YouSaid · the spoken record
Diane Abbott
Lines from Political Thinking with Nick Robinson have been withdrawn from this page while we check who is speaking. See the correction.
On the record 2001–2026
hansard
This is everything the corpus holds for Diane Abbott. It is not everything they have said on the record.
Every line below is reproduced as it was said and credited to the record it came from, and links to that record wherever it can be linked. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections
“Will the Secretary of State speak to his colleague the Home Secretary and make her aware that only issuing up until now 50 visas for Ukrainian refugees is quite wrong and brings shame upon this country?”
House of Commons7 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They did not all come on the Windrush or on other boats either. My own father came on an aeroplane, which was very dashing of him at the time. He was an impetuous person; no doubt, that is where I get it from. As I said, they came in good faith and I believe that the Home Office should deal with them in good faith. It is not too late for Home Office Ministers and officials to pay attention to our report, and to other statements that have been made and issues that have been raised, including the view of its own head of policy for the scheme. It is not too late for the Home Office to listen to criticism and finally give justice to the Windrush generation.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is important that the Home Office understands that what Home Office Ministers and officials see as a minor administrative challenge, as they have so many more important things to do and to think about, is, for the Windrush generation, their lives. This is a signifier of the care and respect that this society holds for that generation. For Ministers to ignore what is said to them, year after year, about the complaints process and to ignore the suggestions that people make in good faith, suggests to me that they do not respect that generation or understand the humiliation that the generation feels. As I said earlier, it is as if they are waiting for this generation to pass away. Finally, the Windrush generation came not just from the Caribbean, but from other parts of Commonwealth, as we pointed out in our report.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It would be good if the Home Office, even at this late stage, listened and implemented some of the findings of the Wendy Williams review, listened to what lawyers and claimants themselves are saying, and listened to the findings of my Committee’s report. The Windrush compensation scheme has to go to an independent organisation, for reasons of increased efficiency and so that people can have some confidence; the Home Office has to look at the level of documentation being insisted on; and, given that Martin Forde QC, has said that applications being completed with legal assistance would speed things up dramatically, the Home Office should guarantee access to legal assistance for all claimants who require it.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We pointed out the failure to provide urgent payments and the delay in launching and adequately supporting grassroots campaigns, and I think something has been done about that. It is frustrating for the Committee even to have had to write the report, because many of the systemic faults were highlighted first in the Home Office’s own lessons learned review by Wendy Williams. It is not that we are bringing the Home Office’s attention to such things for the first time; Wendy Williams had set out many of them. The title of her document was “lessons learned”, but the only thing that one can conclude at this point is that the Home Office has learned nothing—lessons have not been learned at all or, if they have been learned, they have not been implemented. Where do we go from here?”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Among other things, we pointed out the excessive burden on claimants to provide documentary evidence of the losses they have suffered. That is a burden. Somebody might have worked hard in the NHS or elsewhere in the public sector, or in manufacturing as my father did, but they are not used to handling that level of paperwork, so it is a burden. In a way, that insistence on finding all the documentary evidence just compounds the pain and misery they have gone through in the Windrush scandal. Then there are the delays. Like I said, how can those at the Home Office complain that passing the scheme to an independent organisation would cause delays when they themselves have presided over inordinate delays in processing applications and making payments? They themselves have staffed the scheme wholly inadequately.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is preposterous for the Home Office to argue, “We don’t want to pass it to an independent organisation because of delays.” With this scheme, those at the Home Office are the masters of delays. We called for an independent organisation because we felt that it would be more efficient and that—I come back to this question of confidence—applicants would have more confidence in an independent organisation and would be more willing to come forward, so that we could increase the number of people applying and getting justice before they pass away, as they continue to do. At the time of the Committee’s report, 23 individuals had died without receiving compensation, and I have no doubt that even more have passed away by this point.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Seeing what happened, seeing how people were treated originally and seeing how some even ended up being deported—seeing all that—the potential claimants of the Windrush generation lacked all trust in the Home Office. That is why one of our key recommendations was that this scheme should be passed to an independent organisation. The Home Office said, “Well, that might introduce delays,” but it could not have introduced more delays than the Windrush generation are experiencing now. It could not be any slower than what is happening now. There could not be more people dying than now, while the Home Office is processing what it is supposed to be doing.