Jo White
MP for Bassetlaw · Labour · United Kingdom
“I thank my hon. Friend for raising this case. As she will know, we received over 200,000 responses, and we are now in the process of carefully considering the feedback received. The proposals set out a fundamental reform of the settlement system, and it is right that we take the time needed to consider the impacts.”
House of Commons26 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Asylum decision making is up and returns are up, while small boat arrivals are down, and we remain on track to end the use of asylum hotels in this Parliament, although we know there is a long way to go.”
House of Commons14 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This has been an important debate on one of the defining challenges of our time. Our constituents rightly expect immigration to be fair, controlled and free from abuse. For too long, it has been none of those.”
House of Commons14 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This is a binary choice: reform the ECHR and have greater control over our borders, or leave and lose our ability to return illegal migrants or foreign criminals. I choose the powers that the ECHR gives us, which protects all our individual rights and freedoms.”
House of Commons14 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“No, I will not give way. Winston Churchill proposed the establishment of the European convention on human rights at the 1948 Congress of Europe, and the UK was the first country to ratify it in 1951. It came from Churchill’s experience of dealing with the Nazis before and during the second world war.”
House of Commons14 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“No, I will not. Sit down. Instead, we stand with Churchill. We will build a fair, controlled immigration system that is free from abuse. We will focus on matters abut which people are rightly concerned. The issue is not the existence of the convention, but the way in which it has been applied over time.”
House of Commons14 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“Today’s little me’s—the ones who do without the flashy trainers, who play outside but never go inside the big sports stadiums or the posh restaurants and the cafés, who do not fly on aeroplanes or get taken to museums or theatres, who have never seen the King or his palace or Big Ben—in my area, in my constituency of Bassetlaw, are too often expected by this place to celebrate a rapidly changing world by getting to the back of the queue and behaving themselves. I am not having that. I drove trucks across the channel—the only woman in the drivers’ section on the ferries. Small boats—new problem? The flight cases I drove were huge, with ventilation and a false bottom. The border sniffer dogs were an infrequent luxury. I regularly ran the gauntlet of organised crime and desperate people. My predecessor had the biggest swing in 2019.”
House of Commons23 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I get the little me’s so common in Bassetlaw and elsewhere: they are my people, my responsibility. Money is often a problem, but poverty of aspiration is much a bigger one to overcome. You are told that you cannot do that, that this door is not for you, that you stink, that you are thick, that your hopes are only ever dreams and can never be realised; well, this kid never stopped dreaming.”
House of Commons23 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I was brought up to believe in me and what I could achieve. My mother got herself out of poverty because of the Open University, and my father made a choice all too familiar today. He gave up his engineering job to be a Sainsbury’s warehouseman to guarantee cheaper food, and of course he served as a shop steward for USDAW. I remain proud of both my parents for what they did for me. I was a free school meal kid—separate queue, of course—and a free school uniform kid, with clothes from the jumble sale and no new, smart, bright white socks for me, but I had no poverty of aspiration, no holding back, no shutting down of my dreams. That is good parenting, backed by their hard work. I commuted six hours every day to complete my own studies, taking my newborn baby in a carrycot with me. That is what learning to aspire results in.”
House of Commons23 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I begin by thanking the people of Bassetlaw for putting me here. My commitment is to serve all residents to the best of my ability. I thank the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) for his contribution, and I look forward to debating with him in this place. Today’s debate has a direct link to the ongoing discussions on poverty. Having seen the last Government shut all three Bassetlaw police stations and both courthouses, I will have much to say on the issue in this Parliament. Crime and poverty have a clear connection. I need no lessons on how a lack of money impacts on children growing up—I lived it—but that experience taught me something far more valuable in understanding the impact of poverty and inequality, because what my family lacked in money, we more than made up for in love and in hopes and dreams.”
House of Commons23 July 2024Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