Tag: 2021

Jonathan Ashworth – 2021 Comments on Children’s Operations Being Cancelled

The comments made by Jonathan Ashworth, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 1 February 2021.

Reports that urgent children’s operations have been cancelled is deeply alarming; it puts children’s health at risk and reveals the intensity of pressure on the NHS in this wave.

Years of cutbacks, understaffing and underfunding left our NHS vulnerable heading into this pandemic and now swathes of vital non-Covid care are cancelled.

Children must not become the forgotten victims of this crisis. Child health and well-being must always be a priority.

February 1, 2021
Matt Hancock – 2021 Comments on Valneva Vaccine

The comments made by Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 1 February 2021.

The UK has developed and invested in some of the world’s most promising vaccines – supporting global efforts to fight this virus.

The Valneva vaccine showcases the best of Scottish expertise right at the heart of our UK vaccine endeavour, demonstrating the strength of our union and what the UK can achieve when it works together. If the vaccine is authorised by the health regulator, it will be rolled out across the four nations as quickly as possible.

February 1, 2021
Alister Jack – 2021 Comments on Valneva Vaccine

The comments made by Alister Jack, the Secretary of State for Scotland, on 1 February 2021.

This deal is an endorsement of the UK Government’s strategy of investing in vaccine development and in the skills of the Scottish life sciences sector.

I pay tribute to the team in Valneva’s new Livingston manufacturing plant. If the vaccine is authorised by the health regulator, their expertise will play an important role in making the world safer from this virus.

February 1, 2021
Nadhim Zahawi – 2021 Comments on Valneva Vaccine

The comments made by Nadhim Zahawi, the Vaccines Minister, on 1 February 2021.

This deal provides a further boost to the UK’s already-strong vaccine portfolio, and I am enormously proud of all the work which has gone in to securing a vaccine for the UK as soon as possible.

If approved, Valneva’s vaccine will not only help tackle Covid-19 here in the UK, but aid our mission to ensure there is a fair supply of vaccines across the globe.

No one is safe till the whole world is safe.

February 1, 2021
Kwasi Kwarteng – 2021 Comments on Valneva Vaccine

The comments made by Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, on 1 February 2021.

This latest deal is yet another weapon in our national arsenal against this terrible disease, and will ensure we have sufficient supplies to protect the British public in 2021 and beyond.

Backed with major investment from the UK Government, Valneva’s site in Scotland will be a vaccine production powerhouse, working flat out to ensure we can quickly deploy jabs across the UK if their candidate is approved, while supporting top quality, local jobs.

Thanks to our incredible UK Vaccine Taskforce, we have now secured a bumper portfolio of over 400 million vaccines, putting our country in an exceptionally strong position to defeat this virus once and for all.

February 1, 2021
Suella Braverman – 2021 Comments on the Unduly Lenient Scheme

The comments made by Suella Braverman, the Attorney General, on 1 February 2021.

For over 30 years, the ULS scheme has helped victims of crime and their loved ones get justice. The scheme includes many more offences now than it did when it was first launched, allowing us to look at more sentences which don’t appear to fit the crime.

In the vast majority of cases, judges get it right, but the scheme is important to ensure that certain cases can be reviewed where there may have been a gross error in the sentencing decision.

February 1, 2021
Matt Hancock – 2021 Comments on Helping Other Countries with Vaccines

The comments made by Matt Hancock, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 1 February 2021.

This pandemic has shown that the foundations of so many of the exciting experiences that make life worth living are contingent not just on our health, or the health of our neighbours, but the health of people across the world.

The new variants of coronavirus have demonstrated this once again so we must work to promote health security right across the world.

Our New Variant Assessment Platform will help us better understand this virus and how it spreads and will also boost global capacity to understand coronavirus so we’re all better prepared for whatever lies ahead.

February 1, 2021
Carolyn Harris – 2021 Speech on Holocaust Memorial Day

The speech made by Carolyn Harris, the Labour MP for Swansea East, in the House of Commons on 28 January 2021.

Every year across the country, we come together to mark Holocaust Memorial Day: to remember those who have been lost; to hear the retelling of stories from those who have survived; and to reflect on what we can do to stop such atrocities taking place again. I thank the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for the fantastic resources and ceremonies they have provided to ensure that the memorial is still happening safely in 2021.

Thinking of this year’s theme—“Be the light in the darkness”—I think of those glimmers and moments of hope brought about through unimaginable bravery and courage. I came across Madeline Deutsch’s story in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum collection, where she shared the sacrifices that her mother made to keep her safe during their time in the camps in the second world war. Madeline spoke of how her mother would give up her scraps of bread in order to keep her child safe and fed through the hardest and most trying of circumstances. Although we are aware of how the Nazi regime targeted their evil at all Jews, along with those who did not fit the idea of Aryan, today I want to talk about the treatment and experience of women in camps.

