Tag: Christian Wakeford

The speech made by Christian Wakeford, the Labour MP for Bury South, in the House of Commons on 26 January 2023.

I would like to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) and my friend the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) for their contributions to today’s debate, as well as all those who have spoken before me. In particular, I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western), who gave a magnificent maiden speech—although I disagree with his choice of football club.

I would like to thank and pay tribute to the Holocaust Educational Trust, as many Members have, and the Antisemitism Policy Trust for their vital work. I also thank the Community Security Trust, in particular Amanda Bomsytyk and Jonny Newton, for continuing to provide protection to the Jewish community not just in my constituency, but across the country. I thank The Fed in my constituency for their “My Voice” project, which publishes the life stories of holocaust survivors and refugees who have made Britain their home. I hope to raise that in Parliament later this year, and I hope for the support of colleagues. On a final note of thanks, I pay particular tribute to Karen Pollock and Danny Stone, whose counsel is widely sought and respected across this entire Chamber, and indeed across both Houses. Their impact on me and my education should not be underestimated.

We are all ordinary people who today can be extraordinary in our actions. We can all make decisions to challenge prejudice, stand up to hatred and speak out against identity-based persecution. That is the message of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust this year, and it was the story of so many during the holocaust. Genocide is facilitated by ordinary people. Ordinary people turn a blind eye, believe propaganda and join murderous regimes. Those who are persecuted, oppressed and murdered in genocide are not persecuted because of crimes they have committed, but simply because they are ordinary people who belong to a particular group. This is true of genocide the world over, but particularly in the case of the holocaust.

During the rise of Nazi Germany, ordinary people had choices. Many ordinary people were in positions of power, using Jewish people to advance their disgusting ideology and taking advantage of the economic circumstances following the first world war. Many of those in power believed this ideology, but many others were ordinary people obeying orders given to them by evil people. Ordinary people were, for instance, policemen involved in rounding up victims, secretaries typing the records of genocide, and dentists and doctors carrying out evil selections.

Those who were persecuted were ordinary people too, whether Jews, Soviet civilians and prisoners of war, disabled people, Romani people, gays or many, many others. Like us, they all had families, hopes and dreams, and a want and need to get on in life, find opportunities, be happy, and to give and feel love. They wanted to read and write, to contribute and maybe even hold high office, to represent their families and communities and feel free—things we all take for granted today.

Ordinary people also stand by as genocide happens around them. They do not partake, but they also do not speak out, preferring to turn a blind eye and pretend they have not seen it. They were keen not to get involved in case they were next, watching as Jews were snatched from their homes, with anxiety heightened and thoughts swirling around their head: “I hope they don’t come for me next.” What the holocaust showed is that they will. Never in this Chamber or out there must we walk on the other side when it comes to racism and injustice. As a famous civil rights activist once said:

“We do not need allies more devoted to order than to justice”.

I imagine Jews around the world would agree that antisemitism is the oldest racism and that it needs all of us here today to lead from the front and stand against those who wish to fan the flames of hatred and division to enhance their racist agenda.

We should all follow in the footsteps of the ordinary people who did not stand by—the righteous among the nations. Many of them will say that they are not extraordinary people, despite having done extraordinary things. They will say that they did not show superhuman bravery; they just did what was right. When Sir Nicholas Winton rescued 669 children from Czechoslovakia and brought them to the UK, thereby sparing them from the horrors of the holocaust, he simply said:

“Why are you making such a big deal out of it? I just helped a little; I was in the right place at the right time.”

I disagree with Sir Nicholas. He saved innocent children from a life of unimaginable trauma, torture and almost certain death, and gave them a life that at the time seemed impossible. I am sure we all agree that there can be no greater gift than the saving of a precious life.

We stand on the shoulders of giants in this Chamber today. Every single one of us, as leaders in our communities and constituencies, should wake up every day channelling the spirit of Sir Nicholas; doing the right thing, making the right choices, helping those who need it and standing tall in their corner when they need us. Leadership is about ordinary people rejecting division and hate. Leadership is about showing bravery in the face of adversity. Leadership is about choosing virtue over evil.

