheap, green energy; an above-inflation rise in the minimum wage; at least the restoration of the £20 universal credit, but really a reversal of all the benefit cuts since 2010; and rent controls. Finally, I would like to address the disgrace of explicitly excluding trans people from the so-called ban on conversion therapy. Once again, the Government acknowledge that there is a problem, but will they extend the protection of the law to those who need it most—young trans people, half of whom have attempted suicide by the time they reach the age of 26? No. So transphobic parents will still be able to hire someone to psychologically abuse their child in an attempt to stop them being trans, and this practice will still be perfectly legal.”
“But the Conservatives have been in power for 12 years and they have cut the public sector to shreds. Wages will be lower in 2025 than they were in 2008, when I was 12 years old. Since they came to power, the number of people on zero-hours contracts has risen more than fivefold. All of this happened on their watch—and are they going to reverse it? No. In 2010, the Trussell Trust handed out 48,000 food parcels. Last year, it handed out 2.1 million. Meanwhile, Britain gained a record number of billionaires, between them owning £597 billion—about triple the annual operating budget of the NHS. That is the dynamism of the market for you—the kind of dynamism that makes an elderly lady sit on the bus all day to keep warm because she cannot afford to heat her home.”
“This is a Queen’s Speech that provides mediocre answers to the wrong questions. The Government acknowledge that there is a cost of living crisis, but they do not want to do anything about it. They acknowledge that there is a housing crisis, but they are not willing to control rent so that people can afford to live in their homes. They acknowledge that energy is expensive. But do they want to talk about meaningful price caps? Do they want to talk about retrofitting or insulation? Did they vote in favour of a windfall tax to lower bills when they had the opportunity yesterday? No, no and no. This is a Government who tell us they want action on the climate crisis, and then, when a protest movement comes along to demand just that, introduce legislation to have them sent to jail. They want to invest, they tell us, in the future.”
“The killing of Shireen Abu Aqla by the Israeli military and the subsequent attack on her funeral in Jerusalem demonstrate the reality of the occupation of the west bank. Amnesty International has said that it constitutes apartheid, which is a crime against humanity as defined in the Rome statute and the apartheid convention. Will the Minister not only condemn this act of inhumanity but commit now to summoning the Israeli ambassador? Will she take steps to ensure that the UK ceases all arms trade with Israel, and to ensure that Britain is not complicit in the illegal occupation of Palestine?”
“Since we are all talking about when we were at school, I should point out that I am probably the only Member of the House who grew up under a Tory Government and was at school in 2010. Does my hon. Friend agree that the reality of that was class sizes that were the biggest on record and school buildings that were falling apart, and, with education maintenance allowance having been cut, all we had to look forward to was the prospect of paying £9,000 a year in tuition fees if we went to university?”
“I am going to try again, since the Minister did not answer my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) when she asked. We know that during the Prime Minister’s visit he was photographed leaning out of a digger in a JCB factory. Just days before, the BJP had used JCB diggers to bulldoze Muslim shops and homes and the gate of a mosque in New Delhi. Local governments in a number of other Indian states have carried out similar demolitions. I ask again: did the Prime Minister raise that with Modi? If not, why not? Does the Minister accept that the Prime Minister’s visit to India has helped to legitimise the actions of Modi’s far-right Government?”
“My hon. Friend is making an extremely powerful speech in memory of her constituent Ben. One of my constituents died at the age of only five years old from a brain tumour, and tragically he is far from alone. While 80% of children survive childhood cancer as a whole—still far too low—80% of children with brain tumours die within five years of diagnosis. It is the biggest cancer killer of those under the age of 40, yet brain tumours receive less than 1% of the national spend on cancer research. Does she agree that funding must be increased in order to improve outcomes for children and adults with brain tumours?”
“I would also bet that the majority of Members in this Chamber will at some point have taken part in a protest that could have fallen foul of a noise trigger—thank goodness the Chamber is not subject to these anti-noise laws, because otherwise I expect that would be happening every Wednesday. I urge every Member here to think about those protests, the causes they were championing and the people they were with. If they feel that those protests were legitimate and that they should not have been arrested for making some noise, I urge them to extend the same right to others and to vote down these powers.”