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We know, as my colleague said, that the number of people who have applied for compensation is paltry compared to the number the Home Office originally said were entitled to it. The experience of applying for compensation is traumatic in itself. As I have said, one of the things that is not necessarily factored in when people talk about the Windrush generation is their sense of humiliation, as people who came here to the mother country, at being treated the way they were and having to go through the scheme at all. As my right hon. Friend said, people have been put off from applying for the scheme partly because of its complexity, which Ministers have been told over and over again.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It should be prepared to listen to its own staff members who have worked on the scheme. It should not need to launch a series of reviews. Meanwhile, because those who came over on the Windrush are an ageing generation, many of them have died or will die before they get the compensation they are entitled to, and I consider that quite shameful. It is hard to believe that the Department does not understand that the more the process is prolonged; the less willing the Department is to take up practical suggestions made in good faith by not just my Committee, but others; and the more the Department is unwilling to listen to people, the longer it will all take and more people will have passed away without justice. As my right hon. Friend said, many people have argued that the Windrush compensation scheme was inadequate.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Yet the Home Office has been quite brazen in rejecting the analysis of people who had worked for the Home Office on the scheme and of lawyers and potential claimants. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North pointed out, the Home Office rejected many of our key recommendations, and its response demonstrated that the Department was not engaging with the issues. Above all, the Department’s response to many of our separate recommendations was that it would conduct a review. On almost everything we raised, the Home Office said it was conducting a review. It is all well and good that it is conducting a review on all those separate issues, but it should not need to have a review; it should be prepared to listen to the lawyers, claimants and people working with the community and to look at its own figures.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The significance of that law centre is that the earliest generation of Caribbean migrants lived in that area long before it was as expensive to buy a home there as it is now, and I knew that area well as a child. Another important person we took evidence from was Jacqueline McKenzie, who at that time was assisting with approximately 200 claims and is probably assisting with more by now. The policy head of the scheme resigned because she was so appalled at the way the scheme was functioning. Lawyers and others went to the Government to talk to them about the complexity of the system. Above all, given the Government’s original estimate for the potential number of claimants—I think it was 15,000—the number of people applying to the scheme, certainly when the Committee did its inquiry, was relatively tiny.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“People who are known to Government Members, and people who are known to Ministers—not ageing members of the Windrush generation. They cannot deal with the scheme without some kind of legal assistance. I put it to Ministers that it is the complexity of the scheme that has meant we have not had the number of applications that we should have had, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) set out. In the Select Committee’s hearings, we heard evidence from distinguished practitioners, such as Martin Forde QC, who had been the independent adviser to the scheme and also advised on its consultation and design, and Holly Stow, a senior caseworker at North Kensington Law Centre.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The thing that should have struck the Government about the workings of their scheme was that in 2020 Alexandra Ankrah, who worked as head of policy in the Windrush compensation scheme team, resigned because she lost confidence in a programme that was “not supportive of people who have been victims” and “doesn’t acknowledge their trauma”. It is their trauma that I want to try to convey in this debate. The head of the scheme resigned, and they paid no notice—they carried on as before. In that same year, nine law firms wrote to the Home Secretary explaining the complex nature of the Windrush compensation application process and asked that claimants be given access to funded legal assistance. The Government’s response was to say, “Well, the scheme was designed so that people could apply without legal assistance.” What people?”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The lawyers and many of the people who gave evidence to the Select Committee talked about money and compensation, but for the people of the Windrush generation the real scandal was the humiliation at having it brought home to them, by the many aspects of the Windrush scandal, that this society did not consider them British. They were not treated with the fairness and dignity that they would have liked. For the Windrush generation—I cannot stress this enough—this was not about the money; it was about being respected and being genuinely accepted as British. They were treated completely unfairly, in practical, emotional and subjective ways.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Windrush generation was the generation that came from across the Commonwealth, but largely from the Caribbean, to help to rebuild this country after the war. The point about the Windrush generation—a point that may not be understood by Government Members—was that these people thought they were British. They thought they were coming to the mother country. Many of them had pictures of the Queen in their living rooms. The way they have been treated, first in the Windrush scandal itself and then in the debacle of the compensation scheme, could not be more unfair or more cruel.”
House of Commons3 March 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does the Home Secretary accept that many Members of this House are dismayed that she did not make a statement in the normal way, so that she could have been questioned in the normal way? Does she further accept that that is not just disrespectful to the House of Commons, but it shows a lack of real concern for those desperate people escaping Ukraine?”
House of Commons28 February 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I ask the Minister to look into the issues I have raised and to take action for the tenants of Evelyn Court.”