Earlier this week I visited the Terezín ghetto in Prague with the European Jewish Association. While there I heard at first hand from Gidon Lev, a survivor of Terezín, about how it was the site of the original propaganda from the Nazis. When media gathered to the ghetto, the Nazis were keen to stress that while, yes, it may be a ghetto, people were actually being looked after, and children were being educated and fed. Of course, this was all a front for the despicable treatment that was really happening to Jewish people. It was only following the work of the Red Cross that what was truly happening was uncovered.

Fake news is something we must stand shoulder to shoulder against with our Jewish brothers and sisters, from the rapid development of artificial intelligence, the digital doctoring of pictures and videos of the time, to the holocaust denial spreading like wildfire across social media. Ordinary people are still duped by fake news about the number of people murdered in the holocaust. Decades-old theories—in some cases, centuries-old—that Jewish people are somehow puppeteers of the world’s events, that they run our media, music industry and our sport and are somehow plotting against us, continue to put Jewish lives at risk.

We must never lose sight of the story of the holocaust and how ordinary people in power systemically dehumanised Jewish people so that other ordinary people could murder them on a scale that is simply hard to fathom. In short, we must always remember, and never forget. It must never happen again—not to Jews, not to anybody, not on our watch.

The speech made by Christian Wakeford, the Labour MP for Bury South, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons, on 14 December 2022.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered asylum seeker employment and the cost of living.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. My constituent Mary had to flee her home country of Kenya because of fear of persecution and sought asylum in the UK in 2017. I met Mary in August of this year and learned about her story and the barriers that she has faced since coming to the UK, one of which is the barrier to being able to work. Back in August, she told me:

“I was made to understand that I did not have the right to work as a person seeking asylum. This was…devastating for me as I knew I had some transferrable skills that I could use here to build my life and contribute to society.

Not being able to work really affected my mental health. It felt…demeaning for me especially being a parent and not being able to fully provide for my child. Most days, I was confined in the house, dealing with devastation and a lot of stress. There were days my daughter had to miss school when it was non-uniform…days”.

Mahmoud came to the UK in 2020, fearing for his life. He was forced to leave behind his wife and young son. Mahmoud was a civil servant and campaigner in Sierra Leone. He loved his job, but more importantly, he loved the fact that he was advocating for others. His life was sent into a spiral when the authorities began persecuting him. He said:

“Going hungry brings me some comfort. The money that could pay for my food has paid for the food my family is eating. My little son”—

Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing the debate. While inflation has pushed the cost of energy and food to a 40-year high, the asylum support allowance has risen by just 13p from last year. Does he share my concern that the Home Office has not adequately considered the harm done when refugees cannot afford the very basics, such as three meals a day?

Christian Wakeford

I thank the hon. Lady for the intervention. I was just coming on to that point, but I completely and wholeheartedly agree.

As Mahmoud said, going hungry brings him some comfort. The money that could pay for his food has meant that his little son will not go to bed hungry. That is the only comfort that it brings him. He used to spend £10 on his weekly grocery shop, but now, increasing costs are making that impossible. These are not one-off instances; this is the life of an asylum seeker in a cost of living crisis.

Close to 18 months ago, I was in a debate on the Nationality and Borders Bill. In that debate, I said that asylum seekers travel through many safe countries, and that they essentially have a shopping trolley as to what they want as economic migrants. I want to go on record here and say that it is important to admit when you are wrong. My meetings with Mary and others have shown me that I was wrong, and I am sorry for that. Every week, the Government use scapegoats, and as we continued to see even yesterday in the Prime Minister’s statement, asylum seekers have been one for this Government for far too long. I am sorry for playing my part in that narrative as well.

These people are not arbitrary numbers for newspaper editors to froth at the mouth about, or to stoke the fire of intolerance. They are human beings, and we all need to remember that. They have had their hopes and dreams for themselves and their children dashed, but they still have hope. They want a good education; they want to live life without fear of persecution; and more importantly, they need our help and assistance. The persecution may be for a religious or political belief, due to war or because of the sexuality of the person they love, but when I have met asylum seekers, one thing has always been constant: the need for dignity after all they have been through. I am sure that we can all agree that having a purpose through work brings dignity.

People seeking asylum in the UK are in effect prohibited from working, and are forced to rely on just £5.84 a day while they wait for a decision to be reached on their asylum claim. During the cost of living crisis, that small sum makes it impossible to cover what is needed. As the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) said, an increase of just 13p in a year seems miserly in the crisis that we face as a nation.