“People will attend protests not knowing whether the noise that they are making is illegal and whether they will go home that evening and have dinner with their family or be thrown in the back of a police van. I have no faith that the police would show restraint with these new powers when other powers have been abused time and again. In recent weeks Members across the House will have seen the heroic actions of anti-war protesters in Russia and Ukraine. If MPs truly support their right to protest and their ability to make noise, they should vote against these powers. Many Conservative Members also consider themselves great champions of freedom of speech, quick to condemn so-called cancel culture. If they truly believe in freedom of expression, they should vote against the powers.”
“It was through protest that many of our fundamental rights were won, including the right to vote. Noise is an essential part of protest. What is the point of a demonstration if no one can hear its message? What is it if not a show of strength of feeling? Thousands of people gathered together will inevitably be loud. Make no mistake: the Bill is an assault on our right to protest and our ability to hold the powerful to account. What is to stop a corporation that is being protested against calling the police and claiming that the noise is causing significant disruption in order to shut down the demonstration? The powers also give huge discretion to police officers. That will make the law on protests completely unpredictable.”
“Under international law, anyone can claim asylum in any country that has signed the 1951 UN refugee convention. That convention makes it clear that people fleeing persecution can reach a country by irregular means if they are unable to use a valid visa. So, given that there is no legal way to come to the UK for the purpose of seeking asylum, does the Minister accept that the Government risk breaking international law?”
“The Prime Minister broke the laws that he made—laws to protect public health—and then repeatedly misled Parliament. Does the Prime Minister agree that comments made by his Northern Ireland Secretary this morning comparing his fine to a parking ticket are insulting, and when will he do what the majority of those in this country want and resign?”
“This contrasts with the hundreds of children who have been put in hotels and forced to share rooms and even beds with adult men they do not know. The Home Office does not provide any solutions in the Bill. We cannot allow this devastating situation to continue. [ Interruption. ] Conservative Members may chunter from a sedentary position, but I am talking about something extremely serious: a young boy who committed suicide after Home Office failings. It would be great if they showed a bit of humility. Everyone who professes to care about unaccompanied refugee children should vote in support of Lords amendment 22.”
“What happened to Alex is not an isolated case: there has been an alarming increase in reports of suicide among teenagers who arrived in the UK as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. It is a pattern of failure. But instead of the Government righting this wrong, children like Alex continue to be treated with suspicion from the moment they set foot in this country. The Bill does not focus on improving the care of unaccompanied refugee children; in fact, the Home Office seems interested only in building even more barriers. It is particularly cynical that the Department pretends that age assessments are done for young people’s safety when, given the supervision provided in children’s placements, the level of risk is low should a young adult on occasion be placed in one.”
“In December 2017, Alexander Tekle died by suicide less than a year after he arrived in the UK from Eritrea as an unaccompanied minor. Alex was failed on two fronts. First, he was wrongfully assessed as an adult and placed in adult Home Office accommodation, where he was violently assaulted. Secondly, the different local authorities that were subsequently entrusted with his care failed him miserably, leading him into a spiral of depression and substance abuse. Services again failed to step in and ensure that he was supported to overcome these issues. The uncertainty over Alex’s immigration status also caused persistent distress. In fact, an inquest held earlier this year found that the Home Office’s policies contributed to the spiral that led to his death.”
“This Bill is such wide-reaching and deeply flawed legislation that there is so much I could speak on, but in the limited time we have I will focus on Lords amendment 22, which deals with the age assessment of children. Without that amendment, the Bill will increase the number of children who have to undergo age assessments. These processes are unethical and inaccurate, focusing on vague criteria such as a child’s “appearance and demeanour”. Other, more detailed investigations are, of course, re-traumatising for children. There is a real danger that the measures in the Bill will lead to an increase in the number of children who are wrongfully treated as adults and subsequently neglected by the authorities. That will place some of the most vulnerable children at incredibly high risk of harm, as we have already seen.”