House of Commons25 February 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“They want the Industrial Dwellings Society to keep its promise of a 24-hour call out, they want it to communicate with them properly and, above all, they want it to do something permanent about the terrible disrepair in Evelyn Court. As a Member of Parliament for more than 30 years, one of the biggest parts of my case load is housing and housing disrepair. I cannot stress enough to Ministers the misery, depression and anxiety that long-running housing disrepair causes to tenants. The Government have a role to play in ensuring that tenants have disrepair addressed according to existing legislation and according to the needs of tenants. If the Government cannot meet the needs of tenants in these dreadful conditions, how much do they really care about tenants?”
House of Commons25 February 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 requires private sector landlords to ensure that their properties are fit for human habitation at the beginning of a tenancy and throughout. Bearing in mind that 1.1 million homes in the private sector do not meet the decent homes standard, how many cases have been brought under this Act? How many of those cases have been successful? Finally, how much money has been allocated to local authorities to enforce the decent homes standards? I would not like to conclude this speech without applauding the London Renters Union, which has given so much support to the tenants of Evelyn Court. Furthermore, the London Renters Union, across London, has not only helped tenants but empowered them. The tenants of Evelyn Court are not asking for the world.”
House of Commons25 February 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Tenants who need repairs often have to contact call centres situated far away in cities such as Birmingham and Liverpool. The people in these call centres do not know the estate or the individuals, and they often cannot grasp the problems they are trying to explain. The regulators, including the Regulator of Social Housing and the housing ombudsman, are the Government’s responsibility, but they do not have sufficient powers. They can only deal with the process, not individual cases, and they are not able to impose fines big enough to be a real deterrent. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities promised a White Paper on this sector in autumn 2021, and it has still not appeared—it is now promised for 2022. Will the Minister commit the Government to producing the White Paper on this important sector in 2022?”
House of Commons25 February 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That is just a sample of the scores of new housing disrepair cases that I deal with every month. The Minister must be wondering why housing disrepair is so endemic. There are several reasons. There is a lack of funding from the Government generally and they, quite correctly, put the responsibility for fire safety and net zero carbon emissions on to housing associations. I support those policies and that is the right thing to do, but they fail to fund those issues properly. It would take £15 billion to deal with fire safety issues in London alone. Another issue is that housing associations—many of them, such as the Industrial Dwellings Society, set up more than a century ago with every intention of helping local people—no longer have a strong local presence.”
House of Commons25 February 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Among the cases that I am currently dealing with is an L&Q housing association tenant who is suffering from a leaking roof, rising damp, slugs, an infestation of drain flies, continually blocked drains, sewage spilling out into the garden and emerging from the sink, and a shower that has been broken for three years. Another L&Q tenant who I and my staff are trying to help is living in a flat with no working toilet, no gas, a leaking roof and an insect infestation. We are also trying to help a Hackney Council tenant who has been without gas and hot water since 15 December and whose bathroom is in a state of disrepair. A further Hackney Council tenant is in a property with severe mould and raw sewage outside her flat from a drain that has been blocked for six months.”
House of Commons25 February 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I was told about nausea, coughs, colds and chronic asthma. The conditions in Evelyn Court are completely unacceptable and the Industrial Dwellings Society should be ashamed of itself for leaving its tenants in that state. The Industrial Dwellings Society was set up in 1885 by a group of Jewish philanthropists and businessmen who wanted to relieve overcrowding in the east end of London. If they could see the dreadful conditions that, in 2022, their organisation is housing eastenders in, they would be shocked. Those problems are not confined to Evelyn Court, however: the private sector as a whole has the worst housing disrepair and more than 1.1 million homes in the sector—fully one quarter—do not meet the decent homes standard. I also deal with terrible housing disrepair problems elsewhere in the public sector.”
House of Commons25 February 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Let me say straightaway that the tenants of all the flats I visited had made every effort to keep them nicely, which made it even more heartbreaking that their flats were disfigured by chronic disrepair problems that were not in their power to deal with and about which the Industrial Dwellings Society housing association had let them down time after time when it had promised to fix things. I saw dreadful mould covering walls, damp, water leaking in and dampness rising from the floor. In addition, tenants told me about blockages in their drainage system and insect infestations. Among the insects that they had had to deal with in large numbers were ants, spiders and slugs. Worst of all were the health problems that the tenants and their children were enduring because of the damp and mould.”
House of Commons25 February 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I will speak this afternoon about the truly terrible housing conditions that have been endured for too long by the residents of Evelyn Court on Amherst Road in my constituency. This block is run and managed by the Industrial Dwellings Society housing association. One can see that it would have once been a very nice estate and a pleasant place to live, but when I visited it several times recently and residents kindly invited me into their flats, I was shocked by what I saw.”