You have fled persecution, and you fear for your life. You have taken on a potentially near-death experience, crossing dangerous waters in an overflowing dinghy with both your children. You get to your destination, but all avenues are blocked. That £5.84 does not even buy two cups of coffee. It is not enough to feed or clothe yourself or your children, to travel to appointments, or to buy toiletries and sanitary products; that is not feasible. That just is not fair.

Immigration rules dictate that people can apply to work only after they have been waiting for a decision on their asylum claim for over a year. There are many reasons why lifting the ban on asylum seekers working in the UK is the right thing to do. Forcing people fleeing persecution to spend months of their lives in poverty is inhumane. It has a detrimental impact on their physical and, more importantly, mental health. Enabling people to work provides them with the human dignity of being able to support themselves and their families while they build a route out of poverty. There are moral and ethical reasons why that would be the right thing to do. Lifting the ban would also provide considerable fiscal benefits to the country.

Without the opportunity to work, many people seeking asylum are forced into unsafe and exploitative practices, including forced labour. Research by the OECD found that a lack of permission to work can lead some people seeking asylum to work unlawfully, and that type of work can lead to situations of exploitation and modern slavery, as they do not have recourse to health and safety measures, or even regulated employment practices.

The Lift the Ban coalition estimates that reform of the policy could save the UK economy more than £333 million a year. If 50% of people who have waited more than six months for a decision on their initial asylum application were able to work full time on the national average wage, the Government would receive almost £249 million from the tax and national insurance contributions alone. If they no longer required subsistence support but retained support for accommodation, the Government would save an additional £84 million.

By the end of 2022, the Treasury will have wasted nearly £1 billion over 10 years as a result of banning people seeking asylum from working. Lifting the ban would also bring us into line with other countries around the world. The restrictive approach that the UK takes on the right to work makes it an international outlier. In comparable countries across Europe and in Australia, people are given an opportunity to support themselves earlier, with fewer restrictions. In France and Spain, there is a six-month wait, and in Germany a three-month wait.

Employment figures continue to show tightness in the labour market; the CBI has identified that three quarters of businesses are being hit by labour shortages. The British Chambers of Commerce suggests that reform of the shortage occupation list is required to allow sectors facing an urgent demand for skills to get what they need. It makes no sense for business, or for this country, to prohibit thousands of people who have the necessary skills from filling vacancies in industries that are desperately in need of workers.

Members should not listen only to me; the Lift the Ban coalition brings together almost 270 members, including the TUC, Unison and Oxfam, as well as those famous lefties at the CBI, Bright Blue and the Adam Smith Institute. The Government’s own Migration Advisory Committee released its annual report on Monday. It found that banning asylum seekers from working results in their entering the informal economy on poorer wages and conditions, which leaves them open to exploitation. It states:

“We also recommended that the Government review their policy more generally on allowing asylum seekers to work.”

It is not only businesses but the public who support that. YouGov polling carried out in March 2022 found that 81% of the population support granting the right to work after someone has waited six months. According to Refugee Action, 97,717 people seeking asylum have waited more than six months for an initial decision on their application—a sixfold increase from five years ago.

We have heard many times about the asylum system being broken. The figures alone show that to be the case. Just over three quarters—77%—of asylum seekers will eventually have their asylum claim accepted. The cost of living crisis has illuminated the ongoing dangers and frustrations of the restrictive rules. Soaring food and energy prices have pushed inflation to a 40-year high, yet the rate of asylum support allowance has risen by just 13p since 2021. Without the option of supporting themselves and their families through work, many people seeking asylum experience poverty, destitution and homelessness, and develop serious physical and mental health issues. The Conservative mantra has always been that the best route out of poverty is through work, so why are asylum seekers left in destitution and not offered that route?

Labour supports granting asylum seekers the right to work after they have waited for six months. The Minister for Immigration admitted recently that although he did not think the policy should change due to pull-factor concerns, there are good arguments on both sides of the debate. The Government’s defence of the policy is that enabling asylum seekers to work would act as a pull factor, and that wider economic policy schemes could be seriously undermined if migrants were able to bypass work visa rules by lodging unfounded asylum claims in the UK, but that falls flat given that a leaked Home Office report showed that permission to work is not a pull factor. The report revealed that many people seeking asylum do not have a prior understanding of welfare policies or access to provisions before they come to a country, and they have little knowledge of economic conditions in destination countries.