“I wholeheartedly agree with the points my hon. Friend is raising and I thank him for leading this debate. I am regularly contacted by constituents whose private landlords are refusing to fix issues. Like the examples raised by my hon. Friend, they are not small problems; ranging from black mould to rat infestations, these failings have a disastrous impact on my constituents’ health and wellbeing. As it stands, tenants who decide to withhold rent from landlords who fail to maintain their properties to standard will be in breach of contract and have next to no protections. Does my hon. Friend agree that increasing protections for tenants should form a fundamental part of our strategy to make the PRS safer and improve conditions overall?”
“The UK Government have given the Saudi regime an estimated £20 billion in arms sales since the start of the war in Yemen, despite clear breaches of humanitarian law. It is extremely likely that British weapons have been used to kill civilians. In the light of the executions on Saturday, will the Prime Minister cancel his planned visit, and will this Government do what they should have done long ago and end arms sales to the Saudi regime?”
“They have since been forced to apologise and to pay financial compensation, but it is not yet known whether the officers will face disciplinary action. I have spoken here about just two examples connected to my constituency, but countless more could be raised. A total of 594 complaints against Met employees for sexual misconduct were made between 2012 and 2018. A recent IOPC report found a shocking culture of misogyny among police officers at Charing Cross station. Again, that is not confined only to the Met. Sue Fish, the former chief constable of Nottinghamshire, agreed that “it’s not just the odd deviant…what was expressed in those messages in Charing Cross could be in any police station.” Indeed, the IOPC concluded: “We believe these incidents are not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few ‘bad apples’.””
“He was far from alone: more than 20 undercover Met officers are known to have had sexual relationships, some with the knowledge of more senior police officers. At least three fathered children with women they had met undercover. After a 10-year legal battle brought courageously by Kate Wilson, the courts ruled that the Met’s failure to prevent undercover officers entering into sexual relationships amounted to sex discrimination and breached human rights. Such misogyny is not confined to undercover policing. In 2013, 10 years later, my constituent, Dr Koshika Duff, was arrested for trying to give legal advice to a 15-year-old who was being stop and searched. She was violently strip-searched, while police made derogatory and misogynistic comments about her.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins. I thank the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) for securing this important debate, in particular on International Women’s Day. It might seem odd at first for a Nottingham MP to be speaking in a debate about a police force in another city, but the Metropolitan police’s power and impact go much further than just London. In fact, the Met’s actions have been incredibly damaging to women in my city. In 2003, an undercover Met officer, Mark Kennedy, was sent to spy on climate activists in Nottingham. He posed as a fellow activist at the Sumac Centre in my constituency, where he deceived one woman, Kate Wilson, into a relationship that lasted almost two years. He went on to deceive other women into sexual relationships until he was exposed by activists in 2010.”
“Where there are other services that might more appropriately support vulnerable people of all genders, such as victims of domestic and sexual violence or those experiencing mental ill health, those services should be used instead of, or alongside, the police. None of those measures is foolproof, but they aim to reduce the opportunity for police officers to abuse their power and, as the debate has clearly shown, they are badly needed.”
“We should be limiting the powers of the police, not handing them ever wider ones to be used at their discretion, as the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 has done and as the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill proposes. We need to limit the power to stop and search, particularly the ability to strip-search, which is invasive and humiliating and puts women in a vulnerable position. We must ensure that women who are at particularly high risk of abuse and exploitation by police officers or others are not needlessly criminalised, such as those with addiction issues and those who are homeless or undocumented migrants.”
“I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention. I wholly agree with her. We must never forget that it was a serving Metropolitan police officer who kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard almost exactly a year ago. It was his fellow Met police officers who used appalling, disproportionate force against women who were gathering on Clapham Common to mourn her death. There were appalling acts of institutional misogyny in the case of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman, and there have been many others. For over a year, I have been calling for an independent statutory inquiry into misogyny in the Met police. I hope the Minister will commit to that today.”