House of Commons25 February 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“On social mobility, does the Minister appreciate that some are concerned about the proposals that would mean that people would not have access to funding for tuition fees unless they meet certain grades at GCSE and A-level? Will that not impact more heavily on poorer families?”
House of Commons23 February 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does my hon. Friend agree that among young people, black and minority ethnic young people often experience particular mental health pressures? There must be more analysis of the support that they and their families need.”
House of Commons8 February 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Anybody who has actually read the Sue Gray report can only wonder what she was made to leave out. Will the Prime Minister give the House an undertaking that as soon as he is able, he will release the full unredacted report to this House?”
House of Commons31 January 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Minister will be aware that in 2019 two Navy patrol vessels were deployed in the channel to deal with channel crossings. Yet they intercepted no boats and it cost the taxpayer £780,000. What will be different this time?”
House of Commons18 January 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Is there any truth in the reports that the Government want to have asylum seekers processed offshore in countries such as Gambia? Has any such country actually agreed to this? Does the Secretary of State accept that having people processed hundreds or thousands of miles away might meet the letter of our obligations to asylum seekers but certainly does not meet the spirit?”
House of Commons17 January 2022Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Secretary of State said earlier that he will do anything it takes to protect children, so can he assure the House that if it transpires that one of the main issues behind the horrific and cruel death of this child was not enough social workers and too much pressure on existing social workers, he will make the case to his colleagues in Government to make the right level of resources available?”
House of Commons6 December 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I believe so, Madam Deputy Speaker. In response to my question about resources, the Secretary of State for Education implied, certainly, that he would be willing to support any recommendations on finance made by the MacAlister review. However, the Secretary of State would have known perfectly well that his Department has signed a contract with MacAlister which says that he cannot “assume” any additional Government funding, that any recommendations about funding must be matched by savings elsewhere in Government over a period, and that any recommendations must be “affordable” to Government. How can the Secretary of State assure the House that he is willing to support recommendations of extra money when the contract that his Department has signed would seem to imply that any such recommendations would not be acceptable?”
House of Commons6 December 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Home Secretary spoke earlier about the importance of viable plans; does she still consider the use of wave machines in the channel to turn back small boats to be a viable plan? Does she still consider the sending of desperate asylum seekers to a third country, such as Albania, to be a viable plan? When will she stop using desperate asylum seekers as pawns in this Government’s culture wars?”
House of Commons22 November 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill has the sense of being an NHS corporate takeover Bill? We have already seen £5 billion in contracts being awarded to private companies through the VIP lane. The Bill opens the door to private corporations sitting on 42 local health boards. That is wrong.”
House of Commons22 November 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Then there is the issue of black maternal health, which other hon. Members have raised.”
House of Commons28 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. When we talk about unimplemented reports and inquiries, we could go all the way back to the early ’80s and the Scarman inquiry. If everything that Scarman spoke about had been addressed, we would not be in the situation we are in today.”
House of Commons28 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“He also represented Cherry Groce in the aftermath of the Brixton riots. He had a very distinguished ministerial career and ended his career as high commissioner to South Africa, a position that was particularly appropriate because the struggle against apartheid was always one of Paul’s signature issues. Then, of course, we had the legendary Bernie Grant, one of the first black leaders of a local authority as leader of Haringey Council. There are so many issues that were first raised in the ’80s and before, whether that is black children in education or in the criminal justice system, black people in business and the lack of access that they sometimes have to finance and support, or black people in employment, be that public sector or private sector, where black people often find themselves hitting a glass ceiling in terms of promotion.”
House of Commons28 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Then there were the 1985 Brixton riots, which were triggered by the death of Cherry Groce. Then there was the 1985 Broadwater Farm uprising, which was triggered by a police raid that ended in the death of Cynthia Jarrett. Without activity at grassroots level, without anger and the expression of anger—sometimes by marching, sometimes through what was written and what was said—we would not have had the tide of events that resulted in the election of four black MPs in 1987. I will touch on who they were, as I am the only one left in Parliament. There was Keith Vaz, who read law at Cambridge and became a practising solicitor. There was Paul Boateng, who was born in Hackney—Members do not need me to remind them what a great borough that is—and made his name working at Brent law centre.”