Equally, the argument that economic migrants will make false claims in order to access the labour market is not a strong line of defence. A six-month waiting period would provide a strong safeguard against that. It is implausible that somebody would bring themselves to the attention of the authorities on the basis that there might be a chance that their asylum application will not be decided within six months. In reality, most people seeking asylum do not have a choice about the country to which they flee. Many of those who have come to the UK have done so because of cultural, family or community connections.

I pay particular thanks to Refugee Action for all the important work it does in supporting asylum seekers. It has been an invaluable source of information and, more importantly, education to me. I also thank World Jewish Relief; it set up its specialist training and employment programme in 2016, which helps refugees to gain language skills and qualifications, and to get training. It also provides one-to-one assistance in CV writing and interview skills.

We need an asylum system based on compassion. I hope the Minister has listened closely to the body of supportive evidence and takes heed of it. Human beings all need support at some point. Please do not leave these people behind.

The speech made by Christian Wakeford, the Labour MP for Bury South, in the House of Commons on 17 May 2022.

I listened with great interest to the Gracious Speech last week and was left bitterly disappointed. It will go down as a speech of missed opportunities, all through the choice of the Prime Minister. Under this Government, we are heading back to a time that was simply about the haves and have nots. People can either afford the basics or they suffer.

Workers are seeing a decline in their living standards not seen since the Victorian era and the Poor Law of 1834. We are seeing a return to that miserable time, when volunteers pulled together to plug so many holes left by the purposeful underfunding of the state. Eighty years ago, Beveridge spoke of the five giant evils that plagued society, and I am afraid that Conservative Members are propping up and presiding over a return to those evils—or they would be if they were here today.

Beveridge spoke of want, and this could have been a Queen’s Speech that addressed the concerns about the cost of living crisis that is currently gripping the nation through an emergency Budget or a Bill to propose a windfall tax on large energy companies. Instead, food banks boom while people make the choice between heating their home and feeding themselves and their children. Imagine a world in 2022 in which one in four parents are skipping meals because they cannot afford it. What solutions have Conservative Members come up with? Learn to cook. Work harder. Work longer. It is absolutely shameful.

Beveridge spoke of disease. This was a Queen’s Speech that showed that there is no plan for our creaking health service and NHS waiting times. There is no plan to deal with access to NHS dentistry. There is no plan to increase the number of GPs. There is no plan to tackle either the stigma or the problem of addiction, which is a matter close to my heart, as Members will know, because no one chooses to be an addict.

Beveridge spoke of ignorance—not the kind of ignorance shown by the Prime Minister and Chancellor while they put their heads in the sand; he was speaking about the education of our children. The attainment gap is widening further still and, yet again, there is no plan in sight. Our children cannot learn properly if they are hungry, and our teachers cannot teach properly if they are not supported, yet nearly 18,000 schools are facing brutal cuts to their funding. These children are the future of our country, yet they are treated like collateral damage by this Government.

Beveridge spoke of squalor. We have people across the country trapped in their own homes, which are covered in flammable cladding, a full five years on from the tragedy of Grenfell. This was a Queen’s Speech where housing and planning policies were not even mentioned once. Social housing waiting lists are spiralling into the decades, yet we had merely rumours of a rehash of right to buy from a Prime Minister totally bereft of ideas and increasingly out of touch. We have properties riddled with damp and mould making people ill, here in the sixth richest economy in the world.

Beveridge spoke of idleness. This could have been a Queen’s Speech where employment rights were boosted and the shocking practice of fire and rehire was finally brought to an end. Instead, the Government issue further flimsy guidelines that allow bosses to ride roughshod over the workers. More than 20 times we were promised an employment Bill, but this was yet another empty promise for the people of this country and another win for rogue employers. This was a Queen’s Speech that will not help those in need as our country lurches from crisis to crisis. It was a Queen’s Speech where this Government are increasingly out of touch with their own people, and I predict that it is one that will unravel before the year is out. I will be voting against the Queen’s Speech for those reasons.

The speech made by Christian Wakeford, the Labour MP for Bury South, in the House of Commons on 27 January 2022.

I thank the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) for securing this very important debate. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) and for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), and the right hon. and gallant Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), for their incredibly moving and powerful speeches.