“Someone very dear to me who helped to raise me and who came to this country from Ukraine after the second world war would not have been eligible under any of the Home Secretary’s schemes. Today’s announcement, while welcome, is heavily caveated and still falls far short of what is needed. I want the Prime Minister to honour the words he spoke to me last week in this Chamber and put in place meaningful support for all those fleeing Ukraine. When will the Home Office start waiving visas and not just waving flags?”
“The Polish Government have said that they must be prepared to accept up to 1 million refugees displaced by conflict or fleeing for fear of persecution, yet last week, when our Foreign Secretary was asked about accepting Ukrainian refugees, she said that “we can’t make any commitments about any refugees at this stage.” Amid conflict, we must always put direct support for people first, so will the Government commit today to accepting all Ukrainian refugees who wish to come to the UK as well as those persecuted in Russia for their resistance to war and Putin’s regime?”
“As a scientist, does the hon. Member accept that hormone therapy is not permanent? The whole point of it is to pause puberty in order to give a child space to make decisions and explore their gender identity.”
“My hon. Friend is making an extremely powerful speech that is rooted in people’s real life experiences. Does she agree that the GRA needs to be reformed to not only make the process quicker and more straightforward and remove the need for medical reports, but offer legal recognition for non-binary people and those under the age of 18?”
“Ministers must increase the minimum wage, end zero-hours contracts, and abolish all anti-trade union laws to give workers power to negotiate better pay and conditions.”
“When I visited Himmah, a food bank in Nottingham East, in November last year, I was told it was already seeing a steep rise in the number of people relying on its services. I dread to think of the demand from April, as tax hikes and energy bill increases kick in. The cost of living crisis was created by the political decisions of a Government who have chosen to protect the interests of the wealthy and huge corporations, not those of working people. Amazon paid only 7.5% of the value of its income in the UK in tax in 2020, despite sales increasing by almost £2 billion, and the wealth of British billionaires increased by £107 billion during the pandemic. To end the cost of living crisis we should be raising taxes on those who profited from the pandemic at the expense of those who got us through it.”
“To make matters worse, last year this Government implemented the biggest overnight cut in social security since the founding of the modern welfare state when they ended the universal credit uplift. Some 14,250 households in Nottingham East have lost £20 a week. The national insurance hike in April will mean that workers lose an additional 1.25% of their income. This is a flat tax, of course, which will hit the lowest-paid workers the hardest. The cost of food and bills is soaring. Rising inflation has a disproportionate impact on people in poorer households. Food writer and activist Jack Monroe has exposed how the prices of cheaper food products have soared as availability has fallen. For example, the cheapest pasta in their supermarket has gone from 29p to 70p—a 141% price increase.”
“I know that we are short of time, Madam Deputy Speaker, so thank you for fitting me in. The cost of living crisis has been years in the making, and the blame lies at the door of successive Conservative Governments. Communities like mine have been devastated by a decade of austerity. The number of people using food banks has increased every single year that the Conservatives have been in government since 2010. Now, in the fifth largest economy in the world, there are more food banks than there are branches of McDonalds. Almost 1 million people are on zero-hours contracts and hundreds of key workers earn less than the real minimum wage. These jobs are simply failing to put enough food on the table. Nottingham already has about 15,000 children eligible for free school meals.”
“The Mental Health Foundation highlights that living in poverty is a risk factor, and the Children’s Society has said: “Reductions in family income, including benefit cuts, are likely to have wide-ranging negative effects on children’s mental health.” This is not just a crisis of children’s mental health but a crisis of inequality, too. That inequality is exacerbated by the policies of this Government, who now have a duty to fix it.”
“Many of them were far away from home and far away from their family and friends, and one remarked to me that they felt forgotten about and that no one cared. They were all concerned about mental health funding. Of course it is important for us to talk about awareness, but the sad truth is that people are already aware because they are living it. What they need is material change, and that cannot be provided by volunteers operating on a shoestring. There is no way around it. The only option is for the Government to invest significant amounts of money in proper mental health support and in children’s mental health services. We must also tackle the root causes of poor mental health in children.”