Ravensbrück was the largest Nazi concentration camp established for women. Over 120,000 women had been imprisoned in Ravensbrück by the time it was liberated in 1945. Those women faced not just the harsh reality of the camps; they could also face forced medical experiments and sterilisations, be made to work in makeshift brothels or were murdered. In what must have been the very darkest of times, we still hear stories such as the sacrifices that Madeline Deutsch’s mother made to keep her child fed and safe.

Although we know that identity-based persecution often affects all those who fall into the targeted groups, women’s experiences during genocide can be unique. Today we remember those women who lost their lives or experienced persecution not only in the holocaust, but in the genocides that have sadly followed since. Let us remember the light and hope shown by men and women; let us remember the sacrifices made by fathers and mothers; and let these stories show us that in the very darkest of times, there can always be light.

January 31, 2021
Alex Sobel – 2021 Speech on Holocaust Memorial Day

The speech made by Alex Sobel, the Labour MP for Leeds North West, in the House of Commons on 28 January 2021.

Today’s Holocaust Memorial Day theme of “Be the light in the darkness” is really important. We are going through a form of darkness ourselves with the coronavirus epidemic, and 1,500 out of every 100,000 people in this country have died due to coronavirus. For European Jews, the death rate was two thirds of our whole community in the second world war. The fear that Jews had every day in the period from when Hitler took power was unbelievable, and we need to reflect on that today. It did not start with extermination. It started with acts of antisemitism, the forced shaving of beards, the forced labour camps, the removal of religious rights and the detention of children.

I can also say all those things that I have just said about the Uyghur Muslims in China. They are going through a form of persecution, which we need to stand up to today on Holocaust Memorial Day. I praise the Board of Deputies of British Jews for its work on this. We also have other genocides in the world. I am the Chair of the all-party parliamentary group on West Papua, where more than half a million people have been killed. The universities of Sydney and Yale have classified this as genocide, and it is important not just to reflect on history but to remember those people who are being oppressed and having genocidal action taken against them today. We have a duty to speak out about what is happening now, as well as reflecting on what happened to my own ancestors—people I will never get to meet and whose children were never born. That is something that has fallen not just on the Jewish community, but on other communities around the world. It is not just about communities of race or religion. We need to remember other minority communities, such as the trans community, who are going through terrible forms of persecution and oppression around the world, and who are grossly misunderstood in many places. We also need to send our solidarity to communities of identity and others today on Holocaust Memorial Day. This is not a day just about Jews and the holocaust; this is a day about all those facing oppression, genocide and persecution. As a Jewish person, I send my solidarity and my support to all those facing persecution. We need to be able to shine a light in the darkness. It is said that light is the best disinfectant. Today, we can shine that light and start to disinfect the problems and issues of the world.

January 31, 2021
Ed Davey – 2021 Speech on Holocaust Memorial Day

The speech made by Ed Davey, the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, on 28 January 2021.

I pay tribute to everyone who has spoken in this debate so far, not least the last very moving speech by the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). I would like to start my contribution by reading a couple of lines from the memoir of Gerda Weissmann Klein, who was 18 when she was sent to the first of several concentration camps, Bolkenhain. She wrote:

“Ilse, a childhood friend of mine, once found a raspberry in the concentration camp and carried it in her pocket all day to present to me that night on a leaf. Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry and you give it to your friend.”

For me, those words simultaneously drive home the holocaust horrors, while exemplifying the compassion and generosity that existed even in those most awful conditions. It shows us that Ilse Kleinzahler, a young woman in a concentration camp with nothing in the world but a raspberry, could be the light in that unimaginable darkness.

Years later, Gerda said:

“I like to remember some of the things in camp, how people helped each other. I want to tell young people about that—that there was friendship and love and caring.”

Like so many accounts from holocaust survivors, the story has a heartbreaking coda. Ilse died on a death march a week before Gerda was liberated. They were holding each other’s hand. We must never forget the atrocities of the holocaust—never—how Ilse and 6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis and the inhumanity inflicted on humans by humans. We must remember, so that we try harder to stop it happening again, as it has, tragically, in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and elsewhere, as other colleagues have said. We must be vigilant in our opposition to hatred, discrimination and oppression and vigilant in defence of peace, respect and human rights.

Let us also remember, as Mrs Klein does, the friendship, the love and the caring that existed even amidst all that horror. If those qualities can exist in a Nazi concentration camp in the middle of the holocaust, they can certainly exist now. No matter how difficult things are, how big our challenges may be or how dark the days might seem, we can still find those most human of qualities. We can still care for each other, we can still love each other and we can still be the light in the darkness.

January 31, 2021