As has been said several times during the debate, when people think of the holocaust—the Shoah—we instantly go to Auschwitz-Birkenau. We instantly think of Bergen-Belsen . Earlier this week I was in Kyiv, in Ukraine, on a European Jewish Association delegation to Babi Yar, which was the location for the largest mass grave of 100,000 Jews who were killed one by one. There was no gas chamber; they were all shot. Their only crime was being Jewish.

While I was at that delegation, I took part in a symposium to discuss holocaust education, and the rise of antisemitism in football and on our streets across Europe. This is something that we all need to take extremely seriously. We need only consider the instances of last year, when there were not only antisemitic tropes such as blood libel on the streets of London, but convoys being driven throughout the country. It was not right then, and it is not right now.

I have spoken many times in the House about how proud I am to represent the constituency of Bury South, which is home to an extremely large and thriving Jewish community. Within that community there are a number of holocaust survivors, some of whom I have been privileged to speak with personally. I will never forget the way I was addressed by a Kindertransport survivor at a Jewish communal meeting before my election. In the United Kingdom, in 2019, he spoke about the fears for his family caused by the rise in antisemitic hate crime. To be approached in this manner and experience the dawning realisation that the lessons of the holocaust have not been learnt is something that should shock us all.

As the number of holocaust survivors tragically continues to dwindle, I also pay tribute to the second and third generations who are the children and grandchildren of the survivors. They work so hard to preserve the memory of their loved ones and ensure that future generations are aware of the holocaust, the worst crime ever committed. Let me I specifically mention the work of Noemie Lopian. She has published the memoirs of her father, a holocaust survivor, Dr Israel Bornstein. Alongside the grandson of a high- ranking SS Officer, Derek Niemann, they tour the country speaking about their families’ stories and instilling the importance of tolerance and fighting prejudice.

As has been mentioned throughout the debate, the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day this year is “One Day”. This is extremely powerful, and manages to encompass the whole lives of those poor victims and the survivors. It was inconceivable to someone having a happy childhood and growing up with a loving family that “One Day”, within a relatively short period, they would be facing the most unimaginable horrors. I read the words of a survivor, Iby Knill, who stated that from one day to the next, everything could change. She said that one day, she was greeted with an embrace; the very next day, people ran across the road to avoid being seen with her. I read the words of my constituent, Ike Alterman, someone who is rightly revered across the entire Jewish community and by royalty following his recent meetings with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. I will read the following section from his memoirs word for word:

“One day in 1942, they said that all Jewish people must congregate in the town square. You could only bring with you what you could carry in your hands and everything else you had to leave…So we were all lined up in the square, standing there for hours and hours and nothing was happening…Each line was about five deep and they started counting the people. I was standing behind my father and he told me to stay on my tiptoes to make me look taller than I was. So there was my dad, my mother, my sister and my little brother. And they came and they counted and just between my father and my mother they stopped, their hand gesture divided us. So my father and I were saved and the rest were marched out through the square…My little brother with his hands above his head. Rifles on them. Never to be seen again.”

For Ike and millions of others, the following years led them to suffer and witness abhorrent and unspeakable crimes. However, those incarcerated in the most appalling, brutal conditions dreamed that one day, they would be free. How the survivors managed this, I will never know, but they built new lives for themselves and thrived; they started businesses and had families, and now have countless numbers of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It is therefore imperative to tell the whole story of a survivor’s life, and I therefore commend the My Voice project, which is co-ordinated by The Fed in my constituency. That project documents the life stories of holocaust survivors living in Greater Manchester, and is unique in being located in the main Jewish social care provider in Greater Manchester, which enables it to provide holistic wrap-around care to the survivors as their testimony is recounted. The concept was provided by Margit Cohen, who came to the UK on the Kindertransport in 1938. She stated,

“I have to tell you my life story, my whole life story before I die.”

My Voice captures survivors’ stories in their own voices by sound recording and transcribing the storyteller’s words into individual books. These are more than just artifacts of oral history: they are records of each person’s experience and heritage, encompassing their entire life before, during and after the war years. The project intends the completed books to be used as groundbreaking educational resources to further understanding of the persecution of Jews and other minorities by the Nazi regime; to counter prejudice and revisionism; and to give courage and hope to other survivors of tyranny and oppression. To date, 30 life story books have been produced, and a further 12 are in various stages of production. The project works closely with Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, which houses the books in its museum, and the team of volunteers who work on the project also received a Queen’s award for voluntary service. I conclude by thanking those brave survivors for telling their stories.