House of Commons28 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The reason that the Scarman report, which I mentioned earlier, made such an impact was that it was an elderly white judge saying quite shocking things about institutional racism in British society. He could not be dismissed. Sadly, many of the things he said were not acted on, but the Scarman inquiry was extremely important. In January 1981 there was the New Cross house fire. As hon. Members have said, the slogan at the time was “13 dead, nothing said”. A black people’s day of action was organised and 20,000 people marched. I was one of those people, and the extraordinary thing about that march was that there were so many people on it who were not regular black, left activists. They were ordinary people who were shocked that 13 young people could die in this way and nothing really was being done or said about it.”
House of Commons28 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is my view that the black Members of Parliament that were elected in 1987 and, with respect, black Members who are here today, stand on the shoulders of people in the community who were willing to stand up and in some cases actually cause urban disorder. Without those people at the grassroots, none of us would be here. Colleagues have touched on these events, but let me remind Members of them. First there were the April 1981 Brixton riots. It is hard to recollect what an impact those riots had. Scenes like that had never been seen on the British mainland. I remember going to Brixton the day after those riots, seeing the devastation and realising that something really impactful had happened to the British political narrative.”
House of Commons28 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy) on obtaining this important debate. We have heard a lot of important points about black history, but I want to talk about more recent black history. I want to answer the question of why four black MPs were elected for the first time in 1987. It is tempting to think that it was because of our great merit or the benevolence of our political parties, but I would argue, having been one of the Members elected in 1987, that the fact that we could get selected and elected owed a lot to events in the 1980s.”
House of Commons28 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for that important intervention. Of course I am not advocating civil disorder. As someone who lived through that era, I am saying that without people marching and taking to the streets, I am confident that there would not have been the impetus, the concern and the focus that enabled me and my three colleagues to be elected in 1987. He must give me some credit for having lived through that era and having been active in the community at that time. Neither I nor anyone on these Benches would advocate civil disorder, but it happened; we cannot pretend it did not and we cannot pretend it did not have an impact, as Lord Scarman himself said.”
House of Commons28 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I would like to think that, on some of the issues that have been raised in the past 40 years, we will see real action, a real strategy for action and real change in the coming years.”
House of Commons28 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Yes, we have to stop this cycle. I have lived through too many decades of it: of civil disorder, which hon. Members opposite deprecate, of anger, anguish and concern, of reports such as the Scarman report, of “13 dead and nothing said”, of reports being written and nothing changes. I have to tell hon. Members that the community—not just the ethnic minority community but the community as a whole—is weary of reports being written and injustice being pointed out and nothing happening. Black people make our own history. We continue to contend against the forces of institutional racism, whether that is people engaging with civil disorder, which of course I entirely deprecate, or whether it is those of us in Parliament today in 2021. We make our history. Our history is British history. We will continue to fight on.”
House of Commons28 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend has spoken, quite correctly, about heroes, but does she agree that it is not just about heroic figures? It is also about ordinary black men and women—the ordinary nurse, the ordinary factory worker and the ordinary bus driver—who were willing to do what it took to take black politics and black dignity forward.”
House of Commons28 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Is the Minister prepared to share his plans to do something about the wholly disproportionate level of black exclusions from our schools, which often leads to a school-to-prison pipeline? It has been said that the day you exclude a child from school, you might as well give them the date and time to turn up at prison. Will he share with the House his proposals to recruit more black teachers and make it possible to rise up the ladder to be headteacher?”
House of Commons28 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If we are talking about black heroes and heroines, who could be more heroic than that generation of black nurses from all over the Commonwealth who helped to build the NHS post war, the NHS of which we are all so proud today?”
House of Commons21 October 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“That means that there must be clear and binding targets, data collection and monitoring to support and judge progress on this issue. It also means funding for new and existing projects to tackle this disparity and to take the measures that I and others have outlined. I thank campaigners, such as those at Five X More, who have worked so hard to ensure that this matter is not forgotten. Black women and their babies deserve better. At no point in any woman’s life does she feel more vulnerable than in childbirth, and black women should not have to believe or understand that they will have a poorer outcome simply because of the colour of their skin and their babies’ skin.”
House of Commons14 September 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The 2019 NHS Long Term Plan is a start, but it lacks concrete steps to address this disparity. It makes no mention of addressing disparities even in the administration of pain relief, among other things. I am hopeful that the Minister will touch on these issues when she responds to the debate. So I say to the Government: what is the plan to address these disparities? What explanation can be given for them? Ministers have said in the past that we no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities. If they believe that, what will they do about the disparities in maternal outcomes? If the Government and those managing our NHS wish to close this gap, they have to put black women at the centre of their thinking and listen to what they say about their experience, both after and during childbirth.”
House of Commons14 September 2021Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