“This motion calls on the Government to ensure that there is mental health treatment within a month for those who need it; specialist professional mental health support in schools; and the establishment of open-access mental health hubs in every community. These are moderate demands when we consider what is at stake. There has been a 77% rise in the number of children needing treatment for severe mental health issues since 2019. In my constituency, referrals for treatment for eating disorders—as we have heard, these are the psychiatric conditions with the worst mortality and morbidity outcomes—outstripped predicted levels last year. Last Friday, I visited children and young people at Hopewood, an in-patient unit in Nottingham East.”
“When I was in school under the then Conservative-led coalition Government, I remember friends and classmates whose mental health was in crisis. They struggled to be seen, and they waited months, even years. Since then, the situation has only got worse. I am regularly contacted by parents who are caught in the snare of long wait times for underfunded and non-specialist services when trying to access mental health support for their children. In Nottinghamshire, 78% of children referred to child and adolescent mental health services wait longer than four weeks to be seen. Between April and October 2021, just six months, more than 409,000 children were referred to CAMHS for self-harm and suicidal thoughts. I challenge anyone here to tell me that that does not constitute a crisis and that it should not be dealt with as such.”
“If LGBTQ+ allyship does not extend to the most marginalised in our community—our refugee siblings—it means very little at all, so I urge the Minister to listen to what all of us have said today; to listen to our words, and those of refugee organisations and refugees themselves; and to please take a stand in his own Department.”
“For trans refugees, that might prevent them from transitioning—from changing their name, altering their gender expression or undergoing medical treatment—and that will have devastating consequences for their mental health and wellbeing. The introduction of accommodation and offshore processing centres also poses particular risks for LGBTQ+ people, such as experiencing violence and abuse in these settings. Those seeking asylum should be housed in the community, not far-flung islands, derelict barracks, or unsuitable hotels such as the ones in which many refugees are being housed in my constituency. The severity of this Bill’s impact cannot be overstated. This Government are risking not only breaching international law, but sending people to their deaths.”
“Many people who have been welcomed into our country’s LGBTQ+ community would simply not be here if the Nationality and Borders Bill had been law at the time they made their claim. LGBTQ+ refugees are already put through dehumanising so-called tests to prove their identity and are still disbelieved by the Home Office. The Bill increases the threshold to prove that they are LGBTQ+ even further, taking it from the internationally accepted standard of reasonable degree of likelihood to the far stricter balance of probabilities. If they are granted the new temporary protection status, LGBTQ+ refugees could be forced to hide their identity while in the UK for fear of persecution if they are made to return to their country of origin.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Sharma. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) for securing this important debate. I pay tribute to her for her tireless work on this issue and on protecting and extending the rights of LGBTQ+ people, regardless of their passport, country of birth or immigration status. The Nationality and Borders Bill will have a deliberate, devastating impact on the rights of refugees, migrants and people of colour. Refugee Action has described it as “the biggest attack on the refugee protection system that we have ever seen”. Approximately 2,000 LGBTQ+ people claim asylum in the UK each year, fearing persecution in their home countries. This Bill will make it harder for any refugee to find safety here, but for this group, it is even more concerning.”
“The IOPC’s report was truly damning, but it is not the only example of misogyny in the Met police that has come to light in the past couple of weeks. The Met has also been made to pay compensation to a woman in Nottingham who was deceived into a relationship with an undercover officer, and it has been made to apologise to my constituent Dr Koshka Duff for misogynistic and derogatory comments made before and after a strip search. Does the Minister agree with the report’s conclusion that the incidents the IOPC investigated are “not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few ‘bad apples’”? Will he commit to an independent, public, statutory inquiry into institutional misogyny in the Metropolitan police?”
“Public ownership of our energy system could have helped us to withstand the current turbulence in the energy market, and the public support it: in 2019, 52% of people polled were in favour of it. I therefore urge the Government to implement a windfall tax now, to bring energy into public ownership, and to invest in the transformative changes that will protect struggling families and our planet now and for years to come.”